Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Unitarians and Witches on This Day in History

 


The last hanging of a convicted witch during the Salem Witch Trials happened on this day in 1692, and today is the day that Unitarian John Biddle died in 1662 from an illness contracted during his fourth term in prison.

Some estimate that there may have been 40,000 to 50,000 executions for witchcraft in Europe in the past, and 19 so-called witches were hung in Salem. Some like to say that 50-68 million heretics were killed by the Church, but that number is grossly over-blown. Also, most Unitarians (people who denied the Trinity teaching) were killed by Protestant authorities, or at least with the recommendation of Protestant clergy.  One Unitarian, Norbert Capek, founder of the Czech Unitarian Church was even killed at the Dachau concentration camp in 1942.

Perhaps the first witch executed was Theoris of Lemnos (before 323 BC) in ancient Greece. Using magic was not prohibited in Greece at the time, but she was condemned as a murderer in a poisoning death.

The first Unitarian martyred was possibly William Sawtrey in 1401 (that's if we are not including any anti-Trinitarians killed during the Arian controversy of the 4th century). 










Sunday, September 19, 2021

Lant Carpenter on the Plural Words in the Hebrew

 

Genesis 1:1 - In the beginning God (Elohim) created the heaven and the earth. 

The Hebrew word for God is Elohim and it is in the plural form. It is a common practice of the Hebrew Language to put in the plural form, words that express dominion, dignity, and majesty : and, farther, when a plural noun is used to denote a single object, the verb is regularly put in the singular, though it is sometimes put in the plural, owing merely to the termination of the noun. These indisputable facts, at once solve the grammatical difficulty, and it is nothing more, If the doctrine which it is supposed to favour, had any solid foundation in the Scriptures, this Hebrew idiom could afford it no support.-When Jehovah says to Moses, 'I have made thee a god to Pharoah,' the original word is Elohim or Aleim. The plural form is employed in reference to the one Golden Calf, Ex. xxxii. 4. 8. 31; to Dagon, Judges xvi. 23; to the Sidonian deities Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom, each separately. 1 Kings xi. 33. &c. &c. In like manner, Abraham, Pharoah, Joseph, &c. are called Adonim, Lords.--The argument has been rejected by many of the most learned Trinitarians. Even Calvin denies that the plural termination is any evidence of a plurality of Persons in the Godhead.


Genesis 1:26 - And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...

The Supreme Being is in these passages represented as using the language of dignity, according to the practice of earthly sovereigns. Examples of this practice occur in the Scriptures; e. g. 1 Kings xii. 9. Ezra iv. 18. The only wonder is, that it is found in so small a number of instances. In the Koran, God is continually represented as speaking in the plural number, We did-We gade-We commanded; yet the Muslims are strict believers in the Divine Unity. The Jews themselves inferred nothing from this phraseology respecting a plurality of Persons in the one God. In fact, if it taught plurality at all, it would teach that there are more Gods than one, which, in words at least, all Christians, deny.


Thursday, September 2, 2021

The Incomprehensible Trinity Doctrine

 


There are few things more entertaining than reading a Trinitarian try explain and defend the Trinity while acknowledging that this cannot actually be done.

Previously, I had a quote from Bishop Beverage which I will re-post below:

"We are to consider the order of those persons in the Trinity described in the words before us in Matthew 28:19. First the Father and then the Son and then the Holy Ghost; everyone one of which is truly God. This is a mystery which we are all bound to believe, but yet must exercise great care in how we speak of it, it being both easy and dangerous to err in expressing so great a truth as this is. If we think of it, how hard it is to imagine one numerically divine nature in more than one and the same divine person. Or three divine persons in no more than one and the same divine nature. If we speak of it, how hard it is to express it. If I say, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost be three, and everyone a distinct God, it is false. I may say, God the Father is one God and the Son is one God, and the Holy Ghost is one God, but I cannot say that the Father is one God and the Son is another God and the Holy Ghost is a third God. I may say that the Father begat another who is God; yet I cannot say that He begat another God. I may say that from the Father and Son proceeds another who is God; yet I cannot say that from the Father and Son proceeds another God. For though their nature be the same their persons are distinct; and though their persons be distinct, yet still their nature is the same. So that, though the Father be the first person in the Godhead, the Son the second and the Holy Ghost the third, yet the Father is not the first, the Son the second and the Holy Ghost a third God. So hard it is to word so great a mystery aright; or to fit so high a truth with expressions suitable and proper to it, without going one way or another from it." Bishop Beverage, Private Thoughts, Part 2, 48, 49, cited by Charles Morgridge, The True Believers Defence Against Charges Preferred by Trinitarians for Not Believing in the Deity of Christ (Boston: B. Greene, 1837), 16. 

