@Magnum
"It just makes more sense to me..."
In my opinion, what seems more reasonable is not relevant, but what the Scripture asserts about this. This interpretation above does not generate contradictions, at most it explains to someone who previously approached the Bible with a "hack at it with an axe" attitude. In fact, it eliminates contradictions entirely. Let's see a specific example: Scripture teaches that there is one God; yet, it claims, both explicitly and implicitly, that there are three persons who are God. This is a formal logical contradiction, and based on the natural world, we might think this is not possible. Here comes the concept that dissolves the contradiction. Staying with this example: distinguishing concepts such as personhood (the being) and essence (nature, substance). These concepts describe a real existence, just not often needed in the created world, where person and essence coincide. However, if we want to organize the revelation of God found in Scripture, these concepts are very useful. In the first centuries, this was not as necessary; people were satisfied with the belief in one God, but God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - how to describe this in the most accessible way for human reason did not concern them. This was sufficient at that stage, but as certain heresies emerged, it became unavoidable to address these with a definitive formulation of faith. However, "basic vocabulary" is not enough; analytical-descriptive concepts are needed. The Jehovah's Witness response is satisfied to lament that the expressions Οὐσία and Ὑπόστασις have historical antecedents with ancient Hellenic philosophers. I responded, "It's foolish and stubbornly paganophobic to reject any Christian doctrine that ever used these concepts, simply because a Greek philosopher did (e.g., ousia, hypostasis, physis), as inherently false."
Another example: The statements about Jesus in the New Testament seem formally contradictory because, on one hand, they require us to profess that He is truly God, with all the implications thereof; on the other hand, there are statements that suggest He is not God, but merely a man. This is a formal logical impossibility, as this does not occur in the created world. Yet, this is what Scripture presents, so either we throw the Bible out the window, or we try to resolve this contradiction. The Arian response is to absolutize the attributes that suggest one nature and to attack the other with chisel, fork, and hammer. However, this is not exactly a fair method, as you can see. Again, we are at a point where this needs to be harmonized, and Jesus' dual nature resolves this contradiction. So, was there a problem, or wasn't there? Do you understand? :)
If you make "common sense" the criterion for religious truth, not much would remain of Christianity, as it is full of miracles that simply do not comply with "common sense". I'm not referring to the quick answer that "God can do it", but to the question of how exactly. Here it is evident that if one has to explain miracles, then the wildest rationalist-biblicist can dismiss them as beyond reason, and it doesn't matter if it doesn't align with formal logic; however, when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, they fail to do the same. What an inconsistency! Russell's method was similar: he no longer started from what traditional theologians did, summarizing what is in the Bible and based on this, establishing certain regularities, etc., but rather like this: let's sit down and think whether it's reasonable for it to be so. If not, then this should be the starting point for Scriptural interpretation. This rationalism essentially excludes the possibility that mystery could exist.
The rationalist theology is a direction in scriptural interpretation and theology that, following the spirit of the Enlightenment, places human reason above Scripture; what it does not find "reasonable", it is unwilling to accept as the word of God, but attributes to the human weakness, error of the scribes or authors, or subsequent, intentional, detectable and correctable changes. Thus this epistemological view venerates the absolute authority of human reason and its limitless capacity for knowledge; a theological direction that accepts doctrines understandable through reason.
Their handling of the Bible is liberal: reason overrules revelation, so what does not seem "logical" (?) at first must be denied (e.g., the Trinity), cf. Acts 17:29. If there is still something "illogical" in the Bible for them, it is either due to the human error of the writers (Unitarians), or ancient Bible forgery (e.g., Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus and God "became confusable"), cf. Matthew 24:35, 1Peter 1:23-25.
"that the Father and Son are two distinct entities"
The Scripture does not asser that the Father and the Son/Logos are different "entities" (?), but only that they are different persons.
"Is the son a created being ....?"
The Scriptures still clearly distinguish the birth of the only-begotten Son from the making/creating of creatures, and the Scipture never calls the Son a creature. It is just arianist WTS theology. The Son/Logos is the "only-begotten" Son of the Father, so He is unique in his kind, His sonship to the Father is qualitatively different, superior from that of the angels, since He alone is said to have been born / begotten by the Father, while the angels were created.
Or where does the New Testament use the terms 'ktizo', especially 'poio', for the orign of the Son from the Father? Huh? Where does he say that He is a creature (ktistheis), a creature (ktisma) or the first creature (protoktisma or protoktisis)? The Bible never calls Christ a creature (ktistheis), a creature (ktisma) or the first creature (protoktisma or protoktisis). The Bible claims that he created everything, without him nothing came into being that has become (Jn 1:3, Col 1:15-17). From all this it logically follows that he cannot belong to the created, the things that have become, so he cannot be the "first creature" either.
Does the New Testament say that the Son was begotten or born of the Father? Yes or no? Say the same of the creatures or not? Do you think it is a coincidence that the Holy Scriptures describe the origin of the Son from the Father, consistently with a different word it uses for the creatures?
- gennao, tikto <-> ktizo, poio
- the NT exclusively describes the Son’s orgin from the Father by terms derived from ‘gennao’ and ‘tikto’, and openly states that that in the beginning He already was, even the aeons made through him
- the NT exclusively describes the creation’s, and the creatures’ coming in the existence by terms derived from ‘ktizo’ and ‘poioi’
- therefore there must be a significant difference in quality between these two
It's particularly amusing that one of the most important Watchtower doctrines which they are 'ad nauseam' parroting, namely "the Son is a creature", is NOWHERE explicitly stated in the Bible, although they amusingly claim that all their teachings are "clearly" in the Bible! John 1:3 clearly proves that Jesus is not "made", but in accordance with John 1:1, he always "was". For if Jesus were a creature, this verse would claim about him that he was created with his own cooperation, which unleashes the conceptual monster of "self-creation" on the debater who tries this.
