Epigraph: Say, ‘O People of the Book! come to a word equal between us and you — that we worship none but Allah, and that we associate no partner with Him, and that some of us take not others for Lords beside Allah.’ But if they turn away, then say, ‘Bear witness that we have submitted to God.’ (Al Quran 3:65)
Kermit Zarley
Source: Patheos.com
By Kermit Zarley: a professional golf player, who is vocal about his Unitarian Christianity
The three great monotheistic religions of the world are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All three claim to worship the one and only God, the God of the Bible. While all three base their beliefs on the Bible, they do not agree as to who this God is.
Most Christians are Trinitarians because they believe in their doctrine of the Trinity. (I was a Trinitarian for 22 years.) Their theologians explain that it means God is one essence subsisting in three co-equal and co-eternal Persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit.
Both Jews and Muslims disagree with this doctrine of the Trinity. They allege that it seems like tritheism—the worship of three gods. Christians vehemently deny this; yet they contend that the Father is God, Jesus Christ is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and they distinguish them as three separate Persons. To most unbiased souls, this Trinity tallies up to be three Gods, thus agreeing with Jews and Muslims. Trinitarians reply that their doctrine is so mysterious that it is inscrutable and incomprehensible. If that is true, then the three Catholic theologians from Cappadocia who formulated it during the 370s, in their extensive treatises, must not have understood it either.
Most Trinitarians also presume that these “three members of the Trinity,” as they call them, are in heaven and that they are worshipped there by an innumerable company of angels. But this cannot be verified in the New Testament (NT) concerning the Holy Spirit.
The NT declares that Jesus was crucified, died, raised from the dead, and that he ascended into heaven and sat down with God the Father on his throne at his right hand. So, a prominent image Christians have always had is of Jesus sitting alongside God the Father on the Father’s throne in heaven, with angels surrounding them.
No Bible book or letter contains as much information about heaven as does the book of Revelation. Its most prominent theme is the sovereignty of God the Father. And his throne serves as a symbol of his sovereign authority in heaven, the universe, and thus the earth. God is depicted six times in this apocalyptic book as “He/Him who sits on the throne.” A multitude of God’s people cry out with a loud voice, “Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (Rev 7.10). The Lamb, who is Jesus Christ, is portrayed as sitting there alongside of God the Father on the Father’s throne. And the angels in heaven “worshiped God who sits on the throne” (Rev 19.4).
Notice that God is distinguished from the Lamb, Jesus Christ. This distinction always indicates that only the Father is God, so that Jesus Christ is not God. Revelation quotes the heavenly Jesus calling the Father “My God” five times (Revelation 3.2, 12), and it tells of “His God and Father” (1.6), thus restricting the word “God” to the Father.
Jesus calling the Father “my God” is strong evidence that he is not God. On the cross Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27.46), a quotation from Psalm 22.1. And the risen Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, “Go to my brothers [apostles] and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father, and your Father, to my God, and your God’” (John 20.17).
The Apostle Paul repeatedly writes, “the God (and Father) of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 C0rinthians 1.3; Ephesians 1.3, 17; cf. Colossians 1.3).
Furthermore, ten times the book of Revelation quotes heaven’s citizens as calling the Father “our God” (Revelation 4.11; 5.10; 7.3, 10, 12; 12.10; 19.1, 5-6). Sometimes, it does so when both God the Father and Jesus Christ are mentioned together. For example, a loud voice in heaven spoke about “the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ” (12.10). Thus, only the Father is the God of heaven’s citizens.
So, the book of Revelation reveals that Jesus Christ does not have his own throne in heaven, that is, one that is separate from the Father’s throne. There is only one throne that God the Father and Jesus Christ sit on in heaven, and they share it together.
But if God is three co-equal Persons, as Trinitarians assert, shouldn’t we expect there to be three thrones in heaven, one for each of these three members of the Trinity? Yet the Bible never states this. Some Trinitarians have expressed disappointment if not dismay due to this silence—that the Bible does not say the Holy Spirit is enthroned in heaven.
Trinitarians insist that the Holy Spirit, which most call “the third Person/member of the Trinity,” is a full-fledged Person just as God the Father and Jesus Christ are Persons. Yet, of all of the heavenly scenes in the book of Revelation that portray a multitude of angels, twenty-four elders, and four living creatures all praising God the Father and Jesus Christ, there is no mention of the Holy Spirit even existing in heaven let alone sitting on a throne or being worshipped. (In all of the heavenly scenes of this book, which are in Revelation 4-19, the Holy Spirit is only mentioned once, in Revelation 14.13.)
