Trinity Reformation

Transcript

i have been really excited

over this a development that i've seen growing

in and around the the churches

in the united states and canada over the last number of years

some of you might remember it was back in 2010

a book that i believe made the new york times bestseller list uh it was a book which i'm sharing on the screen now which you can find on amazon and it was a book written by a a jewish man by the name of richard rubinstein he was a biblical scholar

and he traced the development

of the history of the the theory and i use that word as opposed to the doctrine the theory of the trinity he talked about the controversy that arose

in the um through you know the the mid 300s 300

years after the resurrection of jesus

and he talked about in this book he talked about how

hebraic thought

was

being changed

so that greek thought became predominant in the church

um i remember david uh david is on with us tonight david levin i remember you sharing a really interesting paper with me that you had written about a soul

[Music] and how there were these greek thoughts that began to infiltrate

the brotherhood and as a result of that theories like the trinity and like the eternal soul began to develop these are things that were not taught in the scriptures and this man uh richard rubinstein wrote about it and sort of created a um

you know a real interest in the subject so i pulled this up this is the amazon uh this is you know just my amazon screen i know i think jim sullivan you've read this book i think a number of us have probably seen it um the boston globe did did a write-up on it you know of course we're in boston so i remember it and uh you know i'll just just highlight this section a splendid lead dramatic story rubenstein has turned one of the great fights of history into an engrossing story and and as a result if memory serves me correctly this book was on the new york times bestseller list in the non-fiction section jim do you have any comments on it i i know you've read it and we've talked about it in the past

uh i just found it as a really interesting book uh it does uh go through the the remarkable battles that went on over the trinity bank and was it the second or third century i came up with a date exactly yeah you know you know there was this contraries we'll talk a little bit about that tonight god willing yeah um so here's the uh here's the follow-up to that um there's a relatively new book out it's a book called christ

before the creeds

it's written by a guy by the name of jeff double i bought this a couple of weeks ago also on amazon um

and what i find really fascinating is that when this book arrived and i began to read it there was a forward and the forward to this was written by none other than the same richard rubinstein that wrote when jesus became god okay

and i i'd like to just read one section of of this book and this will give you an idea as to why i think we are at a really interesting moment in history and why i think we may as a unitarian as opposed to trinitarian believers have an opportunity to share the gospel with a lot of people who for the first time in my memory are really questioning the doctrine or the theory of the trinity so richard rubinstein the guy that wrote that first book we quoted he wrote the forward and this one christ before the creeds and this is what he said he says after that book was published i had the opportunity to speak in many christian churches and discovered to my surprise

that controversy about the trinity was very much alive even among the members of nominally trinitarian congregations

a wide variety of believers came to tell that despite their daily or weekly recitation of the nicean creed this was that creed that developed in the 300s uh you know to sort of formalize the theory of the trinity and make it make it you know dogma

despite these people reciting the the nicene creed or other statements of quote-unquote orthodox belief they either did not understand the meaning of the creed

affirmed the trinity in some metaphorical sense or disbelieved the doctrine outright

and so he talks in this in this forward about how many people are coming to this idea that you know the trinity just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me

now

more recently there has been a development where a number of

non-trinitarian churches

have gotten together to form a loose alliance

where they are trying to normalize

the idea that a belief in the trinity doesn't make sense

you see when you go back in history and you look at how

non-trinitarian believers were treated

i mean it's pretty dreadful

[Music] you know it became such that if you disavowed the trinity you could be and would be burned at the stake

and if there were writings that were against the doctrine or the theory of the trinity they were burned you know this is back in the 300s and beyond okay

but you know as christodelphines

we in a very minor and small comparison to that have experienced i think in the past what it's like to be labeled a cult

or labeled in some derogatory way

because we do not believe that jesus is god the son we believe that he is the son of god that as christadelphians we believe that only the father is god is god and as a result of that you know people like us in the past and you know to some extent still have been treated with scorn

