Sep
30
Dealing with a Theological Curveball, part 1 of 2
“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” — I John 4:1 (ESV)
I have mentioned in the past that I am responsible for screening/vetting candidates for a Christian Facebook group I admin. You might recall that I sometimes ask questions of the candidates to help ensure that their theological beliefs fall (as best I can determine within limited amount of time) within the pale of Christian orthodoxy. Several months ago, I was having one such discussion with a pleasant fellow — let’s call him “Brad” — who seemed like a good candidate. He said he was a mix of Presbyterian and Methodist, indicating that he grew up with a parent belonging to each of those denominations. (Interesting combo, since one is strongly Reformed and the other is of Wesleyan-Arminian heritage.) He also said that he “had doubts about everything”.
Things got even more interesting when I asked if he would have any trouble affirming the 381 version of the Nicene Creed (see below), which is my test for full Trinitarianism. After some time, Brad responded,
“Okay..here is a curveball. I believe the Holy Spirit is just that…a spirit and not a person. The Bible does not mention the word Trinity. GOD is a family if [sic] father and son,period. Jehovah GOD and Jesus Christ…they are the Holy Spirit. That is my take on this and I will not change my opinion on that.”
Wow.
Rather than get into an involved debate (which is way beyond the purpose of such PM chats), especially since he declared himself immovable, I bit my metaphorical tongue and explained that I would have to decline his membership request. I referred him to some resources (relevant to the group he’d applied to) and wished him well. When I do this, some candidates don’t bother to respond at all, while others say something like “OK, I understand. Thanks for the links. I’ll check ’em out.” Here’s what Brad signed off with:
“No problem. By the way the Bible does NOT mention the word “trinity” which is an invention of Catholic church. God is one.GOD is the spirit who created the universe. GOD became flesh in the body of Jesus Christ.When Jesus was in the grave 3 days GOD the father was running the universe. Oh by the way Jesus really died in [sic] Wednesday(Daniel 9 says a sheep will be slain in the MIDDLE if [sic] the week to atone for sins).Jesus rose from the tomb Saturday morning..the REAL ORIGINAL SABBATH.!Sunday is another Catholic church lie.”
Wow, again.
While his “interview” was over at that point, I felt it was better to let it go. So, I never replied back to him. But, I did make a note to myself about possibly responding to his claims in a blogpost. Can you guess what I’m gonna do now…?
“Origin of Term ‘Trinity'”
First off, let’s address this claim that “the Bible does NOT mention the word ‘trinity'”, which seems to be a favorite point made by unitarians and others wishing to undermine the historical Christian doctrine of the Trinity. (Btw, it sounds like Brad might be “binitarian”.) I assume he actually means that there is no Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic equivalent of “trinity” used in the earliest manuscripts of Judeo-Christian Scripture. In that, he is totally correct. It is also a completely irrelevant point.
For one thing, I don’t know of any Christian group that claims that “trinity” (trinitas, Latin for “threeness”) is found in the Bible or, more specifically, in the earliest manuscripts. Secondly, just because a particular term isn’t used during the formative years of a concept, that doesn’t mean the term doesn’t apply, as long as it is correctly defined and understood. For example, the word “incarnation” (or its Greek equivalent, if there is one) is not found, but the New Testament clearly teaches this idea (e.g., Phil 2:6-8; John 1:14). Indeed, there are several theological ideas and terms that are not laid out in toto in one verse or passage.
The earliest documents to use “Trinity” in reference to the Godhead were written by Theophilus of Antioch (in Greek: he trias) and Tertullian (in Latin), both in the late 2nd-century AD. These were very early ideas about the nature of God, and there were certainly differences of opinion on the exact nature of the Trinity. But, this was mostly hammered out by the First Council of Nicaea (325) — as reflected in the original Nicene Creed — and further fine-tuned and made more robust at the First Council of Constantinople (381), which produced the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. As for the term being “an invention of Catholic church”, this is what I tell candidates for my FB group who balk at the use of “catholic” (small ‘c’) in the creed:
“In this context, it means all Christians everywhere and across time, i.e., universal. The Roman Catholic Church, per se, wasn’t even a thing, yet, when the creed was developed. (For more info, go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Marks_of_the_Church )”
Brad is clearly wrong on this matter, as attested to by history.
Next, let’s jump to the end and look at Brad’s “by the way” assertions….
