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Why did our church reject the doctrine of the trinity?
#138210
12/18/11 04:04 AM
12/18/11 04:04 AM
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OP
Active Member 2012
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 1,826
E. Oregon, USA
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Sorry to jump the gun on next year/quarter, in Sabbath School, but it's online now, already, and there are issues listed in the lesson we need to sort out, so, why not start early. Is this the best forum for this thread? I nearly put in Sabbath School. Lesson #1 2012: The Triune God. The lesson emphasises the deity of Christ and the divine personhood of the Holy Spirit - as if any serious Adventist would doubt the divinity of either. There are now well-known discussions in the church, and of course on here, on both issues, but is the challenge to the trinity "doctrine" taught among us, properly understood? There are, it appears to me, to be at least two big problems in this lesson: one mistake, and one untruth - grave misrepresentation. At the top of Monday's section: "Those who question the Trinity doctrine often challenge the deity of Christ." Well, not by the best "questioners" that I've seen among us, since Ellen White's death, and not by our early church as a whole, either, as it happens. Also, in the Discussion Questions at the end of the lesson, the first words are: "Some early Adventists struggled with the doctrine of the Trinity. Today the church has taken a firm stand on the doctrine." "The church has taken", yes, but earlier the whole church rejected the doctrine, teaching yet the deity of the three Powers of heaven: Saying "some early Adventists" is gravely misrepresenting our history, and whoever allowed that must answer to her own conscience (Jo Ann Davidson wrote the lesson draft). Since when has the Further Reading had but a quarter of the space reserved for Ellen White excerpts??? Check it out!! It's usually all SOP, to encourage us to study the Bible deeper. In fact, just looked again, and there isn't a single Ellen White quote anywhere else in the lesson, at all. Is there a difference between Ellen White and the lesson author on the nature of God? See Sister White's statment's further below, which match the single, non-trinitarian quote from her in the lesson under "further reading", for in most of that quote in the lesson she says, in DA 19: " From the days of eternity the Lord Jesus Christ was one with the Father; He was ‘the image of God,’ the image of His greatness and majesty, ‘the outshining of His glory.’ It was to manifest this glory that He came to our world." Since she also, generally in her writings, identifies Jesus as the only begotten Son of God from eternity, this DA 19 statement strongly suggests that 'from the days of eternity' (Mic 5:2, marg.) is a reference to the unknowable point in eternity hinted at also in Prov 8:22, etc, when the Word of God was begotten before creation began, as God's Son. See below, on that, too. Why, then, did our early church resist this doctrine which now we hold as we suggest our pioneers as much as denied the deity of Christ and his eternal pre-existence? How did our church proclaim Christ's deity but not the trinitry doctrine? It turned, not on numbers - 3 members of the Godhead, nor on eternal, divine pre-existence of Christ - for we believed that, too: it turned on whether God died for our sins on the cross of Calvary. It turned on the height of grace: the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God. Now, the lesson says (on Thursday's) that "God Himself, in the Person of Christ" had to and did die for sin, to be a worthy sacrifice of the atonement: but, haven't you heard it preached among us that divinity cannot die but humanity died, in Christ's death? I certainly have, and this is a trinitarian argument preserving the trinity itself. Basically, since that doctrine depends on Three Persons maintaining a threesome from eternity to eternity, the death of the Person called "God the Son" is out of the question else the trinity wouldn't survive salvation intact. Separated for a moment, by death - till resurrection, disrupts an eternity to eternity of existence for God. The trinity cannot be a duo..., for it must be a trinity!! The trinity doctrine's structure prevents salvation!.... Meantime, "God Himself, in the Person of Christ" is actually non-trinitarian wording, distinguishing "God the Father" from "the person of his Son" - that's Ellen White's wording, "the person of his Son". She also said that the "Author of life" suffered on the cross: according to SOP, the person whose eternal identity is the Son of God, having become a mortal man, died on the cross in human flesh, but, indeed, deity cannot die. Listen carefully, now: God, in the person of his Son, died as the Son of man, the Lamb of God. Yet, this is possible, Biblically, only should the Father himself be the God refered to in the Bible as the him who is God, and the pre-incarnate Jesus is the eternal Son of his divine Father, God: yes, not a trinitarian God consisting mysteriously of three-in-one, but the individual, personally distinct God and Father of us all, including Jesus his divine Son.
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Re: Why did our church reject the doctrine of the trinity?
