Here we go with Segment 4, Part 1.
This segment is titled, Who Jesus Christ Is Determines Who He Is Not.
We will explain that as we go along.
This is a book that I was extremely privileged in participating in writing, and I literally
cannot believe it when I see my name on the front of this because, at almost 700 pages,
it leaves no stone unturned in regard to the subject, who is Jesus Christ.
It's called One God and One Lord – Reconsidering the Cornerstone of the Christian Faith.
And on the front here, it has a question, and it says, who do you say that I am.
Jesus was speaking to Peter and he says, but what about you – who do you say that I am.
That's the most important question in the history of the world because every human being
will have to answer that question at some point, either during his lifetime or when
he is resurrected from the dead at some point in the future.
And of course remember, if you're in Group One, you've already answered that question rightly.
And so, I will be reading to close Part 2 of this segment, a little story from this
book, but the book is all about, who is God, who is Jesus and what is their relationship
and I'll say much more about this as we go on.
Because if I come up to you and say, you say, Hi, I'm Bob Smith, and I say, Hi I'm not
Elvis Presley.
You're left with a major question, who are you, ya nut?
So, what was the answer Peter gave when Jesus asked him, Who do you say that I am?
Most Christians would answer, I think most, would say what Peter did, You are the Christ,
the Son of the Living God.
What did Jesus say to Peter when he said that?
Right on, dog, you got it.
You're the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
Given that Jesus Christ is the linchpin of Christianity, don't you think that his identity
would be indispensably vital to get right?
I do.
And if you were the Devil, which you're not, would you try as hard as you possibly
could, to obscure or distort that truth?
We read 2 Corinthians 4:3, 4, 5, 6 in Segment One, and it talked about Jesus is the image
of God.
Now, today, most people have their photos on their phone, which is ok, but sometimes
in the old days when we used to have wallets and this, and you'd pull out – let me
show you my Granddaughter, so you pull out – this is my Granddaughter . Gosh she's thin.
That's not your Granddaughter; neither is it on your phone – it's an image of your
Granddaughter.
No one ever started to eat a chocolate bunny at Easter that then hopped away because it's
an image, which by definition means it's not the object itself.
We're going to see in a minute or two here, or a few minutes, that words have meanings.
We're seeing the whole class.
So now, here's the deal which you might, depending on the background that you come
from – if you do not come from a Christian background, you may find this incredulous,
and I hope you do.
But if you follow the above question, who do you say that I am, with another question,
Is Jesus God?, most Christians, and especially those in ministerial positions of leadership
and so forth, would emphatically say, yes.
That is because they have been taught and inexplicable doctrine known as the Trinity.
And you, if you don't come from a Christian background – Jesus, you are the Christ,
the Son of the Living God; and you're also God – and you're going, Whoa, hold it,
tilt, wait a minute.
If words have definitive, fixed meanings, how could Jesus be the Son of God and also God?
That's a very good question.
I think it's a valid question, and apparently Hollywood agrees.
We're going to play you two short clips, ah, movie clips.
The first one is a movie studio head, ah, talking to a Rabbi, a Roman Catholic Priest,
a Greek Orthodox Priest, and a Presbyterian or Protestant minister.
So you've four guys there, and they're discussing this movie that he's producing
which is partly the story of the Christ, and he is asking them their opinion.
He wants to make sure it's theologically ok with everybody.
So let's roll that one.
Gentlemen, thank you all for coming.
I know you have parishes, flocks and temples making enormous demands on your time, but
I'm sure you appreciate also the great masses of humanity looked at pictures for information
and uplift and yes, attainment.
Here at Capital Pictures, as you know, an army of technicians and actors and top-notch
artistic people are working hard to bring to the screen the story of the Christ.
It's a swell story, the story told before, yes, but we like to flatter ourselves that
it's never been told with this kind of distinction and panache.
Perhaps you forget it's telling in the Holy Bible.
Quite right, Patriarch.
The Bible, of course, it's terrific, but for millions of people, pictures will be their
reference point for this story.
This story is embodied, this story is, ah … realization.
Realization.
You realize, of course that, for we Jews, any visual depiction of the Godhead is most
strictly prohibited.
Oh.
But of course for us the man Jesus Nazarene is not God.
Ah ha.
Hail Caesar is a prestige picture, our biggest release of the year, and were devoting huge
resources to its production in order to make it first class in every respect.
Gentlemen, given its enormous expense, we don't want to send it to market except in
the certainty that it will not offend any reasonable American in regard to faith or
creed.
Now, that's where you come in.
You've read the script.
I wanna know if the theological elements of the story are up to snuff.
