Trinitarians: Which part of the Trinity is Jehovah?

[Albion]

Did Elijah and Moses not hear our Lord God talking on the mountain?

Are all who pray to saints for their intercession praying to Elijah or Moses? Is that your contention? I hope not because a jillion prayers are addressed to people who have died and have not even been canonized by the church, not to mention local favorites and fictitious people like St. Christopher!

 

[DrBubbaLove]

The fact remains that there is ONE and ONLY ONE account in the Bible of someone talking to the departed. That was Saul and he lost his life for it. You use a verse that talks about offering up prayers of the saints to set up a doctrine??? Revelation is a book of prophecy and it could mean ANYTHING. You use YOUR wisdom to make it mean something that it CAN NOT mean because it is CONTRARY to ALL the rest of scripture, instead of WAITING for God to reveal the meaning. That is what you get for using man's wisdom! The catholic church added the praying to the deceased along with multiple other pagan practices to unify the pagans and the Christians. If God wanted us to pray to the departed then we would SEE IT IN HIS WORD.

God has told us JUST how to worship Him. If you worship Him in ANY OTHER WAY then it is FALSE WORSHIP. Cain TRIED to worship God the way HE wanted to, but God HATED IT. In His grace He told Cain the right way to go, but he refused. God has told us how to worship Him but you catholics add to what He told us, making your worship FALSE AND WORTHLESS. We can ONLY do what He tells us and he NEVER told us to pray to the departed. He also NEVER told us to kill people for not accepting our dogmas, He also never told us that we could PAY MONEY TO GET OUT OF OUR SINS. He also never told us that Mary was immaculately conceived, He also never told us to baptize infants, and the list goes ON AND ON. But you catholics don't CARE what HE wants, you do things the way YOU WANT. Just like the women of today whose desires, according to God, is supposed to be to their husband, YOU (Catholic church) ARE CLAIMING God is your husband, yet you refuse to do what HE WANTS. You make YOURSELF THE HEAD. I see many people like this in the Bible, the first being Cain.

I have to correct you. It is not my wisdom at all, but the teachings of the Church you rail against (if I have expressed it correctly and it has been understood by you). Am not that smart and often error in these brief replies attempting to summarize things that volumes have been written on. But I know were to find and correct my answers and also Whom has promised to preserve the teachings my poor attempt to express here relies on.

Oh I know, been there done that - have said for most of my life that my beliefs were formed within myself led by the Spirit in my understanding of sacred scripture alone. And somehow for a long time anyway (though I occasionally wondered), it did not bother me that this "leading" would bring me to "new" positions. Even if it contradicted my former position, I was just as certain the new position was just as true as the earlier contradicting position. Don't need to rely on myself anymore and there is a great feeling of freedom in saying I do not know or not sure but I know where I can find answers that never change if it can be known. And BTW a complete freedom in saying not all the answers are known, so it is ok for some things for me to speculate (new earth vs old, or what is Heaven like for just two examples).

So if you think my replies sound like they are based on my wisdom, I can only give His Wisdom the credit for leading me to a treasure of knowledge He promised would never fail (meaning it also does not change). A source I can rely on and hopefully my poor attempts at making reader digest summaries of it for these forum replies are not in any great error. And I do make some errors, unlike a few here much more learned and careful than me (Der Alter comes to mind).

 

[DrBubbaLove]

Are all who pray to saints for their intercession praying to Elijah or Moses? Is that your contention? I hope not because a jillion prayers are addressed to people who have died and have not even been canonized by the church, not to mention local favorites and fictitious people like St. Christopher!

Yeah my dad is not even Catholic but I find myself talking to him sometimes. I do not see the evil in that. And I never claimed Catholics are not sinners or without fault.
The point is either we have answers to those questions or not. Obviously you do not or it would have been given. For me, there are answers to those questions and those answers do not come from me. Not answers to everything mind you. Where this treasure of knowledge given that we rely on is silent or vague, Catholics are just as free to be "led" to various (and sometimes conflicting) opinions to fill in the gaps as those outside the Church do about everything they believe.

 

[Albion]

Yeah my dad is not even Catholic but I find myself talking to him sometimes. I do not see the evil in that. And I never claimed Catholics are not sinners or without fault.