[Re: Colin]
#138211
12/18/11 04:04 AM
12/18/11 04:04 AM
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OP
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Posts: 1,826
E. Oregon, USA
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Jesus is God, too, of course, but, being God's actual, eternal, self-existing Son (note: Jn 5:26, yes, personally pre-existing), he is worthy of worship alongside God his Father, from the days of eternity. Also, God himself, that's the Father and not the trinity, can as the non-trinitarian Sovereign of the universe (PP, 34.1 - Sovereign...who had an associate - a co-worker who could appreciate His purposes, and could share His joy in giving happiness to created beings.) give of himself his only begotten Son to this world to die for us and for sin without causing the Godhead - that's primarily he himself, the Father - to cease to exist, as would the triune God of three-in-one - in the death of his Son on the cross. To secure that worthy, atoning death, the doctrine of the trinity has to be ejected for blocking and preventing it in principle: that's principally, primarily, why our church rejected the doctrine of the trinity - to secure the worthy sacrifice of the atonement. Three members of the Godhead there be, but not as a triune three-in-one God, else the cross is lost: God gave his Son for us on the cross by the incarnation, or the triune God ceased to be God at the cross - the One divine Being, consisting of three-in-one, stopped being the triune God...: is that truly the Biblical God? Salvation and the trinity principly and pragmatically prevent each other... On the odds of whether we were trinitarian or non-trinitarian as a church in Ellen White's day, she personally was made to feel the difference, in New Zealand. “For instance, an effort was made to obtain the use of the hall at a village four miles from Hastings, where some of our workers proposed to present the gospel to the people; but they did not succeed in obtaining the hall, because a school-teacher there opposed the truth, and declared to the people that Seventh-day Adventists did not believe in the divinity of Christ. This man may not have known what our faith is on this point, but he was not left in ignorance. He was informed that there is not a people on earth who hold more firmly to the truth of Christ's pre-existence than do Seventh-day Adventists.” (Ellen G. White, Review and Herald, 5th December 1893, ‘An appeal for the Australasian field’) "God in the person of his Son" therefore pre-dates Bethlehem, whatever the lesson asserts, as Ellen White, again, differs with the lesson. “A complete offering has been made; for "God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son,"-- not a son by creation, as were the angels, nor a son by adoption, as is the forgiven sinner, but a Son begotten in the express image of the Father's person, and in all the brightness of his majesty and glory, one equal with God in authority, dignity, and divine erfection. In him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” (Ellen G. White, Signs of the Times, 30th May 1895, ‘Christ our complete salvation’) ...and the Bible most likely teaches so, too. On his eternal pre-existence, since we used to refuse (but we appear now to accept) the co-existence theory - Father and Son each absolutely eternal, and even co-eval - being of the same age, we wrote this, including SOP “Here Christ shows them that, altho they might reckon His life to be less than fifty years, yet His divine life could not be reckoned by human computation.” (Ellen G. White, Signs of the Times. 3rd May 1899 ‘The Word made flesh’)
“The existence of Christ before His incarnation is not measured by figures.” (Ibid) Yes, she's saying simply, that Christ's pre-existence as the Son of God had a beginning in the incalculable past; yet, he is the Word of God from the beginning, which seems to be the absolute 'beginning': God the Father was never alone. “The Word was “in the beginning”. The mind of man cannot grasp the ages that are spanned in this phrase.” (E. J. Waggoner, ‘Christ and His Righteousness’, page 9, 1890)
“It is not given to men to know when or how the Son was begotten; but we know that He was the Divine Word, not simply before He came to this earth to die, but even before the world was created.” (Ibid)
“We know that Christ “proceeded forth and come from God” (John 8:42) but it was so far back in the ages of eternity as to be far beyond the grasp of the mind of man.” (Ibid) Ellen White and Ellet Waggoner agreed on salvation and Christology in relation to the Godhead and the incarnation, didn't they just. Refusing the uniquitous doctrine of the trinity doesn't deny Christ's eternal deity and Sonship, in past Adventist teaching, so let's get the picture perfect, or at least accurate.
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Re: Why did our church reject the doctrine of the trinity?
