What does "Non-denominational" mean??

genez said:

Do you believe that when it says the Word of God? That all it contains should be directly from God?

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In the case of the pagan philosophers, I believe Paul was divinely inspired to use their words to make a point. I do NOT believe that the pagan writers themselves were divinely inspired when they wrote what they wrote.

Similarly, in the cases where Paul specifies that he is giving his own opinion, I believe Paul was divinely inspired to share his opinion. The opinion, itself, however, is not God's. Paul uses the exact words "I say, NOT the Lord." Are we to conclude that Paul is lying and it is God?

HypnoToad said:

In the case of the pagan philosophers, I believe Paul was divinely inspired to use their words to make a point. I do NOT believe that the pagan writers themselves were divinely inspired when they wrote what they wrote.

Similarly, in the cases where Paul specifies that he is giving his own opinion, I believe Paul was divinely inspired to share his opinion. The opinion, itself, however, is not God's. Paul uses the exact words "I say, NOT the Lord." Are we to conclude that Paul is lying and it is God?

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But the point you "seem" to be skating around is? That what we find in the Scriptures? .. No matter what it may be?... Is now found in the Scriptures because God willed it in the power of the Holy Spirit to have it in the Word of God.

All what we find in Scripture is there because it was God breathed (is sometimes mistranslated "inspired.") .....

God breathed = God exhaled what was to be written to the writer, and the writer inhaled what was given. And, in turn, the writer exhaled it onto the written page. Its God breathed. God breathed, because all that the writer did was done in the power of God's Spirit. Sometimes the Spirit is called God's breath.

HypnoToad said:

In the case of the pagan philosophers, I believe Paul was divinely inspired to use their words to make a point. I do NOT believe that the pagan writers themselves were divinely inspired when they wrote what they wrote.

Similarly, in the cases where Paul specifies that he is giving his own opinion, I believe Paul was divinely inspired to share his opinion. The opinion, itself, however, is not God's. Paul uses the exact words "I say, NOT the Lord." Are we to conclude that Paul is lying and it is God?

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Who knows what that means to you. Smh

ToBeLoved said:

Who knows what that means to you. Smh

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It means... Though the pagan prophets were not inspired by God? Even they will sometimes say things that are true. After all, the best liars throw in true things to make themselves sound credible.

And.... those true things they uttered, Paul used to make a point.

genez said:

It means... Though the pagan prophets were not inspired by God? Even they will sometimes say things that are true. After all, the best liars throw in true things to make themselves sound credible.

And.... those true things they uttered Paul used to make a point.

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And when Paul quotes them, those specific words are as much the Word of God as if they were uttered by Jesus Himself.

Dave-W said:

And when Paul quotes them, those specific words are as much the Word of God as if they were uttered by Jesus Himself.

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If Jesus walked the earth after Paul's words were recorded? Jesus could have quoted those words as a final authority. Just like Satan's lies have been accurately recorded in God's Word.

Are you thinking if God did not say it directly, that it is not God's Word if its found in the Bible?

genez said:

Are you thinking if God did not say it directly, that it is not God's Word if its found in the Bible?

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That is almost the exact opposite of what I said.

I was looking for the person I replied to s specific answer, but I appreciate your take on it.

I think this thread would not wander so much if folks did not rely upon assuming that the other person knows what your implied intention is. No one is spelling out what they mean exactly. Its been like kicking the can down the road..

There are only two things that really stand out with the term "non-denominational," and they are:

1. Independent congregations that are not affiliated with any denomination and usually have only brief and general statements of belief. In practice, they are usually similar to Baptist or Pentecostal churches.

2. Individuals who use the term for themselves in order to indicate that they are not affiliated with any church. Sometimes it also means that they consider themselves to be Christian although they seldom, if ever, attend any church services.

Duvduv said:

Except maybe for the trinity, which was a later development of theology.

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Why would you call the doctrine of the Trinity "a later development in theology"? It is embedded right there in the first book and first chapter of the Bible.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness... (Gen 1:26)

"Us" and "our" confirms plurality, and Elohim (translated as "God") is a uni-plural word (El- or Eloha- being singular). Whenever there is the an ending with "-im" in Hebrew, it indicates plurality, e.g. Seraph and Seraphim.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a totally biblical doctrine, and that is why Christ embedded it in His commandment for Christian baptism.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (Mt 28:19)

Duvduv said:

Don't you think that from the time the Torah was given at Sinai the Jews would have had the correct interpretation of that? And don't you think the rabbis would been smart enough to change the plural to avoid the logical claim of trinitarians?! And how could a triune God speak as if there were more than a single individual?! And as far as Matthew is concerned there is no evidence it refers to a triune God, but only to three different entities. If the Trinity were a foundational concept it would be found all over the New Testament...

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Oy vey!.... I witnessed to my Jewish parents stumbling all over that one. Apparently, their rabbi could only gave them a superficial answer and they got stuck with some undeniable logic..

"Let us make man in our image..." (that's just one)...


In the mean time.. There were rabbis who were regenerate (before the church age began) who studied and saw the Trinity in the Torah. We just do not get told about them.

Ancient Jewish Writings
About the Trinity Ancient Jewish Writings - Trinity

Duvduv said:

Gosh, imagine how no one in 3000 years of Jewish history ever figured out what came out after the first centuries of the Common Era. The use of the term is the Royal We to his court of angels, not a triune God. But heck, the trinity was some kind of secret for thousands of years, and not a single Jewish scholar ever figured it out....

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So angels can make man in their image? Angels are partakers in the creation?

