Refuting Objections to the Trinity (Part 2)

in continuing this series we are showing how the Triune God is taught throughout scripture yet many Skeptics object to this and point to verse as they think shows that Jesus isn't God so we're going to take a look at some of these and refute their claims the first verse they like to use is Mark 10:18 which they claim shows that Jesus denied being good and God here Jesus is responding to a rich man who calls him good teacher and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life Jesus replies why do you call me good

no one is good except God Alone Now the obvious thing here to note is Jesus never says I am not good and I am not God he asks the man if he realizes what he is saying Skeptics are taking this question as if Jesus was making a statement about himself but that is obviously not what is happening Jesus was trying to get the man to think about what he was saying by calling him good teacher jesus takes this phrase to teach a lesson about what is truly good and show that no man apart from God

can be good on his own Works since that was the reason the man was there in the first place trying to see if he was good enough to enter into heaven Jesus replied by pointing out that to be good meant to be equal with God and if he truly believed Jesus was God but there is no point in which Jesus denies being good he only gets the man to realize that to call someone good means to call them God in fact later in John's gospel Jesus says he is the Good Shepherd so if only God

is good and Jesus says he is the Good Shepherd then we can easily see that Jesus calls himself God and Mark 10:18 only helps confirm that John MacArthur says Jesus challenged the ruler to Think Through the implications of ascribing to him the title good since only God is intrinsically good was he prepared to acknowledge Jesus's deity by this query Jesus did not deny his deity on the contrary he affirmed it another verse is John 173 where Jesus prays to the father and says and this is eternal life that they know you the only true God

and Jesus Christ whom you have sent Skeptics argue that if Jesus says the only true God is the father then he himself cannot be the only true God therefore Jesus isn't God however once again we have a case of Skeptics claiming Jesus said something he didn't Jesus never said I am not God he says the father is God and this doesn't contradict the doctrine of the Trinity as we said in our previous video each person is fully God they are not separately a third of God the father is the true God the son is the

true God and the Holy Spirit is the true God they do not add up to one God they are each fully God the only true God exists in more than one person so the members of the Trinity are the true God individually or collectively when the son says the father is the true God it is no different than when the father says in Hebrews the son is Lord You Lord laid the foundations of the Earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of your hands they will perish but you remain they will all

wear out like a garment like a Robee you will rule them up like a garment they will be changed but you are the same and your years have no end the context around John 173 also shows Jesus as Divine if we look at the entire verse it says eternal life is getting to know the Father and Jesus Christ not just the father so eternal life is getting to know both God and Jesus Christ meaning eternal life comes from both which is a claim to be equal with God which is also what we see in the

prior verse verse two says Jesus gives eternal life and verse 5 says Jesus was in glory with the father before the world was created remember the doctrine of the Trinity says that Jesus finds his Source in the father and submits to his authority nothing here in John 17 contradicts that it does however contradict the possibility for modalism so the next verse we will look at is Matthew 12:32 which says and whoever speaks a word against the son of man will be forgiven but whoever speaks against the holy spirit will not be forgiven if Jesus is

equal to the Holy Spirit then shouldn't a sin against the Holy Spirit be equal with a sin against Jesus well it seems Skeptics take this verse out of context what Jesus is saying is the only unforgivable sin is unbelief we have to remember the context here the holy spirit is the active agent in the world for the Triune God like the sun is the word of God and by active agent it means the spirit is how God moves in the lives of people to bring them to Redemption by denying the Holy Spirit you're denying the

opportunity for the spirit to to receive you into salvation JP holding of tekon TV articulates this well third the one who blasphemes the holy spirit is essentially one who denies the Divine Authority and activity of the spirit which is what the Pharisees did when they attributed jesus' exorcism to El and why specifically what Jesus said on this subject is attached to the story in a nutshell the Pharisees deny that the work of the spirit through Jesus had Divine Authority or activity behind it in other words they didn't believe what they should have about it Christian

scholar James dun put it this way now in terms of today after the resurrection of Jesus you could apply this a couple of ways some would say that blaspheming the spirit amounts to denying the spirit's internal conscience likee proding to become a Believer or you could make it more Broad and apply it to denying that the spirit is God's active principle in the world actually exists and does things like raising Jesus from the dead either way the bottom line is the same unbelief so this verse is not saying Jesus is less Divine than the Holy