but that's changing and there is this new development where a lot of non-trinitarian followers of jesus are trying to normalize the idea that questioning the trinity is natural so what i want to show now is a map

this map that you see is a map of people primarily in the us although we can we can scale out and see that there are countries represented all over the globe can you share steve sorry oh i'm sorry i thought i was sharon thanks jimbo um

so this is a map of this loose alliance it's called the uh unitarian christian alliance

and people who believe that only god is the father

can say yeah i'm a believer in that and they can put themselves on a list so that other christians who are in trinitarian churches can reach out and find like-minded individuals

and i think it's fascinating so looking at this map and and zooming in a little bit it's really quite telling how many individuals are starting to proclaim their belief that only the father is god

so um one of the things that i did not long ago was i um i put my name on this on this list and if you are a member you can do such a thing and you can see other people in other parts of the the region in which you live who also say i believe that only the only god is the father and i think that this may prove to be a great preaching opportunity for our community a great way for us to proclaim

who we are and what we believe and to become a welcoming environment for people who feel lost in their trinitarian churches

so a year or so ago with the approval of uh our arranging board i also listed our meeting house our christadelphian ecclesia as a non-trinitarian church as a way of you know advertising as a way of networking with other folks and there's a description here uh about our ecclesia and what makes us different it gives us

our website a little featured video that we put up there and meeting times

and if you are um you know if you're listening to our midweek class tonight from an ecclesia other than uh other than the boston meeting you know the christophians in stoughton i'd encourage you to think about it because uh it is a way that we can uh i think share the gospel

so first of all any questions or any comments is this a surprise to folks

brother steve this is dana pratt and i was just going to

say that

when we started the bible education center in urbana so it would be like 13

years ago now local churches did kind of peg us as they're not trinitarian you know right but but hopefully people there remember that and actually one woman who is now a sister deliberately came even though she was told like by her pastor or whoever not to come because we weren't trinitarian so your thoughts are very intriguing in that light

yeah i do think that there is a potential here and you know i don't want to put the the cart ahead of the horse but you know if you go back in history to the formation of the christadelphian movement you know it came out of a larger reformation

so there was the stone campbell reformation movement and this is where there were a lot of people who were trying to who were leaving the traditional churches to get back to sort of quote-unquote

historical christianity when i talked to my friends and they asked me you know what makes you know my church different i will often explain to them that you know we are trying to get back to original christianity before you know a lot of the traditions set in and it and i think it captures the imagination of a lot of people particularly in this day and age where logic

seems to be playing a very important role

in one's belief there are many people who are leaving their churches because it doesn't make sense to them they see inconsistencies they see things that are just incongruous they they see things where you know god is eternal and yet jesus died on the cross and they say i don't get it i don't understand it right and so this whole environment that we're in now i think is almost like a mini reformation movement where a number of people are beginning to leave their churches and this particular book that i just got is a book that was written

as a way of opening up dialogue

with individuals who are questioning the trinitarian belief that they were handed as you know in their churches and in their families over the years

so yeah john hey john yeah i have a comment i'm very familiar with this group the alliance um at uh one point they uh wanted to get the tidings magazine as for us to list in it yeah and so we did a very thorough study of it unfortunately uh if you look through uh their literature and their their stand they also believe in the devil which creates and i think that's creates a problem yeah for sure let me just finish please it creates a problem for the official community magazine um as much as we would like to share their beliefs with the unitarian police and crime um we just try to be a little bit careful that we don't end up

inadvertently sponsoring other faults doctrine

yeah and i think that's that's really a very important uh comment john and and i want to be really crystal clear about this there are differences between these different denominations that are sort of joining the uca there are some who believe in a personal devil there are some that believe in spirit gifts there are things that there are some teachings that are very you know clearly off from the teachings of scripture

