Evidence pro and con

[Elijah John]

There is ample NT evidence that Jesus is God. There is also ample NT evidence that Jesus is not God.

The New Testament is contradictory on this matter.

The after some centuries the Church settled on the position that Jesus is indeed "God".

What would happen if new evidence was presented that proves Jesus is NOT God?

Does the Church's very survival depend on the notion that "Jesus is God"?

Does prospect of the Church's collapse make it unreceptive of new evidence?

If not, how would they reformulate their Creed and liturgy to accomodate the new evidence?

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by Elijah John]



Nobody that independently, unaware there existed any dogma about a truine god, that simply sat down and read the four gospels would come away from it believing that Jesus was claiming to be Almighty God YHWH the Creator. The king has no clothes on even if from Constantine onward, "educated" theologists have been telling us we see what is simply not there.

If there was "ample evidence" for this, why did it take three centuries for nominal Christians to develop with the idea?

JW

** the doctrine [of the Trinity] developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies -- The New Encyclopdia Britannica

HISTORICAL SOURCES

**Justin [Martyr] taught that before the creation of the world God was alone and that there was no Son. . . . Justin and the other Apologists therefore taught that the Son is a creature. .. The Son is subordinate, that is, secondary to, dependent upon, and caused by the Father. The Apologists were subordinationists. - Dr. H. R. Boer, A Short History of the Early Church, 1976, page 110

**"Constantine himself presided, actively guiding the discussions, and personally proposed . . . the crucial formula expressing the relation of Christ to God in the creed issued by the council [of Nicaea], 'of one substance with the Father'" - The Encyclopdia Britannica

**The word Trinity is not found in the Bible, and, though used by Tertullian in the last decade of the 2nd century, it did not find a place formally in the theology of the Church till the 4th century. - The New Bible Dictionary

**"The full development of Trinitarianism took place in the West, in the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages, when an explanation was undertaken in terms of philosophy and psychology." -- The Encyclopedia Americana

Here is my earlier post on this topic
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 572#751572

Further reading: Is Jesus Almighty God?
https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/q ... -almighty/