Armstrongism in Contention with Nicene Christianity
By Scout
“Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance,
and there is only the dance.” T.S. Eliot, from “Burnt Norton”
Dance is my analogy for the relationships between the God Persons in the Trinity. Everything that we say about God is an analogy. We know only the created realm and he dwells in the uncreated realm. When we think of him or describe him, we use the earthbound categories that we know. We talk only in symbols, in metaphors. The whole of creation is his poem. He is not just the tribal God of the ancient Hebrews. He is the sovereign uncaused first cause of the reality that we know.
I am going to briefly examine some of the conclusions concerning the Doctrine of God drawn by the early church around the time of the Council of Nicaea and a few centuries thereafter. I am going to compare these conclusions to the classical Armstrongist Doctrine of God. In this essay, as I speak about God, I am limited to analogical language and I understand that. In accord with Analogia Entis, it is the most that I or any of us can attain to. I will start with co-equality.
What Trinitarian Co-Equality is Not
I used to think that God in his divine nature was comprised of three identical persons joined together in some essential way. And at some point, the three in conclave decided that one would be Father, one would be Son and one would be Holy Spirit. But since they were all identical, this organization was simply a matter of arbitrary election. So, the Father Person could have been the Son Person and the Son Person could have been the Father Person, for instance, and that alternate arrangement would have been just as valid as the present arrangement. My naïve model of these divine interpersonal connections is not the model advanced by Nicene Christianity.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit
The Nicene Model is that the Father eternally generates (begets, Greek “monogenes”) the Son (John 3:16) and the Holy Spirit proceeds (John 15:26) from the Father. A post-Nicene modification, originating in Spain, added “and the Son” so that the Holy Spirit was asserted to proceed from the Father and the Son (John 15:26). This addition is what separated Eastern Christianity from Western Christianity. The point is that the Divine Persons are not undifferentiated. They are not equal in the sense of being exhaustively identical. They are equal in ontology (existential essence). But differ in interpersonal relationship and economy (role, activity).
The brothers back then had to look at the data and come to a conclusion. Arius was insufferable. Arius elevated the transcendence of the one God (1 Cor 8:6) and correspondingly diminished Jesus. Constantine wanted everyone to speak the same thing. It hardly mattered what it was. The brothers knew that God was eternal and unchanging (Malachi 3:6). And whatever “beget” meant, it did not mean that eternal Jesus (Hebrews 7:3) was created like the Arians asserted. So, they concluded that Jesus had been generated by God from eternity. God always was and Jesus always was by divine nature. And that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son eternally. So, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three beings that are indistinguishably the same. They are different in that they naturally and eternally exist in a community defined by different interpersonal relationships. “Father” is not just a moniker. The designation is based on the fact of begettal. They are together one essence and one God but have different economies. The Nicene view resonated well with the Biblical data concerning divine personhood, ontology, Monotheism and economy.
The Nicene Model may seem awkward. But is not because the Bible is a spurious document and Christianity is a spurious ideology as atheists would claim. It is because human language and categories are not adequate to the task. Yet, we should resist the temptation to tame all this complexity by imposing human simplicity on it. That is what classical Armstrongism has done and I will turn there next.
Family By Itself Means Bitheism
The first WCG minister that ever visited with me was a pastor of the local WCG congregation. A few years after we talked, he left the WCG and started a Unitarian denomination. He was regarded by the WCG as a rebel and a heretic. But, actually, he was a reactionary. he went back to the early roots of the Armstrongist denomination. The first leader of the Church of God Seventh Day was Gilbert Cranmer and Cranmer was a Unitarian. The Church of God Seventh Day was Arian like the earlier Adventists. Unitarianism and Arianism had a profound, nontrinitarian influence on the formation of WCG theology. And a theme that runs through Unitarianism and Arianism is the subordination of Jesus in his capabilities and his scope.