and so the the reason that i have uh put my name on this is not because you know i'm like an ecumenical guy that says it doesn't matter what you believe but because i think it's a it's hopefully a way just to make a connection with somebody that that may be seeking

does that does that make sense john to you

um

yes and no okay it may make sense to you as an individual i'm not so sure i would be in favor of myoclesia

linking up with that um that alliance because of the other beliefs and i certainly was opposed to tidings doing it because we get enough flack for so many other things as you can be sure the last thing we need to be accused of is associating with a group that believes in the devil so

there's a difference i mean i i could see myself signing into that for making connections but i can't see

my organization is more official and i think you need to be a little bit careful about doing that yeah so i'm quite familiar with the trinity i am when i was dating mary

no when i went dating mary we went to to see the local priest and he uh he made a big spiel about the trinity and i told him point blank i didn't believe in it and i started going and he bodily threw me out of the rectory so if you if you've ever been thrown down on a bunch of steps by a six foot four priest um

and in those days i didn't weigh what i weighed today um and i was lucky to get out of there live anyway

thank you compared to being burned at the stake in the old days john right well anyway thank you steve just a little snide comment here thank you for your patience

some people will get it whoever you know you're going to get that last one god bless you

okay so i think that's i think that's very fair pushback dave david did you have something yeah a couple things uh if i heard right you said that that that made that the first book rubenstein's book made the new york times bestseller list in 2010

i thought so i think maybe before that i'm sorry and i remember reading that like ages ago well well before 2012.

okay look was older than that anyway yeah

rubenstein again as i remember is actually a lawyer by profession and uh somewhat of a semi-professional uh historical research but he he went at it with the like a lawyerly uh

a mindset which is one reason why that book is so so thoroughly uh documented just i highly recommend that book uh a couple other things i'm sure you'll get to this the issue of one god in the trinity or

rubenstein's book is about the divinity of jesus there's nothing at all about the trinity

that was a separate issue about the holy ghost thing yeah so you're this group you're talking about when you say anti-trinitarian are they dumping the the holy spirit thing too

there's got to be a lot of weird things about okay it's not god but i'm sure they don't see them like we do i think some of them do yeah this particular issue i would advise you to look i mean if you're interested i can share some thoughts about uh additional resources there's a guy by the name of dale tuggy who's terrific a guy by the name of sean finnegan um there are a whole bunch of other really good guys i don't want this class to be just about this group i just was trying to point this idea out that there seems to be a movement among people to explore

and to have permission to explore the idea that it's okay to reject the trinity it's it's a growing movement okay and we've seen these sorts of movements historically in the past such as in the 1700s and the 1800s which where we saw the chrysodelphian community sort of grow out of the stone this campbell stone movement so with that said

um what i would suggest is in our class tonight

i would like to try and give us all some talking points or some thoughts about how we might engage people

in a way that they hear us in a way that gives them sort of permission to explore this idea

and i'm going to quote from this this book one more time and he said

this is rubenstein and his forward and he says of the author while he's clearly advocating his own non-trinitarian point of view

the author clearly disclaims any intention to judge readers harshly who disagree with him his arguments are intended

to convince

not convert

to those who've not come to the same conclusions

about this challenging issue

and i think that for me that

that's comfortable for me you know to have a discussion where i'm i'm looking to convince people as opposed to convert them and i think it just go it's it's about the the softening of language

so with that in mind um let me share with you a couple of additional slides um what you see on the screen here is a quote from brother dennis galette uh in his pamphlet which is probably in every christianity neclesia that i've ever walked into one bible many churches why right you you probably remember seeing that pamphlet

and he says in that he says in this pamphlet today religious controversy is reckoned to be out of date almost something to be ashamed of intransigent positions are taken less often moderation is the key word and anything which is likely to fan the flames of controversy is disapproved

and i think that you know this is dennis galette probably writing in the 50s and and you know you think about how our young people uh experience

um

you know these sorts of things today it's something that that a lot of people avoid

