The trinity

[Drich]

The best way to understand the Trinity is as a compromise in committee.

Early Christians were wrestling with Christology. What was Jesus and his role in salvation? Was he man or a god or the God or an angel or...?

The problem was complicated by the need to reconcile Jesus with strict OT monotheism. The god YHWH was a jealous and deeply insecure god who couldn't bear any distractions from his adoration by mortal worshipers. His first commandment was "thou shalt have no gods before me" and his rant in Isaiah 43:10-12 made it clear that he delegates his role as judge to no one.

Which is all reconciled if one simply looks as the word God as a title and not a name. There isn't one deity named God. It is a title that three collectively share.

So how should Christianity reconcile this OT god with the god who fades into a mysterious backdrop while Jesus takes center stage? Jesus' very claim in John 14:6 that he is the intercessor to Yahweh and the only path to salvation.

Very simply. We look at the complete context in which the original Greek and Hebrew were framed.

In sum:

OT: "You are forbidden to have an intercessor" (Is 43:10-12)

I, [even] I, [am] the LORD; h3068 יהוה Yĕhovah

and beside h1107 בלעדי bil`adey

me [there is] no savior. h3467 ישע yasha`

In short God is saying, outside of God there is no salvation.

NT: "You are required to have an intercessor" (John 14:6)

I can break it down in the Greek, if wish. But you have not changed the meaning of the text here too dramatically.

This is quite a dilemma to reconcile. A more clear contradiction on the important matter of salvation would be hard to imagine.

Only as stated. When one opens his own bible and reads what has actually been written reconciliation can easily be found on page.

Solution: Jesus is the same god of the OT and so he is his own intercessor ...to Himself ...because No one comes to him except through him.

OK, we're already on pretty shaky ground here with tautologies like that but it gets worse when you consider how the Synoptic Gospels (Matt, Mark and Luke) depict Jesus as clearly separate from and subordinate to his father (sorry Dirch, but there's no "equality" here between the parts).

Because the bulk of your sermon is based on a [lets say misconception of Isa 43] Your conclusion does warrant a rebuttal. That means the following work:

Jesus and Yahweh speak to each other in 2nd person and of each other in 3rd person:

Mark 15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? Which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Jesus doesn't know all that Yahweh knows:

Matt 24:36 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, neither the Son but my Father only.

Jesus has a separate will which is subordinate to his father's will:

Luke 22:42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

These are just a few examples how how the Synoptic depict a Jesus clearly separate from and subordinate to his father, Yahweh. Were the Gospel of John lost to us, were we to rely on the Synoptic, we'd have the idea that Jesus is some sort of demigod. How can such verses be squared with the idea of Jesus as Yahweh or even as part of some equal triumvirate corporation of deities that you propose Dirch?

The solution is to babble about how Jesus is God and not God, wholly human and wholly divine, three separate persons in one divine being. When this proves unsatisfying, rely on metaphors like water or invent ad hoc explanations based on nothing but imagination like the one you've come up with Dirch.

This is how to understand the Trinity. It is, as one Christian on this forum once blundered into admitting, a way to have your cake and eat it too. It's a clumsy tool to ram together pagan ideas of an intercessor deity to save us from a pagan inspired Hell (which the ancient Hebrews did NOT believe in, based on the OT) with the strict monotheism of Judaism.

And your idea of a corporation of deities IS polytheism, no matter how you quibble about as you try to redefine the term "deity".

---

Has been rightfully been found to be an invalid conclusion, to support your arguement.