Armstrongism is not just Trinitarianism with the subtraction of the Holy Spirit to form a Binitarian theology. Armstrongism asserts a different kind of relationship between the Father and the Son. Armstrongist belief is that the Father and the Son form an expandable family to which other sons will be added through the salvation of Christians. But the family model is based in the biological human family where each member of the family is a separate person. Any connection between members is only matter of agreement in viewpoint and is not ontological. In the Armstrongist family model, the Father does not eternally generate the Son and the Holy Spirit is like an energy of God and not a personal being. Armstrongism claims Monotheism in the sense that God is one family. This assertion is internally inconsistent because the family relationship does not provide for the unity of persons at the level of essence. God may be like a family but that is not the full picture. Family is a weak and limited analogy. The Trinity transcends family because of its special unifying relations as already described.
Armstrongism is actually a form of polytheism. The subcategory of polytheism involving two gods is referred to as Bitheism. Armstrongism is not Binitarian because it proposes no concept of unity at the level of essence among the God Persons. Binitarianism is a form of Monotheism and Armstrongism is not Monotheistic. Further, Armstrongism proposes that one day there will be millions of gods who are god-as-god-is-god.
So Armstrongism took a step forward by declaring that Jesus is God and abandoned its Arian roots in the Church of God Seventh-Day. But it took a step backward into polytheism by proposing that the unity in the God Persons is only the family relationship modeled on human biological connections. Family just doesn’t cut it.
In the Last Analysis: My Two Cents
What difference does it make? If we must deal in analogies, can we say that one analogy is better than another? Maybe, at the end of the day, the Arian Model is just as good as the Nicene Model because they’re both just analogies for something that transcends our understanding. While that reasoning has an appeal, it is not the whole story. There is a pattern. The Anti-trinitarians are typically one-off, likely small, religious groups that harbor many other beliefs that are a departure from orthodoxy. They emphasize works and they have a diminished view of Jesus and the grace he brought to us. Any organization that systematically downplays the role of Jesus is not going to lead anyone to a good outcome. Not only is the Nicene Model a better fit to the Biblical data, something we should value, it tends to not co-reside with odd beliefs.
38 comments:
"Millions of Gods"...... Armstrongism teaches there will be One God as there is One God now.....consisting of etc etc...
Still not been studying Roman Family Law as I suggested 4 times. Not even the concept of "Imperium"... when two Roman Emperors ruled over a Wester with srealm and the Eastern realm with supreme power... as 1...in one and one only undivided Empire.
I go with the "dynamic creative" Yamnaya Indo European sky God breaking and smashing the horrendous rule of the oppressive female "sitting" Matriarchs of the European Stone Age when the Indo Europeans entered Catalyuk, Greece and southern Europe....
Nck
Personally, any belief in the gods, 1, 3 or many, leads to odd beliefs.
The last paragraph (my 2 cents) is quite revealing. Clearly, human reasoning and interpretation is just that, human, and we know that in Christianity there are 41,000 versions.
Where the data fits is a matter of opinion. Scout believes the Nicene model better fits the Biblical data, and as I have quoted many times before, the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia says, when considering the Biblical data alone, something else is a better fit. Which is it?
In the final analysis, it looks like for many, "size" matters, the majority opinion, orthodoxy, the "good" beliefs, not the "odd" beliefs. Strangely enough, there are scriptures that seem to lean the other way!!
(MANY shall say in that day . ., the WIDE gate versus the NARROW gate, the WHOLE world shall wonder after the Beast, etc.).
These discussions are like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, when the discussants can't agree on what constitutes an angel, a dance, or a pin.
The discussions are further complicated by the fact that the Council of Nicea didn't believe in sola scriptura, while today's Protestants insist on sola scriptura as the only valid viewpoint to hold in these discussions.
As a result, the differing viewpoints are mostly talking past each other, rather than with each other. They might as well be discussing whether it is heresy to consume the Flying Spaghetti Monster with marinara instead of meat sauce.
Some may object to my using the term “Nicene Christianity”. This objection is based on the view that there should be no brand of Christianity – there should be a single, monolithic belief. Unity may be an idea that is overwrought. I believe there is unity in the essentials among denominations but yet considerable diversity in the non-essentials.
