= Trinity

The Christian position is that there is a trinity, however this is found nowhere in the bible.

== Slippery Slope
Christianity has painted themselves into a corner; Jesus //has to be God//, or Christianity is a false religion; but moreso, an idolatrous religion. This is because Christianity has created mode of worship, prayer and practice which assumes Jesus is God.

* Who did Michael rebuke satan in the name of (Lord) vs. now (Jesus)
* Who is the church married to *now* vs. (jeremiah)
* Servants of Jesus as Servants of the Lord; John 13:12-17

* John 13:12-17 "12 So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? 13 Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. 16 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. 17 If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them."

=== Jesus Posession
Is God everywhere, within us? The Christian will ask, is Jesus everywhere? Within us? There's actually a serious question here! Christians have invited Jesus into their hearts, //because he didn't have permission to go there, as God the Father does.// In a sense, they have become //posessed by Jesus// and are thus unable to see the truth shining out of the Hebrew Scriptures. So long as they remain in their mode of idolatry it is a stumbling block to any progress. However, if the Christian is willing to admit that the Hebrew Scriptures have primacy over the New Testament there is hope. Otherwise, once they state the New testament has primacy over the Hebrew Scriptures, they cannot be reached.

== Non-Biblical
Here's William Lane Craig admitting the trinity is a non-biblical doctrine:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEYpHDwOhfw&feature=youtu.be&t=134

//(*special note: for giving this and other similar arguments, WLC is no longer considered a Christian by the apologetics community on discord and in many other places-- especially those communities which have begun to adopt presuppositionalism.)//

Here's another article where WLC is discussing the trinity:

<blockquote>It is correct that the doctrine of the Trinity, like its competitors, is a theological construct aimed at making sense of the New Testament data. But those data make two things pretty plain, I think, two things which any theological model has to account for: (1) There is only one God, and (2) There are three persons who are divine. Please understand that what is at stake here is not finding a single prooftext for the Trinity. Rather the question will involve all of the relevant New Testament material and how best to make sense of it.<cite>https://www.biola.edu/blogs/good-book-blog/2020/a-seeker-s-questions-about-the-trinity</cite>https://www.biola.edu/blogs/good-book-blog/2020/a-seeker-s-questions-about-the-trinity</blockquote>

From this we learn that the Trinity is not clearly stated, even in the New Testament -- but is instead a //theological construct// which was created in order to cause the New Testament to make sense. Why doesn't it make sense? Because the Hebrew Scriptures concept of God denies the New Testament concept of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

== An Analysis of the New Testament
Is Jesus is Subordinate to God? An analysis of the passages in the New testament seems to paint Jesus as subordinate to God. There are only a handful of passages to look at, so I put a list of them into the commentary for John 8 in the NSV; here we will examine them in detail.

"The question is often raised (and defended, via John 1:1-) of the Trinity. However, the “Incarnation Problem” is then raised, which is the clear statement by John (and all other gospels) that Jesus is subordinate to God."

What follows is an analysis of new testament passages which are used to show that Jesus is or is not God.
* John 8:42
** 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me.

* John 8:54
** 54 Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me.

* John 17:1,3
** 17 After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.
** 2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.
** 3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ** 4 I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.
** 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

More;
* John 16:19
* John 16:27
* John 20:17
* John 13:38
* John 14:1
* Mark 10:18
* Mark 12:29
* Mark 15:34
* Revelation 1:13,17
* Revelation 3:12

Clarification; these verses show there is only one god: ex. Isaiah 44:8, 45:5 (other verses not given, Matt Slick in a connected debate refused to clarify a string of verses he spewed out and I only was able to get two of them).

=== The Slam Dunk Argument
In Matthew 24:36, we read a verse which has been called the "best" verse to bring up when challenging the deity of Jesus:

<blockquote>36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son,[b] but the Father only.<cite>Matthew 24:36</cite></blockquote>

Because the son does not posses knowledge which the father does, the co-equal nature of the trinity is utterly disproven. In order to get around this, Christians will first state that early manuscripts omit the words 'nor the Son,' however it is in fact only the Latin vulgate and other heavily edited Church manuscripts which omit this. This is not an issue however since you may point out the word "monos" (i.e. 'only' in 'only' the Father) omits the son anyways. It is then not possible to claim the verse does not state that Jesus didn't know the hour.

The Christian will then state that 'monos' does not mean 'only' in the plain sense taken here. This is also incorrect, as the same word is used in John 3:16 "...gave his **one and only** son..." i.e. //monos//. So either this argument will fail because the son //and the holy spirit// do not know the hour, or it will fail because Jesus is no longer God's only son and his sacrifice no longer holds meaning within the Christian narrative.

==== Four Common Christian Answers
In order to get out of this position, various christian theologians have attempted various kinds of apologetic argument.

First is that knowledge of the hour was veiled from the son for a specific purpose. This is Dr. James White's position -- that the knowledge was with-held from Jesus for 'reasons'. "There were certain things which were veiled, in fact... there was a veiling..." for example, for the purpose of Jesus being an example to us so that we may learn to rely on the father. He also states "He made himself of no reputation..." so that there are certain things he does not act upon (ex. the hour). The issue with this approach is that it is merely a restatement of the problem; the fact is that for whatever reason the mind of Jesus is unaware of what the father knows, and is therefore a separate mind. Nothing has been accomplished with this explanation.