The subject is PRAYING to them, not remembering them....or whether or not Catholics are sinners.

 

[DrBubbaLove]

The subject is PRAYING to them, not remembering them....or whether or not Catholics are sinners.

I never said I did not ask my father for help (that is a request - a prayer BTW - to a dead person). And I still do not see the harm in that.

My comment about sinners addressed people that might take something good and twist it - most of us call that sin. Since you disparaged the practice by suggesting some people might do that (have not personally met those Catholics yet BTW but do know they are out there and my curiosity did get the better of me once) I think my reply addressed that even if it was brief. To go further off topic in explaining my response to your question, it would only be relevant if you believed that my position is no one in the Church would abuse the practice - no sinners - and so you wondered if I thought Catholics doing so were correct in taking something good and making it bad. Now that I have acknowledged we are a Church of sinners, please try something else.

 

[DrBubbaLove]

The fact remains that there is ONE and ONLY ONE account in the Bible of someone talking to the departed. That was Saul and he lost his life for it. You use a verse that talks about offering up prayers of the saints to set up a doctrine??? Revelation is a book of prophecy and it could mean ANYTHING. You use YOUR wisdom to make it mean something that it CAN NOT mean because it is CONTRARY to ALL the rest of scripture, instead of WAITING for God to reveal the meaning. That is what you get for using man's wisdom! The catholic church added the praying to the deceased along with multiple other pagan practices to unify the pagans and the Christians. If God wanted us to pray to the departed then we would SEE IT IN HIS WORD.

God has told us JUST how to worship Him. If you worship Him in ANY OTHER WAY then it is FALSE WORSHIP. Cain TRIED to worship God the way HE wanted to, but God HATED IT. In His grace He told Cain the right way to go, but he refused. God has told us how to worship Him but you catholics add to what He told us, making your worship FALSE AND WORTHLESS. We can ONLY do what He tells us and he NEVER told us to pray to the departed. He also NEVER told us to kill people for not accepting our dogmas, He also never told us that we could PAY MONEY TO GET OUT OF OUR SINS. He also never told us that Mary was immaculately conceived, He also never told us to baptize infants, and the list goes ON AND ON. But you catholics don't CARE what HE wants, you do things the way YOU WANT. Just like the women of today whose desires, according to God, is supposed to be to their husband, YOU (Catholic church) ARE CLAIMING God is your husband, yet you refuse to do what HE WANTS. You make YOURSELF THE HEAD. I see many people like this in the Bible, the first being Cain.

BTW, if we actually read the story rather than what someone else tells us it means, Samuel actually tells Saul why the Lord is ignoring him and also why he will die that very day - and it had nothing to do with summoning Samuel or talking to him.

 

[Albion]

I never said I did not ask my father for help (that is a request - a prayer BTW - to a dead person). And I still do not see the harm in that.

Well then, considering all the explanations that have been offered so far, it's not likely that any more discussion is going to make a dent so long as your position is "I don't see the harm in that." The "harm" is that it is patently wrong to give to others what belongs to God alone...and there is plenty in Scripture which says just that. But if you don't see the wrong in that, then you don't.

 

[James Is Back]

Folks this discussion isn't about praying to the dead or any Catholic dogma so get back on topic of the OP please.

 

[DrBubbaLove]

Well then, considering all the explanations that have been offered so far, it's not likely that any more discussion is going to make a dent so long as your position is "I don't see the harm in that." The "harm" is that it is patently wrong to give to others what belongs to God alone...and there is plenty in Scripture which says just that. But if you don't see the wrong in that, then you don't.

This assumes the practice is doing that, so you are correct as long as you believe that assumption to be true. As long as you incorrectly assume Catholics are giving something to someone that rightfully belongs to God, then your imaginary position remains valid to you. It does not make the position a true representation of the practice.

And you have yet to explain (absent the practice of course) how it is Saint John has elders giving to God something you claim they should never have had in the first place. Did they steal those prayers? Did those prayers get lost and they found and offer them up?

