Refuting A Trinitarian

 

@Optimistic_Christianity

1 hour ago

 @ApPersonaNonGrata  wow. You and others who don't believe in The Trinity seem to overthink the simplest of things. Logically, if The man Christ Jesus, The Son of God is Yahweh himself then The Trinity is automatically true. The simple part is to recognize the many places in the New Testament that call Jesus God where Jesus calls himself God. Very simple.  ​  @Optimistic_Christianity  You want a written debate with little old me? Fine. You got it. ----

The expression "Jesus is God" could also be understood as an expression of "Modalism".

Modalism is a theological belief that God is one person who appears in three different forms, or modes. It's also known as Sabellianism, Noetianism, and Patripassianism. Modalism is not another way of saying "Trinitarianism". "Binitarians" also exist. Did you really not know about those other theologies? Or were you dishonestly banking on the hope that I wouldn't know about them? ---- It could also be understood to mean that Jesus was a different, demi, or lesser god. It is the overwhelming consensus among qualified scholars that the "Biblical Hebrews" (even the 1st Century CE versions) were all (yes; all) polytheists. Even the ones who wrote the Torah were polytheists. And that's because they originated as a break-away tribe of Canaanites. That's the religious-cultural "soup" (the so-called "spiritual nutrition") Jesus would have been raised on. That's the religious cultural lens Jesus would have been understood through. --- It could also be understood to mean that Jesus "carried" the divine name like a badge of authority; a deputy of a cosmic Sherriff, like how Moses was "God" to the Egyptian Pharoah. Seriously, you need to spend more time listening to actual Bible scholars like Christine Hayes or Dan McClellan. Yes, I realize you have heard what Dan says about this. But you haven't been really listening. Instead, you hand-wave all of it away, based on 'I'm right. Therefore, Dan must be wrong. And so I'm just going to assume Dan is lying.'.

. Don't get me wrong. Dan is a fallible human. Even I sometimes doubt or disagree with something specific he has said as a scholar. In fact, he posts videos where he corrects some point of technical data he misspoke (or was otherwise wrong) about. But he's not guessing. Nor is he ever lying. He's merely summarising what he learned through years of intense study. When it comes to "the Trinity" as something that took centuries (post-"canon") to finish developing [a post-biblical innovation; possibly sparked by the anonymous authors of the book of "John", when they attempted to give Jesus a "higher Christology"] ... Dan really is sharing a consensus that is unanimous among his academic peers; - except religious-fundamentalist peers who use their credentials as a way to prop up their dogma. Those years of study can't be condensed into the space of a YouTube short video. Notice, also, the right you reserve for yourself and the demand you place on your audience to take everything you say as "fact". You aren't backing up your claims with rigorous data, objectivity, and logical analysis. Instead, you're treating these issues as "simple".

That way of thinking is exactly what "Dunning Kruger" is about. Whereas, qualified Bible scholars hold themselves (and each other) to a much higher standard. Like you, I also wish the issues we wonder about (history, science, language, etc) were all "simple". But they aren't. And that's what makes actual scholars crucially important. They provide free education on the reality of those ancient (and ever-evolving) religious cultures, concepts, and languages. Their short-form videos are a summary of what they've learned. If you want to consider their virtual MOUNTAINS of support for their respective positions, you'll need to take the same amount of YEARS climbing those same mountains and sorting out the materials. Your religious-fundamentalist echo chamber's sense of entitlement to override reality with a simple appeal to authority ... is not the flex you think it is. Meanwhile, out here in the real world, it's important to recognize that those ancient languages did *NOT* have a word that directly and perfectly maps onto what the word "God" is commonly understood to mean in modern English. Words that conveyed "divinity" only meant a literal "god" or "God" whenever the subject was a "god" or "God". In other words, you are reasoning backward. Any form of words like "theos", Elohim, etc.. are only a "god" or "God" if the subject IS a god or "God". We can't use that term to verify if a subject is a god or "God" in any ancient story. Whenever a subject is not a god or "God", words like "theos", and "Elohim", etc.. are being used as "descriptors" for someone who either: a.) demonstrates godly traits or b.) is acting on behalf of a deity; -in other words, a created person (human or angel) who is "making the nature or will of god(s) known" in some way. --- Calling Jesus "God" also indicates some very questionable translation choices. Those choices were made by translators operating under varying mixtures of: a.) personal theological bias b.) political pressure, and c.) economic pressure ... to produce texts that appeal to culturally developed "church authority" and societal norms. Just as importantly, we shouldn't let our mutual disdain for the JW religion shape the lens through which we read and reason. The Jehovah's Witnesses ARE a cult. Fine. We could spend hours agreeing on how abusive and dumb their grift is. But that wouldn't make Trinitarianism valid. Instead, it's just one of the things the JWs happen to be generally correct about. A broken clock is correct; twice per day. "Trinity" is one of the times when JW's theological "clock" happens to be correct. -- Trinitarianism isn't a coherent concept. Nor is it a complex convergence of coherent concepts. It's literally gibberish. But it's also worse than that, because: It's predicated on the threat of "pretend this makes sense, or else you aren't one of us.". This is an "Emperor's New Clothes", "fear of exclusion" gambit. Even worse than that, it's also predicated on the threat: "If you're not one of us, you're an enemy of God. And if you're an enemy of God, he will do very violent things to you ... forever". It is a gaslighting mental technology developed by grossly entitled, power-hungry, and willfully manipulative men. It's a puzzle (aka "mystery") that doesn't actually mean anything. That's why it's unsolvable. Ongoing attempts among sheep to "get it" ... turn minds into disoriented pretzels. Trying to "get it" serves as a way for dizzying minds into a state of fogginess; while also making them feel obliged to pretend they've succeeded at understanding it. [Atlhough, at least the churches who developed early Trinitarian creeds ... admitted it wasn't graspable. So at least they were less dishonest than today's Trinitarians]

It helped those men perpetuate a mind fog that renders sheep minds extra-malleable to the "moral authority" of those men. Catholic priests would pretend to have "discovered" the Trinity hidden in biblical texts. And then they pretended to be "closer" to grasping it than the spiritual peasantry. They used that lie as a premise for saying: "Therefore, we have a greater spiritual lens. And therefore, we are exclusively qualified to read, interpret, and speak for God" (over those sheep). The men who wrote biblical source texts were God-Awful (pun intended). [What is the correct understanding of the Bible? According to me, and according to Bible scholars, this is it: link] Trinitarian rhetoric was just one of many very creative ways power-seeking predators developed ... to make it even worse. In fact, back in the mid-late 80s, I went to my local library and looked up the "Trinity" in a hardbound volume of the Catholic Encylopedia. Today, their digital editions are heavily revised; to smartly hide more evidence that their entire project has always been an occult grift. But at the time, anyone could read it themselves, from "The Church's" own mouth. On those pages, in black and white, they admitted that generations of heated debates about "the Trinity" were eventually settled with "dreams and visions". For the Catholic Church, rejecting "sola scriptura" has allowed them the freedom and "authority" to seek and find "hidden truths" (literally what the term "occult" means) such as the Trinity. Thousands of years later, unfortunately, the "Protestant" apple (the rebellious spawn of that bloodstained Emperess) ... did not fall far from that tree. Even the JWs failed to greatly clean away the nonsense they inherited. They are still a religious fundamentalist cult. And they're every bit as counterfactual, fallacious, and dangerous as all the other moral-authoritarian cults; including yours. [link]