[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]mse2us wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]mse2us wrote:
[quote]confusion wrote:
mse2us,I am really glad you joined the discussion. Thank you. You are much better versed in the scriptures than me. I sort of hijacked the abortion thread with attempts to prove most professing Christians don’t live what the Bible teaches. I was pretty much told that because I am not a christian,I don’t understand what the bible means and I was taking a very Legallistic approach that is incorrect,even tho I only used the words of the Bible to try and prove my points,and that I had no idea what I was talking about…Regardless,my father taught me that any church that teaches that 1.Jesus is not God and that 2. his shed blood alone is not sufficient for salvation,is a false religion. When I studied the NT,I will say that IMO,there are very few places that indicate Jesus is God,let alone that the Holy Spirit is God. Jesus never said he was god,other than I and my father are one. Or something similar. He always referred to himself as the son of man or something like that. From what I can gather,the scripture doesn’t say we have to believe the trinity,it says.something like this in several places:
Romans 10:9King James Version (KJV)
9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. The JW’s are certainly doing that. Confusion[/quote]
I appreciate that confusion. Yeah, the trinity is real frustrating because people who believe it are taught that it basically doesn’t make sense and that it’s illogical by calling it a “mystery” or the concept is beyond our limited human minds to fully grasp so we really shouldn’t try to really understand how the father, son and the holy spirit could be one in the same. The sad thing is that when you’re taught to think and reason like that then it completely ruins ones ability to look at clear, obvious Bible scripture and form a logical conclusion based on scripture. It’s very difficult to think logically if you’re taught to think illogically and thinking that a clearly stated father\son relationship is anything other than two distinct individuals is illogical. That’s because there has never been in the history of humans where a father and son are one and the same. Even in the animal kingdom this has never happened. It’s 100 percent impossible for a son to physically be his father or father be son or either one turn into the other. Even if he acts exactly like his father and the term “splitting image” is used to show how close the son’s physical appearance and personality is to his father, no human in the history of humans would ever think that a father and son are one person. And if anyone tried to convince you that they are the exact same person you’d look at that person like he or she was crazy. I can guarantee that no amount of evidence that a person presented would convince any normal thinking person that a human father and son are the exact same person because a father and son 100 percent of time has always been and will always be two separate distinct individuals.
Now the Bible is written for humans by humans who were inspired by God. Jesus regularly used illustrations to help his listeners grasp what he was saying. His illustrations were told using things that an agricultural, farming society of that era would immediately be familiar with which would help them better grasp what Jesus was saying. It’s a fact that Jesus purposely spoke this way to help his listeners understanding. Since that’s the case, then why would Jesus over and over again refer to himself as son and God as Father if he wanted his listeners to believe anything other than how any human of that time or any other time would understand a father\son relationship? It just wouldn’t make sense, it would be illogical if Jesus who regulary and purposely spoke in a way to help his listeners better understand his teachings would want his listeners to hear father\son and then think that he really meant that they were one in the same.
Jesus referred to himself so much as the son of God that John said at John 20:31 that the purpose of him writing the book of John is so that people may believe that Jesus is God’s son not God.
Like you mentioned there is a verse where Jesus says I and the father are one. This is stated at John 10:30. What Jesus is saying here is that he and his Father are united and in union with each other similar to the old Army slogan “Army of one.” At John 17:11 and 21 Jesus prayed to his Father and asked him that he help his disciples all be one just like he and his father are one. He wants his disciples to be united in mind and thought just like he and his father are. Unfortunately, people use John 10:30 as scriptural proof to prove the trinity and aren’t made aware of John 17:11 and 21 which would explain what Jesus meant when he said I and the father are one. [/quote]
Do you really think your best move here is to accuse us Christians as stupid, brainwashed, and ignorant of the Scriptures and what they say. Not only is that rich, (see the Watch Tower) but ignorant of the history of Christianity and an massive underestimation of the Christians present here. Any numbnut can copy and paste a bunch of scripture. The doctrine of the Trinity existed before the Bible itself did. It was believed and practiced since apostolic times and Taze Russel did not ‘unlock’ some deep mystery of the scriptures that happened to be missed for the 17 centuries prior.
Like I said, the NWT was deliberately altered to fit belief rather than belief conform to what was written. Which is why it is considered highly errant among Biblical Scholars as well as the King James Bible which is known it have well over 800 critical translation errors.
