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Is the creed of Jesus, the Shema (Mark 12:29), trinitarian?
Discussion
28 comments
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No, The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29) proves that the Trinity is false. It says that “Yahweh is one”. That is, he is one in number, not two, or three, as Trinitarians try to claim.
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“God is only one” (Galatians 3:20 NASB). “For us there is only one God, THE FATHER” (1 Corinthians 8:6 NASB). Jesus said that his “Father” is “THE ONLY TRUE GOD” (John 17:1,3), and that “the true worshippers will WORSHIP THE FATHER” (John 4:24).
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Then why is there God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, all the Same God, the Creator? The Trinity is had to explain, just as Our amazing God is difficult to confine in words, He is Spirit, yet Jesus is in Heaven in bodily form praying for us and at God’s right hand the Holy Spirit lives in us if we have accepted Jesus, our God as Savior. We serve a living God.
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If God is single person then, why the the Father called the son (Jesus) God in Hebrews 1:8 and the Holy Spirit God in Job 33:4?
If this is not true then we must remove the book of the book of Job and Hebrews, including Matthew, John, Romans 9:5, 1 Timoty 1:17, Col 2:9, Phil 2:5 and the entire book of Revelation and and entire Psalm.
For these books teach united Godship of three divine persons/beings the trinity.
Then we now focus only to the proof text of single person God, now if one will find the appearances of distinct divine persob then we must remove those books, so that we can validatebthe single person God like Islam. -
The
Schema is located in the Old Testament Deu. 6:4-5 Jesus here in this New Testament passage in Mark is just quoting from the Old
Testament -
No, its the creed of Judaism. They believe in God but Jesus was a stumbling block for them. They believe that there was one God (as opposed to other religions, such as the Romans with their pantheon of gods), they ought to love the one true God with every part of their being.
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I am personally a Oneness guy, so from an orthodox Christian perspective I am a heretic. That said, you can believe in both the Trinity and the Shema. I think the church’s problem is our Christology. Read anything on Spirit Christology it can help resolve ther Shema and the Trinitarian/Oneness divide
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1John 5:7
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Yes. It mentions God 3 times and says that this God is One. It’s perfectly Trinitarian.
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I believe it is. And Yeshua [God is Salvation] answered him, The first of all the commandments [is] , Hear, O Yisra’el [He Holds Onto The Heal Of God] ; The Lord – Kurios our God-Theos is one Lord – Kurios: And you i shall love the Lord – Kurios your i God-Theos with all your i heart, and with all your i soul, and with all your i mind, and with all your i strength: this [is] the first commandment.
Mark 12:29-30 NMV
Hear, O Yisra’el [He Holds Onto The Heel Of God] : The Lord-Yehōvah (Messiah Pre-Incarnate) our God-Elōhīm (The Living Word) [The Many Powered] [is] one Lord-Yehōvah (Messiah Pre-Incarnate) : And you i shall love the Lord-Yehōvah (Messiah Pre-Incarnate) you i God-Elōhīm (The Living Word) [The Many Powered] with all you i heart, and with all you i soul, and with all you i might.
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 NMVJesus was the Lord God of the Old Testament.
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The trinity has three things, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as one whole thing with 3 equal things co existing. I do not use the word “person” since the Holy Spirit is not a person at all. The word Eloheim and others are nouns, such as a board of directors or family, which have parts. I was taught this since I was a child and was taught anything about the Bible but now I know the Trinity was created a few hundred years after the death of Jesus. ??
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Yes
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It actually crushes the claims of unitarians
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Norm P. Sweeting You say that all major branches accept the Trinitarian formula. The councils, which were a few hundred years after the death of Jesus, had paganism creeping in to Christianity and also had to compromise. Many believers did not believe what the councils declared. ?
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Orthodox, Catholic and Original Protestant denominational creeds all accepted the trinity. Those are the major three branches. There are minor exceptions and you’re correct that paganism infiltrated the church after Constantine permitted christian practice. Perhaps the acid of compromise and amalgamation necessitated the calling of the councils.
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The Shema does not exclude the trinity. One God three persons. Trinitarians all agree we have one God, however cults like to say that trinitarians have three gods, not true. However we distinguish between being and person. Any one who says the trinity was never articulated before the council of Nicea is mistaken. http://carm.org/the-trinity-before-nicea
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The lord is one in nature three in persona
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Philemon Mokwena Norm P. Sweeting U are welcome, Philemon, which is a book in the New Testament. I think Jesus is the Son of God, and He is sinless. Titus 2:13 I must look at the original languages, but it could be that our God and Savior are 2 different things. ??
