I'd think you would know better than to hang your argument on this.
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This is "arche", this does not prove Jesus to be the first created thing.
Don't look now but it says "original" and "beginning" there....what is an "original"?.....what is the "beginning" of something?
Selective blindness perhaps?
Colossians 1:15 also identifies Jesus as
"the firstborn of all creation".....being "the image" of his Father doesn't make him God. An image is a reflection of the real thing...and Jesus certainly reflected his Father's thoughts and feelings about many things. He said that everything he taught was from his Father....not from himself. (John 7:16)
To me this is a terribly poor argument, and also accounts for your lack of manners.
So sorry if you found me to be 'bad mannered'. I have a lot of Americans tell me this. Do you know why? Because Aussies are straight talkers, and we don't tip-toe around people's sensibilities as if they are a legitimate reason not to speak the truth.
What was that Jack Nicholson line...? "You can't handle the truth!".....I suggest people put their big girl/boy panties on and just discuss things without the drama.....shall we?
I am so tired of the snowflakes....
You only give a answer that deflect from the question. You could tell me the truth, that you believe in at least 2 true gods, and that you define one differently from the other, and use language, like, You can be divine but not God.
LOL...and there you have it....I just didn't give you the answer you wanted....
There is one true God...the one identified by Jesus himself in John 17:3...
"And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." (NASB)
Did God send himself? Where is the third person?
Theos. How many true Theos? Is this so very complicated? How Many Creator Gods? There is One. In the OT, His Name is given as YHWH, in the NT His Name is Iesous, which we translate Jesus. And to Him, EVERY knee will bow, and every tongue confess that He is LORD, and that salvation is found in none other.
You have a mental difficulty trying to logically analyze Who God is, is that such a surprise?
I have no mental difficulty at all since the scriptures provide all the information I need without having someone to tell it means something different.
"Theos" in Greek means a "god"...any god, as Strong's Concordance explains as its primary definition...
"a god or goddess, a general name of deities or divinities." So it is not a word used only for the Almighty. Keep that in mind.
Read John 1:1 in Greek you will see that the definite article "the" (ho) is used before the first mention of theos but not with the second.
In en the beginning archē was eimi the ho Word logos, and kai the ho Word logos was eimi with pros · ho God theos, and kai the ho Word logos was eimi God theos. (no definite article) This is NOT saying that Jesus is Almighty God, but that he is a divine person who was "with God" and was sent by him. (John 17:3)
Anyone who knows Greek will tell you that the definite article is used to differentiate THE God (Yahweh) from any other "gods" ("theos") which is one who is divine or has divine authority. Jesus had both. As a human, Jesus had divine origin and was authorized by his God and Father to represent him on the earth. He did not have to be God and it makes no sense that the Creator of the Universe would himself come to earth when it clearly states in John 1:18 that
"no man has ever seen God". Thousands of people saw Jesus, so your trinity does not have any support in scripture by direct statement.
Not so fast, that only goes towards your rejection of what Triune God means. Here is another sort of a logical argument you may consider.
The Eternal Father eternally loves the Eternal Son.
What scripture can you provide to state that the Son is eternal? The Bible states that the Father alone is eternal. It means no beginning or end, yet the Bible clearly says that Jesus had a beginning. Colossians 1:15 reveals that Jesus himself in his pre-human form was that "beginning". You fight what the scriptures actually say, but then try desperately to inject the trinity into verses that do not state it.
In this way, the truth of the Scripture is preserved, "I YHWH change not". If the Eternal God did not yet have a Son, His is not a Father, but when He comes to have a Son, then He comes to be a Father. Rather than an eternally Fatherly God, He would have become that. He would have changed.
You see....this is what you just did....God doesn't change his personality, but at some stage in his eternal existence he decided to become a Father and bring forth a Son, an "only begotten".....after that a whole family of spirit beings came into existence "through" the son. (Colossians 1:15-17) Then at some point, God decided to create material things and the universe was created with an earth situated in right the right place to bring forth life. So at what stage did God change? He is the Creator and that it what it means......He created. Not rocket science is it?
John wrote, "God is love". If YHWH existed alone, whom did He love? He would have come to be loving when He came to be a Father. And why would He "become a Father" or "become loving", were He already full and complete in Himself? To become something "more" is to fill in a lack, and I cannot fathom God lacking anything.
His creation is an expression of his love, not that he needed something or someone to love, but that he wanted to expand the qualities that he already had to exercise towards other sentient beings....don't we all need to exercise those qualities to test them out and explore them in a new way? If we are "created in God's image", then those are the qualities he gave us humans to exercise and to explore in our own relationships. That makes sense to me.
Another side of this aspect that God does not change is our sonship in Christ, and how we understand how this question defines our relationship with God. Are we sharing in the Sonship of the Eternal Son? Or are we sharing with another created being? That goes deep fast.
Does it? If we understand the familial relationship of father and son as God and Christ expressed it, what is "deep" about that unless you want to muddy fairly clear waters with stuff dredged up from somewhere else?
If the son is not eternal, which no scripture says he is, then as a created being who has lived in both heaven and on earth, what an amazing King he will be in guiding us sinful humans back to God. He understands our humanity better than any angel that God could have put in charge of us. He selected humans to rule with Christ in heaven for the same reason. Who better to be our rulers and priests than those who know what it is like to live in imperfect flesh? (Revelation 20:6)
What I find to be unreasonable is the need to redefine words apart from what they really mean. Having studied both in school and on my own, I find it unreasonable to interpret John 1:1 as anything other than what it plainly says, the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh, John's Greek is really very simple.
Its only simple when you want it to say what it never meant. The Greek is not the same as the English translation...you can see that in any Interlinear.
"Theos" is not a word that means only "God" with a capital "G"...it can mean any god or divinely authorized person as Strongs definition reveals. Satan is called "theos"...human judges in Israel, Yahweh himself called "gods". If you have the right definition of the word...there is no trinity.
No . . . the word Trinity doesn't appear in the Bible. But the fact of 3 Persons Who are One God does. Pick out a different descriptive word if that pleases you. But you won't find me being convinced by anything less than a real valid argument that does not conflict with plainly stated passages.
Show me three persons in one God.....there isn't one single scripture that says this.
There is "God the Father" stated many times in the Bible, but there is no "God the Son" and there is no "God the Holy Spirit".....these terms were made up by the apostate church that introduced this doctrine over three hundred years after Jesus died.
If God was a trinity, then why wasn't this very important piece of information clearly outlined from the beginning? Why was "God the Son" and "God the Holy Spirit" hidden for so long and why did it take the church centuries to bring it in, when so many opposed it as unscriptural?
I will leave you to ponder these questions....