The trinity is well established in the scriptures, especially when unaltered. The Latin Vulgate is the translation that all other are measured by. Great pains have been taken in more recent translations such as the NRSV and ESV to be as faithful to the original texts as possible. Versions which have been verified and studied by multiple biblical Scholars from many backgrounds and are open to verification and study by all scholars for accuracy, both apostolic and evangelical scholars alike. There is no secret society, no anonymousness. [/quote]
Numbnuts?!?! LOL!! that’s the funniest thing I heard all day? Copy and paste? My post are first rough draft quality at best. The only thing I copy and paste are scriptures (I have copied and pasted in past post but not on this thread. I don’t have a problem doing that).
“The Latin Vulgate is the translation that all other are measured by.” Oh Pat, I cringe when I hear statements like that. I’ll try to help your understanding. We can go back and forth quoting so called experts\scholars with opposite views regarding whether the Latin Vulgate is a good translation or not. Let me give you two specific examples of inaccuracies in the Latin Vulgate. This way we won’t have to rely on quotes from experts\scholars reguarding whether a book is good or not. We can look at the examples and see for ourselves the inaccuracies in the translations. In one of my previous post I showed how the Greek verb proskuneo which means to perform a gesture to prostrate or do obeisance to someone was inconsistently translated in at least six of the most popular translations. When used for someone other than Jesus those Bibles translated proskuneo as prostrate, pay homage, do obeisance but when the same word was used with Jesus the word worship was used. This inconsistent use of the word regardless of your belief is undeniably an example of bad translating. You don’t need an expert\scholar to tell you that. You may need an expert\scholar to make you aware of that fact but once made aware most people reading this can come to that conclusion on their own. The Latin Vulgate actually does something worse - it completely changes a verse to support a doctrine. Want to take a guess on what doctrine that is . . . . . .yep you guessed it - the trinity. The passage is at 1 John 5:7, 8. I first read about this in the book Misquoting Jesus.
I’ll quote it below:
[b][i]"This is the account of 1 John 5:7,8, which scholars have called the Johannine Comma, found in the manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate but not in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, a passage that had long been a favorite among Christian theologians, since it is the only passage in the entire Bible that explicitly delineates the doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three persons in the godhead, but that the three constitute just on God. In the Vulgate, the passage reads: There are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Spirit, and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit the water; and the blood and these three are one. It is a mysterious passage, but unequivical in its support of the traditional teachings of the church on the “triune God is who is one.” Without this verse, the doctrine of the Trinity must be inferred from a range of passages combined to show that Christ is God, as is the Spirit and the Father and that there is, nonetheless, only one God. This passage, in contrast, states the doctrine directly and succinctly.
But Erasmus did not find it in his Greek manuscripts, which simply read: “There are three that bear witness: the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one” Where did the “Father the Word and the Spirit” go? They were not in Erasmus’s primary manuscript, or in any of the others that he consulted and so naturally he left them out of his first edition of the Greek text.
More than anything else, it was this that outraged the theologians of his day, who accused Erasmus of tampering with the text in an attempt to eliminate the doctrine of the Trinity and to devalue it corolary, the doctrine of the full divinity of Christ. In particular, Stunican, one of the chief editors of the Complutensian Polyglot, went public with his defamation of Erasmus and insisted that in future editions he return the verse to its rightful place.
As the story goes, Erasmus - possibly in an unguarded moment - agreed that he would insert the verse in a future edition of his Greek New Testament on one condition: that his opponents produce a Greeks manuscripts in which the verse could be found (finding it in Latin manuscripts was not enough). And so a Greek manuscript was produced. In fact, it was produced for the occasion. It appears that someone copied out the Greek text of the Epistles, and when he came to the passage in question, he translated the Latin text into Greek, giving the Johannine Comma in its familiar. theologically useful form. The manuscript provided to Erasmus, was a sixteenth-century production, made to order(Misquoting Jesus, pgs 81-82)[/i][/b].
That excerpt is an example of a scholar\expert presenting historical evidence and making the reader aware it. Looking at the evidence presented, I don’t need to look for book reviews that rip the book apart so I can just disregard it. This is where thinking for yourself becomes necessary. Because there’s a pretty simple way to verify what the author of Misquoting Jesus states about 1 John 5:7, 8 as to whether it’s correct - just look at modern translations and see how they word the passage. I did that and none of the modern translations word the passage the way the Latin Vulgate words it. The Father, Word and holy spirit aren’t mentioned. Only the Spirit, water and blood are mentioned which of course has nothing to do with the trinity. Only the KJV which is based closely off of the Latin Vulgate has the Father, Word and Holy Spirit at 1 John 5:7,8. This is a good example of a bad translation.