To this I will add Frederick Silver's words below:

"Q: Are the names, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, merely names of office?

A: There is no authority in Scripture for such an assumption. On the contrary, there is much to establish their personal identity. It is a true saying, that this is a mystery incomprehensible to us, and from its infinite nature must ever remain beyond the grasp of a creature's understanding; but its  incomprehensibility is a strong argument in favor of its acceptation. If it were not incomprehensible, it could not be true; because JEHOVAH in his Trinity of Persons is infinite, eternal, immutable, and incomprehensible.

A finite creature may have a capacity to understand how some of the properties in nature, although closely connected, are really distinct things, such as light, heat, and matter; he may have a personal knowledge of the fact, and be able to prove experimentally that heat is not light, and that light is not matter; and he may even understand how these three distinct properties may unite in one, as in the sun. But he can never comprehend, much less explain, how JEHOVAH is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and that these three are One: for if he could, Jehovah would not be infinite and incomprehensible. If Jehovah is not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, from everlasting to everlasting, He is not immutably and eternally the same! The Father cannot be before the Son, nor the Son after the Father. The relationship must be co-eval, for the Father could not be the ETERNAL FATHER without the ETERNAL Son, and the Son could not be the ETERNAL SON without the ETERNAL Father. Neither could I am, be that I AM, if the FATHER, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, were not eternally as such the One JEHOVAH.

It is our mercy to know, that He who is thus revealed, cannot be personally known as THREE eternal nondescript samenesses, defective in foresight; neither is He to be worshipped as such an heathenish deity, having eyes, but seeing not. And such would be the case, if the relative names Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, were merely names of office, and if they did not see all things as existing, that they know shall exist. Indeed, it appears little short of blasphemy to believe, or even to suggest, that the HOLY Ghost, the INFALLIBLE AUTHOR of Holy Scripture, has given a chimerical revelation of the FATHER and the Son.

Is not the Holy Ghost revealed in Scripture as the SPIRIT of the FATHER; as the Spirit of the Son, as bearing witness of them as the Father, and as the Son? Is He then merely the Spirit of the name of an office? Has He ever said, God might have been God, and never have become a FATHER? Is He not rather the Spirit that searcheth all things, yea, the depths of God?-for so it reads in the original text. Is He not the Spirit of wisdom, and of REVELATION, and of Truth? Is the revelation which He hath made true, or imaginary?--and if true, is it not eternally true?"


"We must recognize the fact that mankind cannot go on without a certain amount of absurdity, that absurdity is an element in its existence, and illusion indispensable; as indeed other aspects of life testify." --Schopenhauer 

"I believe, because it is absurd." Attributed to Tertullian


Wednesday, September 1, 2021

Dr. Robert M. Price on John 1:1 in the New World Translation

 

Listen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajr47vK0nxc

In his own translations, the Pre-Nicene New Testament and the Human Bible New Testament translates John 1:1 as "In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word stood before God, and the Word was a God."  


Another fairly recent translation of the New Testament, by David Bentley Hart, also does something interesting with John 1:1c. David Bentley Hart's New Testament 2017 reads at John 1:1 "In the origin there was the Logos, and the Logos was present with GOD, and the Logos was god." (Notice the word "god" in small letters in the last clause.)


However, I discovered in his earlier work, "Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies" he actually writes:

"As a general rule, the 'articular' form ho Theos—literally, 'the God'—was a title reserved for God Most High or God the Father, while only the 'inarticular' form theos was used to designate this secondary divinity. This distinction, in fact, was preserved in the prologue to John, whose first verse could justly be translated as: 'In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was a god.'"





