Page 7 - Countering Trinitarian Arguments With Historical Reference
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What did the Early Church of the Bible believe? Answer Monotheism.
“God is a Spirit”-John 4:24 and the Deity is only “one Spirit”-Eph. 4:4. This “Almighty God”-Genesis 17:1 is only “one God”-Malachi 2:10. There is no other God, Deity, Divine Person, or Savior in existence or beside Him. “Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen; that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he; before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no saviour.”-Isaiah 43:10-11.
The one true God commands that He alone should be recognized, honored, and worshiped as God. He will not share his Deity or Glory with any other false god. The worship of or praying to more than the one true God or any other false god is idolatry. (See Lev. 26:1, *Acts 10:25-26, 1 Cor. 5:10-11, 1 Cor. 6:9-10, Eph. 5:5, 1 John 5:21, Rev. 21:8, Rev. 22:8-9). *Peter rejected worship and told Cornelius to “Stand up; I myself also am a man” therefore, bowing down worship/prayers to living or dead humans/saints is wrong.
“I am the LORD: (I AM) that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.”-Isaiah 42:8.
“And God spake all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them...”-Exodus 20:1-5.
“And I fell at his feet to worship him. (An Angel) And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”-Revelation 19:10.
The pluralistic Pagan belief in more than one God or many gods is called Polytheism.
The Biblical belief in only one God is called Monotheism. This is what the original early first century Church believed! “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:”- Deut. 6:4. The Apostle Paul said: “...we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one.”-1 Cor. 8:4.
Integrative Theology by G. R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest, 1996, page 107. Has this to say about the deity of Christ and how the original Church seen him. “Paul believed that the historical Jesus Christ was the pinnacle of all God’s revelations to mankind. The apostle described...{Jesus} as “the image [eichon] of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). In Koine Greek, eichon could refer to, among other things, a portrait...Repeatedly the apostle affirms that at the Incarnation the invisible God took visible form in Jesus of Nazareth. As the fragment of a hymn of the early church put it, “He (God) appeared in a body” (1 Tim. 3:16; cf. Titus 2:11; the aorist tense in both texts points to the event of the Incarnation). Likewise, “in Christ all the fullness [pleroma] of the Deity [theotes] lives in bodily form (Col. 2:9; cf. 1:19).” This agrees with 2 Cor. 5:19, Gal. 3:17, John 14:6-9.
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