"(having a beginning)"
The Son does not have a beginning (in the), he (already) WAS (existed) in the beginning (cf. John 1:1a), and even more He IS the beginning (Col 1:18).
"When the son was on earth, did he pray to a completely separate superior father who was in heaven while the son was on earth?"
The key is the dual nature of Jesus, since the Incarnation the Son is not "only" God, but also man, this is what the hypostatic unity is about. As a man he could pray to himself as to God; that is, his human soul could glorify a deity closely related to him, but essentially completely different from him. There is no contradiction in this, in fact it is a natural consequence of dual nature."they're just too complex for most people to grasp."
Why should theology be adjusted to fit the comprehension of every average person? For someone with a less intellectual disposition, knowing the Nicene Creed is more than sufficient in this respect.
The focus was not on the "invented" technical terms by denominations (the fact of them), but on the fact that each article of faith is a definitive formulation of a declared truth, and in doing so, we inevitably use certain analytical expressions. Despite any extreme anti-intellectualism and biblicism, no denomination can halt its vocabulary at the Scripture. Even if we theoretically assume this, there remains the fact that the vocabulary used in Scripture does not form a closed set for Christians. This would be akin to Amish logic, who claim they use no technical tools not mentioned in Scripture. You'd agree this is an absurd thought: I find it equally absurd to scoff at the Trinity on the basis that technical terms are used to describe it.
Note, this was played out by the Arians in the 4th century as well. When they argued that the term "consubstantial" is not in the Bible, Athanasius responded: "Impiety must be prevented by all means, no matter how diversely and convincingly someone tries to defend it with words and reasoning. On the contrary, everyone can testify that piety is pleasing to God, even if someone uses new expressions, as long as the speaker's thoughts correspond to the faith and wishes to express themselves accordingly with words."
This is essentially the issue: not the individual theological expressions themselves, but the evangelical truths formulated in them are what's important. Once this is clarified, we can see how absurd the "charge with an axe" level of precision attitude is, saying I'm not interested, just give me simple Christianity, and that's fine.
I don't expect you to adopt this "jargon" as your own, only to understand what I'm talking about when I debate with you. We cannot discuss the Trinity without clarifying what it is – this is orthodox Trinitarian doctrine. This doctrine of the Trinity itself, not some arbitrary alternative imagined by its critics. We must distinguish it from the modalist heresy, professed by a man named Sabellius, after whom we call this direction Sabellianism. It's necessary to talk about this because often during debates, the nature of the difference in opinion becomes clear: modalism professes the personal identity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, claiming these three names are different manifestations, modes, forms of the same one divine hypostasis, subsistence. In contrast, it teaches that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, while forming an inseparable, essential unity, are distinguishable in terms of their personhood. This is very important to clarify, as we've already dismantled a bunch of objections that authors want to raise against the doctrine of the Trinity – e.g., one of the Jehovah's Witnesses' explanatory books asks under the heading 'Trinity': "Is the Bible in harmony with those who teach that the Father and the Son are not separate and distinguishable persons?" After my previous explanation, perhaps I don't even need to write why this doesn't hit the mark against the doctrine of the Trinity: because what they're disputing here is not the doctrine of the Trinity (not even "a type of it"), but non-Trinitarianism, or modalism – which we ourselves also consider heresy.
Honestly, I don't understand this cult of ignorance (I can't call it anything else) that many of these neo-denominations seem to embrace. This must be some form of raw Rousseauism, which idealizes the "good old days" when everyone was an "ordinary person," there was no private property, and oh, how beautiful and good it was. Even Luther and his contemporaries didn't interpret "sola Scriptura" as handing the Bible to the average German peasant woman, expecting her to understand it easily because "the Bible was written for simple/avarage ordinary people" and "Scripture speaks for itself" (blah blah blah, how often I hear these empty, yet to be validated phrases). Instead, they meant that they, the theologians, could freely interpret it without the interference of the pope. That's all they said about it!
In contrast, this cult of ignorance (again) is a completely wrong and anachronistic attitude. When in the history of God's people was everyone given unrestricted biblical interpretation? When did every "ordinary person" have their own Bible? Where in the Bible does it say, "I was written for ordinary people"? Where? Where?! Well, I'll tell you: nowhere!
The language of Scripture and the language of theology relate to each other as the spoken, living (mother) tongue does to grammar. In everyday speech, we don't use words like noun, adjective, etc.; we just speak with the greatest of naturalness. The language of the Bible is not a formal logical theological treatise, but rather like the mother tongue, the speech of a small child, natural speech. The language of theology, however, is like school grammar, which is the formal logical description of the mother tongue. Sectarians, on the other hand, treat the Bible as a grammar book, not as the "living Word" they constantly emphasize. One should approach the Bible fundamentally through hermeneutics, not formal logic. But this is almost telling, because who learns a language through formal logic? Someone learning a foreign language. Thus, the Bible is not their mother tongue. Then, they even take pride in their naivety and in their inability to grasp the complexity of this entire system of thought, because, in their view, anyone who thinks a bit more deeply is philosophizing and walking on Satan's path. However, in many cases among ordinary Jehovah's Witnesses, it's not about simplicity or childlike innocence but about arrogant stupidity, when someone is conceited about being limited. Because my grandmother was a simple Catholic, a humble woman who acknowledged that she didn't know many things, but she was never proud of that.
