1st.
A word is a sign or representative of a thought
or an idea,
and is the idea in an audible
or visible form.
........
It
is the exact image of that invisible thought which is a perfect secret
to all the world until it is expressed.
2d.
All men think or form
ideas
by means of words or images;
........
so
that no
man
can think without
words
or symbols of
some sort.
3d.
Hence it follows that the word and the idea
which it represents, are co-etaneous, or of the same age or antiquity.
........
It
is true the word may not be
uttered or
born
for years or ages
after the idea exists,
........
but
still the word is just as old as the
idea.
4th.
The idea and the word
are nevertheless distinct from each other, though
the relation between them is
the nearest known on earth.
........
An
idea
cannot exist without a word,
nor a word without an idea.
5th.
He that is acquainted with
the word, is acquainted with the
idea, for the idea is wholly in the word.
By
putting together the above
remarks on the term word, we have a full view of what John intended
to communicate.
As
a word is an exact image of an idea,
........
so
is "The
Word"
an exact
image of the invisible God.
As
a word cannot exist without an
idea,
nor an idea without a word,
so God
never was
without "The Word," nor
"The Word" without God;
or
as a word is of equal
age,
or co-etaneous
with its idea,
so "The
Word"
and God are co-eternal.
And
as an idea does not create
its word nor a word its idea;
so God
did not
create "The Word," nor the "Word" God.
Campbell,
Alexander - Barton W. Stone - Walter Scott
on The Spirit
Campbell,
Thomas
Campbell,
Thomas - Spirit - Agent of Conversion
Campbell,
Thomas Holy Spirit - A circular letter
Thomas
Campbell and Alexander Campbell The
Spirit
Campbell,
Thomas a DIRECT OPERATION of the
Spirit
McGarvey,
J. W.
Witness
of
the Spirit
Witness
of the Spirit Our Commentary
Stone, Bartow W.
On
the Trinity
On
the Godhead and the Son
A
Different take
Of
Thomas M. Allen Robert
Richardson
Memoirs of
Alexander
Campbell, Volume
II. (1869)
He
had obtained the "Christian
Baptist" soon after it commenced, and was delighted with its
developments of the simple nature of the religion of Christ, its
distinctions between the different dispensations, and the new light
which it threw upon the themes of
the Bible. He quickly abandoned all the speculations for which with others
he had been
contending, and accustomed himself to speak always of Bible things in
Bible words.
The
total avoidance of the
terms of scholastic
divinity, and the
practice of speaking of
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit just as the Scriptures
speak,
he
soon found to do
more toward settling the vexed questions about the "Trinity" than had been done by
the [377] controversies of fifteen
centuries.
He
aided much in extending the
circulation of the "Christian Baptist" and of the views it presented,
and in leading the people forward to more accurate conceptions of primitive
Christianity, and
labored to promote the most fraternal and friendly relations between
the "Christians" and the Reformers.
Walter
Scott wrote:
"Again--Some
will say, What
does the expression Holy
Spirit mean? Well, in
scripture it stands
........
first for God the Holy Spirit,
........
and
secondly for the holy mind or spirit of a believer--
for
illustration, take Peter's
words to Ananias, "Why has Satan tempted you to lie to the Holy
Spirit; you have not
lied to men, but to God,"
(the Holy Spirit.) And the Saviour says, How much more will your
heavenly Father give a holy
spirit (as it should be translated) to those that ask him.
Again--Praying in a holy
spirit. Again--Paul says he approved himself God's servant "by
knowledge, by long sufferings, by kindness, by a holy spirit'" by a mind
innocent of the love of
gain, or commerce, or sensuality.
Holy
is an adjective and not
the first name of a Divine Being named "Holy Spirit." This agrees
with both the Hebrew and Greek definition of "spirit" as being "the
mental attributes of the mind and its expressions."
"Now
then the
expression stands for both God the Holy Spirit, and for a believer's
spirit made holy by
him.
