In the previous videos, we've examined the passages Trinitarians use to establish that Jesus is God. What did we find? Not one of them proved categorically and unambiguously that there is such a thing as a trinity godhead. Some depended on disputed grammar to make their point. Others relied on punctuation choices made by translators. And still others on renderings that scholars have debated for centuries. Even the strongest among them established, at most, that Jesus can bear the title "God" in some sense, a sense Scripture also grants to angels, judges, and Moses. None of them plainly states the doctrine itself: that the Son is equal to the Father in knowledge, power, and authority. Nowhere in Scripture do we find a description of God as one being in three persons. That conclusion had to be assembled from inference upon inference.
In this video, I'd like to reverse the challenge. Trinitarians love to throw selected proof texts at us, but let’s see if they can handle having to answer Bible verses where there is requirement for special interpretation, no disputed grammar, no contestable punctuation, and no ambiguous constructions. I’m referring to scriptures that simply say what they say. And my request of my Trinitarian friends is this: I'm not asking you to ignore the rest of Scripture. Scripture certainly interprets Scripture, and I've relied on that principle throughout this series. I'm asking for something more basic. Before you reach for another verse to explain any one presented to you, first tell me what the current one plainly says. A verse that must be neutralized before it can be heard is a verse you are not answering.
I’ll be using the New International Version—a popular Bible translation among Trinitarians for this project.
Please take each passage on its own terms and answer the question that comes with it: What does it say?
"Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (John 17:3)
Question one: Who does Jesus identify as "the only true God"?
"Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live." (1 Corinthians 8:6)
Question two: Why doesn't Paul say, "For us there is one God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit"?
"Jesus said, 'Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."'" (John 20:17)
Question three: If Jesus is Almighty God, who is "my God"?
"The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on them my new name." (Revelation 3:12)
Question four: Why does the glorified Christ call the Father "my God" four times?
"There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." (Ephesians 4:4-6)
Question five: Why does Paul distinguish one Spirit, one Lord, and one God if all three are equally the one God?
"For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus." (1 Timothy 2:5)
Question six: How can someone mediate between himself and mankind?
"You heard me say, 'I am going away and I am coming back to you.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I." (John 14:28)
Question seven: In what sense is the Father greater than Jesus?
"But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Mark 13:32)
Question eight: If Jesus is Almighty God, why does only the Father know the day and the hour?
"Jesus gave them this answer: 'Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.'" (John 5:19)
Question nine: Can Almighty “God the Son” truly say, "The Son can do nothing by himself"?
"By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me." (John 5:30)
Question ten: Can Almighty God truly say, "By myself I can do nothing"?
"Jesus replied, 'If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me.'" (John 8:54)
Question eleven: If Jesus is Almighty God, who glorifies him?
"Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah." (Acts 2:36)
Question twelve: Can God be made Lord by God?
"You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy." (Hebrews 1:9)
Question thirteen: Who is Jesus' God?
"When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all." (1 Corinthians 15:28)
Question fourteen: Why will the Son who is supposedly God remain subject to God even after the Kingdom has been handed over?
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." (Ephesians 1:3)
Question fifteen: Why does Paul identify God as "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"?
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Peter 1:3)
Question sixteen: Why does Peter identify God as "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"?
Now, before I close, let me anticipate the answer many of you are already composing. I've been at this long enough to know what it will be. "These verses describe Jesus speaking in his human nature. As God, he knew the day and the hour. As man, he did not. As God, he could do all things. As man, he could do nothing by himself."
I want you to notice something about that answer. Where does any of these passages say it? Jesus says, "The Father is greater than I." He does not say, "The Father is greater than my human nature." Mark writes, "nor the Son, but only the Father." He does not write, "nor the Son in his humanity, though the Son in his deity knows perfectly well." The two-natures explanation appears in none of these texts. It was formulated centuries later, at Chalcedon in 451, precisely because these passages exist and needed to be accounted for. So when you answer a plain statement of Scripture by appealing to the two-natures-of-Christ argument, you are not answering the verse. You are confirming the very thing this series has demonstrated: that the doctrine cannot survive on what Scripture says. It survives on what theologians added.
And one of these passages closes that door entirely. In Revelation 3:12, the speaker is not the man of sorrows walking the roads of Galilee. This is the risen, glorified, ascended Christ, speaking from heaven itself. And four times—four times—in a single verse he says, "my God." Whose God? His God. If the humbled Jesus called the Father his God because he was speaking as a man, why does the exalted Jesus, crowned with glory and seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high, still call the Father "my God"? The human-nature explanation cannot reach him there. Yet the relationship remains unchanged: the Father is still his God. That is not a temporary condition of the incarnation. That is who the Son is.
So, by all means, answer these sixteen questions. But answer them from the verses themselves. If your answer requires a fourth-century council before it can be given, then you have already conceded my point.
Notice what has happened. I have not asked you to resolve difficult Greek grammar. I have not appealed to disputed punctuation. I have not relied on ambiguous expressions. I have simply read passages in which Jesus and the apostles explicitly identify who God is. If the doctrine of the Trinity is true, then every one of these passages requires an explanation. Yet none of them requires interpretation before they can be understood. They simply state the relationship between God and Jesus.
As John puts it: "Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (John 17:3)
After examining all of the classic Trinitarian proof texts, I now leave you with one final question: Why is the identity of the Father as the only true God stated so plainly, while the identity of Jesus as Almighty God is never plainly stated anywhere in Scripture?
If you still believe the doctrine of the Trinity, then please avail yourself of the comment section below to provide answers to these sixteen questions. I will read them, and I look forward to the conversation.