Subject: Is Belief in the Trinity Required? |
Bible Note: Holmes, With regards to the Christ question you are going to have to clarify. In my ears you are saying contradictory remarks. They are acknowledging that Jesus is God yet not equal? You'd have to explain in what sense He is God and in what sense He is not equal. To me you are saying, lets begin with assuming there is a square circle. I can't get around the assumptions of the case in order to be able to answer you. With regards tot he Holy Spirit. I'm not going to give you a yes or no answer, because again, you are setting up what seems a false scenario. You are asking as if the person is trying to get a checklist down in order to receive a gift, and asking if this certain belief is on the check list. I'm telling you that very scenario is wrong. God grants us all things pertaining to salvation, and grants us the spirit to know what we have received. So what I am saying is that God does not give salvation without giving other things. Repentance, perseverance, the Holy Spirit, love for our brothers and sisters in Christ, and acceptance of certain key doctrines are all God's gifts to us, rather than a checklist we do to be saved. Let me try to answer concisely in these three things: 1.) The one thing needful to be saved is that we must be born again. 2.) The new birth gives us everything else. 3.) God never gives us just some of these things. A Christian will never be denied salvation "solely because he does not believe that the Holy Spirit is a seperate person." He will be denied salvation because he is a sinner guilty before an angry God, and has no mediator because he has not been granted the new birth that he may repent and trust to receive that mediator. If a man is born again purely from grace, he will then repent, believe, persevere, love, obey, and accept certain central truths. I will not give a yes or no answer to a question with faulty assumptions. Let me rephrase it into a question that I can give you a yes or no answer to. Will a born again man receive the teaching that the Holy Spirit is a distinct person of the glorious God head? Yes. Will a person who claims to be born again though in reality he is not born again, reveal himself to be such and still a naturally minded man when he rejects the doctrine of the trinity? Yes. That is my view. I think by this point, it should be clear what I believe. In Christ, Beja |