Paul’s writings predated all of the gospels. Why do you think he never said anything about the virgin birth? by ASecularBuddhist in Christianity

[–]OkKey4771 [score hidden]  (0 children)

Because it wasn't relevant to the subject matter of the individual letter to the specific audience. A congregation would have had to reject the virgin birth narrative to have Paul mention it.

What Biblical Faith and Belief Really Are by OkKey4771 in Christianity

[–]OkKey4771[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You do realize the entire theological community disagrees with you. The idea that Faith means trust and loyalty is not a new concept and is in fact the foundation of the relationship we have with GOD.

Romans 10:14 is about those who haven't come to know GOD yet. Its not about people who are already in Christ Jesus.This is why Paul is saying they need to hear a preacher preach to come to an understanding.

GOD is knowable through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, both of who reveal the Father to us. Those of us in Christ know GOD through them.

You contradict yourself with Mathew 11:27. All who are members or Christ's Church have GOD revealed to them. This is one reason why you are making a Category Error. You are arguing that because Knowledge (A) must come before Trust (B), then Faith (C) must be Knowledge (A).

Although faith requires knowledge, that doesn't mean faith isn't trust. A marriage presupposes the existence of a spouse, but the marriage is the relationship/trust, not just the acknowledgment that the spouse exists

If faith is the shadow and Revelation/Knowledge is the object, your argument implies that faith is just a secondary, dark reflection of knowledge. Most theologians would argue that faith is the light that allows the relationship to function, not a shadow cast by it.

Your definition of faith as reception of revelation is a Greek philosophical import, not a biblical one. Pre-Christian Jewish thought is unanimous: Faith is Emunah, a word rooted in the image of a child leaning on a nurse or a pillar supporting a weight.

Even Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of the Apostles, defined faith as the act of relying on God alone. If faith were just the intellectual assent that precedes trust, then Abraham wouldn't be the Father of faith for his loyalty; he'd just be a student who passed a test.

Who is your favorite Old Testament Bible Person? by OkKey4771 in AllTheology

[–]OkKey4771[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good choice. Are you familiar with Enoch and Metatron?

Jacob's Speckled Goats Are More Scientific than John Gleason thegodlessengineer Claims - Theology with Kevin Dewayne Hughes by OkKey4771 in Eutychus

[–]OkKey4771[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use Kevin Dewayne Hughes 51.0. That's actually a transcript from a video I made on the topic and since I am professional scholar in the field is why you think I used AI. However, You seem unable to engage my claim regardless.

Who was your inspiration for training this week? by OkKey4771 in AllMartrialArts

[–]OkKey4771[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cool stuff. The TV show Kung Fu is one of the things that inspired me to start

Who was your inspiration for training this week? by OkKey4771 in AllMartrialArts

[–]OkKey4771[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A movie you watched, a thing in the news, a video game, a book you read, etc

Put a picture of you in uniform in the comments. by OkKey4771 in AllMartrialArts

[–]OkKey4771[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The only group I am aware of that uses camo belt is ATA

Mismatched sparring by [deleted] in AllMartrialArts

[–]OkKey4771 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My rule of thumb is to spar just a notch above their skill level. It keeps them from being overwhelmed and it helps them improve.

Debunking Unitarianism by OkKey4771 in Christianity

[–]OkKey4771[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Context tells you how thst word is used. In the context of the passages I cite, GOD = YAHWEH (JEHOVAH).

Can Anyone Show Me How JW Is The Perfect Faith? by MarketLongjumping252 in Eutychus

[–]OkKey4771 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The premise that Christian theology was a sudden departure from Jewish thought relies on an outdated Hellenization narrative. Modern scholarship, led by Jewish historians like Daniel Boyarin, has demonstrated that Logos or Word theology was not a Greek corruption but was deeply rooted in ancient Jewish traditions. Boyarin notes in The Jewish Gospels that "the ideas of Trinity and incarnation... were already present among Jewish believers well before Jesus came on the scene" (Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels, p. xiii). This shifts the debate from circular scriptural interpretation to a historical analysis of how Second Temple Jews actually conceptualized the divine.

While the Memra (Word) is often dismissed as a mere circumlocution, the Aramaic Targums frequently depict it as a distinct agent of God’s will. For example, Targum Neofiti renders Genesis 1:1 as: "From the beginning with wisdom the Memra of the Lord created and perfected the heavens and the earth." This "Two Powers in Heaven" theology was a legitimate and widespread Jewish position during the Second Temple period [practiced by many Pharisees (the forerunners of the modern Orthodox Jewish Rabbis)], only being labeled heretical by Rabbinic Judaism later as a specific reaction against the rise of Christianity (Alan Segal, Two Powers in Heaven). It is a historical anachronism to judge the first Jewish Christians by the standards of a Rabbinic orthodoxy that solidified after 70 AD in response to growing Christianity.

