Did Jesus Believe in the Trinity?

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3 Responses to Did Jesus Believe in the Trinity?

  1. LarryB's avatar LarryB says:

    Strange, the man Paul, who never met Jesus, makes the claim in Romans that Jesus is “god over all”. In one sentence he rejects God, the Torah, and elevates a man he never met to our creator. Why wouldn’t you believe him?

  2. Concerned Reader's avatar Concerned Reader says:

    @LarryB, the problem with saying “the stranger Paul that never met Jesus” is that he is the earliest Christian author. He’s writing in the mid 50s CE 20 years after Jesus’ crucifixion. Our earliest manuscript fragment copies from his epistles, the 1st Christian literature comefrom the chester Beaty collection which is radio carbon dated to the 2nd century CE.

    Everything in the synoptic gospels from the gospel of Mark to the gospel of John is from about 20 to 40 years after Paul wrote his epistles which are letters either to Churches he founded, or Churches he is maintaining.

    So, we technically only know about a Jewish Torah observant Pharisaic style itinerant preacher from Christian sources that come after Paul of Tarsus, written by people who clearly would have been students of Paul’s own school of thought, IE what we know as Christians.

    Even when Paul calls Jesus “god over all” he is speaking about this concept within his own spin on the Logos doctrine which already existed in Philo and elsewhere like the enochic literature.

    Paul calls Jesus “god over all” “image of the invisible god” “2nd Adam,” “son of Man” which even in the book of Daniel is a heavenly angelic metaphor for the nation. Its only an interpretive skip to say that angelic metaphor isn’t a metaphor and to apply it to a righteous leader figure.

    We know from both of the Talmuds about the presence of the two powers heresy which comes about because in trying to describe how the one God creates the imperfect world, or interacts with the imperfect humans therein, either literally or via vision, and prophesy, he has this manifestation of his will/wisdom which is sometimes described as his “presence” or “spirit,” sometimes described as an angel, etc.

    This figure is in the Targums, its in Philo, and the Christians employ it to describe their would be Messiah in a very unprecedented and heretical way.

    Philo himself (also a Torah observant Jew, though his philosophy took precedence) calls the logos “Deuteros Theos” IE second god.

    Even unitarian Christians who deny the deity of Jesus acknowledge the presence of the concept of this diet coke deity, that isn’t actually God, but is called lowercase god.

    Paul is using existing concepts in a weird way, but he was by no means the only one doing so. He couldn’t have taught this to people successfully if all the concepts were new.

    The trinity as such is not in the Bible, indeed that’s true but the meat and bones of what built the doctrine come from interpretations and speculations that were going around at the time this stuff was written, and most especially make sense in light of the later debates Christians had with philosophically minded pagans in later centuries.

    If Paul was entirely pulling this stuff out of his rear, of what use would it be to even teach it to those new to religion, among non Jewish God Fearers he was poaching from the Synagogues?

    Keep in mind, these god fearers would be illiterate, What they would know would be from what they heard read to them.

    • LarryB's avatar LarryB says:

      CR

      Paul heard a voice from Jesus in Damascus. Prior to that he heard many a tall tales about Jesus and his resurrection from Jesus followers or people who heard about it. He did not create the resurrection story. The fact he never met Jesus and began to believe the stories he heard and later wrote about is where I have a problem. I know I believe a lot of stories also, but none that a man is God.

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