Talk:KCU/03/Lady Knights

Instructor Feedback on First Draft

Update & revised comment: While most of what I said below is true, some of the formatting problems did obscure some of your contributions. This group has won the prize of having done the most work of all the groups in this section. I remember saying last time that you would receive a bonus for that. Please remind me if I forget when I put in the grades at the end of the semester. Your final draft grade (from the instructor) will receive a 5 point bonus on top of the grade I assign you.

As a first draft, this contribution falls short. Even though you have a lot of information & sources (good job on that!), the work has not been organized & revised into a clear, readable form. If this were submitted for the final draft, it would pass with around a C grade. On the other hand, you have done some very good work gathering dialog partners & in taking notes on those resources.

Things to work on:

1. Organize your information by writing your own explanatory & summarizing paragraphs & incorporating your dialog partners into your own writing

2. Expand your treatment of all biblical passages that shed light on the issue of the Trinity--organize & streamline the discussion at the same time

3. Make clearer while interacting with your dialog partners how you would evaluate their views & arguments. For instance, Pack gives a lot of disputable claims & has a view that is not very compatible with most of the rest of what you write & what you found in other dialog partners. You will need to bring in a counter-weight to Pack if you believe that his claims are misleading.

4. Improve the formatting--see the Editing help link at the bottom of the editing page for instructions. I cleaned up the most problematic long horizontal lines for you. Basically, starting a new line after each sentence helps keep the formatting cleaner in a wiki, if you have copied & pasted in from elsewhere.

Here's some other web resources that might be helpful:

http://www.sbts.edu/Resources/Publications/Journal/Spring_2006.aspx

http://www.the-highway.com/trinity_Bavinck.html

http://www.the-highway.com/trinity_Watson.html

http://www.bible.ca/trinity/

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TopicIndex/117/

http://www.christianity.co.nz/trinity.htm

http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/beliefs/trinity.htm

http://everystudent.com/forum/trinity.html?gclid-CKae-uCU204CFQp7PAod5_A

http://www.htb.org.uk/audio/trinity-why-it-matters-graham-tomlin

Here's another useful dialog partner, this time from an excellent individual forum post from one of my students in the online section of Christian Heritage, Missi Balch:

The Trinitarian doctrine as developed by the councils of Nicea and Constantinople has been a topic of discussion since its inception in AD 381. I personally believe in the Trinity whole heartedly. I think it is extremely important to believe in the Trinity and I have substantial evidence to support my belief.

First, even though the word Trinity is not found in the Bible, there are very specific references to all three parts of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. On the surface, I could easily say that I believe in the Trinity because the Bible supports it and I believe everything in the Bible. This is true. I do believe everything in the Bible, for “all Scripture is God breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Paul talked about Scripture as the infallible and authoritative word of God. I think in order to believe in the Trinity, one must believe every word of the Bible. To believe the Bible as the true words of God and then to not believe in the Trinity makes no sense.

I did a web search for the Trinity and came across a site not led by Bible scholars, but by students and for students. I found the wording of what the Trinity means to be exactly as my personal opinion. It states, “the Bible clearly speaks of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit…and also clearly presents that there is only one God. Thus the term: Tri meaning three, and Unity meaning one, Tri+Unity=Trinity. It is a way of acknowledging what the Bible reveals to us about God, that God is yet three ‘persons’ who have the same essence of deity” (www.everystudent.com). What a great definition.

Why is belief in the doctrine of the Trinity so important? If we don’t consider and believe in the unique divinity of Jesus as the second person in the Trinity, then all of His teaching would be no different than any other prophet. He would just be considered a wise man who was a great leader. He was so much more than that. Jesus was God in the fullest sense. According to G.R. Habermas and M. R. Licona who co-authored The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, Jesus referred to Himself as the “Son of Man”. Why would he call Himself the Son of Man if he was God? Jesus was fully man and fully God. (This is another discussion altogether). According to Habermas and Licona, “the key passage concerning the title is found in the Old Testament, Daniel 7:13-14”. In this passage Daniel is describing the second coming of Jesus. He says “I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming…and to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and men of every language might serve Him”. This is the fulfilled prophecy of a human Messiah.

The Holy Spirit is also part of the Trinity. If we do not understand the deity of the Holy Spirit, then how can we allow Him to guide us and direct our lives? There are many scriptural references to the Holy Spirit as a Devine being. In the text What the Bible Teaches by R. A. Torrey, the Holy Spirit is described as having Divine attributes such as being eternal (Ps. 139:7-10), omnipresent (Luke 1:35), omnipotent (1 Cor. 2:10-11, John 14:26, and John 16:12-13), and omniscient.

There is substantial evidence that supports the Doctrine of the Trinity, and many scholars have written books about the subject. I hold fast to my belief in the Trinity. Right from the beginning, we learn about God as a triune being. Genesis 1:26 says “Then God said ‘let us make man in our image, in our likeness”. Jesus said “I and the Father are one” in John 10:30. We are told to “go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). I believe it and I will do as told.

When I talk to my children about topics such as this, I like to use the illustration of H2O as water, ice, and steam. They are easily identified as unique entities, yet they are all still water. It is simple, but it works.

I can not believe the Bible as the inspired word of God, study it daily, grow in my Christian walk, and then deny the Trinity. I may as well deny God Himself.