Is Jesus Christ a created being (Begotten Son) or has He always existed alongside God the Father (Eternal Son)?

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@The_Omega

The authority of Scripture is not a “construct” in the same way that creeds or councils are—it is something Scripture claims for itself.

Not really, it’s your interpretation of Scripture, based on traditional understandings, and catechisms, and the whole canonizaton process itself, which was an endeavor of the Church quite a while after Christ that employed human doctrines and human constructs. I don’t see the value in elevating your interpretation over the interpretation of the Church writ large over history. You cannot access some kind of objective meaning in the text. You are going to offer a subjective interpretation, shaped by your experience and mental categories, just like everyone else.

@The_Omega

that what is written is God-breathed—originating from the Spirit, not human consensus.

And at the time he wrote it, he was certainly referring to the Hebrew Scriptures, not the Christian canon and certainly not his own letter.

@The_Omega

The doctrine of inspiration isn’t a manmade idea imposed on the text; it’s how the text describes itself.

Come on. You decided what “God-breathed” means and have a whole construct/human concept of that. That doesn’t come from the text. It comes from what you were taught the text means. It’s an interpretation. A traditional one.

@The_Omega

I’m saying tradition has no authority unless it agrees with the inspired Word of God.

What you are saying is you reject tradition that doesn’t accord with your personal interpretation of the Word of God. That’s arrogant. None of us have access to the meaning in the words of Scripture until we interpret them, and all of our interpretations are limited by our human and cultural concepts. There is no way around this. We can debate what the Bible means, but no one gets to claim that their interpretation is “God’s word.” It’s just their understanding of God’s word. And since we are all in the same boat with our limitedness, we should put some value on the transmission of the apostolic gospel over time and the consensus understandings that godly people across languages, cultures, and time, have agreed on.

@The_Omega

Psalmic and prophetic references to “Sonship” point to a future reality realized in time, not an eternal relationship between co-equal persons.

Whether you label the Second Person of the Trinity the Son or the Word or Numero Dos, it’s all semantics. Scripture has the Second Person of the Trinity existing at Creation. (John 1, Colossians 1). Theologians have written a lot about the Functional Trinity using different names than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if the terminology is such a sticking point. Like The Source, The Sent One, and The Power. Of course there is Scriptural and traditional interpretive support for these “functions,” but you aren’t going to get to a full theological framework by prooftexting verses here and there and interpreting them outside of their cultural and historical frames of reference.

@The_Omega

Trinitarianism describes three who’s within one what—which cannot be reconciled with the scriptural affirmation of God’s absolute oneness

Yes, I’m aware that it’s always been considered a mystery and analogical thinking fails to represent something with which we as humans in our time-bound, physical universe have no embodied experience. I feel like if we are accepting that Jesus as fully God, fully human died to atone for the sins of humanity and somehow our spiritual participation in his resurrection from death conquers sin and death and reconciles humanity to God and he ascended bodily to heaven where he rules the world as a resurrected, embodied human who is also Lord of all Creation, and our great hope is that even if we die, we are going to be physically resurrected to eternal life in a New Creation when Heaven is united with Earth in the Eschaton… well then the functional mechanics of the Trinity is not the hardest thing for me to “believe in” or what makes me wonder if I’m a crazy and/or stupid person for my beliefs.

[The_Omega]

@Christy

Not really, it’s your interpretation of Scripture, based on traditional understandings, and catechisms, and the whole canonizaton process itself, which was an endeavor of the Church quite a while after Christ that employed human doctrines and human constructs. I don’t see the value in elevating your interpretation over the interpretation of the Church writ large over history. You cannot access some kind of objective meaning in the text. You are going to offer a subjective interpretation, shaped by your experience and mental categories, just like everyone else.

I appreciate your thoughtful response, and I understand where you’re coming from. It’s true—we all bring our experiences, backgrounds, and frameworks to the table when reading Scripture. But my appeal is not to elevate my personal interpretation over others or to deny the historical role of the Church in preserving the canon. Rather, it’s to affirm that Scripture itself claims an authority that is divine in origin—God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16)—while creeds, councils, and catechisms, as helpful as they might sometimes be, are ultimately human responses to that divine revelation.