there's no discussion about doctrine there's no discussion about these things for fear of coming across like some religious quote-unquote bigot

and i think that as we have these discussions if we find ourselves in a position to share conversation with people who might be questioning their traditional beliefs i'd suggest there are two important things to consider the first is you know we all fall short right and so we ought to have these conversations with people with uh humility and with a sense of grace

and we've got to give people um the room to turn around you know we can't be so close to their face battling people over doctrine we've gotta i think give them an opportunity to consider these things so that it's comfortable they can save face by making changes

um thanks for that reminder phil

okay give me just a second everybody

the the second reminder that i want to uh review

is this idea that

we we can't come across as self-righteous

because if we do people won't hear us and all we have to do is look to how jesus treated the scribes and the pharisees you know luke chapter 18 says you know to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else and we've got to be really careful brothers and sisters i hope it's okay for me to be this blunt we've got to be really careful that we don't come across this way because if we do people will just turn us off i think

they won't hear us and one of the we've inherited i think a lot of tremendous things in our community we we have an understanding of the gospel which i think you know we have to just be so appreciative of of the early brothers and sisters who sort of dis rediscovered these things but one of the unfortunate things that we seem to have inherited in my opinion is this

culture of debate

that uh was so prevalent back in the 1800s when when people for entertainment's sake would go to the birmingham town hall to see you know these debaters with gloves off going at it

and that environment is one that is not compelling in my in my opinion again to con to changing people's minds it might win an argument but it doesn't often allow people to you know

to change

so christadelphia obviously came out of this reformation movement we talked about this there was this great interest in doctrinal differences and debate was as much a sport as an entertainment as it was a search for understanding

this idea of caustic language that we sometimes see in our community is i think a problem it might have been the norm in in the early eighteen hundreds we see it in some of the early christian writings but we've got to be careful that we don't carry that sort of attitude in our discussions today and what i would say is we can just i mean i don't want to pick on brother uh brother roberts but you know this sort of language i think is an example of what we want to avoid he says you know to his credit i've been endeavoring to get back to apostolic uh distinctiveness i'm trying to get back to original christianity and to carry back as many with me as possible i want to you know share the gospel with as many people as possible but then he says i will not stand by inertly to see knaves hypocrites and brethren too charitable to fight the good fight of faith make boyd this endeavor right and i don't know if it's just sort of a difference in uh in cultural times but i read that and i can't imagine ever talking to somebody and calling them a nave you know uh i'm not sure even what that word means quite frankly

so uh so that's an example and then

when when brother roberts or brother dr tom brother thomas's uh book is uh done when he wrote uh i think was brother roberts wrote this dr thomas's life and works

there was a uh an editorial or in the preface there was this remark when they republished that work modern readers it's almost like a like a disclaimer like a uh you know a parental warning an advisory uh the editor of the of the book wrote modern readers may think that dr thomas sometimes wrote or spoke of his opponents rather uncharitably

if they do they should bear in mind that the doctor lived in an age when most controversialists fought with their gloves off right

um in elvis israel we see a similar thing in the 15th edition the preface included this sort of disclaimer at the time when it was written frank's speech expressed in robust language was indulged in without offense and in this matter the book reflects its age

and all i'm saying is we've got to you know we have so much to be thankful for when it comes to what we've inherited from these brothers and sisters so long ago that shared you know this rediscovery of gospel truth but we've got to leave some of the baggage behind in my opinion

we've got to be sensitive to the appearance of looking down on others uh if we if we imitate that sort of language the the language that we see in the early christadelphian writings i think we run into the danger of driving people away

and also and importantly giving our community a bad name

um

i you know i think there's probably a lot of us here on on the class tonight that remember uh brother ernie pride

uh ernie was a brother from the cranston rhode island of colisia um i've got great memories of brother ernie he was you know he was old as long as i remember you know i was a little kid and he would he was the guy that would go down at the wilbraham bible school and open up the pool and i was always you know wanted to be the first one but he was uh i think one of the uh the founders