The
Triune nature is not truly glimpsed as God, Jesus and Spirit but
Father is God, Son is God and Spirit is God. Father, Son and Spirit
are not names but Jesus is. In Hebrew Jesus or Joshua means Jehovah-Saves. As Jehovah was made known by various hyphenated
names in
the Old Testament, God of full Deity
For
in him
dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Col 2:9
Jesus
was born of Mary as "a
body prepared for me" but Jesus as the Word WAS WITH GOD and WAS GOD.
It was the Spirit of Christ in the prophets (1 Pet 1:11; Rev.
19:10).
However, when the people
were all out of sorts
about having to eat the body and drink the blood of "Jesus" He made
it clear to those with ears that the
It
is the spirit
that quickeneth; the
flesh profiteth
nothing: the words
that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. John 6:63
If an infinite God can
incarnate His Nature in
a poor boy like Jesus then Jesus as FULL DEITY can incarnate His
Spirit as THE MIND OF CHRIST in His Words. Jesus even said that the
God-Job of judging people for eternity has been incarnated in His
Words. If you don't think that He can do that then why believe that
He can live within human flesh which He used as "clothing?"
And
if any man hear
my words, and believe not, I
judge him not: for
I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. Jn.12:47
He
that rejecteth
me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word
that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last
day.Jn.12:48
When God returned on
Pentecost in invisible,
Spirit form the apostles began to speak. They did not sing, dance,
clap their hands or otherwise imitate the gone-made pagans.
Therefore, God Incarnated his return as Comforter in Words which
teach and comfort.
John
Mark Hicks: Second, the renewal of
Trinitarianism in this
century (beginning with Karl Barth) has filtered down
to
our educators and trained ministers.
What John Mark Hicks seems
to be saying is that
the quite unique revival of a trinitarianism which never truly
existed
among the scholars, has FILTERED DOWN from Karl Barth and not from
the Word of God!
However, the
doctrine of the
Trinity slipped in which scholars were trying to defeat the view that
Christ was not deity:
"This
conclusion is necessary
because the doctrine of the Trinity had to be stated by the
Athanasians in order to defeat the Arian
position of the creation of
Christ based upon the
various proof texts such as Hebrews 3:2, Proverbs 8:22, John 16:28;
20:17, Ephesians 4:4-6 and Revelation 3:14; 4:11.
The
UNIVERSAL MESSAGE is that
no one ever believed that God was three persons meaning people.
Rather, in coming to the AID OF GOD they used the word "trias" to
DEFEAT the notion of Christ as a creature.
Similarly
Karl
Barth
held the view
that
"The
Bible lacks
the express declaration that the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are
of equal
essence and therefore
in an equal sense God Himself.
And
the other express
declaration is also lacking that God is God thus and only thus, i.e.,
as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. These two express
declarations which go
beyond the witness of the Bible
are the twofold content of the Church doctrine
of the Trinity
(Doctrine of the Word of God, p. 437. Also quoted by George L.
Johnson in Is God a Trinity?, WCG, USA, 1973, p. 32).
"Judaism, Islam
and rational Theism are Unitarian.
On
the other hand,
we
must honestly
admit that
the doctrine of the Trinity did not form part of the early
Christian - New
Testament - message,
nor has it ever been a central article of faith in the religious life
of the Christian Church as a whole, at any period in its history.
Thus
we are forced to ask: Is
this truth the centre of Christian theology, but not the centre of
the Christian Faith? Is such
a discrepancy between faith and theology possible?
Or,
is this due to an erroneous
development in the formation of the doctrine of the Church as a
whole?
Certainly,
it cannot
be
denied that not only
the word "Trinity", but even the explicit idea
of the Trinity is absent from the apostolic witness to the
faith; it is equally certain
and incontestable that the
best theological tradition, with one accord, clearly points to the
Trinity as its centre (ibid., p. 206).
Brunner
draws his theological
position from the body of dogma that asserted itself, firstly at the
Council of Nicæa in 325 CE and almost continuously from the
council of Constantinople in 381 CE. Brunner asserts in explanation
of the extraordinary position of Calvin above that
The
ecclesiastical doctrine of
the Trinity, established by the dogma of the ancient Church,
........
is
not
a Biblical kerygma, therefore it is not the kerygma of the
Church,
........