Second is to refer to the hypostatic union and state that the son (in his divinity) did know the hour, but his human nature (in it's human nature) did not, and could not know the hour, because of it's limited capacity. This is the position of Darth Dawkins for example, who asks "Did Jesus need to learn to walk and talk (as a baby)?" to point out that the human nature of Jesus would have been limited. //However// even with this generous explanation we must point out this is a capitulation and not a resolution -- it is the essentially statement that both the trinity, where the son is co-equal to the father is false, and that the hypostatic union -- where jesus is 100% divine, is false. //If Jesus is 100% human and 100% divine, and in that, his divine essence is separate from and different from his human essence, then this is an admission that Jesus' human nature is not God.//

Thirdly -- the son does not know the hour because the father hasn't decided yet when it will be. This is problematic because it does not address the dichotomy between the father actually knowing and the son/angels/holy spirit //not// knowing. It is essentially a misrepresentation of the idea that the father knows something the son does not know. Jesus states he does not know -- not that //he// hasn't decided yet.

Fourthly (often given by the example of a Jewish wedding) the son does have knowledge of the hour, but it is the right of the father alone to announce it. The problem with this is self-evident; Jesus is a separate being to the point where he undertakes different actions and has a different fundamental purpose than God himself. The claim may no longer be that this is like "fingers of a hand" because the fundamental right to action is given to the father but denied to Jesus. So this just shifts the goalposts from direct knowledge to the ability to make an announcement -- and given that Jesus was particular about why he could not answer, this apologetic has no scriptural basis and seems to be more of an invention.

I am not aware of any other answer to this verse but I am actively investigating it.

=== Scriptural Support for Wedding Argument
The same quote appears in Mark 13:32; "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father."

Given this, the idea of an explanation in Mark 13:33-37 is repeated essentially in Acts 1:7 "And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power." In Matthew this is given as "For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.", et cetera. It is then possible to see that it was never intended to be phrased as "only the father knows" but that "only the father has authority" -- this is the wedding argument (the fourth strongest argument).

In this line of reasoning we can turn directly to the following verses in Matthew 25 which compares the coming of the day to the arrival of a bridegroom, for a similar example.

== Binarian and Trinitatian Apologetics
It is not WLC's intention to deny the Trinity "can be found" through an analysis of the New Testament. He states "In the pages of the New Testament, then, we find the raw data which the doctrine of the Trinity later sought to formulate in a systematic way." ([[https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/christian-doctrines/a-formulation-and-defense-of-the-doctrine-of-the-trinity/|wlc]]).

In his own defense, WLC states "..It seems to me just undeniable that John did not think that the Father was the same person as Jesus (John 1.14, 18; 14-15)."

The problem is, these passages are not an exhaustive reading of the qualities of Jesus in the New Testament. We need to allow for the truth of //every// passage in the New Testament. For example:

* "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 7:21 ESV)
*  34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  (Mark 15:34 ESV)
* "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." (Luke 22:42 NIV)
* ...I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. (John 14:28 ESV)
* “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. (John 5:30 ESV)
* So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. (John 5:19 ESV)

So the problem is, if //some// verses in the New Testament can be read that God has multiple "aspects" or "facets", whatever that may mean, and //some// verses in the New Testament can be read that God does //not// have such facets or aspects, then in light of the Hebrew Scriptures concept of a monotheistic God, we must read //all of these passages// in the same light and conclude that God is not a "trinity". To conclude otherwise would be to cherrypick and to ignore or discredit the Hebrew Scriptures in favor of the new.

How does WLC deal with this? By admitting it:

<blockquote>When you relate that people respond to your questions with answers like, “It’s a mystery, we can’t understand it - but you have to believe it anyway!”, I’m afraid that you’re just talking to the wrong people. Your question, “How can Christ be both eternal and begotten?” is not difficult to answer. The reason the Church Fathers spoke of Christ as begotten rather than created is because he shares the same nature as God the Father. A chair does not have the same nature as the carpenter; but kittens do have the same nature as the cats which begot them. Begetting implies sameness of nature. However, being begotten does not entail a beginning of existence, but a relation of ontological dependence. **The Church Fathers loved to give the analogy of the sunbeam proceeding from the sun. If the sun has been shining from eternity past, then the sunbeam is co-eternal with the sun.** There is clearly an asymmetric dependence relation here: the sunbeam depends on and derives from the sun; the sun does not depend on and derive from the sunbeam. Now, of course, this is only an analogy; but the salient point of the analogy is that derivation from another is not inherently a temporal relation.<cite></cite></blockquote>

We thus come to the following schism; separateness in the defining qualities of being or personhood is logically equivalent to separateness of being:

=== Separate Minds
1. If the will is different, it is not the same being.