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FATHER, SON & HOLY GHOST:
WORDS OF JESUS CHRIST:
GREAT COMMISSION:
MATTHEW 28:16-20;
16; And the eleven disciples went into Galilee,
unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed
them.
17; And seeing him they adored: but some
doubted.
18; And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying:
All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.
19; Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost.
20; Teaching them to observe things whatsoever I
have commanded you: and behold I am with you
all the days, even to the consummation of the world.
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TESTIMONY OF GOD:
1 JOHN 5:6-9;
6; This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus
Christ: not by water only, but by water and blood.
And it is the Spirit which testifieth, that Christ is the
truth.
7; And there are three who give testimony in heaven,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy ghost. And these
three are one.
8; And there are three that give testimony on earth:
the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these
three are one.
9; If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony
of God is greater. For this is the testimony of God,
which is greater, because he hath testified of his Son.
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IN THE BEGINNING:
JOHN 1:1-5;
1; In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.
2; The same was in the beginning with God.
3; All things were made by him: and without him was
made nothing that was made.
4; In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5; And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness
did not comprehend it.
THE WORD BECAME FLESH:
JOHN 1:14;
14; And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
(and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only
begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
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The definition of the “Word” is very important in those verses. There is the written Word, the Word as the message of the Gospel, etc. You need to look at the original languages and what early Christians and Jews thought. ?
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(reading the comments of a group I just joined hoping for good apologetics)
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n apologetics today a common argument against orthodox Christianity is that if the God of Israel, the God taught in the Shema is
only one then how can Jesus Christ also be God? They will then point to two different texts Deut 6:4 and then to 1 Corinthians 8:6 they will say,” see it clear says Jesus is Lord and not God”. This does appear to be the case to anyone who has no biblical background. With a little context I believe we can answer this question.
Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
1 Corinthians 8:6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.
In ancient times the Jews believed the Name of God, Yahweh, to be so utterly sacred that that they would not speak it or even write it out. However, they still needed to refer to God by His proper Name, so they devised what is called the Tetragrammaton which when transliterated is YHWH. Every place they wished to say Yahweh they would substitute YHWH in its place.
So Deut 6: would read Hear, o Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one. Our English bibles have substituted the title LORD in all capital letters for YHWH. So anytime you see LORD in our English bible, the underlying Name is Yahweh.
Before Christ Alexander the Great helped koine Greek to become the common language among most of the known world, and by the time of Christ almost everyone including the Jewish leaders would have predominantly read and spoken Greek. This was possible in part due to the fact that in roughly 285 bc a group of 70 Jewish scholars assembled in Alexandra, Egypt to translate the Hebrew scripture into koine Greek. Almost 300 years before Jesus of Nazareth walked the hills of Galilee the many prophecies of His coming had been verifiably recorded in history in what is called the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Tanakh (Old Testament).
When translating the Hebrew to Greek the translators who were Jewish had the same issue with the Name of God, so the used the Greek word Kyrios which means Lord. So every time a Jew would read YHWH in the Septuagint, it would read as Kyrios. This meant that anytime a Jew would read that word Kyrios they would automatically do what they had done their entire lives and mentally replace it with YHWH or Yahweh.
Fast forward to the New Testament and the writers had to have a way to say that the Father and the Son are both God, that they are both of one essence, but not the same in person. Sound difficult? Well God had planned this all from before the foundation of the world, so it wasn’t.
In 1 Cor 8:6 when Paul says, “But to us there is but one Theos (God), the Father”, he has identified the Father as Theos, and to say that Christ is also Theos would be to say that Christ is also the Father which is incorrect and confusing. Paul being a first class scholar knew that Jews would identify Kyrios as YHWH when they read it in his writings because of its use in the Septuagint. So Paul used Theos for the Father and Kyrios for the Son. This made sure that no one would mistake the Father for the Son and vice versa.
With this context we see that when Paul a Jew wrote Kyrios, he meant us to read it as Yahweh. This is evident in his application of O.T. stricture to Christ in Romans 10:13 Paul writes, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Reading a couple of verses before this gives us context and tells us who Paul is identifying as the Lord that needs to be called on in verse 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.”