It could go like the following:

God (Elohim) looked at the angels and said..... Listen you angels.... "Let us (Elohim) make man in our (Elohim) image... After all? Man was created in the image of God.

Does your version of the Bible say that God created man in the image of God and angels?

I once heard a Harvard professor who taught ancient languages at a Bible college I attended... That according to what he saw in the Hebrew that its possible that God assigned in a prehistoric creation the ministry of influencing and effecting a prehistoric humanoid to learn to conform to God's image. This "humanoid" was teaching a tool to get angels to gain a deeper understanding of God. But? After certain angels fell, all hell broke loose. At that point those humanoids never stood a chance to become transformed by angels into God's image. So, in Genesis 1:26, God declared that "this time I will make man in my image." And, God did so by creating man in his image from the start.

Now... The angels may be higher than man at present. But nowhere as powerful as to be a part in the actual creation of man. Only God can create something from nothing.. "bara."

That prehistoric humanoid was needed to be utterly destroyed. Interesting how the prophet Jeremiah referred to this prehistoric judgement of a generic "people" to rebuke and condemn the rebellious Jews of his generation. For those Jews had gone after evil degenerate pagan practices... Jeremiah warned them what trouble was to come upon them.(Jeremiah 4:23-24)

In his prophetic warning Jeremiah takes the Jews listening right back to Genesis 1:2. A passage which in the Hebrew spoke of the earth being found in utter ruin. Its interesting to note, that Jeremiah 4:23, it uses the same Hebrew words found in Genesis 1:2. Therefore, the Jews knew that "tohu wa bohu" found in Genesis 1:2 spoke of an utter destruction. Genesis 1:2 declares that the prehistoric creation that angels had apparently dominion over came to an end that finally destroyed it and removed it from their domain.



23 I looked at the earth,
and it was formless and empty;
and at the heavens,
and their light was gone.
24 I looked at the mountains,
and they were quaking;
all the hills were swaying.
25 I looked, and there were no people; (Hebrew = generic term for humanoids)
every bird in the sky had flown away.
26 I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert;
all its towns lay in ruins
before the Lord, before his fierce anger.


Since the Jews understood the implication that was found in the Hebrew of Genesis 1:2 meant all Jews would be destroyed, Jeremiah needed to go on and clarify. For even though the Jews had become horribly degenerate in God's eyes , they, unlike the prehistoric creation, God would preserve a segment of Israel for the survival of the race!

Jeremiah clarified that there will not be an utter destruction of Israel...


27 This is what the Lord says:

“The whole land will be ruined,
though I will not destroy it completely."

That need for Jeremiah's clarification indicated that the Jews knew that Genesis 1:2 spoke of an utter destruction. One of the previous created world on this earth.

Duvduv said:

God consulted with previously created angels and spoke in the royal we as he created thr highest earthly creatures. What's the big deal?

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If He did in fact consult with them? They had no power to make and create man in God's image. God spoke in the plural of Himself when he told the angels how man was to be made in God's image.

And, besides. How could the angels have anything to tell God in how to make man in their image? The angels helped?

If what you claim were true, God would have asked it like the following. Come here and help me make man in our image. God needed angels HELP in how it was to be done?

Duvduv said:

If the Trinity were a foundational concept it would be found all over the New Testament...

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It is found all over the New Testament. And the rabbis did understand that the Son of Man in Daniel was also the Son of God, and equal with God. They simply did not want to acknowledge this for Jesus of Nazareth.

The early Jewish and Christian interpretation of Daniel’s Son of Man

From the very beginning the Son of Man of Daniel was identified as the Messiah. In fact this has been the traditional orthodox interpretation, one held by the majority of both Jews and Christians for over seventeen hundred years, as even noted critical liberal Biblical scholars and commentators admit:

“IV. Traditional Interpretations. The earliest interpretations and adaptations of the ‘one like a human being,’ Jewish and Christian alike, assume that the phrase refers to an individual and is not a symbol for a collective entity.263

In the Similitudes of Enoch (1En 46:1), the white-headed ‘head of days’ is accompanied by one ‘whose face had the appearance of a man, and his face [was] full of grace, like one of the holy angels.’ He is explicitly called ‘messiah,’ or anointed one, in 48:10; 52:4, and ‘his name was named’ before creation (48:3).

In 4 Ezra 13 the man who rises from the sea and flies with the clouds of heaven is also a messianic figure, but like ‘that Son of Man’ in the Similitudes, he is a preexistent, supernatural figure (13:26; ‘This is he whom the Most High has been keeping for many ages’).

The messianic interpretation prevails in rabbinic literature 264 and remains the majority of opinion among the medieval Jewish commentators. The tradition is not entirely uniform. In some circles the two figures in Dan 7:9-14 were taken as two manifestations of God, apparently in reaction to the heretical view that they represented two powers in heaven. The collective interpretation is not clearly attested in Jewish circles until the Middle Ages…

In summary, the traditional interpretations of the ‘one like a human being’ in the first millennium overwhelmingly favor the understanding of this figure as an individual, not as a collective symbol. The most usual identification was the messiah, but in the earliest adaptations of the vision (the Similitudes, 4 Ezra, the Gospels) the figure in question had a distinctly supernatural character.” (Hermeneia – A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, by John J. Collins with an essay, “The Influence of Daniel on the New Testament,” by Adela Yarbro Collins, edited by Frank Moore Cross [Fortress Press, Minneapolis 1993], pp. 306-308; underline emphasis ours)

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Daniel's Son of Man as the Messiah