of what we now call ask

uh the advancement of scripture knowledge

and ernie had a quote that i remember him telling me and it just sort of was uh you know marked in my mind and it was that we don't burn down somebody's house

until we give them a better place

to live right and i think that's that's my counsel you know as we get into this class about uh about the trinity

our goal in all of discussions like this brothers and sisters is to teach and correct with compassion with a purpose and the purpose is that others might be saved there's this quote from second timothy where we are to yes we're to reprove we are to reboot rebuke we are to encourage exhort but we're to do so with great patience

and and so i i think that's my uh that's my my counsel uh colossians says so as those who've been chosen of god holy and beloved put on a heart of compassion kindness humility gentleness and patience

um you know we get to this this quote again from jesus uh where he's you know rebuking the scribes and the pharisees you study the scriptures diligently but you think it in them you have eternal life these are the very scriptures that testify about me but you refuse to come to me to have life

so i think that as we get into this let's remember that our purpose in having discussions like this is not to win the battle of of debate but it's to save it's to bear fruit it's to encourage and um that's that's my goal um any questions or comments at this point in time

steve the bible verse that comes to mind is uh first corinthians 9 20 to the jews i became like a jew to win the jews to those under the law i became like one under the law although i myself was not under the law so as to win those under the law so just to to give that's a good one to give some way and and for the point that you mentioned so to win them yeah

so i got a couple of comments yeah yeah yes yeah um

dave is right that book came out a long time ago because i remember reading it in the uh about 15 20 years ago i believe the hardcover original was 1999

and amazon is selling the paperback that's why that's paperback edition it's not the first time i've been wrong

no no i said you're not wrong you were right turning 10 was the paperback um

you weren't wrong it just wasn't full full full disclosure

okay um secondly uh your point about debate is really very good i i think this is why uh bible seminars have been much more successful than uh public lectures uh i remember when i was a kid and when i moved to england to work for a while he used to get these public lectures uh the trinity is wrong or there is no devil totally useless uh i got to know brother dennis skillet quite well and working in england over the years and one of the things he said to me that stuck in my mind he said

debate is not a way to preach he says because two things can happen if you win the debate you've embarrassed your opponent and if you lose the debate you've embarrassed yourself

and i thought that was just a great insight and i i think brother roberts was backing away from that late in life that's why he wrote true principles and on certain details yeah yeah yeah he was trying to tone it down and i think he realized that that that was what that has contributed to division yeah so yeah your point is just really well taken thank you you're welcome thank you yeah i was good to uh steve uh can you hear me about steve i can yeah yeah uh your uh comments on uh being uh patient and so forth uh in fact uh it was one of the meetings i took to uh lorna's father who taught me the truth that kindness and uh the way he expressed himself and what not that uh and i agree with you 100 that uh uh if you come on too strong with people

surely gonna turn them off yeah

so so richard i know you know one of the things that i really admire about you right brother richard and i don't want to embarrass you but you know it's it's your ability to have conversations with people you know to be in a walmart and to strike up a conversation and i think that that's what i'm trying to do in in sort of the next part of our class so with your permission i'm going to just sort of change and talk about this idea about

our about you know sort of the shema which is this you know this this saying in judaism hear o israel the lord our god is one

and um what i want to interrupt just for one second sure jay

i just want to thank john for what he just said it has cleared up something that

the division in christadelphian who had that has really bugged me for 49 years so i just wanted to say that before you went too much further bye bye

okay

all right well thanks john and thanks jay so um as we consider this idea and about having discussions with folks that may be questioning the trinity

i want to try and give you some sort of big picture views about what you might have conversations about not to so much prove the point but just to plant the seed in their mind that huh