Paul knowing the relationship of YHWH and Kyrios from the Septuagint would never had used Kyrios in Romans 10:13 because he would know that in the Tanakh in the book of Joel 2:32 it said, ” And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered”
Following clear logic we say that Paul meant for us to see Jesus of Nazareth as the God of Israel YHWH. -
God is One What and Three Whos.
There is only One God YHWH and He has three distinct persons. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit..the Father is Not the Son, the Son is Not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is Neither the Father Nor the Son.
According to Nabeel Qureshi in, “Seek Allah, finding Jesus” They have one essence or being and three separate different personalities that act in independent unity with each other.
If you read the entire bible either you can be left with contradictions, or rightly identify what YHWH is saying in His Word and accept it accordingly. Above all the scriptures are God breathed, infallible, and Absolute Truth (2 Tim 3:16). Therefore they have NO contradictions, so there must be another answer!
The scripture is clear of these four facts: All scriptures (KJV NO copyright)
1.) The Lord God is One (Deut 6:4)
2.) The Father is God (2 Peter 1:17) For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
3.) The Son is God (John 1:1,14a) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God .And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
4.) The Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-5) Peter asked, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart so that you should lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back some of the money you got for the land? As long as it remained unsold, wasn’t it your own? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? So how could you have thought of doing what you did? You didn’t lie only to men, but also to God!” When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized everyone who heard about it.
From a clear exegeses of scripture we see that all three persons the Father, Son, and Spirit are called God. Does this somehow contradict Deut 6:4?
As we can see we have been forced into this view, by the text of scripture itself which is from YHWH Himself. He has made it this way and we are correct enough not to question our Creator when He says,” I am One What and Three Whos”. I can’t fathom what this means but it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t believe it. I can’t fathom nuclear physics but I certainly believe it.
The Bible has proven itself True objectivity with the scores of fulfilled prophecies. It has likewise proven itself True subjectively, by the innumerable lives transformed by the Truth it gives..the Hope…and the Love it brings to this fallen world.
Why does this matter? What is love? We hear God is love, buy why?
We know the Bible is trustworthy because of the fulfilled prophecy and changed lives, so we then must reconcile the Oneness of God in scriptures with the scriptures that tell us the Son and the Spirit are also both God.
I think that like in so many cases in life the answer is found in LOVE. As explained by Abdu Murray “Trinity”, existenceofgod.org
In John 4:8b-9 we read the following, “Because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” ( KJV NO copyright)
If God truly is Love and He truly is self existent or has true aseity, He would have to by necessity have the ability to love in and of Himself. But how could the One true God of Love actually love before He first brought into existence?
Are we to understand that God was not truly complete in and of Himself, and He did not love before He created an object to love? If God must create out of necessity, the need to have an objective to love, was He complete in and of Himself before He created?
God is a God of relationships, He Loves His creation and wants to have a right relationship with it.
If God is only one in nature and one in person then He would have been lacking the ability to Love from eternity past. He would have to have first created something to love before He could Love, so He couldn’t truly be perfect even in His “aseity”. Or would He even have aseity? He would not have had the capacity to have a love relationship with anyone. Except this contradicts the definition of aseity which is existing in and of self. If God couldn’t Love prior to creation, He does not have true aseity. If God is both One in nature and, and one in person then He could not have loved prior to bringing the first creature into existence. Love could have been nothing more than a concept with no real context. The God of the Bible is described as complete not lacking anything form eternity past. A God who lacks the ability to be fully complete outside of creation is not the God which the Bible has revealed to us.
In Bible, as we have shown, God has reveled himself to be One in nature and Three in persons. We have also shown that in-order to be a God of Love, God must have loved before bringing His first creation into existence. God is necessarily a triune God. Meaning it is necessary for Him to be a triune being in-order to be perfect.
The law of parsimony says that the hypotheses with the least amount of assumptions must be true. The least amount of persons you would need in-order to enjoy all three types of relationships which are self-directed, others-directed, and community-directed would be a minimum of three persons. This would mean three is the necessary number to fulfill the three types of relationships.
This is answered in the Triune nature of God as reveled in His Word.
The Father loved the Son, the Son loved the Father , the Spirit loved both who also loved each other. Living in perfect triune relational love without the need to create. This is true aseity.
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