That blessed act of exaltation—in which God the Father invited Jesus Christ to sit with him on his throne—does not suggest that Jesus is essentially equal with the Father and thus possesses deity. Rather, this exaltation magnifies Jesus’ dependence upon God and manifests his subordination to God. Otherwise, if Jesus is God, co-equal with the Father in essence, we would expect Jesus to have his own separate throne in heaven, perhaps alongside of the Father’s throne and at the same height. The Father’s throne is the highest of all other thrones in heaven. That is why he is often described in the Bible as “the Most High” (e.g., Daniel 7.9, 25; Luke 1.32, 35). The Father’s throne belonging to him, and it being high and lifted up (Isaiah 6.1; cf. 52.13), symbolizes his exalted rank, thus his superior dignity, over all, including Jesus Christ.
The existence of one throne in heaven for God, with Christ at his side, also affirms a strict monotheism, thus nullifying Binitarianism and Trinitarianism. Trinitarian Richard Bauckham at least acknowledges, “In Second Temple Judaism, then, the throne of God in the highest heaven became a key symbol of monotheism.” And Marinus de Jong insists that “God on his heavenly throne remains the center of all worship (Rev 7:11-17), and adoration of the Lamb in no way endangers or diminishes the worship due him.”
To conclude, the most formidable image which refutes the notion of the Trinity is God the Father literally sitting on his heavenly throne with Jesus sitting alongside him. If the Trinity was true, and it is not, one would expect all three of its members to either sit together on one throne or have their own thrones in heaven. Either way, no manner of mental gymnastics could escape the allegation that such an image presents three Gods. Yet the Bible repeatedly states the concept that there is only one true and living God.
Categories: CHRISTIANITY, Faith, Highlight, Religion, Unitarianism
I am afraid I could never understand this 3 in 1 business and 1 in 3. In a booklet from Christian Missionaries which I found in Africa (Ghana, I think) it was written: ‘Never argue with a Muslim about Trinity, he will not understand it’. Right.
and that is why I converted/reverted to Islam.
The holy spirit doesn’t have a throne because Jesus was the only begotten son of God according to the evangelists and preachers of trinity.So really he’s only a gopher , you know go for this and go for that. Astegfirullah
The Holy Ghost: The mysteries of Trinity
By Zia H Shah MD
The Son is begotten by the Father but the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone in the Eastern Orthodox tradition but from both the Father and the Son in the Roman Catholic tradition. This is ‘Paradox par Excellence,’ for God is without parts: therefore Son and the Holy Ghost are same yet different. By the grace of some magical wand Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are distinct, one begotten by the Father, other proceeding from both the Son and the Father, yet mysteriously there are no parts in Trinity. Again, there is nothing new, in God, nothing made and there is nothing in the Trinity made or created or composite, yet the Holy Spirit proceeds from the other two; additionally Christ has two parts, divine and human, yet the ‘Trinity has no parts and is not composite!’
In the Roman Catholic tradition the Holy Ghost proceeds from both the Father and the Son. Historically, however, it has been noted by the Catholic Encyclopedia that the Creed of Constantinople at first declared only the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father. The Encyclopedia, however, is quick in providing rationalization for this historical contradiction, ‘it was directed against the followers of Macedonius who denied the Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father.’
Jesus Christ is supposed to be begotten by God the Father, yet, according to the gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus, he was not conceived by a human father, but by the Holy Spirit; and he was born of the Virgin Mary. The ‘beginning of His incarnate existence’ was due to the Holy Spirit. The Apostles’ Creed says Jesus was ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.’ How to separate the human and the divine parts of Jesus Christ is another mystery, that cannot be pursued in this Knol.
To borrow a phrase from Soren Kierkgaard, all this is ‘Paradox par Excellence,’ and is unparalleled by its irrationality in human affairs. No wonder only 10-15% of the so called Christians visit their churches regularly in Britian, human mind struggles to escape from any conflict, if it can!
The schism between the Eastern and the Western Church is described by the word ‘Filioque,’ meaning also from the son.
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A wonderful article by Kermit Zarley.
I am so glad to see that as a professional golf player, he has used his time well and will leave a far more rich legacy than just golf.
Do be reminded that all Christians do not believe in the Trinity: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Church of God (Herbert W Armstrong), ect. I would probably say that most professed Trinitarians don’t really believe in it, since they can’t wrap their intellence around it. Arianism took the church by storm in the third century of the church and was finally Voted out by a church hiarchy. Yet the belief is still proclaimed by many fundamentalist churhes as absolutely Biblical. In these churches if you do not believe in the Trinity – you are a heretic. So sad.
my apologies to my fellow Christians , it’s not my intention to hurt anyone’s feelings, but being a woman who loves Mary the blessed mother (as) < I see no throne for the blessed holy mother in the trinity either even though she went through all the hard labor pains and so much sacrifice and all she gets is the short end of the stick , not even This sexist formula had to be invented by some bigoted man no doubt. Thank Allah for being one without a partner who neither begets , nor is begotten and is alone worthy of worship . Peace You All