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I am not trying to ban other points of view THAT ARE BASED ON BIBLICAL SCRIPTURES.Well there might be cause for the Trinity. But the concept of trinity was already in older religions in that region so it makes sense that early Christians would want one as well. They do have a "holy spirit" besides God, which is yet another myth borrowed from Persia and Greek"
"the Holy Spirit appears to have an equivalent in non-Abrahamic Hellenistic mystery religions. These religions included a distinction between the spirit and psyche, which is also seen in the Pauline epistles."
Persian:
", the Holy Spirit, also known as Spenta Mainyu, is a hypostasis of Ahura Mazda, the supreme Creator God of Zoroastrianism; the Holy Spirit is seen as the source of all goodness in the universe, the spark of all life within humanity, and is the ultimate guide for humanity to righteousness and communion with God. The Holy Spirit is put in direct opposition to its eternal dual counterpart, Angra Mainyu, who is the source of all wickedness and who leads humanity astray.[44]"
But the ENTIRE bible is mythology borrowed from older cultures. Those earlier religions were not literally true and neither is Christianity.
Yes I can, watch ....the entire Bible are stories created by highly educated writers and used other sources of fiction to create the narratives. Therefore trinity or non-trinity are both concepts in a Middle Eastern myth.
Right except this is a "religious debates forum". Not a "theology debates forum". Not a " let's debate conocepts but only people who believe the supernatural stuff is literally true".
Yeah it isn't that by a long shot. Now there IS an actual forum for that on this site, I think it's theological debates. This isn't that.
And yeah, Satan isn't real, that's another Persian influence. Satan was in the OT but the modern version of an eternal war against Satan and God started at the 2nd temple period. More myth borrowing. Here you go:
"
During the Second Temple Period, when Jews were living in the Achaemenid Empire, Judaism was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Achaemenids.[27][8][28] Jewish conceptions of Satan were impacted by Angra Mainyu,[8][29] the Zoroastrian god of evil, darkness, and ignorance.[8] In the Septuagint, the Hebrew ha-Satan in Job and Zechariah is translated by the Greek word diabolos (slanderer), the same word in the Greek New Testament from which the English word "devil" is derived.[30] Where satan is used to refer to human enemies in the Hebrew Bible, such as Hadad the Edomite and Rezon the Syrian, the word is left untranslated but transliterated in the Greek as satan, a neologism in Greek.[30]
The idea of Satan as an opponent of God and a purely evil figure seems to have taken root in Jewish pseudepigrapha during the Second Temple Period,[31] particularly in the apocalypse"
Oh, look, the later stories about Satan at war with Yahweh were not from people speaking with a God but was taken from a myth they clearly really liked and allowed it to radically change their theology.
It's all fiction.
Cathol...Non sequitur. I don't care about your opinion. I care about what is true. These are not "my" opinions. These are the consensus opinions of entire fields of scholarship. If opinions of vast amounts of scholars who spend their professional lives studying comparative analysis, archeology, historicity to you is "sheer worthlessness" then you simply don't care about what is true.
Meanwhile there are J.Witnesses, Hindu, Islamic, any strange cult making the same claim. That evidence and analysis are worthless because they simply want what they want to be true. Or they "feel it" in their heart.
Sorry, every line of evidence points to religions being metaphorical myths.
Well that would be brainwashing. To not allow historicity studies that demonstrate a religion is just like all others, to actually attempt to censor information is true ignorance. I can't believe you typed those words? Luckily it is not 1200AD and you cannot banish information that you find inconvienant.
Feel free to provide evidence that what you say is truth is actually true.
This is not a evangelical forum only for preaching. What's worse is you are trying to ban other points of view.
I cannot make this up?
GOD does not ‘go’ anywhere himself.No he fights wars and sea monsters too.
Exodus 15:3:
Yahweh is a man of war;
Yahweh is his name.
Isaiah 42:13:
Yahweh goes forth like a mighty man;
like a man of war(s) he stirs up his fury.
Zephaniah 3:17: Yahweh, your God, is in your midst,
a warrior who gives victory.
Psalm 24:8:
Who is the King of Glory?
Yahweh, strong and mighty;
Yahweh, mighty in battle.
Ha ha ha… you joker.Why do you keep pointing out the ' humanity ' verses ? We affirm them . Jesus isn't a rebel within the God head ,doing things apart from The Father and the Holy Spirit . Just like in marriage the Man is not greater in the sense of ' being, worth essence , value, and such ..No he has greater roles in the sense of headship. Within the God head the three persons are co equal ( Just like the man and woman ) but the voluntarily assume different roles for purposes . Like all three were there in creating the universe and raising Jesus.
Excellent.I think that "Holy Spirit" may be a reference to "God's Spirit" as shows up in the Tanakh.
Which scriptures mentions ‘God the Son’?I believe God the Son fits what scripture tells us.