[Re: Colin]
#138213
12/18/11 10:33 AM
12/18/11 10:33 AM
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Sorry to jump the gun on next year/quarter, in Sabbath School, but it's online now, already, and there are issues listed in the lesson we need to sort out, so, why not start early. Is this the best forum for this thread? I nearly put in Sabbath School. Lesson #1 2012: The Triune God. The lesson emphasises the deity of Christ and the divine personhood of the Holy Spirit - as if any serious Adventist would doubt the divinity of either. There are now well-known discussions in the church, and of course on here, on both issues, but is the challenge to the trinity "doctrine" taught among us, properly understood? There are, it appears to me, to be at least two big problems in this lesson: one mistake, and one untruth - grave misrepresentation. At the top of Monday's section: "Those who question the Trinity doctrine often challenge the deity of Christ." Well, not by the best "questioners" that I've seen among us, since Ellen White's death, and not by our early church as a whole, either, as it happens. Also, in the Discussion Questions at the end of the lesson, the first words are: "Some early Adventists struggled with the doctrine of the Trinity. Today the church has taken a firm stand on the doctrine." "The church has taken", yes, but earlier the whole church rejected the doctrine, teaching yet the deity of the three Powers of heaven: Saying "some early Adventists" is gravely misrepresenting our history, and whoever allowed that must answer to her own conscience (Jo Ann Davidson wrote the lesson draft). Since when has the Further Reading had but a quarter of the space reserved for Ellen White excerpts??? Check it out!! It's usually all SOP, to encourage us to study the Bible deeper. In fact, just looked again, and there isn't a single Ellen White quote anywhere else in the lesson, at all. Is there a difference between Ellen White and the lesson author on the nature of God? See Sister White's statment's further below, which match the single, non-trinitarian quote from her in the lesson under "further reading", for in most of that quote in the lesson she says, in DA 19: " From the days of eternity the Lord Jesus Christ was one with the Father; He was ‘the image of God,’ the image of His greatness and majesty, ‘the outshining of His glory.’ It was to manifest this glory that He came to our world." Since she also, generally in her writings, identifies Jesus as the only begotten Son of God from eternity, this DA 19 statement strongly suggests that 'from the days of eternity' (Mic 5:2, marg.) is a reference to the unknowable point in eternity hinted at also in Prov 8:22, etc, when the Word of God was begotten before creation began, as God's Son. See below, on that, too. Why, then, did our early church resist this doctrine which now we hold as we suggest our pioneers as much as denied the deity of Christ and his eternal pre-existence? How did our church proclaim Christ's deity but not the trinitry doctrine? It turned, not on numbers - 3 members of the Godhead, nor on eternal, divine pre-existence of Christ - for we believed that, too: it turned on whether God died for our sins on the cross of Calvary. It turned on the height of grace: the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God. Now, the lesson says (on Thursday's) that "God Himself, in the Person of Christ" had to and did die for sin, to be a worthy sacrifice of the atonement: but, haven't you heard it preached among us that divinity cannot die but humanity died, in Christ's death? I certainly have, and this is a trinitarian argument preserving the trinity itself. Basically, since that doctrine depends on Three Persons maintaining a threesome from eternity to eternity, the death of the Person called "God the Son" is out of the question else the trinity wouldn't survive salvation intact. Separated for a moment, by death - till resurrection, disrupts an eternity to eternity of existence for God. The trinity cannot be a duo..., for it must be a trinity!! The trinity doctrine's structure prevents salvation!.... Meantime, "God Himself, in the Person of Christ" is actually non-trinitarian wording, distinguishing "God the Father" from "the person of his Son" - that's Ellen White's wording, "the person of his Son". She also said that the "Author of life" suffered on the cross: according to SOP, the person whose eternal identity is the Son of God, having become a mortal man, died on the cross in human flesh, but, indeed, deity cannot die. Listen carefully, now: God, in the person of his Son, died as the Son of man, the Lamb of God. Yet, this is possible, Biblically, only should the Father himself be the God refered to in the Bible as the him who is God, and the pre-incarnate Jesus is the eternal Son of his divine Father, God: yes, not a trinitarian God consisting mysteriously of three-in-one, but the individual, personally distinct God and Father of us all, including Jesus his divine Son. As the early church formed, there were many beliefs brought in from the churches the members came from. But that did not make those beliefs as part of the truths of Adventism, much like Sunday keeping. Each one had to be confronted and studied and the members slowly shown the truth, and like the Sabbath truth it was printed in the main Adventist papers and given at the camp meetings and other gatherings till the members gradually understood and accepted it. So its not fair to say that the church members did not accept the belief of the GodHead. Some did not and had to be shown which Ellen White did.
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Re: Why did our church reject the doctrine of the trinity?
[Re: Rick H]
#138226
12/18/11 05:04 PM
12/18/11 05:04 PM
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OP
Active Member 2012
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 1,826
E. Oregon, USA
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So its not fair to say that the church members did not accept the belief of the GodHead. Do you see Godhead as meaning the same as Trinity? - just checking, as the difference matters yet may not be obvious to most. This is about our historical clash with the doctrine of the trinity, a doctrine we differed with in detail and substance, for good reason. What our church taught - in the methods you mention - was not at all the trinity doctrine, but the Biblically based Godhead led by the Father, etc, and Ellen White didn't change that position for herself or the church to that of the doctrine of the triune God. Have you noticed that in her quotes?
