Kingdom Ready Blog

What Does the Bible Mean by the Term “worship”?
by Carlos Jimenez (Xavier)

Jason D. BeDuhn, Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, University Press of America, 2003, pp. 41-49.

Ancient Mediterranean societies tended to be very hierarchical. It was a world where everyone knew their place in relation to countless superiors and inferiors. Those who neglected or forgot this stratification of rank would be readily reminded by those around. In the highest place stood God or the gods. Below that in the Roman Empire ranked the emperor, followed by senators, governors, and a very complex system of local officials, priests, and landowners. The very bottom was occupied by slaves who might be owned by the lowliest of peasants.

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM” and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”  God, furthermore, said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you ‘ This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all generations.”   Exodus 3:14 & 15 NASB

1 John 5:20
And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

The words “this is the true God” could either be applied to “him who is true” or “his Son Jesus Christ.” The Greek is ambiguous on this. Thus, in order to determine which interpretation is the best, we need to look at the theology, in particular, of John and 1-3 John. In this case, there is a very similar statement in John 17.3.

Many a trinitarian holds to the belief that Jesus pops up here and there back in the Old/Original Testament proving that he is God. They believe that such a view is tenable based on the fact that in certain events described in the OT, the text describes God appearing to someone and conversing with them or doing something else in person. Yet NONE of these instances does the text ever say that the being described as God is Jesus or is “God the Son”, or any “person” of a tri-personal Godhead.

Discussion of Thomas’ words in John 20:28 has been a hot discussion topic of late here on kingdomready. So I thought it was fitting AND timely when I ran across an excellent article on the same subject by Ivan Maddox of West End Bible Fellowship in Atlanta Georgia. Ivan’s full article is rather long, so I thought I would post a couple of interesting latter segments of it and provide a link to the full piece (Did Thomas Claim that Jesus is God?) for those who wish to read the entire paper (which I would heartily recommend).

The God of Thomas?

The inspiration for this post comes from this article, which I suggest you all read.  The basic idea is that God is by definition a God who is not silent.  The article supports this contention with the Psalm: “Our God comes, he does not keep silence”.  This idea can also be widely supported by the whole Old Testament as compared to the other gods of the nations around them.  The priests of the other gods had no revealed law, barely any prophecy either.  They would cut open animals and lay out their entrails to receive a sign from their gods.  They would cast lots and roll dice.  They looked for anything, large or small, to receive a sign as to why there was a famine, or their nations were being conquered, or a drought, or their wives barren.  YHWH rather, speaks openly, giving a law and laying our revelation to his prophets.

Another fellow Bible-believing Unitarian wrote an interesting article entitled “Two Gods?”. In it he (Juan Baixeras) makes the point that the Bible expressly shows that there is only ONE God and then that Jesus HAS A GOD. Therefore it is not hard to see the logical conclusion that if Jesus is God, then there has to be TWO Gods. Of course the inverse is the real truth in that since Jesus has a God, then he is NOT that God and is just who the Bible tells us he is – the Messiah, “God’s anointed” human representative.

With all the trinity discussion that has been going on here at kingdomready.org, I thought I’d take time out to write an article on few of the issues I find with the trinity. Now I have a host of them – some of which have been brought up in the comment debates going on here in the blogs and some others probably to follow. But I wanted to address a couple of particular issues in detail that really bug me about the trinity belief. So let’s get started.

The Trinity contradicts the Biblical record

of how God reveals himself and his Messiah

Since there has been so much “Trinity” debate here on the kingdomready blog, I thought this week I would cover something on subject. Even more reason since during the debates between us Unitarians and our Trinitarian visitors, we also had a “Oneness” believer join in and several people didn’t really catch his positional stance at first. The following might help with that somewhat.

In all the exchanges we’ve had in the debate and as a result of the debate, I’m seeing several charges being leveled against us that are (1) incomplete, (2) false, and/or (3) don’t follow logically from our points. These are all strawmen. I’m just going to list them here:

• That we mix creator and creation based on singular pronouns
• That singular pronouns can be used of multiple persons
• That we deny progressive revelation, or it nullifies our points
• No Unitarian statement appears in Scripture
• Misrepresentation concerning the New Creation of Colossians 1