Yes, the canonization process involved people—but those people weren’t creating the authority of Scripture, they were recognizing what was already authoritative because it came from God. There’s a massive difference between receiving what the Spirit has given and constructing theological systems layered in later philosophical language. That’s why I emphasize returning to the language of the text itself, rather than leaning on metaphysical categories that the apostles never used—like “co-equal persons” or “eternally begotten.” Those are interpretive conclusions, not inspired phrases.

So it’s not that I believe I can access Scripture with perfect objectivity—but I do believe that when we prayerfully and humbly read the Word, seeking not to impose later constructs but to let it speak for itself, the Spirit still leads us into truth (John 16:13). That’s not arrogance—it’s trust in the sufficiency of the Word and the guidance of the same Holy Ghost who inspired it.

@Christy

Come on. You decided what “God-breathed” means and have a whole construct/human concept of that. That doesn’t come from the text. It comes from what you were taught the text means. It’s an interpretation. A traditional one.

I understand the caution against importing rigid constructs into the text. But when I say the doctrine of inspiration comes from the text itself, I’m not just repeating a tradition—I’m taking 2 Timothy 3:16 seriously on its own terms. The phrase “God-breathed” (theopneustos) is Paul’s own Spirit-inspired language to describe the nature of Scripture. That’s not something I made up or was taught in isolation—it’s what the text says about itself. Yes, I interpret what “God-breathed” means, just like we all interpret every word we read, but that doesn’t make it purely subjective or merely traditional. It means that Scripture carries divine authority, not just human reflection.

We all bring assumptions to the text—that’s true. But I try to let Scripture define its own terms wherever possible. I believe the Bible is trustworthy because the God it reveals is trustworthy. So when it says all Scripture is “God-breathed” and able to make us wise unto salvation, I don’t think that’s just poetic language—I believe that’s a claim about its origin and authority. And if that’s true, then my understanding of God, truth, and salvation must start there—not with what tradition says, or what makes most sense to my modern mind, but with the voice of the Spirit speaking through His Word.

@Christy

What you are saying is you reject tradition that doesn’t accord with your personal interpretation of the Word of God. That’s arrogant. None of us have access to the meaning in the words of Scripture until we interpret them, and all of our interpretations are limited by our human and cultural concepts. There is no way around this. We can debate what the Bible means, but no one gets to claim that their interpretation is “God’s word.” It’s just their understanding of God’s word. And since we are all in the same boat with our limitedness, we should put some value on the transmission of the apostolic gospel over time and the consensus understandings that godly people across languages, cultures, and time, have agreed on.

I agree with part of what you’ve said—we all do interpret, and none of us come to Scripture in a vacuum. But respectfully, I don’t believe it’s arrogant to insist that God’s Word must remain the final authority, even if all of us are fallible in how we approach it. In fact, I’d argue that’s the most humble position we can take: not trusting in the weight of consensus or tradition alone, but coming back again and again to what has been breathed by God (2 Timothy 3:16).

You’re right—we all bring cultural lenses, and I admit I have mine. But so did every generation of Christians, including those who crafted the traditions you refer to. The danger is when we treat the accumulated interpretations of church history as untouchable, even when they introduce terminology or concepts not found in the inspired text. That’s where I part ways—not because I think I know better, but because I genuinely believe the Holy Spirit still guides us into all truth (John 16:13), and that the Word, when rightly divided (2 Tim. 2:15), is sufficient to lead us without needing philosophical constructs added centuries later.

So yes, I value tradition—but I value truth more. And if tradition ever drifts from the clear, God-breathed Word, then as the Bereans did, we have the responsibility to go back to the Scriptures and search them daily—not arrogantly, but prayerfully, humbly, and faithfully.

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

@The_Omega

So it’s not that I believe I can access Scripture with perfect objectivity—but I do believe that when we prayerfully and humbly read the Word, seeking not to impose later constructs but to let it speak for itself, the Spirit still leads us into truth (John 16:13). That’s not arrogance—it’s trust in the sufficiency of the Word and the guidance of the same Holy Ghost who inspired it.

But you have just built a case otherwise; that the Spirit did not lead the church into truth, and that the church missed the text of scripture, despite the church father’s constant Biblical references. It was to correct errors such as you are promoting that later creeds, terminology, and constructs were introduced. They are purposeful, not drift; and they are essential beliefs, not traditions.