........ but
it is a theological doctrine
........
........ which
defends the central
faith of the Bible and the Church.
Hence
it does
not belong to the sphere of the Church's message, but it belongs to the
sphere of theology; in this sphere it is
the work of the
Church to test and examine its message, in the light of the Word of
God given to the Church. Certainly in this process of theological
reflection the doctrine of the Trinity is central (op. cit., p.
206).
The
UNIVERSAL MESSAGE is that
no one ever believed that God was three persons meaning people.
Rather, in coming to the AID OF GOD they used the word "trias" to
DEFEAT the notion of Christ as a creature.
>
The Nicean motive was
NOT to establish the trinity as a central doctrine taught by the
Bible.
>
Rather, Arius taught that Christ and the
Spirit were CREATED beings and were not therefore God.
>
Nicea was simply to defend THE CENTRAL
FAITH that Jesus was full Deity.
Rubel Shelly can abandon the
epistles without a blink
because Karl Barth or someone has convinced him that John wrote that
which had been sieved from philosophy and his own personal agenda.
He
assuredly got neither the trinity of separated persons nor Narrative
Theology
from the Bible or church historians.
John
Mark Hicks: Third, the stress on incarnational theology (particularly within
missiology and
ethics) has reaffirmed that God was
really among us as
Immanuel.
But, the fully
come in the flesh said:
"Where two or
three are gathered together there will I be in the midst of you." When you
forget that and hire musical worship facilitators to "lead the
audience into the presence of God" you have denied a primary meaning
of "gospel."
Dostoevsky explains
that when Jesus comes in our midst He will not take the HOLY PLACE of
pulpit but He will be out with suffering humanity. When we see Jesus
incarnated it will be in the fleshly form of some old lady needing a
cup of cold water on a hot day when the air conditioner quits. Jesus
will never be seen with the singers and clappers who mocked him to
death with that old paganism.
John
Mark Hicks:
Fourth, postmodern audiences yearn
to hear about community, empathy
and relationality which incarnational emphases address.
Does that mean
"itching ears"? This is
always understood to be an EFFEMINATE take over of the
church:
From
the following proof of FEMININE and EFFEMINATE
takeover:
"Revivals
in urban America were no longer
occasions for the church to renew
itself as a community, but meetings of
individuals who did
not know one another to share their religious feelings.
The
revivals
created a community of
feeling among people
who had
no
other
communal
bonds.
Further, as the minister and his sermon declined, personal prayer and testimony came to the fore.
Correlatively,
........
the
hymn
Iyrics usually either bore witness to a generalized personal experience.
........
as
in "I Love to Tell the Story," or
made personal pleas: "I Need Thee Every Hour."
"The
gospel hymns thus became
an important medium of expression for the emotions and yearnings of Protestants--
"first,
the clergy and
women who ruled the
religious sphere,
and later evangelicals generally,
........
as
the churches attempted to defend themselves
against the challenges
of American religious pluralism.
"The
hymns represented a burst
of creativity from the people themselves, a rich, intensely
devotional experience by which one could rise above the ordinary
world.
"The
danger,
however, was that the inward-turning quality of the hymns and their
sentimental melodies
"would
reinforce the retreat
from social issues which by 1875 was visible throughout Protestant
evangelicalism.
"The
power of poetry and music,
sweeping revival crowds along on "billows and tides of heavenly
emotion," as a nineteenth-century writer put it,
could
become a mere
mass movement, without the discipline of intellect and organized
action that Protestantism needed to meet the challenges of the
era.
"With
personal experience as
the ultimate authority, they could disregard the ordinary world--so
the hymns portrayed the world as a stormy sea, full of turmoil and
strife, and looked forward to personal transformation and the hope of
heaven after death.