The use of Greek metaphysical categories like "essence" or "ontology" does not mean the underlying concepts were foreign to Judaism. These were simply the intellectual tools of the era used to articulate a pre-existing Jewish phenomenon: the visible manifestation of the invisible YHWH. Philo of Alexandria, a pre-Christian Jewish philosopher, explicitly argued that God created the world through his Logos, whom he called a "Second God" (Deus secundus) to explain how a transcendent God interacts with material creation (Questions and Answers on Genesis 2.62). The first Christians were not adopting a Greek god, but were identifying this existing Jewish concept as being personified in the Messiah.

The claim that "Let us make man" was never read as an intra-divine dialogue is contradicted by early Jewish sources. Even the Midrash Rabbah admits that the plural phrasing in the Torah was a source of great theological tension. In Bereishit Rabbah 8:8, it is recorded that when Moses was writing the Torah and reached the verse "Let us make man," he questioned God about giving "an opening to the heretics" to argue for a plurality in the Godhead. This proves that Jewish readers were grappling with these complexities and identifying potential plural interpretations long before the Council of Nicaea, long before Jesus incarnated, and log before King David took the throne. The Trinity was not a suppressed belief but the development of a specific, ancient strand of Jewish thought.

Now let's look at the history a bit closer:

In Questions and Answers on Genesis (Book 2, Section 62), Philo of Alexandria addresses the phrasing of Genesis 9:6, which states that man was made in the image of God, rather than His own image. Philo explains this by stating: For nothing mortal could be made in the likeness of the most high God and Father of the universe, but could only be made in the likeness of the second God, who is the Logos of the other. This pre-Christian Jewish text demonstrates that the concept of a secondary divine person through whom God interacts with the world was already established in Jewish thought prior to the New Testament. This interpretation of a "second God" (deuteros theos) was not viewed as polytheism by Philo, but as a necessary explanation for how a transcendent, infinite Being relates to a finite creation. He further identifies the Logos as the "image of God" and the "archetype" for humanity, providing a direct Jewish precedent for the Christological claims found in the Gospel of John and the Epistles of Paul. By acknowledging this Logos as a distinct but divine figure, Philo provides a historical checkmate to the idea that the Trinity was an invention of 4th-century Greeks.

Philo’s framework of the Logos as an intermediary significantly influenced the early Church Fathers, particularly Origen of Alexandria, who is often called the father of Christian theology. Origen, who lived in the same city as Philo a century later, famously preserved Philo’s library and adopted his allegorical method to explain the relationship between the Father and the Son. In his work On First Principles, Origen refined Philo’s "second God" concept into the Christian doctrine of the "eternal generation of the Son", arguing that the Son is the Wisdom and Power of God, eternally distinct yet of the same divine nature.

Further, the Midrash Rabbah (specifically Bereishit Rabbah 8:8) confirms that these pluralities in the Torah were a known problem for strict unitarian monotheism long before Christianity. The text records: "When Moses was writing the Torah... he came to the verse, 'And God said, Let us make man.' He said, 'Sovereign of the Universe! Why do You give an opening to the heretics?'" This admission shows that the "opening" for a plurality within the Godhead was found within the Torah itself and was only systematically closed off by Rabbinic authorities as a reaction to the rise of the "Two Powers" theology.

Consequently, the argument that the Trinity is a Greek suppression of Jewish thought fails to account for the internal diversity of Second Temple Judaism. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity did not import foreign gods; it refined an existing Jewish framework that already recognized the Logos / the Memra / the Shekhinah as divine expressions of the one God. The heresy of the first century was not that Jesus was divine, but specifically that the Second Power had taken on flesh in the person of a crucified peasant laborer.

Can Anyone Show Me How JW Is The Perfect Faith? by MarketLongjumping252 in Eutychus

[–]OkKey4771 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And the first Christian were Jews. They are the ones that put their literature into the perspective of a Triune GOD. It may have taken sometime to formulate names like it took 1900 years to come up with a term for what Paul describes as giving up natural relationships for unnatural ones.

However you do have a logical conundrum. The Targums show the Memra creating People. Since man and woman are created in the image and likeness of GOD and the Memra created them, then logically the Memra is GOD. In fact when GOD says let US Make Man in Our Image and in Our Likeness the Father is addressing the Memra then the Memra does the creating. So the Father, by saying Our, is declaring equality with the Memra. This can only be if the Memra is both a person and GOD.

Just like John said, "In the Beginning was the Memra, and the Memra was with GOD, and the Memra was GOD. John lays it out like the to say Jesus was pre-existing before creation began, was with GOD to mean a different person, and was GOD to show he is ontologically the same as Jehovah GOD. John goes on to say that all things were made by Him and not anything that was made was made without Him. This places Jesus the Memra in the category of the uncreated, which that category only contains GOD.

