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Let’s not allow anyone to convince us that an apple is an orange. Let’s also make sure we’re holding on to an apple when someone tells us we’re holding on to an orange, thinking it to be an apple. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. Either that or he’s a fool. I...

Your assertion about me is incorrect.

Yes. It’s a danger that we must all be on guard against. There’s a narrative in some non-trinitarian circles that I find insufferable. It goes something like this: the early Church was unitarian but was invaded by trinitarians who took it over. The narrative is historically inaccurate and...

An additional thought. Readers should be aware that this is trinitarian commentary on scripture - not that there’s anything wrong with that. Commentary is commentary. Commentary - trinitarian and non-trinitarian alike - may or may not be an adequate or accurate explanation of scripture...

Your source did well until it asserted, as an indisputable fact, that God is presented in the Bible, the NT especially, as Trinity. It isn’t. See the post-biblical formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity - centuries in the making.

You’re welcome. To begin with, “God” is singular. It was suggested to me overnight by another member of the forums that “God” is plural. That idea has no support whatsoever in Hebrew Lexicons and there are no English language translations which render the word plural when referring to the...

God is plural? If so, then translate elohim as plural: gods. The Messiah’s God isn’t plural. The Messiah’s elohim is singular: God.

What?

I teach, but I’m still a student (and always will be this side of the Messiah’s second coming; probably beyond then. I’m a “lifer”.)

I’m tired and forgot to mention that Gregory of Nazianzen (a giant figure in trinitarianism, though the average Protestant trinitarian knows little, and couldn’t care less, about him) said about the “wise” in the Church at a late date in the 4th century. I’ll post that too for your...

You don’t care about these passages of scripture? How can we not be interested in, take into account, all passages of scripture in evaluating whatever it is that is presented to us?

He’s definitely using the term “trinity” (even using the phrase “unity in trinity”) and that’s what trinitarians latch on to. However, even trinitarian scholars (Catholic and Protestant) acknowledge that he doesn’t pass the test of orthodoxy. In historical context, he couldn’t. Tertullian...

Did I neglect to mention that Fortman was a hard core Trinitarian? He doesn’t write against the Trinity. He writes in favor of the Trinity. I’m not judging motives but anyone who tells us otherwise is giving us an incorrect understanding of his writing. Fortman an anti-trinitarian? No way...

He had some of the craziest thoughts we can imagine. But for the cause of the Trinity, he came up BIG. After I get back to Tertullian and finish reading / re-reading him, I plan to go back, strap in tight, and read / re-read Origen. I was working full-time when I went back to college to earn...

What’s that, you say? You don’t think Origen is an important figure? Consider this. “Three centuries after his martyr’s death, Origen was to be posthumously condemned as a heretic by the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553). It is ironic that orthodoxy ultimately condemned him, for it is to Origen...

”6. Origen’s Helpful Suggestion. It was the many-sided genius of Origen that helped to solve the problem. Origen, like Tertullian, was strongly opposed to Monarchianism with its emphasis on monotheism to the exclusion of hypostasianism and tri-personality. Abandoning the view of the Apologists...

“5. The Problem. The immediate problem, which the Church has to solve, was stated in two questions: (1) How could the Church escape from subordinationism? or how could it get away from viewing Christ as kind of a “second God”... (2) How could the Trinity of special persons (hypostasianism) be...

“Historians of Christianity and its relationship to society often claim that Constantine created Christian Europe, or Christendom, but that now we are in the post-Constantinian era. In theology, we have to say that we now seem to have entered a post-Chalcedon era. The transformation this...

“The adoption of the Nicene Creed in 325 and the Chalcedonian Creed in 451 stabilized the doctrine of the Trinity and Christ for over one thousand years. They made use of Hellenistic categories and thinking to do so. The important question to ask is not whether orthodox theology betrays...

”It is a simple and undeniable historical fact that several major doctrines that now seem central to the Christian faith - such as the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the deity of Christ - were not present in a full and well-defined, generally accepted form until the fourth or fifth...