[Terry_Sampson]

• You are arguing with the contents of the Berean Holiness article. I was merely expanding a little on Mitchel’s reference to that article.
• Meanwhile, you ignore my reference to Matt. 1:21-22. Was there ever a time and place when Jesus was not the Son of God or that the Son of God was not Jesus? If either, when and where?

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@The_Omega

But respectfully, I don’t believe it’s arrogant to insist that God’s Word must remain the final authority, even if all of us are fallible in how we approach it.

Okay, I agree, with the caveat that we have to interpret God’s word within the communicative context it was received, and there is essentially no such thing as “the plain meaning” of the text. That’s just a way of saying “the meaning obvious to me.” We can build cases for what the original speakers and hearers intended and inferred and those cases will be better or weaker, more plausible or less plausible, more or less coherent and preferable given other assumptions, but we are never going to get to the “objectively correct” interpretation.

@The_Omega

The danger is when we treat the accumulated interpretations of church history as untouchable, even when they introduce terminology or concepts not found in the inspired text.

Agreed. I think with this issue of the Trinity though, where Scripture will clearly lead you is to not having answers and not to better answers than the creeds offer. The Trinity construct is a work of theological imagination that tries to make sense of a whole range of texts and experiences that in many ways claim conflicting realities. I’m all for re-imagining constructs, as long as people are humble about the fact that they aren’t going to brilliantly discover some truth in Scripture that everyone else just missed. We can recover more authentic interpretations to correct interpretations that have become twisted or misused over the course of Christian history. We can say that contextualizing the overall truth and message in Scripture requires imaginatively moving beyond the ancient contexts and traditional understandings, and applying truth to our questions in new and different ways (as we see with scriptual arguments against slavery or race-based discrimination or war, or for ordained women, or for allowing same sex marriage). But it’s all going to be an imaginative exercise, not a logical exercise, or an empirical evidence analysis exercise. The text says what it says and it doesn’t explicity teach any model of the Trinity. You aren’t going to be able to use scripture to come up with a different one, just to point out which parts you want to be agnostic and unsure about. I have no problem with people being agnostic about various aspects of traditional Christian theology because I think the Bible itself encourages us to argue with God and live faithfully in our doubts and lack of understanding. What I do have a problem with is people who reject one kind of theological certainty but in exchange for a different certainty they just make up. (And if my answers to you have seemed harsh it’s because someone is always showing up on this forum claiming to be a prophet who has single-handedly discovered the real meaning of the Bible, and usually they are pretty uninformed and somewhat delusional. And for crying out loud, you picked The_Omega as a username, which is a little bit much.)

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@Terry_Sampson

Meanwhile, you ignore my reference to Matt. 1:21-22. Was there ever a time and place when Jesus was not the Son of God or that the Son of God was not Jesus? If either, when and where?

The Son of God was not Jesus until the Incarnation. Jesus of Nazareth is a human who had an origin in time. To believe Jesus is God in the traditional hypostatic union sense (as opposed to believing that Jesus became God or uniquely channeled God, which are typically viewed as heresies) requires believing that God united himself with creation in an unprecented way at the conception of Jesus of Nazareth’s physical human body. But before that conception, Jesus of Nazareth the embodied human did not exist. Christians don’t generally believe in the pre-existence of human souls, humanity starts with embodiment.

There are supposed embodiments or prefigurations of the Son/Second Person of the Trinity in the Hebrew scriptures that are not Jesus, if you take the path of arguing that Jacob wrestled with God embodied and God accompanied Shadrach Meshach and Abednego in the furnace embodied, for example, or that David and Melchizedek were uniquely filled with the Holy Spirit to embody God/The Son/The Sent One in a historically singular way that anticipated the full Incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth.

[St.Roymond]

@rsewell

But you have just built a case otherwise; that the Spirit did not lead the church into truth, and that the church missed the text of scripture, despite the church father’s constant Biblical references.

And those Fathers spoke in unanimity, which gives a stronger claim to have been guided by the Spirit that any little group later on that comprises a fragment of a fraction of the church – arguably that promise was made to a combined “you”, not a distributive one. On top of that, if the Council was just human thought, what happened to Paul’s teaching that the Spirit gives teacher to the church – did the Spirit take a vacation at one of the most critical junctures in history?

I would say that the assertion “the Spirit leads us into truth” can only apply when all Christians speak in unanimity (again).