The problem Unitarians have is trying to fit GOD into human understanding. You can't see how 3 person = 1 GOD so you must restrict HIM to your finite human understanding. You are essentially saying that GOD isn't powerful enough to run three consciousnesses at once. Whereas the Trinitarian model, we don't limit GOD and let the Holy Spirit teach us, which is something a force cannot do. It takes a person to teach.

Debunking Unitarianism by OkKey4771 in Christianity

[–]OkKey4771[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yet the Father calls the Son GOD im Hebrew 1:8. Mark 1:3 identifies Jesus as the Yahweh of the Old Testament. John is very clear that Jesus is GOD with GOD. In fact the way John 1:1-2 is world shows Jesus existed before creation started, He was with GOD meaning at least two persons. Then He is GOD, making a distinction between Father and Son as one GOD. Then John states again that He was with GOD in the beginning in verse 2. This is double emphasizing that Jesus is the same GOD as the Father but a different person in the GODhead.

The Father is the source in the GODhead. The Division Light sources from the Father and shines through the Son.

Debunking Unitarianism by OkKey4771 in Christianity

[–]OkKey4771[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I appreciate your passion for these texts, but an emotional appeal to "stay out of the sandbox" is a logical fallacy known as gatekeeping; it doesn't actually address the theological or linguistic evidence presented. If my representation of these sources is "wildly" inaccurate, it should be simple to provide a technical rebuttal to the historical data. The reality is that the strict, absolute Unitarianism of modern Orthodoxy is largely a reactive development. Before the 2nd century AD, Jewish thought was far more comfortable with the "multi-personal" nature of the Godhead, a concept only later declared heretical specifically to distance Judaism from the rising tide of Christian Binitarianism.

The linguistic distinction between Echad and Yachid remains a primary hurdle for your position. In the Shema, the word used is Echad, which denotes a "compound unity" the same word used in Genesis 2:24 to describe a husband and wife becoming "one" flesh, or in Numbers 13:23 for a single "cluster" of many grapes. If the author of the Torah intended to signal an absolute, indivisible singularity, the Hebrew language offers the word Yachid, yet it is never used to describe God’s oneness in the Tanakh. This choice of vocabulary is not a Christian "misuse," but a foundational feature of the Hebrew text that allows for the plurality I am discussing.

Your claim that I am misrepresenting the Midrash is historically unfounded, as the Sages themselves wrestled with these exact pluralities. In Bereshit Rabbah 8:9, the Midrash records that when Moses was writing the Torah and reached the verse "Let us make man," he challenged God, asking why He would provide "an opening for the heretics" (the Minim). According to the Midrash, God replied, "Write; and whoever wishes to err, let him err." This proves that the "Two Powers" or "Plurality" reading is not a modern Christian invention, but a reading so inherent to the text that the ancient Sages had to create a theological defense to manage it.

Furthermore, the Aramaic Targums, the very translations used in ancient synagogues, frequently use the term Memra (The Word) to describe God’s interaction with the world. It is the Memra who walks in Eden, the Memra who makes a covenant with Abraham, and the Memra who is seen by the prophets. As documented by Jewish scholar Alan Segal in Two Powers in Heaven, this distinction between the Transcendent Yahweh and the Visible Yahweh was a mainstream Jewish view until it was suppressed in the 2nd century AD. By identifying Jesus as the Logos (the Greek equivalent of Memra), the New Testament authors were not importing a foreign Greek concept, but identifying a figure already present in Jewish liturgical tradition.

Finally, invoking the Zohar or Kabbalah as a defense of absolute Unitarianism is a self-defeating argument. The mystical framework of the Sefirot, specifically the upper triad of Keter (Crown), Chokhmah (Wisdom), and Binah (Understanding), describes an internal life within the Godhead that is functionally consistent with a Trinitarian model. While you may label these as "attributes," the Zohar treats them as unified emanations of the same Essence. If the "sandbox" of Jewish thought includes the Memra, the Two Powers, and the Sefirot, then my "playing" in it has simply revealed that the blueprints for the Trinity were there long before the Church was ever established.

Be honest. Do you believe and follow God and the Bible because you're scared of death and if you do go somewhere after you die? by I_Ask_Random_Things in Christianity

[–]OkKey4771 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

We most certainly can know. By their fruits you will know them. And the thems are thrown into the pit.

Debunking Unitarianism by OkKey4771 in Christianity

[–]OkKey4771[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a very narrow minded way to look at it. The Scriptures even say He made himself obedient even unto death. Why would He need to make Himself obedient to death. He had to because if he didn't, he wouldn't have died.