I thought the chariot scene was fakey.
How's he going to jump from one chariot to the other going full speed?
Ah hah.
Well, we can look at that, but as for the religious aspect, does the depiction of Christ
Jesus cut the mustard?
Well, the nature of Christ is not quite as simple as your photo play would have it.
How so Father?
It's not the case simply that Christ is God, or God, Christ.
You can say that again.
The Nazarene was not God.
He was not not God.
He was a man.
[inaudible] No sir.
Rabbi, all of us have a little of God in us, don't we?
Well.
It's the foundation of our belief.
The Christ is most properly referred to as the Son of God.
It's the Son of God who takes the sins of the world upon himself so that the rest of
God's children, we imperfect beings, through faith may enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
So God is split?
Yes … and no.
There is unity in division … And division in unity.
I'm not sure I follow, Padre.
Young man, you don't follow for a very simple reason.
These men are screwballs.
God has children, what, and a dog, a collie maybe?
God doesn't have children, he's a bachelor, and very angry.
No, no, he used to be angry.
Why?
He got over it?
You worship a god of another age who has no love.
Not true – he likes Jews.
God loves everyone.
God is love.
God is who he is.
This is special?
Who isn't who is?
But the house of God be rendered in a motion picture.
God isn't in the motion picture.
Then who is [inaudible].
Gentlemen, maybe we're biting off more than we can chew.
We don't need to agree on the nature of the deity here.
If we can focus on the Christ, whatever his parentage.
My question is, is our depiction fair?
I have seen worst.
I've read … There's nothing to offend a reasonable man.
Father?
Well, the motion picture teleplay was respectful and exhibited tastefulness and class.
Who made you a expert all of a sudden?
And what do you think, Rabbi?
Hmmm.
I haven't an opinion.
The next clip is from a movie about two guys who are being chased by the mob or some bunch
of bad buys, and they duck into a convent, ah, to hide, and they end up having to stay there.
So they have to put on the outfits of the nuns and stay there for a while.
And, as we pick up this clip, which is only about a minute and a half, one of them is
about go teach a class on the Trinity, and he was the one of the two that was not raised
as a Roman Catholic, and he's going to ask the other guy to explain the Trinity to him.
I think you'll enjoy this one.
You gotta class in fifteen minutes.
Ok.
Explain the Trinity.
Hmm.
That's a bit of a bugger.
It can't be that difficult.
You've been a Catholic all your life.
Well, here's the pitch.
You got the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost.
The three are one, like a shamrock, my old priest used to say.
Three leafs, but one leaf.
Now, the Father sent down the Son, who is love, and then when he went away, he sent
down the Holy Spirit, who came down in the form of a … You told me already – a ghost.
No, a dove.
A dove is a ghost.
No, the ghost was a dove.
Let me try to summarize this.
God is his son, and his son is God, but his son moonlights as a holy ghost, a holy spirit,
and a dove, and they all send each other, even though their all one and the same things.
Got it.
What?
You really could be a nun.
Thanks.
Wait a minute.
What I said, does that make any sense to you?
Well, no.
No, and it makes no sense to anybody.
That's why you have to believe it.
That's why you have to have faith.
I mean, if it made sense, it wouldn't have to be a religion, would it?
Now folks, the kinds of conversations that you just saw in those two movie clips I think
are representative of thousands of conversations like that that people have had trying to understand
this convoluted idea.
If words have meanings, is it valid to question something like that?
And here we have a wonderful graphic – it says at the top, Words Have Meanings.
That's good, and when those meanings are muddled, then communication breaks down.
So let's see the following – these are all statements that Trinitarians will tell
you – people who believe in the Trinity.
Just in case you don't know what it is, I'm going to read you significant excerpts
of the definition of the Trinity from the New Bible Dictionary, a reputable Trinitarian document.
Words have meanings.
Jesus is one hundred percent God and one hundred percent man.
Is that – Jesus is all God and all man.
What word does that render meaningless?
All.
Right.
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, are one God.
God the, god the, god the – are one.
Here's one.
Jesus is the eternally – that means no beginning and no end – begotten Son of God.
Really?
Come on.
Now, I want you to really think here, especially if you like I were taught that Jesus is God,
that he's one third of the Trinity and all this kind of thing, because those statements
make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
You go to your bank – I'd like to withdraw a hundred percent of my money.
They say, ok.
You come back the next day – I'd like to withdraw a hundred percent of my money.
They say get out of here you idiot, you just took your money yesterday.
Now, on our website, at TLTF.org, we have fifty questions, and Question 10, What does
the Bible say about the Trinity for people who wanna know?