Great! Excellent! Brilliant!I believe Jesus is not God
A question for the Unitarians and other Christians who doubt Jesus is God:
<snipped>
This is extremely easy to answer if Jesus is God. But if he's not, I wonder how it's answered.
Thanks for playing!
GOD does not ‘go’ anywhere himself.
GOD sends his Spirit, his angels, his prophets, his servants … to do his Will.
God is the controller of his forces. He himself does not enter a fight but directs from his glorious throne!
GOD speaks a word and it is MANIFESTED in whomever and in whatever way he chooses.
GOD spoke the word that a saviour would come into the world to redeem mankind… and, Lo! In time, that WORD OF GOD was manifested in the MAN, Jesus Christ! Yes, the WORD OF GOD TOOK ON FLESH (which means, simply, ‘came true’).
I am not trying to ban other points of view THAT ARE BASED ON BIBLICAL SCRIPTURES.
What I’m saying is that we WHO DO BELIEVE would like to debate AMONG OURSELVES concerning what we believe.
IT IS YOU who is saying that we should NOT BELIEVE anything that we say we believe.
I think even Trinitarians who I tail against would turn and rail against you… ‘My enemies enemy is my friend while our common enemy is in battle!’
And, SATAN is not battling GOD, per se. He is battling the Son of man.
God CREATED the Angel that became known as Satan. Satan is completely wrong that he can rule over mankind, which is what the REAL BATTLE IS CONCERNING.
What would happen if there hadn’t been a saviour who maintained his sinlessness is that Satan would have proved to God that man could live without God … but, ironically, it would have DESTROYED mankind … leaving Satan with nothing to rule over…. A serpent biting its own tail!!
If you read the scriptures properly then you would know that it is Jesus who is battling with Satan.
Moreover, the ‘theology’ of the Hebrews, the Israelites, the Jews, was well established before they ever encountered any nation like the Persians or any belief as Zoroastroism (however it’s spelt!)
And TRINITY… they never encountered anything called or alluding to a TRINITY.
What they encountered were nations who believed that the world was created and maintained by spirit deities (GODS) who were MANY IN ‘persons’: there were many of them who each individually were managing aspects of the created world. Typically THREE but often more.
The Israelite ‘GOD’ told his favoured nation that they were NOT TO BELIEVE IN OR WORSHIP MANY GODS BUT THAT THEY SHOULD WORSHIP ONLY ONE GOD - Him - ALONE.
But then you go on to say that no one should believe in ANY THEOLOGICAL belief…. Nah! That’s as far as the ‘friendship’ goes!
Those sentences that you wrote. I think it's more metaphorical.
Is Yahweh a man? No
Does He actually come down and go into the mist of people? No.
So what does all this mean then? Is someone lying to us? No
God is the king of glory too. He was actually Israel's first king. He told them that He will be there king, but they wanted a king like that nations around them, so God gave them Saul.
God is mighty in battle, does that mean He fighting in the front lines? No of course not. All of this is God manifestation. God manifesting Himself in people, esp when it comes to war. He can also manifest himself in angels where it can say that God walked among them.
Angels can also carry and bear God's name too, just like on how Jesus did. And God said..... well no... an angel said.... That angel was speaking for God. God can also speak through people and work through people too. God worked through His son all of Jesus's life. Jesus said that he could do nothing without his father.
God is mighty in battle. Of course He is. He will help people win wars by his help. Very easy to understand. God does not leave heaven. There is no reason for that. Plus, the angels do God's work too, they are the "finger's of God" as scripture tells us.
God is not Jesus and Jesus is not God. God was working through Jesus, 2 Cor 5 even tells us that one too. The trinity totally degrades our Creator.
So this proves that Jesus is not God. True.No. First Yahweh appears many times in the OT, riding a Chariot, speaking with Job, putting him on trial. He did stuff.
You are also adding modern theological ideas about God developed by Aquinas and others. Back then each nation had a National God:
"
The 9th century BCE saw the emergence of nation-states in Syria-Palestine, including Israel, Judah, Philistia, Moab and Ammon, each with its national god.[34] Thus Chemosh was the god of the Moabites, Milcom the god of the Ammonites, Qaus the god of the Edomites, and Yahweh the "God of Israel" (no "God of Judah" is mentioned anywhere in the Bible).[35][36] This development occurred first in the kingdom of Israel (Samaria), and then in Judah, the southern kingdom, where king Jehoshephat was a strong ally of the Omride dynasty of the northern kingdom.[37] In each kingdom the king was also the head of the national religion and thus the viceroy on Earth of the national god,[38] and when Judah became an Assyrian vassal-state after the destruction of Israel, the relationship between the king and dynastic god Yahweh came to be thought of in terms of Assyrian vassal treaties.[39]
The Bible retains traces of this worship of multiple gods both in the region and in Israel.[40] In this atmosphere a struggle emerged between those who believed that Yahweh alone should be worshiped, and those who worshiped him within a larger group of gods.[41] The Yahweh-alone party, the party of the prophets and Deuteronomists, ultimately triumphed, and their victory lies behind the biblical narrative of an Israel vacillating between periods of "following other gods" and periods of fidelity to Yahweh.[41"
Yahweh also fights a sea monster.