@rsewell

It was to correct errors such as you are promoting that later creeds, terminology, and constructs were introduced. They are purposeful, not drift; and they are essential beliefs, not traditions.

As the outcome of Christ’s promise, they are most definitely essential! An argument can be made about which councils qualify as having full authority, but that is a detail; the first few were unanimous in representation and voice.

@Christy

I’m all for re-imagining constructs, as long as people are humble about the fact that they aren’t going to brilliantly discover some truth in Scripture that everyone else just missed.

Yes – that final assumption requires holding that the Spirit wasn’t paying attention all these centuries.

@Christy

There are supposed embodiments or prefigurations of the Son/Second Person of the Trinity in the Hebrew scriptures that are not Jesus

Yet those could happen because Jesus was in the future – the Son was already an aspect of that Person, that is, being embodied in the physical was an “option” from eternity. (By extension, Creation exists because the Son had the potential to take on material form.)

[The_Omega]

@Christy

What I do have a problem with is people who reject one kind of theological certainty but in exchange for a different certainty they just make up. (And if my answers to you have seemed harsh it’s because someone is always showing up on this forum claiming to be a prophet who has single-handedly discovered the real meaning of the Bible, and usually they are pretty uninformed and somewhat delusional. And for crying out loud, you picked The_Omega as a username, which is a little bit much.)

Christy, I appreciate your honesty, and I understand your frustration—truly. Forums like this often attract voices claiming fresh revelation while dismissing centuries of thoughtful theology, and that can wear on people who value communal discernment. But I want to be clear: I’m not here claiming to be a prophet or to have discovered something “new.” Quite the opposite. I’m holding to something ancient—a view of God rooted in the original apostolic message: that Jesus is the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9), that God was manifest in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16), and that there is One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism (Eph. 4:5). My concern isn’t about being original—it’s about being faithful to what the Bible actually says without reading later creedal constructs into it.

---

When I say it’s about being faithful to what the Bible actually says, I’m referring to the difference between drawing meaning from the original language of Scripture—such as Greek grammar—and reading into the text theological systems that developed centuries later, particularly the philosophical framework of the Trinity. Using Greek grammar helps us understand what the original authors intended—for example, how the word Logos in John 1:1 is used or how verbs and tenses reveal time, action, and identity. That’s not adding to Scripture—it’s uncovering the meaning that’s already there.

But when we begin to use terms like eternally begotten, co-equal persons, consubstantial, or triune essence, we’re no longer just translating the Greek—we’re importing philosophical categories that come from Neoplatonism and early Greek metaphysics, not from Moses, the prophets, or the apostles. The Trinitarian model, as formally expressed in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, was deeply shaped by attempts to harmonize Christian theology with Greek philosophical notions of substance, personhood, and metaphysical relationship—things foreign to the Hebraic worldview of the Scriptures.

The Bible actually warns us about this. Paul says in Colossians 2:8: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” He goes on to declare in verse 9: “For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Not in three persons—in Him. Likewise, 1 Corinthians 1:20–24 contrasts the wisdom of the world with the foolishness of preaching Christ. God chose to reveal Himself not through philosophy, but through incarnation—the invisible Spirit made visible in the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 3:16).

So the difference isn’t about rejecting history or Greek altogether—it’s about not allowing post-biblical philosophical constructs to redefine what the Scriptures plainly declare: that God is One (Deut. 6:4), manifest in flesh (John 1:14), and revealed in the name of Jesus (Acts 4:12).

---

As for the username—“The_Omega”—I chose it not as a title for myself, but as a reminder of who He is: the First and the Last, the Almighty (Rev. 1:8, 11, 17–18). It’s a declaration of who Jesus is, not of who I am. I’m not trying to be “the guy who figured it all out”—I’m trying to uphold what the apostles preached and what the Scripture reveals. We may disagree, and that’s okay. But my aim is to dialogue with reverence for God’s Word, not to elevate myself.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@The_Omega

Using Greek grammar helps us understand what the original authors intended

As a linguist, I think this is nonsense. Grammar itself is a construct imposed on a language to describe it as an abstract system instead of a communicative event. Grammar rules simply describe typical patterns of use, they don’t unlock objective meaning or intended meaning. You understand author intent by understanding their cognitive environment and the patterns of inferential thinking that were likely. Most of this is not information you can find in the text.

@The_Omega

we’re importing philosophical categories that come from Neoplatonism and early Greek metaphysics, not from Moses, the prophets, or the apostles.

