My response to a non Trinitarian

My response to a non Trinitarian

Brothers and sisters this here is my responses to a non Trinitarian believer. He claims he is a believer of the Trinity yet with proper read his Apologetic you can see the breaking down of the Trinity. His is response is the color dark green, mine is purple,  the dictionary is maroon, the Bible is red, and the Creeds is blue.  

//Matthew Treviño You have said "begotten" means causes to be.  I have no idea what that means.//

Begotten comes from the Word begat or beget and it means,

be·get\bi-ˈget, bē-\
verb
: to cause (something) to happen or exist
: to become the father of (someone

In saying that God the Father begot the Son it means that the Trinity is self generated which means they have existed, will exist and will always exist, through this Love that He is. Love is a key word here because God is Love.

In another thing you posted, you said Love is an adjective. Well this is False.

Love is actually a noun or it could be a verb and it is who God Truly is. It can not be much simpler said then as it is stated in 1 John 4:8; 16. In understanding Him as Love everything else can be seen much clearer I would say. Also if Love, in these two verses are, as you say adjectives, then it's worded incorrectly.

//Here is my problem.

1) You claim that our Lord is God's literal Son. The ONLY way for this to happen is if he was "begotten" of his Father.   There is no other way.//

The problem is your view of the whole thing bro. Yes Jesus Christ is the literal Son of God, as I have stated over and over again. Above is the meaning of begat. And what this means is that Love is not a singular but plural.

All this has to do, like I've said before, the keyword Love, if you do not understand this then you do not understand the Trinity.  

I think Athenagoras explains this much better than I could. This was written in 177 AD,
"The Son of God is the Word of the Father in thought and actuality. By him and through him all things were made, the Father and the Son being one. Since the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son by the unity and power of the Spirit, the Mind and Word of the Father is the Son of God. And if, in your exceedingly great wisdom, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by "the Son," I will tell you briefly: He is the first-begotten of the Father, not as having been produced, for from the beginning God had the Word in himself, God being eternal mind and eternally rational, but as coming forth to be the model and energizing force of all material things."

What he is saying here is rather clear. While Jesus is the begotten Son of God, Jesus was never created which means He is eternally God.

//2) You also claim he existed the same time as the Father. If that was the case, he can't be "begotten" of his Father.  There was no need for scriptures to even mention "begotten". If you change the meaning of "begotten" to say "causes to be", please explain what that means.  Why describe the 2nd person differently from the first if the 2nd person existed same time as the first?

Is either 1 or 2? There is no 3rd option where you can say is BOTH.//

I have already explained begotten above.

The problem is you are hung up on one word in one verse. Instead, when we take the whole of evidence, we see that Jesus shares the same nature as The Father. This is a unique begetting that remains a mystery to us. We know it cannot be as we understand begetting since that would infer that The Father pre-existed The Son.

"I and the father are one" John 10:30

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Matthew 28:19

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." 2 Corinthians 13:14

//The ONENESS of God.
Our understanding of God needs to be adjusted.
We need to think outside the box./

Why does it need to be adjusted? If there was reason for there to believe that there existed multiple Gods then this would be a reasonable request however, there is no reason for this belief. As quoted before, Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30). They are not two different Gods or even two different natures but one God and one nature that are two different persons, with the third (hence Trinity) being the Holy Spirit. If, for instance, we are to say that these are multiple Gods, as your adjustment would require, then two of the Trinity would be lacking in some sort.

Are they lacking in anyway?

The explanation here is if the Father is A and the Son is B then there must be something that one of them lacks in order for them not to be the same. Something must be distinctly different. We aren't talking about Christ's humanity here but His divinity.

What did either of them lack in order for this distinction to be made?

//We know there is only one supreme DIVINE NATURE, so let’s call this NATURE A. Just suppose there was another supreme Nature existing INDEPENDENTLY from Nature A and perhaps having a different kind
of nature. If such a nature existed, we can call it B and we can rightly say there would be TWO GODS as there will be TWO DIVINE NATURES A and B. However, we know from scriptures that B never existed, therefore there is only ONE GOD, ONE NATURE A.//

In which The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit all share in. Nothing here refutes the Trinitarian thinking of the Catholic Church as passed through the centuries.

//So what do we make of Jesus? The Bible clearly states that Jesus is God’s only begotten SON. His firstborn. Therefore, he was NOT CREATED out of nothing which was what Arius taught i.e. The Father spoke something like this, "Let there be a Son" and Jesus was created out of nothing. Arius had GOOD INTENTION. He wanted to solve the oneness of God by just making the Father as God and taking our Lord out of the equation, denying his divinity. The problem with his idea is that if our Lord was created out of nothing, he can't have his Father's nature. He could have a similar nature but then he would NOT TRULY BE ALMIGHTY GOD'S SON but rather adopted. This nature of his would not be eternal since it was created. This was rightly REJECTED by the church at the Council of Nicea who then formulated the Nicene Creed of 325AD.

I suggest you study Arius a bit more if you believe he was well intentioned. In fact, you are following well in his footsteps though I do not doubt you are well intentioned.

Yes Arius wanted to MAKE the Father as God alone. The problem is he would have to make up this doctrine. There is no historical reason to believe this doctrine of men.

You go on and agree with the council yet it appears as if you do not agree with the council since you want to "adjust" god's oneness.

What is your solution?