Sunday, August 29, 2021

Thinker and Heretic John Locke on This Day in History


This Day In History: English philosopher and physician John Locke was born on this day in 1632. Locke was a real “Renaissance Man” who found time to be an expert in, not only medicine, but also metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of education, economics, the Bible and theology (moving from Calvinist trinitarianism to Socinianism and Arianism, though he is still referred to as a Protestant Scholastic). He would go on to inspire David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant and the founding fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson.

Locke was the Father of Classical Liberalism (Libertarianism). He stated that each person has a property in himself, and property precedes government. Unlike Descartes, Locke thought the mind was a blank slate (tabula rasa). The earth is given to humans in common. Locke’s doctrine that governments need the consent of the governed is central to the Declaration of Independence. He advocated separation of powers and believed that revolution was not only a right but an obligation at times.

John Locke wrote his major works in his 60's, and never really found time for a wife or romance. He did have an interesting feud with Isaac Newton. Newton would send strange, paranoid letters accusing Locke of trying to “entangle [him] with women.”

His rejection of the Trinity Doctrine would have branded him a heretic and had him burned at the stake in a previous century.

"With Milton and Newton there is another name constantly associated, as sharing the same distinguished mental rank, JOHN LOCKE. The evidence of his Unitarian belief is so complete that no one now denies that he held the same theological opinions on this subject as the poet and the philosopher. He had well considered the Scriptural, and also the historical, arguments for and against the Trinity. He says, 'The fathers before the Council of Nice speak rather like Arians than the orthodox.'

'There is scarcely one text alleged by the Trinitarians which is not otherwise expounded by their own writers.'

'It [the Trinity) is inconsistent with the rule of prayer directed in the Sacred Scriptures. For if God be three persons, how can we pray to Him through His Son for His Spirit'?"


Locke, like others of his time, was fascinated with alchemy: "Newton’s friend and follower, the philosopher John Locke, was also a reader of Philalethes and a serious student of both chymical medicine and chrysopoeia. If Newton was a 'magician,' then so were Boyle, Starkey, and Locke." ~William R. Newman

The History and Mystery of Alchemy is now available on Amazon...and it is only 99 cents.

Locke wrote the following on reading and thinking: "This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in. Those who have read of everything are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. There are indeed in some writers risible instances of deep thought, close and acute reasoning and ideas well pursued. The light these would give would be of great use, if their readers would observe and imitate them; all the rest at best are but particulars fit to be turned into knowledge; but that can be done only by our own meditation and examining the reach, force and coherence of what is said; and then, as far as we apprehend and see the connection of ideas, so far it is ours; without that it is but so much loose matter floating in our brain. The memory may be stored, but the judgment is little better and the stock of knowledge not increased by being able to repeat what others have said or produce the arguments we have found in them. Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge by hearsay, and the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, and very often upon weak and wrong principles. For all that is to be found in books is not built upon true foundations nor always rightly deduced from the principles it is pretended to be built on. Such an examen as is requisite to discover that, every reader’s mind is not forward to make, especially in those who have given themselves up to a party and only hunt for what they can scrape together that may favor and support the tenets of it. Such men willfully exclude themselves from truth and from all true benefit to be received by reading. Others of more indifference often want attention and industry. The mind is backward in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to its original and to see upon what basis it stands and how firmly; but yet it is this that gives so much the advantage to one man more than another in reading. The mind should by severe rules be tied down to this at first uneasy task; use and exercise will give it facility, so that those who are accustomed to it, readily, as it were with one cast of the eye, take a view of the argument and presently in most cases see where it bottoms. Those who have got this faculty, one may say, have got the true key of books and the clue to lead them through the maze of variety of opinions and authors to truth and certainty. This young beginners should be entered in and showed the use of, that they might profit by their reading. Those who are strangers to it still be apt to think it too great a clog in the way of men’s studies, and they will suspect they shall make but small progress if, in the books they read, they must stand to examine and unravel every argument and follow it step by step up to its original.