What I really wanted to capture was the historical reality that in the pre-Nicene period, there had developed some diversity in Christian belief. Arianism, the idea that Jesus was created and had a subordinate divinity, was surprisingly common. And I believe that there were many genuine Christians who lived their lives back then and died having the belief that Arianism was true. In their geography, they may have never encountered anyone who was not an Arian. But in the post-Nicene period, the Arian viewpoint became much less tenable to any who were in communication with the core of Christianity. I think nontrinitarian doctrines probably became a symptom of a larger spiritual divergence from bedrock orthodoxy. I believe that the Nicene conclusions have shaped modern orthodox Christian theology and to label orthodox Christianity as “Nicene” is not a stretch.
Scout
Given the circumstances provided to humans living in this era, how can there be anything but anthropomorphism? If God manifested Himself as living in a temple somewhere on planet earth, it would tend to diminish the anthropomorphism, but even then, there would still be much that humans simply cannot comprehend.
BB
BP8 wrote, "... in Christianity there are 41,000 versions."
The taxis (Greek for structure of configuration) for the Trinity is not as loosey-goosey as you might think. The Bible does give us some data. And among the theories some are more plausible than others. Even Armstrongists knew that they had to accommodate the relationship between the God Persons, for instance. They dropped the Holy Spirit but they still had two related God Persons to describe. But instead of consubstantiality, Armstrongists came up with "family" as the uniting principle. And that dog won't hunt. So, the Armstrongist theory is not as good of a mapping of the Biblical data as the Nicene theory. There are other issues but that is a start.
I would say that a lot of this initially seemed speculative to me. But that is not really the case. It isn't speculative, it is analogical. And I think we know that in our gut. There might be 41,000 analogies but there is only one set of fundamental principles given in scripture.
Scout
Addendum to 7:25:14
The perpetual struggle for clarity in writing. I wrote that the Greek word “taxis” meant “structure of configuration.” That is a typo. It should have been “structure or configuration.”
I also stated that the taxis of the Trinity was not speculative but analogical. What I mean by this is that when I study the Trinity, the whole idea seems somewhat surreal. The fact that there is a God at all is surreal. But it is not even remotely in the same ballpark with the surreal idea that atheists have that the Cosmos is eternal. The idea of three beings that are one being is just not anywhere in the realm of my experience or imagination. People concoct analogies involving phenomena in the created realm but none of the analogies really work. But even the bare essential descriptions of the Trinity that people develop using stark theological language is really analogy. All the ideas and words come out of the created realm that we are familiar with. It is human talk and it can’t be anything but human talk and everything we know is an analog of the spirit reality.
The dataset about the taxis of God is there in scripture. The Trinity is an interpretation of that dataset. I fully expect that someday a better dataset will be built and there will be a better interpretation. But it will be based on more advanced concepts and vocabulary that are not accessible to us now. So, the orthodox understanding of the Trinity feels like speculation. But it is not the dataset at issue, it is the interpretation. We just don’t have the ideas and language. I cannot understand how the Father and Son configuration can exist from eternity. Why not the Father and two sons? Or three? But then, why is there anything?
Scout
The mental acuities are indeed challenged when attempting to wrap the head around the non-existing 3 person Trinity.
Believing in God means believing what He has revealed in scripture. Call it what you want, but there is only one God
Absolutely right on the "Nicene Christianity" nomer.... Part of who supported what, the Eastern Empresses supported the conclusions of Nicea and the Western Empress had Rome following that or lose the "special status and authority of Rome as the seat of the successor of Peter... whilst she ruled from Ravenna and most of the Germanic tribes surrounding her were Arian.
Same point goes when someone designates Christianity as "Pauline".
Of course the Western Romans / Rome struggled to keep their authority whilst the relationship East West was comparable to US - EU albeit being one Empire under one "Imperium" but two Emperors.
Nck
Not 5:21. I agree in believing in only what is revealed in scripture. The is still questions about the trinity doctrine that does not fit in scripture.
John 15:26 for example. The trinity controversy went on for years and was called a theological civil war. The bible regularly presents the Father as greater than the Son and so on and so on.