i wonder if i should like think about this more

okay

so the first thing i do is is i would suggest that we might start by rethinking

the historical jesus

and this is uh you know i think some of you have seen this picture before this picture on the left was painted by uh warner salman i think it's probably i think somebody said it's got like the world record of the most reprints of of a painting uh you know there are so many people that have reprinted this i remember growing up and going to my friends who were catholic and they all had this painting in their kitchens right and uh what do we see we see this white anglo-saxon man that has been named jesus and yet on the right we see what the biblical archaeological uh biblical archaeology review magazine uh sort of reconstructed based on um forensic science what a jewish man in the year of you know ad30

might have looked like and so we see this this great difference in view and that is just a visual way to see the difference between sort of the the jesus of tradition at least in you know white anglo-saxon uh countries and the jesus of history or we might say the jesus of the bible so we see it sort of visually but we can go beyond that and we can start reminding people

of very basic things but i remember having conversation with a buddy of mine saying you know you know jesus was jewish and it just like what no it just seemed so funny to him you know he thought jesus was catholic just like him

and the the just a simple thing like that you know that jesus was a jewish man

for a lot of people who don't grow up in a christian home or a bible reading home they might find that worth considering anybody else have that experience growing up in uh in catholic new england

or anyplace else

jim smiling yeah i think he better yeah um i i grew up in a jewish neighborhood in brooklyn okay

in fact um so many of my friends were some like i think in college even one boyfriend was a valentine

[Music]

lynn and

barbara probably remember val

he was a really strong trinitarian and

getting him to [Music]

never never had a bible class my dorm room and we never took the approach of debate we took the approach of where a bunch of students let's study this and see what you think and eventually after a few months i said well what do you think about the nature of jesus and god he said oh oh it's pretty plain the bible is pretty plain i don't know why i ever believed in the trinity even though in all that time i never even mentioned the word trinity

yeah you know john it's it's interesting you talk about you know growing up in a jewish neighborhood yeah all we have to do is go over right now to the uk and we see this explosive growth within the crysadelphian community from one particular demographic

and what's the demographic

iranian iranians who grew up not as jews

but but they grew up in a very monotheistic religion

right and so if we if we think about preaching the gospel some of the the greatest converts are our brothers like david levin you know or or like these brothers and sisters that are coming over from iran who who don't have this baggage of you know a trinitarian belief and i think that well yeah yeah by sharing this idea that we believe in one god it makes us in my i would think it would make us that much more palatable to uh to to believing that jesus was more than uh i had a grad student uh named mohammed imanian and uh much much talk and everything he eventually accepted jesus changed his name to mark imani interesting and it's he did not become a christian

that i didn't get that far but he did marry a christian girl later on yeah but his family totally disowned him yeah so if you think about it jesus grew up in a jewish household and one of the key teachings in all of judaism was based on the shema hero israel the lord our god is one and uh you know what's the first commandment what's you know joshua says you know you've got today you've got to choose who are you going to serve are you going to serve yahweh or you're going to serve somebody else you got to choose right all throughout the jewish scriptures we see this the importance

of a belief in one god in a you know and it's it's a clear and certain teaching of the jewish christian of the jewish uh scriptures and even when you get to the new testament you see that belief coming through and i'll just point you to the sanctuary shuckle you know why was it that they had to have a special coin in order to go into yahweh's temple and it was because the striking of an image on a coin with a man's you know a man's image was viewed in the mind of the the jewish believers to be

a you know a problem with hear o israel the lord our god is one have no other gods before me so this is something that was you know deeply held a deeply held belief by jesus as well as all of the jews in both the jewish scriptures and the new testament scriptures

jesus and the apostles shared the same understanding

of god as other jews

in the old testament or the new they all believed that the father was god this idea of a trinity never entered their minds

and to sort of have that discussion with interested friends or just sort of to somehow find a way to have that discussion may in a gentle way plant the seed um i've got a i've got a quote here from from mark chapter 12

and this is where um you know the the scribe that young rule that that young student came to him and said you know what's the greatest commandment and i'll just i'm going to turn it up it's uh mark chapter 12.