Before that Yahweh was a smaller God who later was promoted. NOt what you would expect is the "one true God" was communicating with people. But exactly what you would expect if these were myths made by people:
"
Contrary to the traditional picture of the Israelites entering Palestine from outside its borders, the current model is that they developed from the native Canaanite population, and that Israelite religion was accordingly much closer to that of the Canaanites than the Bible suggests.[28] The Israelites initially worshiped Yahweh alongside a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, including El, head of the Canaanite pantheon, (he, not Yahweh, was the original "God of Israel"—the word "Israel" is based on the name El rather than Yahweh), Asherah, who was El's consort, and major Canaanite deities such as Baal.[29] El and his seventy sons, who included Baal and Yahweh, made up the Assembly of the Gods, each member of which had a human nation under his care; a textual variant of Deuteronomy describes Yahweh received Israel when El divided the nations of the world among his sons, and incidentally suggests that El and Yahweh were not identified as the same god in this early period:[30][31]
When the Most High ('elyôn) gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he separated humanity,
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number of divine beings.
For Yahweh's portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.
Then Yahweh was promoted in the myth-making to a higher God:
"Between the Judges and the first half of the monarchy El and Yahweh and other gods merged in a process of religious syncretism;[32] 'el (Hebrew: אל) became a generic term meaning "god", as opposed to the name of a specific god, and epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone, diminishing the position of El and strengthening the position of Yahweh,[6] while features of Baal, El, and Asherah were absorbed into Yahweh.[7] In the next stage the Yahwistic religion separated itself from its Canaanite heritage, first by rejecting Baal-worship in the 9th century, then with prophetic condemnation of Baal, the asherim, sun-worship, worship on the "high places", practices pertaining to the dead, and other matters."
So none of the 14th century theology applies to early myth writing.
Also if you are going to start with "that is a metaphor", fine then so is the resurrection. It's a metaphor for dying and rising from your lower self to your higher compassionate self. No real savior demigods to get you into heaven. It's just metaphorical spirituality.
Once you start saying "I say this is a metaphor" then anyone can say anything is a metaphor.
I mean, I do actually believe that is what the myth could mean but I don't think it was written to mean that. Scholar John Dominik Crossan actually does think that was the resurrection metaphor. It's more likely that all the other religions were being Hellenized (they all got savior demigods who when baptized into the group you got into the afterlife) and people in Judiasm also wanted one. I think they believed the myths were real, not metaphor. Back then it was common to believe in some supernatural story and heaven was another Greek myth that was very appealing to people.
The Israelites did not have an afterlife like that. The Jewish religious leaders rejected it but eventually it caught on. Of course this was during the Greek invasion, wow what a coincidence!? Yahweh told the Jews about heaven just when the people who already had it invaded?
The answer is so simple that it really questions what it is that Trinitarians believe about the scriptures that we commonly read.A question for the Unitarians and other Christians who doubt Jesus is God:
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
Notice that it is GOD that demonstrates His love towards us but it is CHRIST who dies.
Jesus is not God, and there is nothing to pretend against!Let's pretend Jesus is NOT God, just like you claim. How is it GOD showing his love toward us by asking someone else to die?
You have the wrong analogy… What you suggest is nothing like what the scriptures alludes to.If the Warden comes to your house and requests you die for someone who's currently in jail, someone who knows and confesses he's guilty, would you consider this an act of love by the Warden?
Remember, I'm not asking if you are loving by agreeing to die for the convicted felon, I'm asking if you feel the Warden is showing his love for you by asking.
This is extremely easy to answer if Jesus is God. But if he's not, I wonder how it's answered.
Thanks for playing!
Absolutely right.I think that "Holy Spirit" may be a reference to "God's Spirit" as shows up in the Tanakh.
I think that "Holy Spirit" may be a reference to "God's Spirit" as shows up in the Tanakh.
Which scriptures mentions ‘God the Son’?
‘Son of God’ is not ‘God the Son’ since there is no such thing as ‘God the Son’.
You read that from a trinity website and it sounds sexy so you adopted it as a mantra without knowing even that it is false ideology!
I believe Jesus is not God
Are you trinitarian or modalist?I believe you would be right if you were taking the Spirit of God within and the body as a whole but He is God by identification of the Spirit within.
So you do not believe the holy spirit is a person?I think that "Holy Spirit" may be a reference to "God's Spirit" as shows up in the Tanakh.