[In
contrast to the hope of the
word of God, this is the southern black contribution of
hoplesness]
"Hebrew
music... was used in
the luxurious times of the later monarchy the effeminate gallants of
Israel, reeking with perfumes, and stretched upon their couches of
ivory, were wont at their banquets to accompany the song with the
tinkling of the psaltery or guitar (Am. v1. 4-6), and amused
themselves with devising musical instruments while their nation was
perishing... music was the legitimate expression of mirth and
gladness, and the indication of peace and prosperity." (Smith's,
Music, p. 590).
"An
artificial, effeminate
music which should relax the soul, frittering the melody, and
displacing the power and majesty of divine harmony by tricks of art,
and giddy, thoughtless, heartless, souless versifying would be meet
company." (Barnes, Albert, Amos, p. 303).
"Middleclass Protestants
in POST-INDUSTRIAL America
were increasingly literate producing and devouring newspapers
magazines, histories, novels, and poetry in enormous quantities. At
the same time, male and female roles were being redefined, and many
men spent their energies in the business and politics of an expanding
society. Those were
arenas from which both women and ministers, by custom and/or law,
were excluded. Religion
itself was becoming a separate sphere, no longer directly linked to
government and public affairs, and ministers had lost the prestige
their forefathers had as scholars and advisers to
magistrates. Together
with their most faithful followers, middleclass women, they created a realm
of intense religious experience, separate from the larger society,
and gave it expression in poetry and hymnody.
Johannes
Quasten. In Music and Worship in
Pagan and Christian Antiquity, beginning on page 41:
"Philodemus
considered it paradoxical that music should be regarded as veneration
of the gods while
musicians were paid for performing this so-called
veneration. Again, Philodemus held as
self deceptive the view that music mediated religious ecstasy.
He
saw the entire condition induced by the noise of
cymbals (hand clapping or tabering) and tambourines as a disturbance
of the spirit.
He
found it
significant that, on the whole, only women and
effeminate men fell into this
folly.
Accordingly,
nothing of value
could be attributed to music; it was no more than a slave of the sensation of
pleasure, which satisfied much
in the same way that food and drink did.
"Women
and girls from the
different ranks of society were proud to enter the service of the
gods as singers and
musicians. The
understanding of this service was universal:these singers constituted
the 'harem
of the
gods'."
(End of
Quasten)
At
the same time, male and
female roles were being redefined, and many men spent their energies
in the business and politics of an expanding society.
........
Those
were arenas from which both women
and ministers, by custom and/or law, were excluded.
Religion
itself was becoming a
separate sphere, no longer directly linked to government and public
affairs,
........
and
ministers had lost the prestige
their forefathers had as scholars and advisers to magistrates.
........
Together
with their most faithful
followers, middleclass women,
........
........ they
created a realm of
intense religious experience,
........
........ separate
from the larger
society, and gave it expression in poetry and hymnody.
One bit of the "gospel"
fully explained by Paul
is that Jesus fired the doctors of the Law. Peter went further by
outlawing "private interpretation" which is to fuller expound.
Therefore, there is no role in the church for further expounders. The
role of the church is to teach the Word "as it has been taught" and
then teach the people that the Mind of Christ gives them no room to
"yearn" for selfish minds.
To tell you the truth, they
had better be
fishing or watching a football game! I believe the same scholars have
filtered the idea that the people are not interested in the Bible.
Too bad! The problem is preacher and scholar manufactured and
"church" is not a pagan worship center or "meet my needs" including
fixing my car. Rather, the church is synagogue or school of the
Bible. It has no role to play in social engineering or even extensive
social activism. Why get upset that the role of the local
psychologist is not to teach the Bible?
John
Mark Hicks: Trinitarianism
is present
in many
quarters of contemporary
Churches of Christ.
It
is regularly discussed at lectureships and conferences, and is given a place
in contemporary theological
works.[37] The
earliest
beginnings of
this resurgence was anti-Jehovah's Witness
rhetoric like that found in Hugo McCord which Doug has noted.
The
UNIVERSAL MESSAGE is that
no one ever believed that God was three persons meaning people.
Rather, in coming to the AID OF GOD they used the word "trias" to
DEFEAT the notion of Christ as a creature.