and what's fascinating to me is jesus response you know what's the greatest commandment um

verse 28

one of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating and noticing that jesus had given them a good answer he asked him of all the commandments which is the most important

the most important one is uh he answered jesus is hero israel the lord our god the lord is one

love the lord your god with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and the second is this

love your neighbor as yourself

there is no commandment greater than these now here's the thing that i think is fascinating

well said teacher

the man replied you are right in saying that god is one

and there is no other but him

now if if jesus

heard someone reply like this

and jesus

thought that he was you know the the second person of the trinity don't you think it would be reasonable for jesus to sort of like

further explain things to this young teacher to say well let me let me explain you know you say that uh you know the lord our god is one and but but let me tell you what that really means jesus doesn't do that he doesn't he doesn't you know try to better teach this man on his understanding of god and does just the opposite he doesn't correct him he actually compliments him and he says you're not far from entering the kingdom of god and i think that's really a very compelling thing for me to to say yeah you know jesus never thought he was part of a trinity otherwise he would have corrected this man he didn't do that um who do the cry you know who do the crowd say that i am who do you say that i am right we know the stories you are the messiah you know jesus doesn't like pause and give more details and say well that's true but i'm really this you know there's none of that i think these sorts of conversations might be helpful

and if

the the idea of monotheism

was such an important thing

hero israel the lord our god is one what's the most important commandment that god has won right

don't you think it would be reasonable

that there would be a huge amount of controversy in acts and in the letters that would try to define and refine the teaching of the trinity because these letters are so full of other controversies there's controversies about you know are we saved by works of law or are we saved by grace

i mean that was a controversy in the day and and paul had to write about it because people were up in arms over it what do you mean i i'm going to give away the law of the law of moses i'm not going to perform that i've been eating kosher ever since i was you know one year old

and to just like walk away from that of course there'd be controversy and there was and paul addressed it in his writings for a jew the idea that you know the messiah would die

i mean it was a huge controversy so much so that it became the centerpiece of faith and it be there were whole chapters dedicated to if christ is not risen your faith is in vain first corinthians 15.

don't you think it would make sense

that if the the

the trinity was being taught

that there would be huge controversy among the early jewish brothers and sisters of course there would but there was nothing in the new testament scriptures that pointed to any sort of thing like that and i think that's really an important point to get across when we're talking to folks peter had to get

uh uh uh corrected on that too when the sheep came down out of heaven and uh right yeah yeah

that's right richard that's right so we don't get any sense whether it's in the gospels in the acts or in the letters of any hint of controversy over this you know quote-unquote new understanding of the jewish god it's not there and so i think that points that's a good discussion and it's a discussion you can have with somebody without having to open up the bible and without having to you know go verse by verse it's a conversation you can have on a bike ride it's a conversation you could have in a golf cart it's kind of you can have over a cup of coffee um

low-key these are things that just made me go pause and you know have you ever wondered why there's no controversy so that's i think that's

that that's important and that gives us a couple of options why

why was there no controversy well maybe the trinity didn't exist yet

well maybe the trinity did exist but jesus never told anybody about it

or the trinity wasn't taught because

you know the trinity was caught but but it didn't cause it didn't cause any controversy well obviously that that doesn't make sense when we see so much other controversy so

um eventually though there was right there was no controversy in the in the new testament because it wasn't taught

but eventually there was and this is where uh rubenstein starts talking about this influx of um

of greek thought

and this this led to a controversy between athanasius who taught that jesus was eternal and aaron who taught that jesus had a beginning right jesus was the only begotten son of god and this then led to the council of nicaea and the council of constantinople and all of that sort of history of the trinity the point is in all of these scholarly writings the trinity was a later development and that explains the lack of controversy in the scriptures

it's never explained as explained in the scriptures so i'm going to stop there we've uh we've run out of time and i think that's probably as good of any a place to stop