Jesus was, by nature, as fully divine as He was fully human. The (unique, only begotten) hypostatic union (, son, in all of human history including to come). He was not coterminous with a Person (hypostasis) of God the Holy and Undivided Trinity (substance). He was the greatest possible manifestation of God through a human, the penultimate manifestation bar more ‘direct’ theophanies and in some ways yet, the ultimate. More real.
How though? I just dont understand what toure trying tk say.
I think i get what youre saying but remember that Jesus was not mere human. He was incarnate. He wasnt mere human and then decided to become the second person of the trinity. The second person of the trinity The Son together with the father and the spirit “formed” Jesus. The trinity was before. And he was divine and human at the same time hense the miracles he performed. As for the temptations it was hes human nature fighting his divine will like at the garden of Gethsemane. He asked for the cup to be passed from him but immediately the divine nature steps in sort of.
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It’s also why phrases like the Trinity is useless to me. It carries baggage based off of the specific denomination in question. It’s not really clear cut and limits it down to three.
Take the Holy Spirit. What is it? Is it a being that can be tested like Jesus or is it unable to be tempted like the father? Is it even a being period or is it the power of the word?
Also what about the angel of the lord. Is the angel of the lord angel or is it God? Is the angel of the lord a pre incarnation of Jesus?
On earth Jesus was not divine though. He was a man with no benefit that we don’t have. He faced sin and choose to not sin. He had to study the Torah and learn it. He still had to grow up and learn language and everything.
Jesus was directed by God in what to do and Jesus carried out that will and was given power by God just like the apostles were given power by Jesus and just like the disciples that believed the gospel and was blessed by the laying on of the apostles hands were given the power of the spirit. Jesus was protected by angels to not die until his appointed time. ( but we could make the same argument for any of us based on god determining our times and place ). After his death burial and resurrection we then see Jesus saying all power and authority was given to him and says after all of Gods enemies are defeated he will hand the kingdom back over to God. Jesus was not equipped with anything we don’t have or the prophets did not have until he died and defeated death. Right before his death the father even turned from him.
Well that debate was sort of in the Councill Of Nicae. Things there happened and the majority of the Christians decided The Trinity which i mean it is stated in the Gospel.Of course we cant understand it because we are humans. And i think you are missing the main point. Why did Jews wanted to kill Jesus? Because he was caliming divinity. So there you go. Jesus was full divine and full man.
So your claiming that anyone can be him? Or do what he did ? I think not
But anyway if you dont believe in the trinity thats fine . Thats just me making some comments on it. God bless
It’s hard to say I believe in the trinity when it’s a coined phrase with various doctrinal baggage associated with it depending on which tradition you’re using it from. A random council of men regardless of how knowledgeable they are simply can’t be the ones that define my belief. It has to be shaped completely from scripture for me if it’s doctrinal.
What I believe has happened is that people read these texts through the lens of coined phrases and their tradition.
In John 5 we read that the Jewish leaders wanted to kill Jesus because he was breaking the sabbath in their view. Then the flame to kill him was made stronger when he said God was his father and he was his Son and that made him equal to God.
As stated several times I believe that Jesus is God. But I don’t believe that Jesus , who he was as a man and what he learned and his preferences and so on, existed before being born. Jesus was not a baby, or even a man, given all knowledge and power. He had Mary’s dna and she was his biological mother.
Jesus may have been god made flesh but he was that. God made flesh. He was human. He was just as human as you or me. He experienced things God the father has not and vice versa. Jesus did not have an easier time avoiding sin than anyone else. He simply stayed consistent with it and pursued a god without failure which God already knew would happen and prophesied about throughout the entire Torah all the way back to the first few chapters of genesis when it speaks of a man brushing his heel while crushing the serpents head.
What I do see in scripture is that Jesus being god had any direct tie to something we don’t have or that prophets ever had. The general mindset I see carried over by the term trinity seems to misrepresent Jesus and evening the Holy Spirit.
