This thread has sort of shifted from ‘Explain the Trinity’ to ‘Defend/debate the Trinity’. nothing wrong with that, of course, but I’m not sure the explaining was anywhere near done.
One thing I’d like to see is the raindog’s explanation of it - I completely get that you don’t accept it, I would just like to hear your explanation of what it is that you reject. What, not why. In fact: What, without the why.
From the King James Version, Isaiah 12:2
Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation.
I once heard a explaination for the Trinity as such:
Think of the Father as a cut of lunch meat,look from the top it is round, look from the side it is square,The whole which is God the father divided it self in two, thus creating the son, then the lover of the son for the father and the love of the father’s love of the son each split some of them selves and gave to each other thus came the Holy Spirit, Of course you know the lunch meat was Baloney.
Monavis
Basing claims on poor English translations does nothing to inspire confidence in me. The word or name “Jehovah” does not appear in any part of the Hebrew bible or even the Greek Septuagint and it indicates a pretty shoddy translation from the original Hebrew.
Me too. In fact, I’d like to hear that kind of thing in many of the debates we have here.
Your best contribution to this thread seems to have been when you were lurking…
Thanks for this post. I’m pressed for time, but I will return later and answer directly.
Thanks.
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Maybe I’m a simpleton, but God is God, his son is Jesus and Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit is God, Everything else is Angels dancing on the heads of pins. We can’t know what we can’t know.
Quick point- Iehovah was a transliteration attempt by Italian monk Galatinus in 1520. A Spanish monk wrote it as Jehova as early as 1270.
Now my Trinity analogies-
The feebler ones-
Imagine an Eternal Amoeba in which The Second eternally emerges from the First & The Third eternally emerges from Those Two.
Imagine an Eternal Flame. To be Flame as we think of it, there must be light and heat. The Father is the Flame, The Son is the Light, The Spirit is the Heat. Also, the Original Flame emits a Second Flame and they both emit a Third Flame which sets aflame all who approach them.
My favorite one- The Trinity is our way of explaining God’s relationship, not only with us, but with Godself. God has perfect Self-Knowledge (Logos) & perfect Self-Love. God’s Eternal Image/Knowledge of Himself is The Son, and the Eternal Love between Them is The Spirit. I THINK that came from Augustine.
As were yours.
Thought the KJV of the Bibls is old, it is usually considered a very accurate (but very hard to read IMHO) translation. I hope you are aware that the words God, he she man, woman does not appear at all either because it was not written in English, so why would you expect the word Jehovah to be there.
Below is the lexicon of the Hebrew , which can be seen also at http://scripturetext.com/isaiah/12-2.htm (it’s easier to read there then below), and you can see that the Name of God is indeed used, which sometimes the translation into English is given as Jehovah
As I read the posts I can see that there is no explaination for the Trinity. Some people believe in it and some do not. Wasn’t the split with the Orthodox over the Trinity?
One first has to establish what the word God means. Each person has it’s own reason for belief or not to believe. It, like God will never be explained, it is a matter of belief. Our upbring, what we were taught and how we have experienced life all influence our beliefs.
Faith is a personal thing.
Monavis
In any good translation–even the Authorized Version–I’d have expected the word “Jehovah” to be absent. At any rate, I do not actually criticize an early seventeenth century translation for committing a seventeenth century error. However, when someone posting on the SDMB continues to promulgate that earlier error while declaring that “scripture” supports a position, I feel safe in challenging the quality of the scholarship employed.
The reason that some European translators rendered the Tetragrammaton with three syllables was that it is the Jewish practice to refrain from speaking the name aloud, typically substituting the name Adonai, (i.e., “Lord”), at that point in the reading. The vowels selected for “Jehovah” were the vowels found in the word Adonai. The Masoretes who reconstructed the Hebrew text, concluding around the tenth century, used the vowel points from Adonai to remind anyone who was reading from scripture to substitute the word Adonai when reading aloud. Now, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, translators relying on the Masoretic text while being unaware of its history may be forgiven for copying the vowel points into their translations. However, that minor error had been clarified and corrected many years ago.
In addition, of course, we find the initial letter “J” cluttering up the word. “J” as a transliteration of the Hebrew letter yod made sense in German where they have the same pronunciation. However, if one wishes to transliterate a name into English, it makes far more sense to use the letter “Y”.
Since actual scholars had resolved that there is no name “Jehovah” in the bible many years in the past. I simply consider that any scholarship that continues to repeat that long-corrected error is very suspect in its quality.
tomndebb The Word is above us, it preexisted us and is eternal - the Word was in the beginning. We do what we can to translate it to the languages, as long as the attempt is a honest one God can use it.
This is part of what God does, He takes our imperfections and He produces perfection from it. This is to His glory. You don’t try to figure out His Word, but He teaches the believer through His Spirit.
There are some versions of the Bible that intentionally distort the Word, adding and subtracting from it, these are the ones to avoid. Some warning against this are in Prov 30:6, Rev 22:18,19, Deut 4:2, 12:32.
A quick test that the Lord has given me to see if the translation is honest or a distortion is Gen 3:22, to make sure that it states the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and not they (man and woman).
The KJV, NIV, NASB, AMP and many others state this intent correctly, here is the
KJV
NIV:
And the AMP:
Here is what has been pointed out to me as a corruption in the CEV:
The difference is that the CEV states in it’s preface that they attempt to gender equate men and women, which is a predetermined attempt to distort the Word, putting human intellect above God’s and above faith in God.
As long as the translation attempt is honest, such as the KJV is, God can and will use it.
The Great Schism was a bit more complicated than that.
However, one of the reasons for it was the Filioque clause in the Nicene Creed. The Roman church believed that the Holy Spirit was sent to us by both the Father and the Son, whereas the Greek church believed that the Holy Spirit was sent to us by the Father through the Son.
Why do you think the Word referred to in John 1:1 is to be identified with scripture?
-FrL-
I was always taught that the Logos in John 1:1 was the Son. I don’t know where kanicbird is getting an identification of it with Scripture.
It’s a lot like 3-in-1 oil.
Fine. However, I am not actually challenging the raindog’s theology or beliefs. the raindog has entered this thread to assert certain things based on (an interpretation of what) “scripture” says. That implies that there is some scholarship involved in determining how to read scripture. If the scholarship is shoddy–as indicated by using a corrupt seventeenth century translation of the Tetragrammaton, not as quoting a particular seventeenth century translation–then I think the quality of that scholarship can be challenged.
(Quoting a passage from the KJV that includes the translation “Jehovah” is fine; it is a common translation to which all have access. Using the word “Jehovah” in one’s own discussion indicates an analysis that appears to be based on flawed sources.)
At any rate, I have made my point; I will not continue this hijack.