C. Leonard Allen Trinitarian Theology and Spiritual Life

Trinitarian Theology and Spiritual Life by C. Leonard Allen
May - August, 2004

These are rough notes in review of C. Leonard Allen teaching a radical form of trinitarian theology which has neither Biblical nor historical support from classical Trinitarians.   Many of the members of this group dismiss all of the Bible except seven facts ABOUT Jesus Christ and therefore all that Jesus taught. This new trithism lets some claim that they are teaming with the Spirit to write a new set of Scriptures because OUR culture has changed and the old Bible has been "sifted away by philosophy, evolution and the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle." This is inforced by insisting that present theology must bend to historical dogma: if you are "historyless" and Biblical you are probably legalistic as we will note.

YOU MAY WANT TO HEAR FROM JESUS CHRIST BEFORE YOU DIG DEEPER. SPIRIT never speaks of a PEOPLE: the spirit (mind) OF a male is masculine.  If we say SHE has a NASTY spirit we do not think that there is a LITTLE PERSON named "NASTY" inside of her body.  Just common sense uncommon unless you have been baptized to receive a new PERSONAL spirit which is A holy spirit when the "sins are washed away."  The mark of ANTI-christ is to deny that JESUS OF NAZARETH embodied FULL DEITY. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes,       he will guide you into all truth.       He will not speak on his own;       he will speak only what he hears,       and he will tell you what is yet to come. John 16:13 The Spirit OF God is the BREATH of God: it has NO independent thinking or speaking ability. We may SHOOT OFF our mouth but not the ONE GOD. The TRIAD is Father, Son and Spirit: these are not NAMES. The authority of Father, Son and Spirit was EMBODIED in Jesus of Nazareth who became the CHRIST of God. The triad is NOT, God, Jesus and a person named Holy Spirit. The "trinity" comes from Greek and all pagan PHILOSOPHIES. Col. 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit,         after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. Col. 2:9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Theopolus and Tertullian used the pagan concept of TRIAS to contrast the Christian God as ONE GOD Who has the power to [1] think, [2] breath and [3]  articulate words. Psa 33:4 For the [1] word of the [2] Lord is right;         and all his works are done in [3] truth. "My words are Spirit and they are Life" John 6:63 Psa 33:5 HE loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.   Psa 33:6 By the [1] word of the [2] Lord were the heavens made;         and all the host of them by the [3] breath of HE mouth. Psa 33:7 HE gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: HE layeth up the depth in storehouses.   Psa 33:8 Let all the earth fear the Lord: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of HIM Psa 33:9 For HE spake, and it was done; HE commanded, and it stood fast. Psa 33:10 The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought:         he maketh the devices of the people of none effect. If you are not COMPLETE IN Christ when you are baptized INTO Christ and need a SEPARATED Father and Spirit then you cannot read BLACK TEXT on BROWN Col. 2:10 And ye are complete in him, which is the head of ALL principality and power: Col. 2:11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands,         in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:  Col. 2:12 Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through         the faith of the operation of God, [your belief has no supernatural power]         who hath raised him from the dead. Lactantius (307 ad) "nevertheless, with reference to each person, he introduced the words, "and beside me there is no God," when he might have said "beside us; You are NOT baptized into the NAMES of A father and A son and A holy spirit: Peter etal said that we MUST be baptized in the NAME of Jesus Christ. We are baptized into the NAME of Jesus Christ and then HE puts us into the Kingdom of Christ which is the Church of Christ.  We do not deal with THREE PERSONS.  No mystery: just reading 101a If you are a baptized believer you will NEVER EVER say that Jesus as the Christ SHARED the godhead with two other PEOPLE.  There is NO mystery for believers. John 14:10 Believest thou not that         I am IN the Father,         and the Father IN me? Are you doing to deny that: hearing a voice from up in the AIR does not mean there was another person up there. The Spirit or mind OF Christ is not literally like a DOVE: the Rock Pigeon was a carrier of messages.  He is the SON of a FATHER and not the DAUGHTER of a MOTHER in pagan triads. The Catholic distortion of the creeds MUST be a father, mother and eternally infant son which you probably worship as a PAGAN son at Xmas and Ishtar sun worship services. the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself:         but the Father that DWELLETH IN ME         he doeth the works. God became a "father" in all classical trinities when HE spoke a WORD: that word was the Son of God. The Spirit was the BREATH of God.  Neither spirit (breath) or son (articulated word) has ANY THOUGHTS on their own.  Therefore, if you insist on THREE PEOPLE as a FAMILY of Gods then you have two members deaf and dumb. Jesus just said it so that you CANNOT make a mistake on your own. Why can't you believe that instead of philosophy where NO trinitarian ever thought of three separated beings? John 14:11 Believe me         that I am IN the Father,         and the Father IN me:         or else believe me for the very works’ sake. Then reading MORE of the context to see that this is not another PERSON but Christ in Spirit. John 14:17 Even the Spirit OF truth;         whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him:         but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you,         and shall be in you. When Christ was with them the Spirit OF Christ was with him.  