John
Mark Hicks: McCord
describes Jesus
in lofty language as "the Father of Eternity" (based on Isaiah 9:6)
and "no less than Jehovah."[38] Unlike most of the first and second
generations,
he
is willing to
use the term "Trinity" since "the Godhead is a threefold being."
Yet, there is a functional hierarchy in the immanent Trinity
and he accepts
Campbell's distinction between "Word" and "Son."[39]
One
of the best examples of
this Trinitarian
emergence is Roy H.
Lanier, Sr.'s 1974 Timeless
Trinity which dared to use the traditional word and
unfold a
traditional, even
orthodox, understanding of Trinity.[40]
Lanier's
book
enabled a wide acceptance of the term "Trinity" when earlier in our
history it was seen as an "ism."
The book stresses the deity of Christ (seven of the eight chapters on
Christ are about his deity).
It is
unfair to Br. Lainier who
speaks of the trinity but does not commit blasphemy by cutting the
Godhead into three, separated persons with independent skills and
roles.
It
was an ism throughout
history including the RM scholars. The trinity of three persons is a
brand new, primarily church of Christ heresy now driving the Purpose
Driven cult. However, the "honor" probably goes to the Gospel
Advocate literature feeding from H. Leo Boles, The
Holy Spirit, Gospel Advocate, 1942
John
Mark Hicks: Furthermore, recent
years have emphasized
the
incarnational
presence of
God
in the
context of ethics and
spiritual devotion.
"What Would Jesus Do?" has become the ethical slogan of the last
decade of the twentieth century and Max Lucado has certainly dominated
devotional/spiritual reflection on the
meaning of the incarnation.
When Jesus promised "another
comforter" He said
"I will come to you." Furthermore, He said My WORDS are SPIRIT and
they are LIFE. John 6:63. Therefore, the confession that Christ came
fully in the flesh means that he INCARNATED "the Mind of Christ" as
the Holy Spirit in His Words personally taught and preserved by
inspiration in the NT writers.
Therefore to suggest that
God is incarnated in
ETHICS and DEVOTION denies that He is Incarnated as Mind or Spirit in
His Word. This is the definition of Anti-Christ.
John
Mark Hicks: Ethical
reflection has risen to
the top of our Christological
interests. This
is probably due to the recent shift from the epistles
to the gospels in
our
preaching and
teaching. Olbricht's 1979 theology of Mark, The Power to Be, is a good example.
[41] In 1987
Martin
Luther
wrote
Reason
knows
nothing about the wretchedness of depraved nature. It does not recognize
the fact that no man is able
to keep God's commandments; that all are under sin and condemnation;
and that the only way whereby help could be received was for God to
give his Son for the world, ordaining another ministration, one
through which grace and reconciliation might be proclaimed to us.
Now,
he who does not understand
the sublime subject of which Paul
speaks cannot but miss the true meaning of his words.
How
much more did
we invite this fate when we threw the Scriptures and
Saint Paul's epistles under
the bench,
and, like swine in
husks,
wallowed in man's nonsense!
Therefore, we must submit to
correction and learn to understand the apostle's utterance
aright.
J.H.Garrison:
"There is God
and Jesus: all the rest is opinion."
"Carl Ketcherside advocated that the "core gospel" "'consisted of the (1)
life, (2) death, (3) burial,
(4) resurrection, (5) ascension, (6) coronation and (7) glorification
of Jesus' (Mission Messenger, Dec., 1972,
p. 180)." ibid, p. 53. He also said that "The gospel was proclaimed
as fully and completely on the first Pentecost after the resurrection
of Jesus as it ever has been, and nothing written later
was added to it" (ibid, p. 53).
"Not one apostolic letter
is a part of
the gospel of Christ...the Roman letter was not a part of the
gospel...the letter to the Galatians was not a part of the gospel"
We
note
that Paul said that he KNEW only Christ and Him crucified: He did not
say:
"I
TEACH
only Christ and Him crucified." Knowing Christ means that you had
better not listen to a self-elevated 'scholar' or manufacturer of new
creeds out of old paganism. Paul preached only the MILK because the
Corinthians were still carnal. However, once they were Spirit
enlightened or "perfected" he was able to preach the meat.