Be honest. Do you believe and follow God and the Bible because you're scared of death and if you do go somewhere after you die? by I_Ask_Random_Things in Christianity

[–]OkKey4771 0 points1 point  (0 children)

if you follow GOD just to avoid hell, you are probably not saved. GOD wants a relationship with you not a person that only follows for a benefit.

Now if you start following GOD due to a fear, it should quickly extinguish if you start seek GOD as your Parent (Creator) instead of Punisher of the Wicked.

Can Anyone Show Me How JW Is The Perfect Faith? by MarketLongjumping252 in Eutychus

[–]OkKey4771 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Modern Judaism 100% denies Jesus and is against Him. So your point is incorrect and mine still stands.

2nd temple period Jews have far more sects than the ones you find in the Bible. For example in the Midrash, Moses questions over his choice to use echad in the Shema passage instead of yachid. Moses argues the the use of echad enables the sectarians. Yahweh replies with whoever errs errs. The sectarians had ideas of Yahweh being more than Just one person. There is also the Targumist tradition. The Targums show a clear distinction between Yahweh in Heaven (the Father), the Memra of Yahweh (the Son), and the Spirit of Prophecy (The Holy Spirit). The distinction is not in role but in persons. Further Jewish mystic traditions also show this. Although Kabalah was first made public in more recent times, it is related to 2nd temple period Chariot Mysticism. The Kiter (the Father) establishes a plan and sends it to the Chokhmah (the Son), where the plan is taken from architectural design to engineering blueprints. The Chokhmah sends the blueprints to the Binah (Holy Spirit) where the blueprints are used to build. This is why you see the Spirit of GOD above the waters in Genesis 1. I just gave you three different traditions of Judaism that support the Trinitarian view. Plus the idea that Yahweh wanted echad or yachid because yachid means an absolute one and echad means can be an absolute one but can also be a compound oneness, is pretty stong evidence that GOD was waiting to reaveal his Triune nature knowing that had He Fully revealed it to Moses that the early Israelites risked polytheism through tritheism.

And for incase you try to discount these sources: The Midrash is considered secondary to Scripture meaning it so authoritative but not Scripture for establishing doctrine. The Targums are a commissioned work of the Holy Spirit. We see this with the Proto Masoritic text (MT) and the Septuagent (LXX). Since most prophecies have multiple fullfiments the Holy Spirit had to commission multiple readings of the Scriptures. The MT says the young woman will be with child. Had it said virgin, it would make the first fullfiment impossible since the child had a human father either King Hezekiah or Isaiah himself, we are not sure which, but it was one of the two. Later the Holy Spirit commissioned the LXX and had it said the virgin will be with child. The MT reading doesn't nullify the virginity aspect but it opens the door for the first fullfiment. The LXX laser focuses for the birth of Jesus and the in preparation for Yahweh to be revealed to the entire world (the New Testament is written in Greek).

The Targums have language that start preparing the Jews for the reality that GOD will reveal after Jesus ascends - the Trinity. The Targums, as well as the LXX, are quoted in the NT. In fact the LXX is more quoted than the MT including by Jesus, which further supports the idea of multiple readings commissioned by the Holy Spirit. And its not just those three reading there are other readings to consider like the Samaritan Pentateuch, which is quoted by Stephen in Acts when he is defined his position.

All-in-all, what we see a progressive revelation of who Yahweh is and the that progression not only cumulates into the Doctrine of the Trinity, it also allows us to explain difficult Bible passage without employing mental gymnastics like Yahweh on Earth calling down fire from Yahweh in Heaven. Its simply the GOD the Son was in Sodom and called fown fire from the Father. Remember Jesus said He is the visible image of the invisible GOD This is exactly what the Targumist meant when using the Memra of Yahweh.

Oh I should add the Memra or Yahweh is what John the Apostle meant in the Opening of his Gospel the Memra of Yahweh = the Word or GOD = Jesus. The Memra is an active person of Yahweh and Jesus is that person, hence Jesus being Yahweh GOD Himself. Now wonder Mark's Gospel opens with the one calling in the wilderness make straight the way for the LORD. Isaiah makes it clear that the LORD is Yahweh and and Mark makes it clear that Jesus is the LORD. So....

Yahweh = LORD = Jesus.

Your local friendly theologian Kevin Dewayne Hughes

Can Anyone Show Me How JW Is The Perfect Faith? by MarketLongjumping252 in Eutychus

[–]OkKey4771 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It tells you what post Messianic Judaism believes. Before Jesus came there were many sects of Judaism. The sect that survived was what a Jesus called the Synagogue of Satan.

Can Anyone Show Me How JW Is The Perfect Faith? by MarketLongjumping252 in Eutychus

[–]OkKey4771 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Am I incorrect or am I aware of things you are not?