Last edited by Colin; 12/18/11 05:32 PM.
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Re: Why did our church reject the doctrine of the trinity?
[Re: Mountain Man]
#138227
12/18/11 05:24 PM
12/18/11 05:24 PM
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OP
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E. Oregon, USA
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It is plain and simple that Ellen White believed the three persons of the Godhead are three separate and distinct individuals who act in perfect harmony for the well-being of the universe. First, MM: don't load her writings with 'our' trinitarian interpretation: that's unethical! - find, for you and me and anyone else, too, where she writes that the Holy Spirit is an individual! Divine Spirit - yes, having personality - yes, the omnipresence of the Father and the Son - yes, but an individual indistinct and indepedent of Father and Son, as well??? Please, if there's no evidence, just be honest about it. She definitely wrote of the HS as the agency of Father & Son: that's NOT an independent individual - face it, please. Also, in last week's lesson, under further study The influence of the Holy Spirit is the life of Christ in the soul. We do not see Christ and speak to Him, but His Holy Spirit is just as near us in one place as in another. It works in and through every one who receives Christ. Those who know the indwelling of the Spirit reveal the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith (MS 41, 1897).”—Ellen G. White Comments, The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 6, p. 1112 Have you not read that receiving the Spirit is the experience of accepting and receiving Christ in the heart, the mind of Christ created in us, Christ indwelling us by his Spirit? The Spirit speaks for Christ, not for himself, too: he is Christ's personality spiritually present with us, but it is the Spirit of the Godhead, not an independent individual, as trinitarianism declares. We are under Scripture, not doctrinal declarations, remember. You kind of put your foot in it, with your concise statement, as the Holy Spirit is the exception to that..., hence I tackled that, here. The eternal Sonship of Jesus is a primary point in the truth of the Godhead, compared to SDA trinitarianism, so I hadn't dealt with the HS till now. Also, "Some early Adventists struggled with the doctrine of the Trinity." ...is this true of our church, at all?
Last edited by Colin; 12/18/11 05:32 PM.
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Re: Why did our church reject the doctrine of the trinity?
[Re: Mountain Man]
#138257
12/20/11 01:40 AM
12/20/11 01:40 AM
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OP
Active Member 2012
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 1,826
E. Oregon, USA
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M: It is plain and simple that Ellen White believed the three persons of the Godhead are three separate and distinct individuals who act in perfect harmony for the well-being of the universe. C: She definitely wrote of the HS as the agency of Father & Son: that's NOT an independent individual - face it, please. You already familiar with her statements regarding the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit "is as much a person as God is a person". He "has a personality" and "is a free, working, independent agency." I realize you interpret these kinds of testimonies to prove the Holy Spirit is not an independent agency or person or individual. But, hey, can you blame me for concluding otherwise? Thanks for finding time for this thread, too. Now, MM, please don't put words in my mouth: "independent agency" I agree with (see below) , so please note that. "Independent individual" is what she doesn't teach, whatever else she says, as I conceded last time. It was your "distinct individuals" that needs examination, in this regard, given we can't actually say that of the HS. Of course the Holy Spirit is a mystery, so don't interpret from what little is revealed about it to make him more than he is: he is simply, truly the infinite - hence independent agency - omnipresence of Father and Son, the Spirit in fulness of the Godhead. This, from my second intro post above The influence of the Holy Spirit is the life of Christ in the soul. (SDABC, vol.6,1112) explains that the HS is Christ's infinite, invisible, personal presence in each of his saints. Obvious, perhaps: that means we're free of trinitarian, dogmatic formulas making each and all persons of the trinity exactly the same in all manner of ways, like our church's doctrine of the trinity says. Since the Bible and SOP are clearly much more flexible than that, the Holy Spirit is Christ and the Father's presence with us, proceeding from them, and not another person just like them - SDA trinity teaching, having yet their personality, having power to manifest their presence within us. Equally, Sister White is replete with proclamation that the pre-existent Christ is the only begotten Son of God. It's not just the KJV saying so: he is God of God, etc., Son of God in the fulness of the Godhead alongside his Father. That cannot be gainsayed by simple grammatical arguments, when the meaning of Christ's eternal relation to his Father is so clear in Scripture!
Last edited by Colin; 12/20/11 01:42 AM.
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