As asked earlier what is the Holy Spirit? Is it really s third person and a being on it own? I don’t see any evidence to believe that. I don’t have any scriptural reason to believe the Holy Spirit has personhood and has its own will but is subject to the will of the father. Additionally the term trinity does not seem to work well with the angel of god. The angel of god is something most don’t even pay attention to and just assume it was nothing more than a angel but this angel referred to himself several times as God. It seemed like God also manifested himself as the angel of the lord and there is no scriptural reason for me to say that the angel of the lord was Jesus, the father, or the Holy Spirit. What I also don’t believe is that the father, the son, and the angel of the lord and a self willed independent being called the Holy Spirit existed in the beginning. I think throughout time God manifested himself in different ways and sometimes those ways generated a new being such as the angel of the lord and Jesus. Prior to that manifestation they did not exist. I also don’t believe that the Holy Spirit is a being period but a power. I could be wrong but I don’t see any scripture stating the Holy Spirit was a self aware conscious being. Closest to it is the phrase “the helper” which is not a strong argument to me.
I initially brought this all up because it’s about culture and faith and how it overlaps and how language expresses it. Culture ( including denominational lenses) determines what’s read and adds layers to it. Regardless if it’s correct or false.
The trinity is a byproduct of culture adding a layer to scripture.
Same as how nowadays it’s common for people to not know the differences between hell and the lake fire and a big part of that is language. Jesus used two different phrases and 99% of the time it seems those two separate words , Gehenna and Hades (Sheol ).
So in the same way culture affects faith nowdays it also affected the faith of ancient Jewish people. That’s why it’s so connected to Mesopotamian faiths in genesis down to them even using a non hebrew word take from another to describe the sea monsters in the first creation account.
Agreed that Jesus was God in flesh of course . And about if he was before i used the term The Trinity “formed” in my previous post. But i dont get your view on culture and faith. In the counsil there were people for all over the empire. Greeks ,romans egyptians etc. These cultures were different but the hellenistic philosophy was the dominant on the West side. But again there were eastern habitants of the empire too that suppoerted trinitarianism and were not influenced by Arius which i assumed he had adopted the eastern philosphical view. So it has to come down to this. What did the early Crihistians(the Christians that faced the great persecution and before that) believed
You understand just fine Nick. As fine as anybody. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. I’m in good company.
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The Trinity is an inescapable conclusion from revelation. Nothing in the doctrine of the Trinity is heterodox to, does not logically follow from, the Bible. Trinitarian theology does not teach the pre-existence of Jesus. It does teach the Personhood of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Which is valid. Nothing in Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Greek culture of the C4-5th ecumenical church council invalidates their findings with regard to the Trinity.
I don’t think it’s heretical to believe in the trinity I just don’t think it’s true because it’s not the complete story and again, it does depend on how you use it.
There are many who believe that Jesus existed before his birth and they even believe the angel of the lord is Jesus.
I know it’s a lot to unpack, but what is the definition of personhood? How does the Holy Spirit scripturally meet that criteria? Who is the angel of the lord and is he God and if he’s god then why is he not in the trinity since he seemed to show personhood as well?
Was Jesus our god in fleshy chains and is that different from the word becoming flesh and was fully human until he defeated death and had all authority and power and the keys given to him?
Why does he return the kingdom back to the father after defeating Gods enemies?
You can treat the questions as rhetorical because again I know it’s a lot to unpack. There are entire books that work on unpacking each individual question.
Mi.
By definition it isn’t heretical or better heterodox to believe in the trinity. And I agree it’s not the complete story and again, it does depend on how you use it. That doesn’t invalidate it as true.
Incoherent, ignorant, folk beliefs are two a penny.
The Holy Ghost is the personal presence of God. in remarkable understated, unvaunted way.