And the next sentence in our little blurb, which I'm going to read you much of it here
– what's it say?
Absolutely nothing.
Now that maybe news to you; that may be surprising, but if you ever talk to an honest, educated
Trinitarian, he will admit that the word Trinity is nowhere in the Scripture.
Neither are the curious terms, God the Son, Three-in-One, all God and all man, nor any
of the other extra – means outside of – extra-biblical terminology that Trinitarian theologians must
use in their convoluted and desperate defense of this inconceivable doctrine.
Do you know that there are many variations of the Trinity among Trinitarians in different religions?
Do you know anything about the history of how this incomprehensible notion came directly
from pagan mythology?
It did not pass Go, it went directly in.
Do you know that quite a few religions, prior to Christianity, have a Trinity of their own?
And do you know that, from about the fifth to the eighteenth century, tens of thousands
of precious Christian brethren were put to death by the Roman State Church because they
refused to believe a pagan fable about a three-headed god.
There's a great book by Richard Rubinstein – I had the privilege of spending an afternoon
with him years ago in Virginia.
A wonderful man, Jewish man; he wrote a book called, When Jesus Became God.
It's kind of a historical novel.
It's very well done, and it's the story, the record, of what happened of Council of
Nicea when Jesus became God.
325 a.d., Jesus became God, because he's not God in the Bible anywhere, but he became God.
One of the things in the book that really blessed me, which I didn't known til I read
it, was that after the Council of Nicea, there was a massive uproar among the thinking portion
of the populace.
What?!
Kind of a collective question that they asked, and in this book, One God and One Lord, we
have five chapters devoted to the historical development of the Trinity.
Seriously, seriously, if you're a thinking Christian, if you really want the Bible to
make sense, because the idea of the Trinity and that Jesus is God will destroy untold
numbers of verses.
They won't make any sense.
All of em about the holy spirit are not going to make sense, plus gobs of other ones.
So – and look, I love Christian people.
I am one.
I'm stuck with them forever; they're stuck with me.
We're brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ.
The question is, what does the Word say?
And I'll show you that we know truth has practical benefit; therefore, error, believing
error, leads to practical consequences and harm.
No honest Trinitarian scholar will say that he can either understand or explain the Trinity.
Now think about that.
It's the cornerstone of Christianity.
Not one honest Trinitarian scholar will tell you he can explain it; understand it or explain it.
How then can it be the cornerstone?
I'm going read you eight quotes from enthusiastic Trinitarians; staunch Trinitarians.
Here's one, and these are on our website.
Question 10 – The church confesses the Trinity to be a mystery beyond the comprehension of
man.
The Trinity is a mystery, not merely in the biblical sense of what is truth, which was
formerly hidden but now revealed, but in the sense that man cannot comprehend it and make
it intelligible.
That's from a book called Systematic Theology.
Does that sound systematic to you?
Not me.
Here's another one.
Even as some demand that we believe in the Trinity, they admit that it's a mystery
beyond understanding.
Here's a startling statement from a handbook of Christian truth – The mind of man cannot
fully understand the mystery of the Trinity.
He who has tried to understand the mystery fully will lose his mind, but he who would
deny the Trinity will lose his soul.
I think I've met some of those who have lost their mind.
Personally, I'll take Door Number Three – that would be the truth alternative.
If you watch ESPN quite a bit, they have a show, a little segment they put in – Come
On, Man – showing a bunch of bonehead plays and statements by sports figures, and then
they – come on, man.
That's what I say after reading that.
Now, what about 1 Peter 3:15 where the Apostle Peter instructs us that we are always to be
ready to give a defense to everyone who asks us for the reason of the hope that is within us.
How can we reconcile that exhortation with the belief in a doctrine that is, as the Encyclopedia
Americana – now that would be a secular document – but it calls it beyond the grasp
of human reason.
Here's one from a professor of church history, at least at one point.
New York's Union Theological Seminary – that's a big one.
He is a dedicated Trinitarian, but here's what he said in his book, The Doctrine of
the Trinity – my conclusion then about the doctrine of the Trinity is that it is an artificial
construct.
It produces confusion rather than clarification, and while the problems with which it deals
are real ones – I wrote, huh?
– the solutions it offers are not illuminating.
It has posed for many Christians dark and mysterious statements which are ultimately
meaningless because it does not sufficiently discriminate in its use of terms.
Words have meaning.
He also admitted, much of the defense of the Trinity as a revealed doctrine is really an
evasion of the objections that can be brought against it.
A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge – this was written in 1885 – here's what it says
about the Trinity.
Precisely what that doctrine is or rather precisely how it is to be explained, Trinitarians
are not agreed among themselves.
