Monday, March 3, 2008

5am Study (Trinity)

Why is the doctrine of the Trinity under such attack? Mormons and JW’s both label it as apostasy. They believe that he was a god, or a great prophet, or just a great teacher. But in the Apostle Paul’s day the Gnostics believe that he was not a man at all. I am reading through a paper that Jerry gave me a while back, on The Trinity, an unpublished essay by Jonathan Edwards. Hopefully by Friday after reading it ten times I might have something to say about it. And of course I’m reading my all time favorite, Should we believe in the Trinity? by the JW’s. So my friends have we been deceived, was the trinity something that was made up thru history, or do we have it right.

3 comments:

Garrett Conner said...

Chris,

I heard the late D.James Kennedy do a lecture just a couple of days ago on his radio broadcast and he explained the Trinity in light of the law of non-contradiction. Look it up.

G
I ain't gots time this week to wax eloquently or eat biscuits.

Mr. P said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mr. P said...

I found a helpful quotation on the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry website (http://www.carm.org/doctrine/trinity.htm):

“[…] the doctrine of the Trinity is arrived at by looking at the whole of scripture, not in a single verse. It is the doctrine that there is only one God, not three, and that the one God exists in three persons: Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

The Bible never uses the word Trinity, but we can perceive from Scripture that God is One in Essence and Three in Persons.

The Scriptures plainly reveal that God is One: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4).

The Scriptures also reveal that the Father is God (Philippians 1:2); the Son is God (John 1:1, 14; Col. 2:9); and the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4).

ps - There is a good bit of info on the website I referenced that should be helpful, but I haven’t read it all. Tread carefully.

Also, be careful with analogies, while they may be helpful, they tend to break down at some point. We must always be careful, like Garrett said last week, to stick with what is clear in Scripture.