It’s a kind of translation to present concepts according to the cultural frames of the receptor language. The counter-argument is that the meaning existed in the Hebraic/Hellenistic Jewish/early Church frames and that meaning needed to be triggered with different labels in the later Greek context of the early church. I’m not claiming nothing new was possibly imposed, just that the imposing of foreign concepts on meaning is a necessary part of translation and communication. A receptor audience has the words they have and the concepts they have. You can’t magically transfer the source language concepts to their brains, you can only build awareness about how concepts differ and do or don’t overlap.

@The_Omega

The Trinitarian model, as formally expressed in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, was deeply shaped by attempts to harmonize Christian theology with Greek philosophical notions of substance, personhood, and metaphysical relationship—things foreign to the Hebraic worldview of the Scriptures.

The formal theological description of the Trinity, possibly. The Greeks were also very concerned with precisely defining things and much of their philosophizing revolved around creating and refining definitions of abstractions. But it is still the case that the Hebrew Scriptures, while affirming the oneness of God, also speak of Divine Wisdom as a personified entity, speak of the Spirit of God doing things and filling people, and empowering people, and performing work of sanctification and truth telling. They speak of a Creator and Judge who relates as both Father and Husband. And they speak of Divine Messengers who embody God’s presence on earth (aforementioned Person who wrestled with Jacob, for example).

In the first century Jewish context, what seemed to break their brains was not that Jesus claimed it was possible for a Divine Son of God to be human and distinct from God, but that he had the audacity to claim he and the Father were one. That’s what got him crucified for blasphemy.

Could you state a summary of what you think is a proper understanding of God, the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit would be?

[graft2vine (Ethan)]

@St.Roymond

The Son doesn’t ascend to the Spirit, He ascends to the Father.

With the triune nature of God, all three have to be involved - they are One. So the Son ascends to the Father through the Spirit. That, or the Son meets the Father in the Spirit as the Father proceeds to the Spirit.

@St.Roymond

The Father doesn’t proceed anywhere, the Spirit proceeds from the Father.

Your statements flatly contradict the plain words of Jesus.

Not a contradiction… its saying the same thing. Lets take love as an example of one of the fruits of the Spirit. The Father proceeds to love the Son; is the same as saying: Love proceeds from the Father to the Son. If the Father doesn’t proceed, He cannot love us.

@St.Roymond

Since the name had to be given, it wasn’t the name yet. And it is given as a description of what He would do.

The name was given, and He told us what He would do in the OT… we didn’t understand until it happened.

@St.Roymond

So “Jesus” can be no more a name that “Yahweh”, to use your own reasoning.

Yahweh means “I AM”… I am what? It is often translated as “the Lord”. A true name doesn’t have “the” in front of it. The name “Jesus” means “the Lord is salvation”, or “I AM your Savior”. Jesus saves us by making us righteous, by putting our sin to death on the cross.

• Jer 23:5 “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “That I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness; a King shall reign and prosper, and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. 6 In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell safely; Now this is His name by which He will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

@St.Roymond

God’s name is Yahweh. The Father is Yahweh, the Son is Yahweh but in the Incarnation gains the name Jesus

Jesus is the full name of God. God never said his name is Yahweh, but said this:

• Exo 3:13 Then Moses said to God, “Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?”

• 14 And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” 15 Moreover God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: ‘The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.’

“The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” is His name… This is a definition of His name, not the name itself. The triune nature is in it, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are types for the Father, Son and Spirit. And then, “I AM WHO I AM” is a sentence… like saying, let what I’m doing show who I am. I am sending you, Moses, to go save the children of Israel.

• Exo 3:8 So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey,

Jesus has come to save!

@St.Roymond

@graft2vine

@St.Roymond

At the bottom left, “immaterial soul” is in conflict with the OT definition.

Please expound.

A living soul is a body plus the breath (of God) --it’s in Genesis 2.

That’s not in conflict. A body does not have to be material for the soul to be living. The resurrected Jesus walked through walls. A soul can live in an immaterial physical body.

[The_Omega]

@Christy

Could you state a summary of what you think is a proper understanding of God, the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit would be?