Here's a book – God in Three Persons – A contemporary interpretation of the Trinity
– another professor, a theology professor, and he says, The trinity is not clearly or
explicitly taught anywhere in Scripture, yet it is widely regarded as a central doctrine,
indispensable to the Christian faith.
Now we'll get to all this.
Oh it's not supposed to make sense; in fact, those of you mental midgets who think it is
supposed to make sense are not enlightened.
You don't have the faith to believe something that doesn't make any sense.
That's not faith; that's superstition.
In this regard , it goes contrary to what is virtually an axiom of biblical doctrine;
namely, that there is a direct correlation between the scriptural clarity of a doctrine
and its cruciality to the faith and life of the Church.
I just said that when I said, no one could write that statement.
Then he goes on – In view of the difficulty of the subject and the great amount of effort
expended to maintain this doctrine, we may well ask ourselves, what might justify all this trouble?
And here's another one – same gentleman.
He says, The Trinity teaching is not present in biblical thought but arose when biblical
thought was pressed into this foreign mold.
He's talking about Greek concepts.
Thus the doctrine of the Trinity goes beyond and even distorts what the Bible says about God.
Later, he says in his claim that the doctrine of the Trinity is a very important, crucial
and even basic doctrine – if that is indeed the case, should it not be somewhere more clearly, directly
and explicitly stated in the Bible?
That's an innocent question.
If this is the doctrine that especially constitutes Christianity's uniqueness, how can it only
be implied in the biblical revelation?
Excuse me, it's not even implied, but – For here is a seemingly crucial matter where the
Scriptures do not speak loudly or clearly.
One more.
Little direct response can be made to this charge – meaning that there is no Trinity.
It is unlikely that nay text of Scripture can be shown to teach the doctrine of the
Trinity in a clear, direct and unmistakable fashion.
I read, I was reading about a former American President who many people think was, I think
many think he now used to be a really bad president.
But anyway, and they wrote about him and his double-talk and all of that – you could
probably, you know, you could think that way about other politicians, or whomever, but
I've never forgotten this, and we put it in the One God and One Lord book with a different
ending on the sentence, but – so we modified it slightly.
To read any theologians explanation of the Trinity – and the rest of it is what they
said about, whenever this president speaks on a controversial matter – is to be transported
to realms where words, shorn at last of their semantic burdens, pirouette and regroup in
combinations hitherto undreamed of.
Now that is classic prose.
Words are so cool.
I'll put that in, briefly – it's globally gook.
The only way anyone can believe in the theology of the Trinity is by suspending any appeal
to reason, logic or linguistic principles.
And now let's see how a leading biblical work defines the Trinity.
This is from The New Bible Dictionary – now it's probably an older copy.
It may have been updated, but – and it's like more than three, almost like four pages
and I copied this, so I'm going to read you excerpts, because I'm really trying
to pound this thing.
Why?
Because it's been pounded into virtually all Christians as the only biblical truth
regarding the identity of God, Jesus and the holy spirit.
And it's very difficult to get people to give it up.
Now I promise you, if you are currently one who believes in the Trinity because it's
the only thing you've ever heard and you're part of a group that believes that, it will
very likely cost you something to change and believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the
simple truth of Scripture.
You will most probably be ejected from that group.
I would have been and my former, my author colleagues, we would have been burned at the
stake, with the pile of these books providing the fuel, up until only five hundred years
ago or so; something like that.
Think about it.
The same demons that have promoted that doctrine and caused those people to burn those other
people at the stake because they said, Jesus is the Son of God, the Trinity is pagan fable
– those spirits are still around, and believe me, they are still promulgating this lie.
So here are some excerpts from the New Bible Dictionary.
The first sentence – The Word Trinity is not found in the Bible … - I expected it
to go on to triune or the next topic in the New Bible Dictionary alphabetically, but no.
The word Trinity is not found in the Bible.
Really?
What are we going to write about then?
Ok.
And though used by Tertullian – one of those rock stars that only has one name apparently
– in the last decade of the second century, it did not find a place formerly in the theology
of the Church until the fourth century.
It is, however, the distinctive and all comprehensive doctrine of the Christian faith.
Look, there's gotta be some group think going on here.
There's gotta be some kind of peer pressures, some kind of, I gotta go with the flow or
I'm going to lose my job.
Gotta be something like that happening here.
It makes three affirmations – let me clarify the Trinity for you by reading it from this
respected document.
There's the one god, that the Father, the Son and the Spirit is each God.
The three affirmations are – let me back up.
Maybe I misread that.
Number one, there's but one God – got it.
Next, the Father, the Son and the Spirit are each God.