Another example is at 2 Corinthians 3:14. This verse in the Latin Vulgate and the King James has a sentence that reads “in the reading of the old testament.” Based on the Latin Vulgate and the King James Version which is based off the Latin Vulgate the term “old testament” is used to refer to the Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures. Sad to say, based on the popularity of the KJV over the centuries, most Christians today refer to the Hebrew-Aramaic scriptures as the “old testament” and think that it’s no longer valid and the scriptures aren’t to be used by Christians today or that the Christian-Greek scriptures override anything in the Hebrew-Aramaic scriptures. I’ve talked to people about the Bible stating the earth will never be destroyed (some Christian religions such as Catholics believe that the physical earth will be destroyed) and would quote a scripture such as Ecclesiastes 1:4 where it states that the earth will remain forever or Psalms 104:5 which states that the earth will never toter and the person would reply - “well that’s the old testament which is no longer valid, show me a scripture in the new testament.” All I would do is a mental face palm and show them Matthew 5:5 where Jesus states that the righteous will possess the earth (here he is quoting Psalms 37:11,29).
The Greek word that the Latin Vulgate and KJV translated “testament” is diathekes which means “covenant.” So 2 Corinthians 3:14 should read “at the reading of the old covenant,” which is referring to the Mosaic Law (Mosaic Law is not longer valid). Most modern translations realized this and have correctly translated diathekes as “covenant.” Take a look for yourself at any translation that’s not the KJV. Unfortunately, the damage is well engrained and is done. Even though modern translations removed “testament” and have correctly translated diathekes as “covenant,” most Christians don’t know that. They are taught to not value the Hebrew-Aramaic scriptures like they do the Christian-Greek scriptures and that’s a real shame. Like I said in one of my previous post, this greatly limits ones understanding of the Bible and God’s original purpose for humans, the fact that God’s kingdom is a literal kingdom will remove current kingdoms, will rule over earth and will remove wickedness(Daniel 2:44; 7:13,14,27; Psalms 37:10,11). This is another reason why the Latin Vulgate is a bad translation and not even close to the “The Latin Vulgate is the translation that all other are measured by” statement you made.
Pat, you keep saying how bad the NWT is but you’re not giving me examples. Give me some examples of just how bad the NWT is. I’ve given you multiple, detailed explanations including non-JW\third party info as to why many of the modern translations of the Bible are bad. It’s easy to just say somethings bad without backing it up.
By the way. . . . . I can’t wait to call someone “Numbnuts” today. Earlier today while I was typing this reply someone came into my office without knocking I looked up and said “hey numb…I mean Bob.” He looked at me like I was crazy. 
[/quote]
I didn’t call you a numbnut. I said ‘any numbnut can copy and past reams of scripture’. Meaning that it doesn’t take a well verse Bible theologian to do so. As a matter of fact Atheist do this all the time.
What I took exception to, was the arrogance and demeaning of all other Christians by calling them out as stupid and brainwashed when JW’s make up 0.00000000000000000000001 of the Christian population. And technically, JW is not a Christian sect, if you want to be specific. Christians by definition, believe not only in Jesus but his divinity and his part in the God-head. This dismantlement of the the Trinity makes one not a Christian. It’s not the belief in Jesus, it the belief in who Jesus was that makes on Christian. A doctrine established before the Canon of the Bible even existed. This is important history, before the Bible was the Trinitarian doctrine was. The doctrine extends from Apostolic times and are verified by the writings 1rst century Christian theologians.
There are to many errors to go about and address all of them and scripture quoting contests take up to much time and are usually a stalemate.
I will take one example and discuss it.
This is John 1:1 from the NWT:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.
This is the King James version, originally adhered to by your sect:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
This is the ESV translation (and ever other save for the NWT):
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
(John 1:1 ESV)
As you can see the difference is stark and the theological implications massive. Under NWT, ‘The Word’ is a god separate from God himself. Save for the problem that there are no other Gods. The implication is polytheism. There is no definition of the godlieness of the logos
As you can see from this original Greek to English translational chart, ‘a god’ was never intended.