I answer, this is a good objection and ought to weigh with those whose reading is designed for much talk and little knowledge, and I have nothing to say to it. But I am here enquiring into the conduct of the understanding in its progress towards knowledge; and to those who aim at that, I may say that he, who fair and softly goes steadily forward in a course that points right, will sooner be at his journey’s end, than he that runs after everyone he meets, though he gallop all day full speed.

To which let me add that this way of thinking on and profiting by what we read will be a clog and rub to anyone only in the beginning; when custom and exercise has made it familiar, it will be dispatched in most occasions without resting or interruption in the course of our reading. The motions and views of a mind exercised that way are wonderfully quick; and a man used to such sort of reflections sees as much at one glimpse as would require a long discourse to lay before another and make out in an entire and gradual deduction. Besides that, when the first difficulties are over, the delight and sensible advantage it brings mightily encourages and enlivens the mind in reading, which without this is very improperly called study."

See also Over 320 Books on DVDrom on Thinkers and Philosophy


Thursday, August 19, 2021

The Holy Spirit not the 3rd Person of the Trinity

 

This book, "The Impersonality of the Holy Spirit by John Marsom" is available on Amazon for only 99 cents.

From The History of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Christian Church by Hugh Hutton Stannus

As God, our Heavenly Father, is THE INFINITE SPIRIT who fills all space and time, we are inclined to think it must be an exceedingly difficult task to find in the Bible proofs of another Infinite Spirit, “the third person in the Trinity”. It may have been some such thought as this which led Jeremy Taylor (“Works”, xiii. 143) to say, “That the Holy Ghost is God, is nowhere said in Scripture. That the Holy Ghost is to be invocated, is nowhere commanded; nor any example of its being done recorded”. There is nothing more evident, in the writings of what are called the ante-Nicene fathers, than the fact that Irenæus, Origen, Tertullian, Athenagoras, &c. &c., never thought of the Holy Ghost as equal to the Father. In the New Testament the Holy Spirit is spoken of as sent by the Father, as the gift of the Father-that is, subordinate to the Father. So, too, the Son is repeatedly spoken of as subordinate to the Father, and as deriving all his power and authority from the Father. Trinitarians say, indeed, that these texts refer only to the Son's human nature, and not to his supposed Divine one. But, in the case of the Holy Spirit, no such evasion can be resorted to. Moreover, if the Three Persons of the Trinity be co-equal, is it not very strange that there should be passages so strong, and so numerous, in assertion of the inferiority and subjection of the Son and Spirit to the Father, and yet that there is not one passage in the whole Bible that speaks of any inferiority or subjection, real or apparent, of the Father to the Son or the Spirit? We are bound again to repeat that all the weight of Bible evidence is against the hypothesis of a second infinite spirit, equal to “the God and Father of all flesh”.

The doctrine of a Triune Deity which affirms the Holy Spirit to be a third person in the Godhead, is altogether one of inference; and it involves the mind in the most complete confusion, making more than one, eternal omnipotent, omnipresent God. "God is a Spirit", the Holy Spirit, and it is unscripturas to say that there is more than One Infinite Spirit. In the following passages the words “Spirit” and “Holy Ghost ” are used for God himself.

“For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him” (i.e. except the man himself), “even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God”, (i.e. but God himself.)—1 Cor. ii. 11.

Why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?......Thou hast not lied unto man but unto God”.—Acts v. 3, 4. 

"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you”.—1 Cor. iii. 16.

"By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens”, (i.e. God made the heavens.)- Job xxvi. 13.

"The Spirit of God hath made me”, (i.e. God me.) Job xxxiii. 4.

Christ said, “I cast out devils by the spirit of God”. Matt. xii. 28. These were miracles, we learn, which God did by him.

“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee: from thy presence", (i.e. from thyself.)-Ps. cxxxix. 7.

"My Spirit shall not always strive with man”, (i.e. I will not always strive with man.)-Gen. vi. 3.

“Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”, (i.e. by God.)—2 Pet. i. 21.

In reading the Scriptures we find that all these works ascribed to the Spirit are also said to be done by the Power, Understanding, Word, Hand, Finger and Breath of God; can any person seriously believe these to be distinct personalities in the Godhead? Do they not simply mean God himself?