2. Any meaningful division //such that// one must address a division with a separate name implies that one division's mind can be addressed separately, or will hear in exclusion to or in primacy over, another division, implies a separate being. Our Jesus who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy Name? Why even bother then, with "Jesus"? Why did Jesus pray? Surely it was not to put prayer on a a pedistal as the hypocritical Sadducees did!

=== Not Omniscient 
For example; Jesus is not omniscient; ex. Matthew 21:18-19 etc. 

"In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once." (Matthew 21:18-19)

"And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs." (Mark 11:13 ESV)

etc. Since the mind of Jesus is separate from the mind of God, they are separate beings.

=== The Incarnation Problem
Secondly, separate locations (or separate incarnations) indicate separate beings; Jesus while on earth stated that the Father was in heaven -- Later, Jesus ascended to heaven. For more on this see the [[https://www.noachide.ca/wiki/christian_steamroller?s[]=incarnation&s[]=problem#the_incarnation_problem|incarnation problem]].

== The Root of the Heresy
The root of this //particular// heresy is found in common with [[Presuppositionalism]]. 

In "[[https://abdullahalandalusi.com/2013/04/02/the-fallacies-of-dr-william-lane-craigs-argument-for-the-trinity/|The Fallacies of Dr. William Lane Craig's Argument for the Trinity]]" WLC makes the following logical, but non-biblcal argument for the trinity (note: In https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/questions-from-a-muslim-about-the-trinity WLC himself states this quote is from his book [[https://apps.biola.edu/apologetics-store/products/books/item/philosophical-foundations-for-a-christian-worldview_Book|Philosophical Foundations]].)

<blockquote>1. As the greatest conceivable being, God must be perfect.

2. Now a perfect being must be a loving being. (For love is a moral perfection; it is better for a person to be loving rather than unloving. God therefore must be a perfectly loving being.

3. Now it is of the very nature of love to give oneself away.

4. Love reaches out to another person rather than centering wholly in oneself. So if God is perfectly loving by His very nature, He must be giving Himself in love to another. But who is that other? It cannot be any created person, since creation is a result of God’s free will, not a result of His nature.

5. It belongs to God’s very essence to love, but it does not belong to His essence to create.

6. So we can imagine a possible world in which God is perfectly loving and yet no created persons exist.

7. So created persons cannot sufficiently explain whom God loves. Moreover, contemporary. cosmology makes it plausible that created persons have not always existed. But God is eternally loving. So again created persons alone are insufficient to account for God’s being perfectly loving.

8. It therefore follows that the other to whom God’s love is necessarily directed must be internal to God Himself.

In other words, God is not a single, isolated person, as unitarian forms of theism like Islam hold; rather God is a plurality of persons, as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity affirms. ... Thus, since God is essentially loving, the doctrine of the Trinity is more plausible than any Unitarian doctrine of God’.<cite>https://abdullahalandalusi.com/2013/04/02/the-fallacies-of-dr-william-lane-craigs-argument-for-the-trinity/\\  https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/questions-from-a-muslim-about-the-trinity\\  https://apps.biola.edu/apologetics-store/products/books/item/philosophical-foundations-for-a-christian-worldview_Book\\ //(edited for clarity, emphasis added)//</cite></blockquote>

There are multiple issues with the above; the statement that it is a non-biblical argument is in fact being very kind to his logic, as it is in fact anti-biblical. While God certainly must be perfect in a sense, it is wholly incorrect to layer upon God our personal human expectations of what it means to be perfect. God is not necessarily "perfectly loving" in that he chooses to kill people who commit abominations //to God.// But in any case there are atrributes of God which are clearly main-stays of the Hebrew Scriptures:

=== God is One
"Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." (Deuteronomy 6:4) is a common prayer. In fact this is one of the most important parts of the bible; the following verses state explicitly it must be clearly taught to everyone from childhood and remembered forever; as well, those words must be placed in boxes and attached to the doorposts of every home and office:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead, inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." (Deu 6:5-9)

=== God is the creator
In contradiction to WLC's 5th point above, the concept of God the Creator is clear from Genssis 1:1:

* In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
** also; "And Hashem God formed the man of dust from the ground, and He blew into his nostrils the soul of life." (Genesis 2:7).

=== Lawgiver and Judge
Since God requires a relationship with us; as found all over the bible, not least in Genesis 2:15 "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it." and the following verse, "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”"

=== Father
The conception has always been one of father and son; as well as husband and wife (for Israel, at least). Ex. Hosea 11:1 "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." or Isaiah 63:15-16 "Look down from heaven and see, ... 16 For you are our Father, ..."

* Malachi 2:10 "Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?" Thus "one father" is also seen as an analogy that God is One.

== Conclusion
William Lane Craig's interpretation of the Trinity is, by his own admission, non-biblical in the sense that a) it does not appear in the bible, but also in the sense that b) the bible itself, which is not silent on the issue, disagrees with him (both in the Christian New Testament and of course, the Holy Hebrew Scriptures!)

=== Closing
If one asks, "What about Josephus?" one may state conclusively that Josephus is not a credible source; in Wars 6.5.4 Josephus states that Vespasian is the messiah; "The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular: and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian: who was appointed emperor in Judea."