I thought on a previous post, a week or so ago, this author had written that they'd not even read the Nicene documents, yet here this study is.
Anonymous 12:08 wrote, “The bible regularly presents the Father as greater than the Son and so on and so on.”
The author of Hebrews wrote of Jesus:
“…Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power…” (Heb 1:3)
Armstrongists miss the import of this statement because they mistakenly believe that it is referring to the physical shape of God – and that shape is the human shape. David Bentley Hart in his New Testament translation gives us a better rendering:
“… Who being a radiance of his glory and an impress of his substance, and upholding all things by the utterance of his power …”
The Bible Hub translates “impress of his substance” as “the exact expression of his substance (hypostatsis)”. In modern parlance, Jesus is a duplicate of God in his essence. This is not referring to the shallow anthropomorphic concept of God’s alleged physical form.
Counterposed against this in the scripture often cited by Armstrongists and Arians:
“I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28)
The scriptural data then leads to a seeming contradiction. One scripture asserts Jesus is equal to God and another asserts that he is subordinate to God. At this point, we could all renounce the Bible and become atheists. Or, like Armstrongists, we could select one scripture and reduce dissonance by cancelling most of the meaning of the other scripture. Or we could simply acknowledge that Jesus is in some sense equal to the Father and in some sense different from the Father. I side with the latter approach because it does not do exegetical violence to the scripture. This view supports the idea that Jesus is in economy (role and activity) different from the Father but in ontology (essence, substance) equal to the Father. All three God Persons are God but have differing activities.
The Armstrongist neglect of Hebrews 1:3 and the exaltation of John 14:28 is a consequence of their Arianist bent.
Scout
Scout 800 says, "this view supports the idea that Jesus is in economy, role and activity, different from the Father, but in ontology, essense, substance, equal to the Father".
I've been reading old Armstrong literature on this and what you describe here is Armstrong binitarianism plain and simple. You have tried to change it into something else (bi-thesim), but of all of Armstrong's detractors, you are the only one who comes to that conclusion.
Also, your post says, " Family just doesn't cut it".
I like anon 521's suggestion, "let's just believe what's revealed in Scripture"!
Scripture clearly gives us the Father-Son relationship (family).
God is our Father (family).
God begets (family).
We are born again, from above (family).
We are called children of God (family).
Christ is the Firstborn (family).
We are to share the Divine nature and bear the image of the heavenly (family).
We will have glorious bodies like His (family).
We shall be like Him and see Him as He is (family).
I'm not saying God's children will be God as God is God, but it is clear that the Biblical idea of salvation is that " sons will be added through the salvation of Christians ".
Hebrews 2:10, says " for it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing MANY SONS to GLORY ".
This belief (family) is by far more scriptural that Orthodox Christianity, where 99% identify salvation as "dying and going some place" , which tells us nothing of substance.
Scout, this doesn't have to be complicated. Let's take what the Bible gives us and leave it to Him to fill in the blanks later.
I still have not read the Nicene documents but I am currently engaged in a study of the history of the Doctrine of the Trinity. And what I am studying is not the original Nicene documents. I may one day do that.
Scout
BP8 5:33
I would like for you to make a case for Armstrongism being Binitarian rather than Bitheistic. I would like to see what that argument looks like. I believe Armstrongism is clearly not Binitarian. But it might also not be Bitheistic as it is sometimes defined. The definitions that I have in mind look like this:
1. Binitarianism: Two gods sharing a common essence or substance.
2. Bitheism: Two separate gods who do not share a common essence or substance.
The former is monotheistic and the latter is polytheistic. The analogy of family does not provide for the concept of a common essence or substance.
The analogy of family is used often in scripture as you have pointed out. It has its value but it does not address the issue of God’s ontology comprehensively. Family is an analogy and has its limitations. It is the Biblical data that transcends the family analogy that must come under discussion. The Armstrongist doctrinal architects, whoever they were, just invoked the idea family and then quit before the job was done.
Scout
I wholeheartedly agree with every word of this comment. We can only go by what is revealed in scripture.