We also perceive that in the Bible, “the Spirit of God” frequently signifies holy influence, strength, comfort, truth, miraculous power, etc., etc., which God is said to send, give, pour out, shed forth, baptize with, and anoint with. The following passages clearly sustain this view:

“Thou gavest also thy Good Spirit to instruct them”.Neh. ix. 20.

“I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions”.-Joel ii. 28.

“And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord".- Isa. xi. 2.

“Would God that all Jehovah's people were prophets, and that Jehovah would put his Spirit upon them”, (i.e. give them wisdom of speech.)-Numb. xi. 29.

“And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him (Samson) and he rent the lion as he would a kid”, (i.e. God gave him strength.)—Judges xiv. 6.

“The Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet; and Abiezer was gathered after him”.-- Judges vi. 34. 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; and hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised".—Luke iv. 18.

“He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God; for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him”.- Jn. iii. 34.

“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with Power". -Acts x. 38.

"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him”.—Luke xi. 13.

"Now we have received, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God”. -1 Cor. ii. 12.

“I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth”.- John xiv. 16, 17.

“When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth which proceedeth from the Father".--John xv. 26.

“Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth": -John xvi. 13.

No one need wonder that the influence of the Holy Spirit is spoken of occasionally as a person, when they know that Sin, Death, Wisdom, and Charity, though inanimate things and qualities, are often so spoken of.



Blaise Pascal (and his wager) on This Day in History

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This day in history: Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, physicist, inventor, and writer died on this day in 1662. He was also a Catholic theologian who gave us what is called Pascal's Wager. This wager is:  A rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).

Christianity Today explains it this way: Imagine you are drowning at sea. Certain death awaits you. But then you see a lifeboat floating towards you. A voice tells you that it may well be rigged to explode if you climb on board. There is no way to know whether this is true or not. What should you do? The logic of Pascal's wager is that you might as well swim to the boat. If you do not, you will die anyway so you lose nothing except the effort taken to get to the boat. If you get to the boat and it has no bomb then you have survived, which is an infinitely valuable outcome to you.


Pascal's wager charted new territory in probability theory, marked the first formal use of decision theory, existentialism, pragmatism, and voluntarism.

The stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius expressed a similar sentiment long before Pascal which can be summed up as follows:  If the gods exist and they are good, they will look kindly on you for your attempt to be a moral person.
If the gods exist but they aren't good, you shouldn't have believed in them anyway, morally speaking.
If the gods don't exist, then you will have lived a virtuous and honest life, which is good in and of itself.

The Christian apologist Arnobius of Sicca (d. 330) stated an early version of the argument in his book Against the Pagans, arguing "is it not more rational, of two things uncertain and hanging in doubtful suspense, rather to believe that which carries with it some hopes, than that which brings none at all?"

Wager aside, Philosophers over time have come up with many arguments for the existence of God. The Western tradition of these arguments started with Plato and Aristotle who gave us the cosmological argument for God (which is an attempt to prove the existence of God by the fact that things exist and must have a cause). 

St. Anselm gave us the ontological argument which argues that because we can imagine a perfect being like a god, ergo, there must be a god.

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Augustine of Hippo all used a variation of the Teleological Argument, or, the Argument from Design (Complexity implies a designer. The universe is highly complex. Therefore, the universe has a designer.)

RenĂ© Descartes argued that the existence of a benevolent God is logically necessary for the evidence of the senses to be meaningful. 

John Calvin argued for a sensus divinitatis, which gives each human a knowledge of God's existence: "That there exists in the human mind and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity [sensus divinitatis], we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead…. …this is not a doctrine which is first learned at school, but one as to which every man is, from the womb, his own master; one which nature herself allows no individual to forget."

There is also  the argument from beauty, the argument from consciousness, the Rational Warrant argument, and arguments from testimony and personal experiences.

There are also arguments from miracles and arguments from authority. For instance, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormonism, asserts that the miraculous appearance of God, Jesus Christ, and angels to Joseph Smith and others and subsequent finding and translation of the Book of Mormon establishes the existence of God.

Islam asserts that the revelation of its holy book, the Qur'an, and its unique literary attributes, vindicate its divine authorship, and thus the existence of God.


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