A biblically grounded understanding of God, the divinity of Christ, and the Holy Spirit—without reliance on post-biblical creedal philosophy—maintains the absolute oneness of God as declared throughout Scripture (Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 43:10–11). God is revealed as a singular, indivisible Spirit (John 4:24), who is omnipresent, eternal, and sovereign. The divinity of Christ is not derived from a second, co-equal person within a triune Godhead, but from the truth that God Himself was manifest in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16). Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9). His divine identity is not as a separate entity within the Godhead, but as the very embodiment of the eternal Spirit in human form.

The Holy Spirit is not a third divine person, but rather the Spirit of the one true God, and in the New Testament context, the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9–11). The same Spirit who created the world, overshadowed Mary, dwelt in Jesus, and now indwells the believer, is one and the same. This model maintains a strict monotheism while affirming Christ’s full divinity and the ongoing operation of God’s Spirit in the world. It aligns closely with apostolic teaching, avoiding later metaphysical constructs such as “eternal Sonship” or “hypostatic persons,” which lack direct scriptural support. Instead, it emphasizes that God’s redemptive self-disclosure was manifested in time through the incarnation, not an eternal interpersonal dynamic within the Godhead.

[St.Roymond]

@graft2vine

Yahweh means “I AM”… I am what? It is often translated as “the Lord”. A true name doesn’t have “the” in front of it.

Do you grasp simple grammar? and how translations work?

Everything after the … is so off it doesn’t even rise to the point of being wrong.

You ignore the plain words of scripture in order to twist it to your ideas, and then demonstrate you lack basic language skills – so badly I don’t even know where to begin.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@The_Omega

His divine identity is not as a separate entity within the Godhead, but as the very embodiment of the eternal Spirit in human form.

My understanding of classic Christian Trinitarianism is that it also affirms the oneness and indivisibleness of God. But if you collapse the distinctness of the Three Persons into onenesss too much, you end up in modalism. If you emphasize the distinctness too much, you end up in Arianism. The whole idea of personhood to describe functional roles in the Godhead is using metaphorical/analogical thinking to try to conceive of something with which we have no embodied experience. One cannot be three and three cannot be one, so we try to use conceptual metaphors to grasp what it means. I’m fine with admitting all these attempts fail and the creeds’ use of metaphorical representations (with their reliance on concepts of “substance” for a spiritual being, their employment of anthropomorphic figurative language with regard to “personhood” “wills,” “identity,” and the father-son relationship, etc.) break down at points. Sure. They were attempting to describe a reality we can’t describe and concepts we have no experience with or adequate words for. It’s a fair critique that some of their elaboration was probably more an attempt to make insufficient analogies “work” in some kind of ultimately coherent way that ended up taking the analogy as some kind of ultimate reality instead of a conceptual metaphor. I feel like this is more a limitation of human language and experience than it is twisting the truth of Scripture, imposing foreign beliefs on the early Church’s teaching, or saying anything that demonstrably counters revelation.

I agree that God’s self-disclosure as Triune was manifest to us in time, along a redemptive continuum of understanding, and any attempt of ours to model out the dynamics of divine relationship in the Godhead in eternity past is theological imagination and conjecture, not an act of interpreting revelation.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

I guess I don’t understand what the pastoral or missional or personal discipleship concern in all of this really is. The vast majority in the people of the pews in Christian churches have totally heretical views when it comes to the Trinity, but it has nothing to do with reading fifth century church fathers or reciting the creeds liturgically. Some of them get their heretical ideas from uninformed “plain reading” of their Bibles. And we don’t think it affects their salvation or ability to live an ethical life.

In the last twenty years, the only harmful way I have seen the rather arcane minutiae of historical Trinitarian theology that you are referencing dragged out and used to impact anyone’s daily life as a Christian was when Wayne Grudem and friends tried to argue for the eternal ontological subordination of the Son in order to prop up their misogynistic ideas that women are ontologically subordinate to men and will continue to be subordinate to men in the New Creation, which is just bananapants and pathetic. You shoudn’t need to invoke big Greek words about the Trinity to manipulate your wife into obeying you and keep women out of the pastorate. And in the end “Nicene orthodoxy” turned out to be good for women, bad for misogynists, so I’m predisposed to cut it some slack.

[Terry_Sampson]

United Pentecostal Church International (UCPI) - David K. Bernard

UPCI - Our Beliefs A brief overview of our essential doctrines

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@St.Roymond

“Preceed” both isn’t a word and isn’t in my post – I said “proceeds”, as in when Jesus said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father.