It took many years to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity and I'm suppose to write a thesis differentiating Bini verses Bi? I would love to accommodate, but it's Spring and the wife has me doing too much outside work. I simply don't have the time, but I too will save it for further discussion.
As far as the "analogy of family" goes, there are no perfect analogies, even in Scripture. In one place, God is likened to an unjust judge. In reality He is not unjust, but the point is made. I'm with you on the main point: Understanding "God" boggles the mind!!
........."family".....Eph 3:15.
There are no gods/elohim besides Yahweh - Isa 45:5, the Father.
Jesus told Philip since he saw Him he saw the Father yet the Father is greater than Jesus.
BP8 4:05
You said you had been reading some Armstrongist literature so I thought you had this on the tip of your tongue.
Scout
Anonymous 8:15 wrote, "There are no gods/elohim besides Yahweh - Isa 45:5, the Father."
Then why did Doubting Thomas refer to Jesus as "ho theos". This is the term used for the great God - like God the Father.
You also wrote, "Jesus told Philip since he saw Him he saw the Father yet the Father is greater than Jesus."
When Jesus said that to Phllip, Jesus was incarnate and subject to death. By any measure the immortal Father was greater than Jesus. But before and after the incarnation, Jesus had a different status. Jesus said in the Gospel of John, "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." After the resurrection, Jesus returned to the glorified state that he had before the incarnation. The glorified state is Identical with God's glorified state.
Scout
Why did Jesus only ever pray to the Father and not pray to the Holy Spirit? Why did Jesus teach his disciples to pray "Our Father, Who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name" ? Why didn't Jesus say "Our Father and Holy Spirit who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy names"?
Anonymous 2:37 wrote, “Why did Jesus only ever pray to the Father and not pray to the Holy Spirit?”
While the God Persons in the Trinity are co-equal in ontology, they differ in roles and activities. That is the way that God is organized. From eternity. Jesus had the Holy Spirit with him throughout his ministry on earth. When he gave to us an understanding of what happens in prayer, we learn that prayer is through the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:26). My belief is that Jesus set an example for us and that he also prayed through the Holy Spirit. So, Jesus prayed to the Father and through the Spirit.
That is the way God determined how each God Person would function. So, we pray to God through the Holy Spirit and in the name of Jesus. So, the question is, “Why did Jesus not pray to the Holy Spirit?” Because that is not the way that God organized the roles and activities of the God Persons.
I believe the logic you are following is that if the Holy Spirit is also God then Jesus should have also prayed to the Holy Spirit. Jesus did not pray to the Holy Spirit; therefore, the Holy Spirit is not God. In this argument, the proposition that states “If the Holy Spirit is God, then Jesus should have prayed to him” is an assumption that is not supported in scripture. It is not supported in scripture simply because God did not organize the roles and activities of the God Persons in that way. Assuming that Jesus should have prayed to the Holy Spirit is a leap of imagination. One might ask, in this same vein, why did not Jesus pray to himself? After all, Jesus is God.
I believe than when Christians make assertions about the Holy Spirit, they should be diligent in the pursuit of accuracy. We see through a glass darkly. What I have stated is the way that I personally analyze the issue.
Scout
NCK
Off the topic but I found your comment about Catal Huyuk interesting. I have followed the archaeology of this site for decades. It is near the city of Tarsus and Paul must have known about the mound that is now being excavated. Nobody, of course, back then knew the mound contained an ancient Neolithic city.
Although the people depicted in the wall paintings of Catal Huyuk seem to all have reddish skin and black hair (this may be a bias in the pigments they had available to them), a number of y chromosome haplogroups have been identified from the bones. The haplogroups are represented in modern times in Western Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeastern Asia. So, Catal Huyuk was fairly cosmopolitan.
They, of course, worshipped an obese female figure. She seems to have been around since Neanderthal times. Some kind of matriarch. I don't know who she is.
Scout
Anon, aka Scout, Monday, May 12, 2025 at 8:00:40 AM PDT wrote:
[[Anonymous 12:08 wrote, “The bible regularly presents the Father as greater than the Son and so on and so on.”
