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Unitarians and denying the Godhead

There is a unitarian church near where I work which as with most churches in the area has a banner announcing their easter services. I know that unitarians deny that Jesus was God in the flesh(1 Timothy 3:16, Philippians 2:4, 1 John 5:7, John 1:1-14) so I decided to research their beliefs on the web. From my brief search, there seems to be 2 types of uni’s, unitarians universalists and biblical unitarians. The uni universalist believes in universal salvation for all, meaning all will be saved. They seemed to be heavy into human reasoning and supposedly read from the Koran and other types of religious materials at their services. The biblical unitarians on the other hand are closer to christianity(but NOT christians) as they believe that only faith in Jesus Christ can save you. They also are big into reason, or what I like to call the foolishness of man.

The website that I gleaned most of this information from is biblicalunitarian.com. They claim to be christians, and from what I have read claim that trinitarians(ones who are saved and believe in the trinity) are christians too. See, that is where I have a problem, among other things. They claim that God cannot be three persons and one at the same time, but Jesus was just a man who lived a sinless life and then died for all of our sins. My main argument is that if they are correct(which they are not) and Jesus was not God, then we have been attributing deity to someone who is not God, which is false doctrine and goes against the first commandment. So only one of us can be correct and the other teaching a false doctrine(or worse worshipping another god) and both can’t be christians.

As with all advanced cults(like the JW’s, mormons) they seem to have an answer to all the tough questions, for instance John 1:1. They write 2 articles on this issue and have to play with the greek and use scholar speak to prove that the verse doesn’t prove Jesus is God. I will admit I haven’t read a majority of both articles, as I got to the part where they started the greek game and stopped there.

OK, I just did some more reading, and we can think modern scholarship for supporting the unitarians view. In reading over their examination of all the verses that trinitarians use to support the trinity, I notice they accuse the KJB of adding verses or using minority greek manuscripts to support the the trinity, where modern bibles have the proper renderings. They used the NASB’s rendering of 1 Timothy 3:16 to support their view!

From http://biblicalunitarian.com/html/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=132 :

3.When properly translated, 1 Timothy 3:16 actually argues against the Trinity .  “By common confession great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, Was vindicated in the Spirit, Beheld by angels, Proclaimed among the nations, Believed on in the world, Taken up in glory” ( NASB ).  This section of Scripture beautifully portrays an overview of Christ’s life and accomplishments .  It all fits with what we know of the man , Jesus Christ .  If Jesus were God, this section of Scripture would have been the perfect place to say so .  We should expect to see some phrases like, “God incarnate,” “God and Man united,” “very God and very man,” etc .  But nothing like that occurs .  Instead, the section testifies to what non-Trinitarians believe—that Christ was a man, begotten by the Father, and that he was taken up into glory. 

Notice the quote from Bruce Metzger just above this section that they use to support their beliefs.

More can be found here .

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2004 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Christianity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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