THE TRINITY REVISITED

This is not a religious blog -- with the fact that I am an atheist being no small part of the reason for that. I generally confine my comments on religion to profound reverence for our Christian heritage and profound dislike of Islam and all its works. I did however let my old theological interests off the leash long enough recently to post a few derisive comments about the doctrine of the holy Trinity ("So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God" in the Athanasian formulation). Naturally, I got a bit of return-fire over that. So for those who are interested, a few notes follow by way of a rejoinder:

Maverick Philosopher mentions the trinitarians' favourite text: John 1:1 "And the Word was God". Trinitarians say that John was clearly referring to Jesus in saying that but in so doing they overlook the very point John was making: That Jesus should be seen not only as a person but as a message of enlightenment from God. So it was the message or truth that was divine and eternal rather than the person. If John had meant to say "Christ", he would have. And it actually gets worse for the trinitarians if we concede that John was referring there simply to Christ. Because in the original Greek of the NT, the supreme being is always referred to as "ho Theos" (THE God). And in John 1:1, John specifically calls the Word "theos" (meaning "divine") rather than "ho Theos". So John is specifically saying that the Word was NOT the supreme being. So there is NO scriptural basis for the trinity doctrine.

{A detour here for Greek grammarians: It may be contended that John used the anarthrous form of "theos" purely because it was a predicate. It is true that there is some usage to that effect: Probably a lazy usage where the meaning is otherwise clear. But the question is: Was it John's usage? No. We see just a little later in the same text a predicative usage WITH the article: "kai ee zoe een to phos".}

The remaining point that a couple of people have made is that if Christ is not God what is he? I would have thought that was obvious -- one of the many people who have allegedly gone to Heaven.

And the comment on Northwestern Winds is just puzzling. He quotes Paul to say that you have to believe in the resurrection to be a Christian and seems to think that implies that you have to believe Christ is God. I would have thought it implied the exact opposite! Or was God dead for three days?

[Just a fun footnote: I have crazy interests for an atheist so I thought I might list the books I keep within arm's reach on my desk while I am blogging: Strong's Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible; The Penguin Australian encyclopaedia; The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge; The Macquarie [Australian] Dictionary; Brewer's Politics; The King James Bible; an Italian/English dictionary; a French/English dictionary; a Spanish/English dictionary; a German/English dictionary; The Koran; The American State papers including the Federalist; an American desk encyclopedia; Pears Cyclopaedia; a dictionary of American slang; the poems and songs of Robert Burns; Mein Kampf; a Greek New Testament and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer with Hymns Ancient and Modern. So now you know what I think I often need to know more about!]

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ELSEWHERE

More on Wal-Mart. A reader writes: "My son, who is 20 yrs. old, works for Wal-Mart. He is in his sophomore year of a Business degree. His job at Wal-Mart is putting him through college and he makes good money for a kid his age, well above the minimum wage. But he plans to remain with Wal-Mart for his career. In fact he expects to move up into management this spring. His description of his work environment does not match the descriptions of those anti-capitalist Wal-Mart bashers. He laughed at these allegations. (I asked him specific questions based on the complaints I'd heard online)"

Windschuttle vindicated! Courageous historian Keith Windschuttle has stressed that support for the "White Australia" immigration policy (which excluded Asians) came mainly from the labour unions. Amazingly, the unions are still at it in 2005: "A major union has called on the Federal Government to block a move by a Victorian fruit board to import up to 10,000 fruit pickers from China.... Mr Shorten said "no growers or employers should be allowed to undermine the job opportunities of Australians and their legal wages and conditions. The Howard Government must act to ensure Australian workers are not disadvantaged by the importation of Chinese labour"."

Eurosclerosis: "While American soldiers were delivering emergency supplies to isolated disaster areas and Australian doctors were treating the injured, Europeans were having meetings or, worse yet, trying to set dates for meetings. The French Minister of Public Health, Douste-Blazy, posed a rhetorical question while visiting Sri Lanka: was it "normal" that his colleagues in Brussels held their first discussions on the subject a full ten days after the catastrophe?"

Still not good enough for the critics, of course: "Employers hired workers in 2004 at the fastest pace in five years, with overall payrolls rising by 2.2 million. December's job growth was a bit lower than expected, with the unemployment rate holding at 5.4 percent."

About time: "China is planning to make selective abortions of female foetuses illegal as a way to close the widening gap between the number of boys and girls in the country, the official Xinhua News Agency said."

The British view of other countries (poll results): "A glance down the column headed "The top five" shows the dominance of countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada and also the relevant insignificance of countries on the European continent. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are rated unusually safe and Australians unusually friendly. The USA has a more mixed reputation: dynamic and democratic, yes, but also dangerously unsafe.... most continental European countries scarcely feature in the ratings (and Spain, in particular, does not feature among the top or bottom five in any of them), Italy and France stand out as countries thought to have some of the world's most beautiful buildings and works of art. Against that, the French and the Germans are thought to be among the world's least friendly people. While Britain and several old Commonwealth countries have high ratings across the board, the survey reveals some places as being almost pariah states. Large numbers of Britons admire Indian food - but only provided they can eat it here".

Surprise, surprise! "Ten months after it received $1.6 million from Republican Gov. Rick Perry's Texas Enterprise Fund, the Texas Energy Center has yet to create any new jobs and is without a director. Created in 2003, the center was proposed as a way to transform the energy industry by bringing together business and researches to develop new energy sources. It was to create thousands of jobs and bring millions of dollars in corporate investment to the Houston suburb of Sugar Land"

The latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx got money by deceiving relatives.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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