Translated directly ignoring english structure is reads:
‘In beginning was the word and the word was toward the God and God was the word’
Nowhere is separated God from the word, but the word was God.
God is the logos in every Christian translation. This is an extremely important point that sets up not only John, but ties every thing together from Genesis on, where the NWT merely leaves such a thing as a hanging participle without form or definition, leading the reader to believe in many gods, outside of the one God. A notion that is squashed through out the rest of scripture.
Now the challenge therefore for you is to prove that the NWT translation, got it right, from the original Greek, in evidence contrary to it, from sources outside the Watch Tower? Can you take the original manuscript and assemble it in such a way to support the polytheistic notion of ‘information’ being a god separate from God Himself. Good luck, I think you will find it impossible.[/quote]
I realized earlier today that I forgot to address your question about John 1:1 in the NWT.
Contrary to what many think, in instances such as John 1:1 we are never told “this is how it is believe it.” We are provided with information that always quote secular sources and even other translations. I’ve known what the book Truth in Translation states for years (of course not to the extent that John 1:1 is explained in the book).
Below is from Truth in Translation pgs 114 and 115.
[b][i]Greek has only a definite article, like our the, it does not have an indefinite article, like our a or an. So generally speaking, a Greek definite noun will have a form of the definite article (ho), which will become “the” in English. A Greek indefinite noun will appear without the definite article, and will be rendered in English with "a’ or “an.” We are not “adding a word” when we translate Greek nouns that do not have the definite article as English nouns with the indefinite article. We are simply obeying the rules of English grammar that tell us that we cannot say “Snoopy is dog” but we must say “Snoopy is a dog.” For example, in JOhn 1:1c, the clause we are investigating, ho logos is “the word,” as all translations accurately have it. If it was written simply logos, without the definite article ho, we would have to translate it as “a god.”
Similiarly, when we have a form of ho theos, as we do in John 1:1b and 1:2, we are dealing with a definite noun that we would initially (“lexically”) translate as “the god,” but if it is written simply theos, as it is in John 1:1c, it is an indefinite noun that would normally be translated as “a god.” To complete our translation into English, we need to take into consideration the fact that English has both a common noun “god” and a proper noun “God.” We use the proper noun “God” like a name, without either a definite or indefinite article, even though a name is a definite noun. As a definite noun, “God” corresponds to the Greek ho theos (lexically “the god”), which also is used often as the proper noun “God” in both the New Testament and other Greek literature from the same time. So in John 1:1b and 1:2 it is perfectly accurate to drop the “the” from “god” and say the Word was "with God (literally “with the god”). But what about the indefinite theos in John 1:1c? This does not correspond to the English definite proper noun “God,” but to the indefinite noun “a god.”
In Greek, if you leave off the article from theos in a sentence like the one in John 1:1c, then your readers will assume you mean “a god.” The kind of sentence we are dealing with is one with a be-verb, where the predicate noun (theos) is in the same noun form (the same “case”) as the subject noun (ho logos). In this subject (“nominative”) form, the definite article is really indispensable for making the noun definite. Its absence makes theos quite different than the definite ho theos, as different as “a god” is from “God” in English. In other words, John uses the indefinite theos in a manner distinct from his use of the definite ho theos. This is fairly clear not only from the distinct forms the word takes, but also from teh context in which those distinct forms are used. John says on the one hand that the Word “was with” ho theos, “God,” but on the other hand that the Word “was” theos, “a god.” Its is striking, therefore, that most of the translations we are comparing take no notice of this careful, distinction, and translate the different words as if they are exactly the same.[/i][/b]
Yeah, its a tough read if you didn’t keep up on your English from grade school. There’s much, much more. https://thebibleisnotholy.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/truth-in-translation.pdf
But you don’t need it because John 1:1 does not prove the Trinity because it doesn’t mention anything about the third part - the holy spirit. I can see if it said something like “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the holy spirit, and the Word was God and the holy spirit.” But it doesn’t so I’m not sure how people can base their Trinity belief on John 1:1. I can see if the term was “Duality” instead of Trinity, if that was the case, then I can see how people can be confused if they don’t know about confusion with the translation from ancient Greek to English. The only time Father, son and holy spirit are used in the same verse is at Matthew 28:19. Except for the erroneous addition at 1 John 5:7, 8 in the Latin Vulgate and KJV, God, Jesus and the holy spirit are not mentioned together in the entire Bible. In fact God and Jesus are mentioned together at least 10 times and every single time Jesus is at God’s right hand as a separate distinct individual. We’re actually given a glimpse of heaven by Stephen in Acts 7:55,56 which states "But he, being full of holy spirit, gazed into heaven and caught sight of God’s glory and of Jesus standing at God’s right hand, and he said: “Look! I see the heavens opened up and the Son of man standing at God’s right hand.” This passage should be the end of the Trinity debate. For the first time in the Bible we are given an eyewitness account of both God and Jesus together in heaven. If God were three in one then why didn’t Stephen say he saw the three parts of the Trinity and why didn’t he mention the holy spirit. If Stephen saw Jesus in a submissive position - the right hand position, how could that mean anything other than Jesus being a separate individual from God? Why would the Bible which is written for human understanding, describe a scene where two individuals are said to be standing next to each other want anyone who read it to think anything other than what any human in the history of humans would think - two individuals, not three standing next to each other. Jesus himself said at Matthew 26:64 that he was going to be at “the right hand of power.” So does Romans 8:34, Ephesians 1:20, Colossians 3:1, 1 Peter 3:22 and Hebrews 1:3. All of these scriptures say Jesus is at God’s right hand and not one of them mentions the holy spirit as being with them. It’s so puzzling that people would look at those clear, plain passages, ignore the simplicity of the meaning of them and stick to Trinity belief.