Spirit to deny the Holy Spirit simply means you deny the activation of God and deny the internal changing powers of the spirit so basically unbelief the next verse Skeptics say refutes the Trinity is 1 Timothy 2:5 they claim it shows Jesus is just a man and not God since it says he is a mediator between God and us so how can he be God if it says he's a man who mediates between God and Men well we have to remember what the entire verse is saying if we conclude this verse says Jesus isn't God because

he is the mediator then he cannot be in the other party as well so if being a mediator means Jesus can't be in one party it also means he cannot be in the other party being the mediator is not an autological claim but a claim about one's task Jesus is the mediator because he is fully God who became fully man as well so that he would take on human nature to die for our sins John Gil says concerning this verse it was proper indeed that he should be man that he might have something to offer

that he might be capable of obeying suffering and dying and so of making satisfaction in the nature that had sinned but then had he not been God he could not have drawn n to God on the behalf of men and undertook for them and much less have performed nor would his blood righteousness and sacrifice have been available to cleanse from sin to procure the pardon of it justify from it and make atonement for it or make peace with God so all in all this verse is not an ontological claim that Jesus cannot be divine trinitarians

affirm the hypothetic union and that Jesus is fully man so the next objection is from 1 John 4:12 which reads no one has ever seen God if we love another God abides in us and his love is perfected in US Skeptics claim Jesus cannot be God because Jesus was obviously seen by people when he was on Earth but to claim this is to take the verse out of context since it is obviously referring to God the father and not God the son since in verse 14 it says the son was sent into the world this

is the exact same thing we see in John 1:18 which says no one has ever seen God the only God who is at the father's side he has made him known so John is clearly speaking of God the father in 1 John 4:12 and this is something we see throughout the New Testament the writers constantly refer to the son as Lord and the father as God Wayne gudam says the New Testament authors generally use the name God to refer to God the father and the name Lord to refer to God the son this is seen

in several places this is not an ontological claim but titles to differentiate between the two at times the titles are switched to show that they are both God and Lord but it is specifically mentioned generally the son was referred to as Lord and the father as God but for the most part the context of this is talking about how we do not see God but his love is in us and we should display the love for all to see another verse I sometimes hear used against the Trinity surprisingly is John 1:1 Skeptics claim the original

Greek in this verse shows the word isn't God and is merely a God in Greek if there is no article before a noun then at times when translating into English you add an A or an an so we often add an a depending on the grammar Skeptics say the grammar shows we should do this in John 1:1 since this part has no article yet this part does have the definite article for the when speaking of the word being with the God so they say it should be rendered like this which shows the word is not

the almighty God but the word is just a God so did John leave out the definite article for the in Greek on purpose to show that there was a difference between the God and the word who is just a Lesser God well the problem is this is a very simplistic view of Greek grammar Dr John betchel points out John structured the verse like this to show which word was the subject in Greek finding the subject of a sent is done by looking at word endings however John 1:1 is problematic because both God and the word

have the same ending the usual way to handle a situation was to add the' to the subject and leave it off the direct object which is exactly what John did Dr betchel says to conform to the standard Greek grammar EC cwell demonstrated in an article in the Journal of biblical literature in 1933 that it was a normal practice to Omit the' in this type of sentence John was simply using good grammar and making it clear that he intended to say the word was God rather than God was the word statement with some theological drawbacks John

constructed a sentence in the one way that would preserve proper grammar and sound Doctrine declaring that the Word was God this is what is known as colwell's role I tracked down the original article to read for myself and attached it in the information section below if John wanted to say the word was a God he could have easily done this by saying e Theos as e is the Greek word that is equivalent to the English article for a or an but he doesn't because the word is God not a god also Skeptics seem to forget

that a few verses later in verse 18 John says no one has ever seen God and leaves off the definite article for the here yet it is clearly speaking of the father if John was intending to differentiate between the God and Jesus just a God then he should have rendered verse 18 with the definite article but he doesn't because he's using proper grammar later in John 20:28 John writes Thomas answered him my Lord and my God the original Greek uses the phrase the god to directly refer to Jesus and not the father so this theory

is completely destroyed by context john1 shows that Jesus is God and the verse is very trinitarian the last verse I want to look at is Revelations 3:14 where Jesus is identified as the beginning of God's creation so how do trinitarians respond by simply looking at the original language the Greek word for beginning is Arch which can refer to originating or active cause of creation which would mean it says the same thing as John 1:3 and Colossians 1:15-16 Strong's Concordance points out this word as several meanings which include origin the person or thing that commences the

act of cause which are among other meanings so this verse is showing that Jesus is the origin or active cause of creation the point from where creation begins from not the first created thing John MacArthur says this corrects a heresy apparently present in leosia as in colasse that Christ was a created being instead he is the beginning beginner originator initiator of creation since we are on the topic of the Book of Revelation it is interesting to see how much this book supports the idea that Jesus is God the first chapter has Jesus speaking the John

calling himself the first and the last which is the same title given to the Lord in Isaiah 48 Jesus also says he is the Almighty which is the Greek word used for the personal name of God in the septu agent and we also see Jesus Calling himself the living one which reflects the meaning of God's personal name I am that I am or the existing one as it appears in the sepagan in Exodus 3 so Jesus once again affirms he is the Eternal God and most objections that Jesus's divine nature are clearly versus taken out

of context and do not reflect the message of the Bible in context it is affirmed over and over Jesus is the Eternal Divine God and those who say otherwise are clearly mistaken