 

[Albion]

This assumes the practice is doing that, so you are correct as long as you believe that assumption to be true. As long as you incorrectly assume Catholics are giving something to someone that rightfully belongs to God, then your imaginary position remains valid to you. It does not make the position a true representation of the practice.

And you have yet to explain (absent the practice of course) how it is Saint John has elders giving to God something you claim they should never have had in the first place. Did they steal those prayers?

Did you read post #148? "Which part of the Trinity is Jehovah?" is the subject.

 

[DrBubbaLove]

No I did not read #148 before I hit post.
The reverence for the use of the divine name by the Israelite people predates modern era by thousands of years. Even the newer OT books show a reverence in not using it compared to the earliest books, I do not think we should mistake that reverence for what they considered His Name, which would remain at least a habit for NT Jews, as an indication that all the various names substituted for that name indicate a belief in more than One Being or for that name to ONLY properly apply to One Person of the One Being. The name, even for the Israelites applies to the One God. So for Christians holding to the Trinity Doctrine the name Jehovah would properly apply to Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

 

[Jaxxi]

A trinitarian brother on another thread refused to answer this question.

Can anybody give me an answer?

Gen 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD*God made the earth and the heavens,

* יְהֹוָה
yehôvâh
yeh-ho-vaw'
From H1961; (the) self Existent or eternal; Jehovah, Jewish national name of God: - Jehovah, the Lord. Compare H3050, H3069.
​

The Father.

 

[donfish06]

The Father.

Please explain this to me:

According to what you said, all the Old Testament scriptures below refer to the Father. But the New Testament tells us clearly that Jesus fulfills all of these scriptures.

Isaiah 43:10-11 No other saviour
John 4:42 Christ, the saviour
Isaiah 44:6 First and last
Revelation 1:8 Alpha and omega
Zechariah 14:5 LORD shall come back w saints
1 Thessalonians 3:13 Jesus returns with saints
Hebrews 12:23 God is the judge
John 5:22 Jesus is the judge
Isaiah 33:22 Jehovah is Judge
Revelation 19:11 Jesus is Judge
Isaiah 44:24 Jehovah is Creator
Colossians 1:16 Jesus is Creator
Exodus 3:14, John 8:58 I Am

Why are we told that there is no other savior but the Father, and later told that the Son is our savior? Etc.

 

[Jaxxi]

Please explain this to me:

According to what you said, all the Old Testament scriptures below refer to the Father. But the New Testament tells us clearly that Jesus fulfills all of these scriptures.

Isaiah 43:10-11 No other saviour
John 4:42 Christ, the saviour
Isaiah 44:6 First and last
Revelation 1:8 Alpha and omega
Zechariah 14:5 LORD shall come back w saints
1 Thessalonians 3:13 Jesus returns with saints
Hebrews 12:23 God is the judge
John 5:22 Jesus is the judge
Isaiah 33:22 Jehovah is Judge
Revelation 19:11 Jesus is Judge
Isaiah 44:24 Jehovah is Creator
Colossians 1:16 Jesus is Creator
Exodus 3:14, John 8:58 I Am

Why are we told that there is no other savior but the Father, and later told that the Son is our savior? Etc.

John 10:30 " I and the Father are One."

 

[donfish06]

John 10:30 " I and the Father are One."

Then how can you say that Jehovah is the Father, and not the Son also?

 

[Jaxxi]

You are correct. Jehovah is all of the Trinity. They are One in the same. Jehovah is each One and all of Them at once.

 

[Wgw]

The subject is PRAYING to them, not remembering them....or whether or not Catholics are sinners.

1. St. Christopher was a real person; an account of his life is given by the Holy Fathers, which is sufficient proof. The fact that you arent pious enough to believe in the existence of this saint is a tragedy given what a fone Christian he was.

2. The Orthodox do not strictly speaking pray to the saints but rather through them; the saints being the only Christians who can be identified with certainty (that is, it has been proven by miraculous events or their martyrdom that they are in Heaven), their intercessory prayer is more valuable than that of any living person.