Why would God use son\father relationship and right-hand in relation to position of authority if in fact there was no father\son relationship because they were one in the same and there was no right-hand position denoting second in command because they were in fact equal. Is God fooling us? Is he exaggerating his love for us so we can love him more? Think about it for a second. The most well known scripture in the Bible is John 3:16. God is linking the love he has for people and using verbiage like “so much,” to him given something precious - his “only begotten son.” 1 John 4:10 which states - “The love is in this respect, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent forth his Son as a propitiatory sacrifice for our sins” is another scripture linking God’s love for us to him sacrificing his son. Those two scriptures are proof that God has tremendous love for us because he sacrificed something as precious as an only begotten son (which means Jesus is the only thing that came directly from him). The fact that these scriptures are in the Bible means that God wants us to know this. But if Jesus is really God, then he’s deceiving us and exaggerating the sacrifice he made for us and the love he has for us. That’s because anyone who would read John 3:16 would immediately understand and be able to relate to sacrificing an only child as being the most difficult thing to do and the ultimate sacrifice. The deceit and exaggeration would be in the fact that God’s allowing everyone who reads the Bible to think Jesus is his “only begotten Son” when in reality it is God himself who made a copy of himself (because he was clearly in heaven and spoke from heaven to Jesus on a number of occasions) came down to the earth and died for our sins. If that’s the case which is what the Trinity belief implies, would it be that big of a sacrifice for God to remain in heaven, create a copy of himself to go through the pains Jesus went through, die and just resurrect the copy? It would show us that God loved us because he came up with an arrangement for our sins to be forgiven but why would he make us think one thing (that he gave his only begotten son at great cost to him) when in reality it was another (just a copy of himself)? That would be deceitful and dishonest and even though we’d appreciate whatever arrangement God provided us to have our sins forgiven, most people would wonder why God wouldn’t be straight up with us and just clearly tell us what the true arrangement is. Even though people who believe in the Trinity would not admit this but If God and Jesus are the same then God has been misleading us for centuries. Could that be the case? Absolutely not because the Bible say’s it’s impossible for God to lie. But, if Jesus was really him as the Trinity states God is lying to us and exaggerating his love for us so we can love him more. Would he do that?
As far as there being other gods in the Bible there most certainly are. 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 states - “Now concerning the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no God but one. For even though there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many “gods” and many “lords,” there is actually to us one God, the Father, from whom all things are and we for him; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and we through him.”
That’s a pretty clear scripture to show that there are “many gods” even “gods” in heaven. Satan is even called “the god of this system of things” at 2 Corinthians 4:4. Jesus even refers to judges as gods. A god in the Bible means anyone that is powerful. Even today we use that term. I’m sure you’ve heard the term “god among men” in movies. Or a character in a movie is so powerful he is called a god. Isaiah 9:6,7 is a prophecy regarding Jesus. In this passage he is called “prince of peace” and a “mighty god” who will sit on David’s throne. God almighty would never be called a “prince.” This passage is obviously referring to Jesus and he is called “mighty god” not “God Almighty.” God Almighty is reserved for his Father only.
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