Hmm.
And that the Father, the Son and the Spirit is each a distinct person.
I'm skipping, reading excerpts.
Though it is not a biblical doctrine in the sense that any formulation of it can be found
in the Bible, it can be seen – I don't see it – to underlie the revelation of God
implicit in the Old Testament and explicit in the New.
You know what explicit means?
In your face.
We just read all these Trinitarian guys who said it ain't explicit.
Golly.
Ok.
I'm going to save you from a lot of this.
Ok, let's see here.
All right.
All scriptures does not give us a formulated doctrine of the Trinity – they keep saying that.
It contains all the elements out of which Theology has constructed the doctrine.
The teaching of Christ bears testimony to the true personality of each of the distinctions
within the godhead.
I question that, cause Jesus said that they may know you, the only true God, and me, Jesus,
whom you sent.
We're going to see in the second part of this – one plus one is two – the Dynamic Duo.
It also, the teaching of Christ also sheds light upon the relations existing between the three persons.
It was left to theology to formulate from this a doctrine of the Trinity.
In most formularies – most, not all – some say other things – but most; let's just
go over most.
Here we go.
This will clarify it for you.
The doctrine is stated by saying, that God is one in his essential being, but in his
being there are three persons.
Yet, so as not to form separate and distinct individuals, they are three modes, or forms,
in which the divine essence exists.
Person is, however, is an imperfect expression of the truth inasmuch the term denotes to
us a separate, rational and moral individual, but in the being of God, there are not three
individuals but three personal self-distinctions within the one divine essence.
Then again, personality in man implies independence of will, actions and feelings leading to behavior
peculiar to the person.
This cannot be thought of in connection with the Trinity.
Each person is self-conscious and self-directing and yet never acting independently or in opposition.
When we say that God is the unity, we mean that, though God is himself a threefold center
of life, his life is no split into three.
He's one in essence, in personality and in will.
We say that God is a Trinity in Unity.
We mean that there is unity in diversity and that the diversity manifests itself in persons,
in characteristics and in operations.
I'm not ready to teach a class on this.
Oh, my gosh.
And the last statement says – cause one of those words have meaning – the eternally
begotten Son of God – it says, the Son is called the only-begotten perhaps to suggest
uniqueness than rather than derivation.
What is the definition of S-O-N?
A male who did not exist until he was fathered by a father by way of a seed, and that is
who we have in the Son of God.
Now, seriously, if a Martian came to earth on a religious research mission.
He was tired from his trip; he checked into a motel, opened the drawer, found the Gideon
Bible, said, Hmmm, what is this?
He used Martian speed-reading.
Would he believe in the doctrine of the Trinity?
No way.
Well all these Trinitarians said it's not in the Bible, well so, that kind of clarifies
it, but there's no way a person, had he not been steep in this idea from the first
moment of his Christian life, and everybody believes this and you're a cultist if you
don't believe it, nobody would believe it; because it's inexplicable.
It can't be understood.
No Martian would become a Trinitarian and no human being would be a Trinitarian only
by way of what he extracted from Scripture.
Why are 99.9% of Christian people today Trinitarians?
Because that's all they've ever heard.
Now if you talk to them, they'll say it doesn't make any sense, I don't understand it.
And most people think of God, he's the Father, Jesus, he's the son.
People have asked me – I should say this here – are Trinitarians saved, because what
does the Bible say?
To be save, you confess Jesus is God?
No.
Jesus is Lord, and that God raised him from the dead.
But I certainly believe that – I don't know how you could totally believe the Trinitarian
doctrine to degree that you wouldn't even saved, so I think most Trinitarians – sure,
because what do they think?
They think God's the Father; Jesus is the Son; God raised him from the dead.
They don't think all of the linguistic complications that are involved.
We didn't even really – you wanna read other – go to a library and go to the theological
section and look up the Trinity.
This is the honest to God truth.
I sat in the Albany, New York, library for about six to eight hours for two days researching,
years and year ago, to teach a class on this subject – it was called One God – and
when I went home, I had to watch cartoons, and I'm not kidding, I slumped into my chair,
mentally frazzled beyond what I'd ever experienced, and turned on cartoons to heal myself.
I'm serious.
Because it is so convoluted and so mind-bending – that's a great term for it.
So as we on into Part 2 of this Segment, we will see what the Bible does say – the simple
truth that there is one God and one Lord.
There is one God, the Father – that's in 1 Corinthian 8:6 – we'll read it.
One God, the father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, his precious son, and we will see why the
doctrine of the Trinity diminishes both the love of God and the heroism of Jesus Christ
on our behalf.
Who do you say that he is?
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