“Resurrection and Sabbath Issues”
Regarding the Daniel 9 reference, I can only assume he is referring to the final part of the chapter (verses 26-27 in particular), which speaks of the Seventy Weeks and the Messiah (or, at least, “an anointed one”):
“24 “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 25 Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. 26 And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. 27 And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.” — Daniel 9:24-27 (ESV)
(One interpretation of the passage)
Interpreting prophecy is not an easy thing, but I think most commentators understand these “weeks” (actual Hebrew term translates as “sevens”) as sets of seven years each. There are at least a couple theories on the starting and stopping points (which I won’t get into), but the seventy weeks is, therefore, a 490 year span. This means that the final week would be a 7-year period and not the week of the Passover celebrations during which Jesus was crucified. Even if one took the final “week” to be seven, 24-hour days (which I’ve never heard of and which would require a hermeneutical rationale for why to interpret it differently than the previous “weeks”), I don’t see how the rest of verse 27 would fit. Whether one takes the numbers here as literal or symbolic, clearly God has not yet brought an end to sin and established His righteous rule (v.24).
Before we determine what day Jesus rose from the tomb, we need to determine what day he was crucified. Scholars take three different positions for the day of the crucifixion — Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. The majority, however, favor the traditional day of Friday with a Sunday resurrection. The primary sticking point for the Wednesday proponents is that the traditional view doesn’t allow for enough time to cover the “three days and three nights” prophesied by Jesus Himself (Matt. 12:40). So, through a combination of “high days”, particular interpretations of the above passage from Daniel 9, attempts to identify the specific year and day in the Jewish calendar via lunar cycles, and some dubious readings of select passages in the Crucifixion and Resurrection accounts, they push the former back a couple days and re-locate the latter to the Sabbath (i.e., Saturday).
They read Matt. 12:40 as necessitating that Jesus was in the grave a full 72 hours, so they do their best to find them. However, they either forget or dismiss the use of “inclusive reckoning” by Hebrews/Jews and many other ancient cultures (e.g., Egyptian, Greek, Roman). This was the common practice of counting both the first and last units of time when calculating an interval. So, whether referring to hours or days or years, a partial one counted as a whole. Two great examples in Scripture are II Kings 18:9-10 and Acts 10:30, but there are many more.
“It is obvious from [the Gospel] texts that “in three days,” “after three days,” and even “three days and three nights” are all equivalent to “on the third day.” One writer (Matthew) uses all three phrases for the same period. The interval from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning is three days, by inclusive reckoning. Since it is clear that this mode of counting was the common practice in Bible times, and widespread in many countries, it is useless to try to understand this period as three full 24-hour days, according to the modern Western habit of counting. To do so violates both historical usage and Biblical statement, and creates a difficulty that would not exist if the ordinary usage of common speech and of examples in the Bible be taken into account.”
There are other, related points the Wednesday proponents make, but nothing that can’t be explained as well or better by the Friday (or Thursday) proponents. There are other arguments in favor of the Friday view (though I’m not sure I buy them all) that also mitigate against the Wednesday view. From what I understand, the Thursday-crucifixion theory has some merit, but the traditional Friday/Sunday view best fits the chronological order of events, accounting for all the scriptural clues and requiring fewer controversial interpretations or speculations.
(Artist’s rendition of early church meeting.)
From scriptures like Acts 20:7 and I Cor. 16:2, it is apparent that the earliest followers of Jesus switched from meeting on the seventh day of the week (Gen. 2:2; Ex. 20:8-11), i.e., Saturday (aka Sabbath), to meeting on the first day, i.e., Sunday (aka the Lord’s Day) The change was clearly in honor of Christ’s resurrection. (Although, some ethnically Jewish believers probably still met on Saturday, at least for awhile, but Judaizers were reprimanded for demanding such things. Also, we know that Paul would go to the synagogue on the Sabbath in order to reach Jews for Christ, and it’s possible that others did as well.)
Ignatius, an Early Church Father and martyred Bishop of Antioch, attested to Christians meeting on Sunday in his Letter to the Magnesians (early AD 100s), though there is evidence that some Christ-professing groups met on Saturday (or both Saturday and Sunday) even into the 5th-century AD. In the end, though, just because the Roman Catholic Church may officially claim to have authorized the change (for its members, at least, and laughing at the Protestant “homage” to the RCC’s authority), there is no reason to attribute such a change to a “lie” or conspiracy of the Vatican. Rather, church history — and here I mean the Christian Church writ broad — tells us that Christ’s followers originally made the switch on their own centuries before there even was a Roman Catholic Church. (The RCC reconstructs church history with a different bias, so they obviously would disagree.) (Check out these three articles for additional commentary.)
As apologist Matt Slick has summarized: “[T]he Bible does not require that we worship on Saturday. If anything, we have the freedom (Rom. 14:1-12) to worship on the day that we believe we should. And, no one should judge us in regard to the day we keep. We are free in Christ and not under law, (Rom. 6:14).”
With these relatively minor issues dispatched, I’ll address the actual nature of the Trinity in Part 2….