The author of Hebrews wrote of Jesus:
“…Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power…” (Heb 1:3)……Counterposed against this in the scripture often cited by Armstrongists and Arians:
“I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28)
The scriptural data then leads to a seeming contradiction. One scripture asserts Jesus is equal to God and another asserts that he is subordinate to God. At this point, we could all renounce the Bible and become atheists. Or, like Armstrongists, we could select one scripture and reduce dissonance by cancelling most of the meaning of the other scripture. Or we could simply acknowledge that Jesus is in some sense equal to the Father and in some sense different from the Father. I side with the latter approach because it does not do exegetical violence to the scripture. This view supports the idea that Jesus is in economy (role and activity) different from the Father but in ontology (essence, substance) equal to the Father. All three God Persons are God but have differing activities...]]
******
Scout, you wrote that: "All three God Persons are God..."
You may say that about Jesus today, but when He walked this earth as a physical human flesh, blood and bone human being: He was not God.
And Jesus said: "Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am [he], and [that] I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things." John 8:28
Would God the Father, the God, that God Abraham Isaac and Jacob, ever say something like: "...I do nothing of myself?" No, of course, not.
But, Jesus said those words. If Jesus were God, then how/why would He say such a thing? Would any God say words like those: "...I do nothing of myself?"
Jesus knew His Father was greater, and often pointed people to His Father, and not to Himself.
Even when Jesus entered towns, and many (all?) were healed, did those people/witnesses give glory to Jesus Christ?
Matthew 8:16 "When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with [his] word, and healed all that were sick:"
Matthew 9:8 "But when the multitudes saw [it], they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men."
Yes, Jesus was a man, just like us, but His Father, His God, was doing something in His life and He knew glory was never to go to self: HimSELF. It goes to His Father/His God.
Matthew 15:30 "And great multitudes came unto him, having with them [those that were] lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus feet; and he healed them:
31 Insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel."
No mention of being glorified to either Jesus, or God's Spirit, there. All glory to that God of Israel, that God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob/Israel!
Mark 2:12 "And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion."
Again, no glory to God's Spirit, or to Jesus.
Even the unconverted disciples of Jesus argued about who was the greatest among them, among human beings, when the greatest all along was The God, Jesus' God/Father, that God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob (Acts 3:13)...always, forever!
Will there be a mention that Jesus or God's Spirit is the greatest?
Time will tell...
John
SCOUT
I was at Phaselis where Paul landed and have travelled extensively in his footsteps all over the Mediteranean... From Damascus to Malta etc etc
I do however love the Stone Age.
Once the Kurdish and Sytian situation is settled I must go to Gobekli Tepe.
I also like to follow your spiritual journey..... even if it is divergent of mine.
As I said to the Shiite in his temple... we must jpurney to peace..... yhen I walked over to Pauls house...
Nck
John 10:00:00
You raise an interesting question. Why was Jesus so secretive about the fact that he was God? Jesus came to bring a message and he supported that message with miracles. The miracles were mostly healings based on what we have in writing. I believe that he felt that revealing himself as God would be so disturbing to his Jewish target audience that it would interfere with the communication of that message. The Jews were already hard of hearing spiritually. So, Jesus had to pretty much set some things aside until he accomplished his mission. But these issues were later addressed within the confines of the church among people who were yielded to the Holy Spirit.
The secretiveness leaves the mistaken impression that Jesus was not really God. But Jesus was God. Isaiah wrote of Jesus, “… and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God (El), The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” And then in the Gospel of John, Doubting Thomas uses the expression “my God: (in English “the God of me”) and refers to Jesus as “ho theos”, a term reserved for the great God, ruler of all .
The scriptures that you cite are indicating to us that while Jesus was on earth in a kenotic, incarnate state, he operated under the direction of God the Father. He could not mediate to human beings without doing that. He had to make a bridge from God to our condition by being in our condition. And Jesus could not have set a plausible example for us to follow without lowering himself to the human level of operation.