The inference st Roymond…the inference.

In not adequately addressing the issues in your response you mislead opening the door to errant theology.

You have not correctly refetenced my response. Its important to clarify to readers why preceed/preceeds (it makes no difference which) does not mean predates. You didnt do that, which all trinitarian theologians always do and the text i quoted below is very strong evidence as to why its important

Isiaiah 9.6

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given…he shall be called wonderful, counsellor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace"

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@mitchellmckain

But the number three is nowhere in the text and this is not something I agree with. I don’t agree with the limitation to three persons any more than I agree to the limitation to one person. I believe in a transpersonal God – no limitations. Three only comes into it because these are the persons of God we know. And they are the only three spoken of in scripture. So… we are right to be wary of opening this up for anyone to add more persons to this, which I can easily see new religions trying to do. But I believe in an infinite God, not a God who is three.

This statement is contradictory.

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@Christy

The Son of God was not Jesus until the Incarnation. Jesus of Nazareth is a human who had an origin in time. To believe Jesus is God in the traditional hypostatic union sense (as opposed to believing that Jesus became God or uniquely channeled God, which are typically viewed as heresies) requires believing that God united himself with creation in an unprecented way at the conception of Jesus of Nazareth’s physical human body. But before that conception, Jesus of Nazareth the embodied human did not exist. Christians don’t generally believe in the pre-existence of human souls, humanity starts with embodiment.

Except that Christians believe Christs “soul” did pre exist his human birth

@Christy

. The vast majority in the people of the pews in Christian churches have totally heretical views when it comes to the Trinity, but it has nothing to do with reading fifth century church fathers or reciting the creeds liturgically. Some of them get their heretical ideas from uninformed “plain reading” of their Bibles.

Christy, your last statememt there… thats exactly what Christians should do…we cant simply make up stuff to suit ourselves that isnt there in its pages. It was written for men in the language of men.(mankind)

Whether you accept it or not, the writers of the bible…mem such as Moses, David, Daniel, matthew, Paul, John…these writers were given all the informarion THEY wrote down by God. God used men to interprete His words to us.

To.claim those words need re interpreting is fundamentally wrong…i do not know why people here hinge their entire world view on that kind of stuff…it screws up their beliefd to the point its not sensible. Smart people immediately see those cockups and tear said wolrd view apart highlighting the inconsistencies and internal errors it causes.

I was not always a Christian, this is an important concern. If we think the bible is just a book of morality…sorry but atheism has a better answer for that…evolutionary social experimentation. Social sciences prove that we dont need God for morality. Christianity offers much more than that, the bible a lot more than a story about morality

[Terry_Sampson]

The Oneness of God | Dr. David K. Bernard & Dr. David Norris

• @[3:48] “Oneness Pentecostalism or Apostolic Pentecostalism as it’s sometimes called is a branch of the larger Pentecostal Christian movement …”
  ++++++
• So what are the chances that there are Onenesss/Apostolic Pentecostals in the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders?

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@adamjedgar

Except that Christians believe Christs “soul” did pre exist his human birth

No they don’t, they believe the Second Person of the Trinity (the Son) existed as a Person before the Incarnation when the Word became a human. The body/soul/spirit thing is a (Greek?) construct that applies to embodied human persons, not God. God IS spirit. The Hebrews had a different construct of bodies with the breath of life, but animals had the breath of life too, so it wasn’t the same construct as “a soul” being the immortal aspect of your personhood or whatever. Origen got kicked out of the Church as a heretic for teaching the pre-existence of souls.

@adamjedgar

To.claim those words need re interpreting is fundamentally wrong

All messages communicated in words of human language need to be interpreted. It’s called “hermeneutics,” it’s a discipline of philosophy/linguistics. Words mean nothing until the communicative intent of their uttering is inferred = interpretation of a message in language.

@adamjedgar

Social sciences prove that we dont need God for morality.

Agreed. And Evangelicalism along with many other iterations of Christianity in history have actually been used by their power brokers to make people bad, so there is that. I don’t believe the Bible is a guidebook to morality. I also don’t believe the biblical authors took dictation from God or that the actual words used in Scripture are some sort of magical divine meaning containers. They are just human words in human language, if we want to understand what they mean, we need to use the same language interpretation strategies we use to interpret any other text.