Posted by jimmyjames on March 22, 1999 at 15:35:23 {MWOuU2yvobPRY}:
In Reply to: Stafford's Response to White posted by Cygnus on March 22, 1999 at 12:51:39:
Cygnus,
I hate trinity debates. For two main reasons: 1. As Jan commented on, people get caught up in dishonesty because they're stuck trying to justify a preconceived idea rather than honestly examining all the evidence. 2. It seems to me that if God wanted to reveal who he is in the pages of the Bible, then he wouldn't make it so dependent on minutia like silly technicalities in grammar in the words written down by imperfect people. Most trinity debaters get caught up in this and spend hours and hours on pages of this baloney and the only thing that changes in the end is that they've gotten a little older. It reminds me of the way the Pharisees were described as "straining out the gnat but gulping down the camel" and getting into "debates about words".
As it is, I've stepped away from the idea that the Bible is God's word. I don't want to tie myself down to a particular set of beliefs.
On the other hand, since I decided to leave the org, from my reading of the Bible it seems clear the Bible describes Jesus as being God manifested in flesh. The main reasons I believe this is because Jesus described his body as being the "temple" of God, which God prophesied in the Old Testament that he would inhabit. In 1 Timothy 3:16 Paul specifically states that he was manifest in flesh, and in Colossians 2:9 it enlarges on this when it says "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form". Prophecies about God in the Old Testament are attributed specifically to Jesus in the New Testament. YHWH was the ancient name for God in the Old Testament.
I don't need typical texts that trinitarians use to "prove" that Jesus was God, such as John 8:58. I see it throughout the NT.
I don't believe in the trinity, but I think people's ideas of Jesus are really not as important as whatever message he was conveying.
just my 2 cents.
jimmyjames