Dallas Burdette believing and teaching
many that God and the Gospel
is incarnated in GRACE ONLY, is a chance to show that there are
dozens of things in the Epistles which define the WHAT and HOW of the
Gospel INCARNATED in our earthly lives including baptism. We will
quote several pre Restoration Movement leaders who identified the
Christian System as the gospel: whatever is good news is gospel.
Martin
Luther told the
INCARNATIONAL freaks in his day:
35.
In this light
Paul here portrays the false apostles and like pernicious schismatics,
who
make great
boasts of having a
clearer understanding
and of knowing much
better what to teach
than is the case with true preachers of the Gospel. And when they do their
very best,
when
they pretend
great things, and do wonders with their preaching, there is naught
but the mere empty
"letter."
In
his CORE GOSPEL, Rubel
Shelly identifies seven facts ABOUT Jesus but then says
that:
These
are the essentials of Christian faith. It
is this core message about
Jesus that we share
........
in
common with other Bible-believing, cross-proclaiming,
resurrection-confessing, born-again persons that constitutes us a
church.
Outside
the essence of the
gospel,
there
are other
features that reflect our history and consensus interpretations of the larger
biblical message.
Rubel
Shelly dismisses the
epistles as the product of, say, John sifting poor memories with
philosophy and writing something based on his own personal
agenda.
Therefore,
shifting from the
epistles to the "gospels" is a confession that there is no patience
for a God INCARNATED in the fleshly context of church, doctrine or
keeping commandments. This, again, is the meaning of
ANTI-CHRIST.
(Click
to see Shelly's repudiation of all but the "core" of seven
facts)
John
Mark Hicks:
Shelly followed with his Surely This Man Was the
Son of
God.[42]
That same year Hazelip and Durham
published Jesus: Our Mentor and Our
Model in the same
vein.[43]
Harding
University's 1988 lectureship on the Gospel of Mark was entitled The Lifestyle of
Jesus.[44]
Since
Paul knew Christ and
Him crucified, we need to save the epistles to see how a
FLESH-INCARNATED Christ functions in Paul as part of His
body.
As
a way to MARK the "super
apostles" who were bleeding the church but not being INCARNATED with
a Christ spirit, Paul wrote:
Are
they ministers
of
Christ? (I speak as a
fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure,
in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. 2 Cor 11:23
Of
the Jews five
times received I forty stripes save one. 2 Cor 11:24
Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered
shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; 2 Cor 11:25
In
journeyings often, in perils
of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in
perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the
wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; 2
Cor 11:26
In
weariness and
painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings
often, in cold and nakedness. 2 Cor 11:27
John
Mark Hicks: Max
Lucado, however, has
been the most influential of all. His Christology is
pervasive in our pulpits, our
pews and throughout evangelical culture. His recent
Just Like
Jesus
represents his ethical
reflection,[45] but his God Came Near, one of his first
books, reveals his Christological presuppositions.[46]
Experiencing God by Blackaby
and King plaguing
the Baptists and churches of Christ uses his Shelly-like Narrative
theology to show that Jesus had his "assignment" from God as did
Moses, however, you must get your own assignment as the Moses of
Christ for your time. Shelly claims that you can be even greater than
these men.
"The
Apis bull, as
depicted in this Egyptian statuette, is likely to be the pattern used
for the golden
calf the
Israelites made at Mount Sinai (Exo. 32), since
they were undoubtedly quite familiar with it as a result of their
long captivity in Egypt. Note that in front of the sun disk and
horns, which
looks virtually identical
to some Catholic
monstrances,
there is the serpent
poised to strike.
In Scripture the serpent is symbolic of Satan.
(Gen 3, Rev. 12:9)
"The
priest (here the
Pope) sometimes holds up the sunburst monstrance with the host encased for the congregation to adore and venerate.
Virtually any time the monstrance, a pagan sun symbol, is
viewed by the congregation, they kneel in submission. A Catholic
cannot walk past this sun symbol without acknowledging it by kneeling
and or making
the sign of the cross with
their hands.