The Angel - Messenger - of the Lord was at the very least a manifestation, an avatar. A visual bot. A manifestation of the Spirit. Or an Angel. A created supernatural person. Which opens more questions than it answers.
Your questions need answering with literary analysis, with deconstruction, with rationality. What is the story of the story. How did the minds who came up with them work? What was their epistemology?
The thing is the apostles and the early Crhistians were trinitarians. So they believed in a false Gosplel? I think not. Is it the whole story? Who knows. Maybe not . We cant understand how God works period.But denying that Jesus was and is God whether he existed before incarnation as “flesh” or not is just contradictory to all . So two things. Jesus was God if not then why even be Christian and then there is one God. Now if you believe he manifests hismelf in persons or not is again a debate but not that serious in my opinion. The trinity is just to explain God.
So far no know one here has said Jesus was not God. Everyone I’ve read so far believes Jesus was the incarnation of God.
What’s debated is what is the trinity. Some of us here clearly views what that word to mean as different things. The apostles may have believed in something similar or contains what the trinity teaches but that particular phrase was not first used until the third century by Tertullian. Now I don’t recall him mentioning specifics about the Holy Spirit having a individual will and personhood in depth and I don’t recall him considering anything about the angel of the lord and how that “avatar” played into the trinity.
But the apostles and first two centuries of christians did not use the phrase trinity to refer to God and I’m not so certain the way Tertullian used it is adequate, nor its modern use, to really explain what the father, son and Holy Spirit is.
That’s what I’m saying. We all clearly believe Jesus was God made flesh. What’s the difference between Gods word was god and was with god becoming flesh vs God splitting himself into three and so on and how does it equate to Christ existing before his birth. That all directly plays into how trinity is being commonly used in my experiences.
As for how it’s connects to culture is this.
Trinity is a coined phrase by men used to explain their understanding of certain aspects of God and that phrases changes in its meaning between one person and the next and from one century to the next even if it’s slight. That coined phrase contains an ideological view that may or may not be complete and it’s affects the way someone views God which means it holds a certain culture within it which shapes dogma and doctrine and therefore culture within the body and even how those outside of the body thinks about it.
Also as a side note. Tertullian also believed that unbaptized babies died and went to hell. So he’s not exactly my main go to teacher for all things accurate and true.
I don’t think it entered their minds Nick. It took three centuries to formulate the Trinity doctrine.
Well it didnt entered their minds. Their (some of them)were the ones that wrote the Gosples. The holy spirit helped them to. They wrote about the three persons in the Gospels.
Plus i dont think theres that an isue as long as someone does believe Jesus as God and not as “a god”
That is a nice theory, but some of the events recorded in the gospels are evidence that He knew more than His culture.
Two instances come to mind.
- A healing of a blind man which required adjustments indicates a knowledge of anatomy not available in His culture.
- He knew that there are not husbands and wives in heaven.
Mark 8
22 They came to Bethsaida. Some people[d] brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Can you see anything?” 24 And the man[e] looked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus[f] laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Then he sent him away to his home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.”[g]
Matthew 22
23 The same day some Sadducees came to him, saying there is no resurrection;[a] and they asked him a question, saying, 24 “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.’ 25 Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother. 26 The second did the same, so also the third, down to the seventh. 27 Last of all, the woman herself died. 28 In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.”
29 Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels[b] in heaven. 31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the crowd heard it, they were astounded at his teaching.
Except they never used the phrase and I don’t see any evidence that they rejected the angel of the lord as god also and I don’t see where they referred to a pre incarnate Jesus or where they gave the Holy Spirit personhood as a individual being with its own free will as opposed to it being a power to help us.
I have. He wasn’t nounally. Adjectivally yes. He wasn’t coterminous with a Person of God. The (only begotten) Son of God was not (congruent with, mapped to, identical to, the very exact same thing as) God the Son. Neither was He God the Son lite, shorn of omnis (whatever they are), collapsed down to a Spirit fertilized ovum like a neutron star.
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