325 AD

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father [the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God,] Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father;

381 AD

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father;


//My belief is this. Nature A (Almighty God\Father) generated
from within a Son from his OWN NATURE in eternity so the Son also has NATURE A. He doesn’t have a similar NATURE TO A. He actually has NATURE A, hence the term only begotten Son, firstborn (Heb 1:5). This action of "begotten" initiated TIME\BEGINNING and we have John 1:1 Since there is only still ONE NATURE A, there is only ONE GOD. This is why Jesus is God’s only begotten Son. His literal or natural SON. When we say we believe in ONE GOD, we are saying or should be thinking we BELIEVE THERE IS ONLY THIS ONE SUPREME DIVINE NATURE which we call God. There is NO OTHER NATURE. It just happens that our heavenly Father has this divine nature and his Son has HIS (Father's) divine nature too. NATURE A. ONE NATURE//

If both The Father and The Son are of the same nature A then they are the same nature, in which case they are the same, they are one.

We believe in one God because there is only one God. If 2 beings have this same nature then they are one in the same sense.

This is just as humanity is, there is only One human Nature. Just as with Angels who do not have a human nature or dogs that do not have the human nature nor cats that do not have the human nature, each and everyone of these creatures all have their own one nature.

//The problem is this. Catholics\Protestants won't  even consider this even if they want to.  The decision has already been made and is deemed infallible.  Augustine's work on the Trinity settled the doctrine of the Trinity.  The Trinity doctrine was finally defined properly around 420-450AD.  All three existed same time and are co-equal.  Literal Son had to go.  Many will claim it in passing.  They would like to think they believe in it but the reality is, if you believe all three exist same time and are co-equal, then there is no literal Son.  We had demoted the Father and elevated his Son to make them co-equal and in the process, we humans are now telling him that he HAS NO SON!//

Catholics/Protestants won't consider this because it is the truth, not a made up fiction as you are purporting. If, as it has been, the Catholic Church has deemed, deemed is a poor word instead it should be found, that this teaching is infallible, we have to ask the next question. Can the Church be wrong? If we answer this as no then we cease to be Catholics and instead are Protestants. If the answer is no then the case is closed and we do not need to consider this issue further.

Literal Son is something that was never taught, either in the Bible or in Tradition so this has no real bearing on the case. There is no demotion or promotion in this case. This is what is called a straw man argument.

//Many will say there is no real Father and Son relationship like we humans have.  We should not think of God like human relationship.  This is a wrong way of looking at it. We got it backward. The relationship first started ABOVE.  Our Lord who created the world, used his own experience with his Father, to give mankind a similar higher relationship.//

This relationship that you deny, that it is not like a human relationship, is actually quite apparent. We don't know everything about each other at every given time. This alone makes the relationship unlike we as humans experience. Even if we speak in terms of love, it is impossible to compare our human relationships with God's as we do not perfectly love as they do. A denial of either of these points then brings us to the conclusion that God therefore is not omnipotent. I am not willing to go there since He is in fact omnipotent.

//The Father has his divine nature, the heart (core) of his nature is his Holy Spirit (not talking about the Paraclete) which gives him his personality, who he is as a person, life to his divine nature and his almighty power.  During the "generation process"  (eternal generation of the Son), he had to share his Holy Spirit with to his Son. The Son has his divine nature and his own Holy Spirit giving him his unique personality.  When God through his Son made mankind in his image, mankind too has a  human nature and a spirit which gives the personhood.  Through this shared Holy Spirit, our Lord rightly said, he is in the Father and the Father is in him. They are always connected.  They both are Alpha and the Omega because of their eternal divine nature.//

The problem is now you deny the Council of Nicea since you are splitting one being into two. The council uses the term homoousion which means the same being, in other words of the same nature. Again we have to ask as to whether the Council can err. If the answer is yes, we cease to be Catholic, if the answer is no then what you propose cannot be true.

What is your answer? Yes or No?

//Matthew Treviño No is not. Heresy is when you say the Son is equal to the Father. When you deny a literal Father and Son relationship. If I am wrong, then Justin, Tertullian and Athanasius were all wrong when they said our Lord was born of God, his Father.//

No, the heresy is rejecting the teaching of the Church. Even if those Church Fathers denied the equality of the Father and the Son, which they did not, this does not make your proposition true.

There is also a difference between the meaning of equality. If you mean that Justin, Tertullian and Athanasius denied that The Father and The Son were equal in eternity, nature or status then we must count their teaching on this occasion as heretical. Now what we can do is say that The Father is the first among equals since the Son and Holy Spirit do His will and glorify Him. This is exactly as Justin taught in his First Apology:

"We will prove that we worship him reasonably; for we have learned that he is the Son of the true God himself, that he holds a second place, and the Spirit of prophecy a third. For this they accuse us of madness, saying that we attribute to a crucified man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of all things; but they are ignorant of the mystery which lies therein."

Tertullian completely disagrees with you and says they are the same being and drawing from the same power:

"And at the same time the mystery of the oikonomia is safeguarded, for the unity is distributed in a Trinity. Placed in order, the three are the Father, Son, and Spirit. They are three, however, not in condition, but in degree; not in being, but in form; not in power, but in kind; of one being, however, and one condition and one power, because he is one God of whom degrees and forms and kinds are taken into account in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
Against Praxeas 2