Which is something that the wisest of your coreligionists, like Dom Gregory Dix, understood, as they attempted to restore Catholicity to Anglicanism. Unfortunately, while theynwere very successful, they werent successful enough; the latitudinarianism required to allow low churchmen like you and high churchmen like Percy Dearmer, the Benedictines of the OSB, CS Lewis, Herbert Howells, and so on, to coexist with low church evangelicals in the same communion opened the door for a liberal faction, which first became highly visible with the proposed 1786 American BCP, which downplayed the Trinity and was never ratified; the next appearance was the equally unsuccessful Grey Book proposed revision to the English BCP in the 1920s. They finally took over after the Council of Bishops waa pushed over by Rob Pike, who publically deprecated the Trinity saying "We need fewer beliefs and more belief." Of course the Anglicans wound up with fewer believers.

What it comes down to is piety and obedience. The Orthodox bishops and monastics, who are consecrated to God and who I have seen do wondrous acts of love, say that there is a Trinity and beg the prayers of the saints. Who am I, the least of pilgrims, the worst of sinners, a practical stowaway on the Ark of Salvation, to disagree with them?

 

[Albion]

1. St. Christopher was a real person

I don't think so. The Vatican (which has all the information you refer to and a lot more riding on the decision) doesn't think so. But the point, I think, is still relevant, St. Christopher aside, and some other example could just as easily have been cited.

2. The Orthodox do not strictly speaking pray to the saints but rather through them

There's a verbal slight of hand being used when something like that is said, regardless of denomination. EO Christians clearly DO pray to saints, even if they define their intentions as you describe here.

 

[Berean777]

Please explain this to me:

According to what you said, all the Old Testament scriptures below refer to the Father. But the New Testament tells us clearly that Jesus fulfills all of these scriptures.

Isaiah 43:10-11 No other saviour
John 4:42 Christ, the saviour
Isaiah 44:6 First and last
Revelation 1:8 Alpha and omega
Zechariah 14:5 LORD shall come back w saints
1 Thessalonians 3:13 Jesus returns with saints
Hebrews 12:23 God is the judge
John 5:22 Jesus is the judge
Isaiah 33:22 Jehovah is Judge
Revelation 19:11 Jesus is Judge
Isaiah 44:24 Jehovah is Creator
Colossians 1:16 Jesus is Creator
Exodus 3:14, John 8:58 I Am

Why are we told that there is no other savior but the Father, and later told that the Son is our savior? Etc.

Excellent versus thanks.

God is infinite Holy Spirit (John 4:24).

Recount who came on genesis.......

Genesis 1:2-3
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

The Holy Spirit is Jehovah who holds two relationships within his infinite being. The Father relationship is when he conceived the world and the Son relationship is when he entered into it as th preeminant Son who was before creation. God the Holy Spirit within his being would say LET US which is his dual relationships of the one infinite being.

Genesis 1:26
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

We are told by scripture that the Holy Ghost conceived Jesus of Nazereth and we are also told in acts that.........

Acts 20:28
Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

The apostles say that the Holy Ghost purchased us with his own blood. So the Son relationship points to the Infinite Holy Ghost being who is God.

The dual relationships within the infinite Holy Ghost being is declared in Isaiah........

Isaiah 9:6
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:
and the government shall be upon his shoulder:
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God,
The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

The infinite being who is the Emmanuel a Son who is given to us is also the everlasting Father who brought life into the world.

The Holy Ghost has two relationships within his being.

It would be similar to me an finite being saying that I am a father to my children and a son to my mother. Yet the infinite being can be a son to himself not from a substance or nature point of view, but that which points to an relationship office.

For example the Holy Ghost can take on the position of the Son by what scripture declares.....

Philippians 2:6-7
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

 

[Wgw]

I don't think so. The Vatican (which has all the information you refer to and a lot more riding on the decision) doesn't think so. But the point, I think, is still relevant, St. Christopher aside, and some other example could just as easily have been cited.


There's a verbal slight of hand being used when something like that is said, regardless of denomination. EO Christians clearly DO pray to saints, even if they define their intentions as you describe here.

How about you let the Oriental Orthodox, of which I am one of five or so on this forum, speak for ourselves when it regards our praxis? Have you been to our liturgies? Read our service books? Studied the writings of our saints, bishops and theologians? Can you even name all nine autocephalous OO jurisdictions and the table of precdence of OO Patriarchs?