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[Scape211]

Hi Jim! Hope you are doing well. Still frequent this site as the resource is immensely useful for discussion and study. I don't post much. Just mostly lurk

Anyways, I had a discussion with a friend the other day about the Trinity. His viewpoint is that trinitarian belief isnt necessary and was created many years after the bible. He points to numerous scripture where Jesus claims to be less than God. This is the usual fair, so I explained how they clearly believed He was claiming to be God and showed some counter verses. The main point was that trinitarian belief was there at the start even if they didn't give it that title.

However, I wanted to check my logic on one of his thoughts. My friend claims that Jesus is just God's son. He is not God, but still higher than us. My point was to show that God requires a holy sacrifice for sin. We cannot pay it, so Jesus had to live a perfect life for us to be saved from sin (to which he generally agreed). But my reasoning is this: if Jesus is holy and considered the ideal sacrifice for sin, how can he not be God? God is the only standard of perfection, Jesus must be God. If he is not God what is he? And if he is equal to God as the standard of perfect but somehow separate, we are into polytheism which is never taught in the Christian doctrine. So my friend is left with a contradiction where Jesus either is God or he believes in polytheism. His response was that holy does not necessarily mean perfect; it could just mean set apart. I guess it depends on how we define holy in this context right? What are your thoughts on this? Am I going about this discussion in the right way? I still struggle with this topic sometimes as the Trinity (though true) is not easy to explain or conceptualize. Any thoughts you have would be helpful good sir

[jimwalton]

You've already made good points. He can't have it both ways, as you have said. If He's deity as the Son, but not fully God, we are truly into polytheism, a completely untenable (and unbiblical) theology.

I'd say the Gospel of John nails this one for you.

• Matthew identifies Jesus as the Son of God 17 times.
• Mark: 7 times
• Luke: 11 times
• John: 30 times

Interesting, John is also the one who most decisively claims that Jesus is not just the Son of God, but also God Himself (Jn. 1.1, 4, 18; 10.30).

Jesus didn't just define Himself as holy, but also as sinless (Jn. 8.46), and therefore in this case it does mean perfect.

Jesus is uncreated (Jn. 1.2-3). He had no beginning (Jn. 1.1-3). "Son" doesn't describe origin, but rather relationship.

The Trinity is always tricky business. There are many people who work hard to undo the deity of Christ. It's a solid biblical position affirmed strongly and unequivocally by the early Church—those who were closest to Jesus and the Apostles in time and history.

By the way, it's simply not true that the Trinity was created many years after the Bible. Paul's view is trinitarian, as are the Gospel writers. It's true that synthesizing and systematic theologies came later, but it's impossible for synthesizing works to come before the original documents. We can say with surety that Paul's epistles are trinitarian. You can look at this link (https://www.the3rdchoice.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=11425) for the list. You can also see on the Trinitarian forum page that these questions come up all time, even though they hold no water. In a sense, there is continually a great effort to make Jesus not-God. If Jesus can be dethroned, the whole faith system crumbles. Since He's the fulcrum, people know that's the only truly lethal place of attack, so it's where they aim. Everything hangs on Jesus, in every sense of the word.