Scout
NCK
NCK
Gobekli Tepe is fascinating. It is a hunter-gatherer site but it displays an understanding of the idea of God and religion. Anthropologists always thought that religion came out of the agricultural cultures. But these people did not have agriculture. I have always felt that Gobekli Tepe was near the time of Adam. For a hunter-gatherer culture to suddenly acquire religion and start building religious monuments is a revolution. I think this may have marked an advancement in human mentation across all of mankind in the Neolithic. I haven't tried to find other evidence of this. Just a conjecture for now.
Scout
Which scripture supports the claim God organised the roles and activities of the Godhead?
In reply to the question Jesus didn't pray to himself because he depended on God the Father. John 6:38 supports this: For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me. Even when deciding on his first 12 disciples, he went off by himself and prayed. Luke 6:12.
The disciples even asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. Matthew 6:9
From another comment about Hebrews 1:3. I don't know how others conclude what you claim they do for Hebrews 1:3 for it is far more than the physical appearance of Jesus, it teaches how God upholds all things by his word. Jesus's radiance, he's the shimmering reflection of the glory of God. It also shows how beloved Jesus is by God the Father.
Anonymous 11:46 wrote, “Which scripture supports the claim God organised the roles and activities of the Godhead?”
In scripture we only see the organization (taxis) as an existing status. The language I used was analogical. As temporal humans we organize a group of people in this way so that is the semantics I used. In reality, we do not know how this taxis came about. The Nicene view is that this is eternal and has no origin. It is a part of the divine nature of the uncreated God. I believe that is true. Instead of active voice, I could have use passive voice. I could have said, for example, God “is organized” in that way. This leaves a loose end. Who did the organizing? Passive voice has more elasticity and we do not need to specify who did the organizing to make the statement. So, the answer is that there is no explicit statement about the origin of the divine taxis in scripture that I know of. And the direct temporal language does not exist to express it, anyway. We have only the deduced ontology to guide us and we can only speak in analogy.
Also stated, “In reply to the question Jesus didn't pray to himself because he depended on God the Father.”
In economy Jesus was dependent on the Father. In ontology, he is at parity with the Father. Jesus is God ontologically. He is the Son in economy. In the statement I made I intended to expose an absurdity. The absurdity is that if someone is God then they should be prayed to. This is a concocted axiom used by nontrinitarians to support the subordination of the Son. It is an argument born of the conflation of ontology with economy. We should pray to whomever God wants us to pray to. Being of the class Elohim is not a sufficient condition to receive prayers. The Son and the Holy Spirit are both intimately involved in our prayers but we address our prayers to the Father.
Also stated, “I don't know how others conclude what you claim they do for Hebrews 1:3 for it is far more than the physical appearance of Jesus …”
This is how. In classical Armstrongism (HWA’s original theology. There may now be different views in Splinterdom.), God is believed to be anthropomorphic. Armstrongists render a shallow interpretation of the idea of man being created in the image of God. For them, this refers principally to the physical form that God has. So, to Armstrongists Heb 1:3 means that Jesus is an identical twin in physical appearance to God the Father. This interpretation is crucial for the White Nationalist theme that runs through Armstrongism. Working from the appearance of Jesus, Hoeh believed that God is a white man. God has race and he is white. Their belief is that Adam was white and all the other races came about through mutation. I think originally they believed this mutation was unintended. But Dean Blackwell preached back in the Seventies that God planned the races and built the racial types into Eve’s ovaries. That, of course, does not match the findings of genetics. We know that the original modern hominids were black and whites and other racial types are downstream mutations. When Armstrongists read Hebrews 1:3, it is surcharged with much more meaning than you might expect.
Scout
Regarding my naivete about the taxis of the Trinity. I discovered that Thomas Aquinas also thought that the God Persons of the Trinity were equal such that any one of them might become incarnate and perform the role of Jesus. I did not find the original source document. This was in a lecture given by David Bentley Hart.
Scout
Not an student of Dr Stav?
Anonymous 1:48
Dr. Stavrinides was a bright light in a sea of darkness.
Scout
Recollections may vary 'Scout'.
There was an anti-JW book that quoted Jn 20 saying "..their New World translation calls Jesus God!" Quite a zinger for JWs to consider.
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