This is the Spirit OF God. John 14:18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Doesn't that trump VAIN PHILOSOPHY? Now WHO is it that will COME to the Apostles as TRUTH? John 14:25 These things have I spoken unto you,         being yet present with you. This leads to Christ still speaking when NOT present with the Apostles. John 14:26 But the Comforter,         which is the Holy Ghost, [The Spirit OF truth]         whom the Father will send IN MY NAME What is HIS Name? Jesus Christ. What will Christ in Spirit teach? What HE said while present: nothing more, nothing less. Peter left as the MARK of a false teacher anyone who DENIES that the face-to-face revelation through Prophets and Apostles can be "private interpreted" or "further expounded."          he shall teach you all things, [not YOU]         and bring all things to your remembrance, [you are not THAT old]         whatsoever I have said unto you. "HAVE SAID" seems to be PAST tense when the Apostles (only) had fully revealed the PATTERNISM well documented in the PROPHETS. If your preacher is not 2,000 years old and HAS HEARD Jesus the Christ in a face-to-face revelation to hand-picked and trained apostles and claims that the Spirit TOLD THEM something, DO NOT FEED HIM So, you see NEITHER Son nor Spirit has ANY words to say to you or your preacher: The Spirit OF Christ will REMIND them of what Christ IN PERSON had taught: nothing less, and certainly nothing more. When each history of THEIR work was finished recording their MEMORY, their testimony was SEALED and made tamper proof IF you have the Spirit (mind) OF Christ. The Spirit OF Christ will still be NAMED Jesus Christ: Holy Spirit is NOT a name The Same John said that the Holy Spirit bears the name of Jesus Chrisit the Righteous.         1John 2:1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin,                 we have an advocate with the Father,  JESUS CHRIST THE RIGHTEOUS. SAME COMFORTER: people who want the SPIRIT ONLY do not want JESUS CHRIST whose Spirit it was. Don't you see: The Spirit OF TRUTH will be I The Holy Spirit will bear the name Jesus Christ The Spirit OF Truth would speak what Christ had taught them. This is the same SPIRIT CHRIST who inspired the prophets and indwelled Jesus of Nazareth. If you are not a PROPHET or an APOSTLE who left you a "membory" then: John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. Jesus FIRED the doctors of the law because THEY take away the key to knowledge. The role of the church is to READ and discuss the Word of God and you will receive the Spirit OF Christ Who put HIS mind into HIS Words powerful enough to create all that we see. The role is not to JUDGE but to TEACH and LEARN that which is written. Christ in Spirit prophesied the WHOLE nature of the School of the Bible.  He came to FILL FULL this WELL DEFINED PATTERN as He disabled or crippled the curse of the Law and paganism (come to a church near you). Notice the difference between the WE (Apostles) and the YOU who did not hear Jesus in person and HIS Spirit will NOT speak to you.  That would make you a SECOND INCARNATION. 2Pet. 1:19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy;       whereunto YE do well that ye take heed,       as unto a light that shineth in a dark place,       until the day dawn,       and the day star arise in your hearts: 2Pet. 1:20 Knowing this first,       that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. Don't be an ANTI-Christ and deny that CHRIST (Who was and is God in visible and audible form) and deny that in HIM dwelled the GODHEAD BODILY. Jesus said of Himself that the Father WAS in HIM and He was IN the Father. Jesus said that when they had been WITH Him they had been WITH the Spirit. No one can accidentially MISREAD that absolutely clear statement in very clear words.  You need LOTS of expensiive help from the NOT friends to break your fingers looking for SOME reason to DENY that Christ was the Godhead BODILY. I don't know what the invisible Deity is like and cannot know: that is why God prepared the writing prophets and apostles to reveal His will.  The image and PATTERNISM God wants us to know and honor is embodied in Jesus of Nazareth who was and IS treated like a criminal to those not OF FAITH or OF TRUTH.  WHATEVER we do in word or deed must be done in the name of Jesus Christ: He gave us all of the songs and sermons because WE be not prophets or apostles.

   

Novatian Cocerning the Trinity

Click for John Mark Hicks on the "cummuning" godhead which from the originators of the concept demands that God is three persons in the sense of "three centers of consiousness."  Therefore, THEY are not one but three with individual skills and knowledge base but they are ONE says men like H. Leo Boles in that they were on friendly terms.

A Gathered People: Revisioning the Assembly as Transforming Encounter  by John Mark Hicks, Johnny Melton and Bobby Valentine.  These people really lust to drag you back under the sacrificial system which was the worship of the starry host to which God abandoned them because of musical idolatry at Mount Sinai. LU is in big trouble. THE BOOK for your review.

H. Leo boles evidence for his founding of this view.
H. Leo Boles book on Tritheism or polytheism.
More H. Leo Boles
H. Leo Boles on Genesis 1
The Trinity in History
There is only One God beginning in Genesis
K.C.Moser rediscovered writer on the Indwelling
Theophilus to Autoclycus: first use of Trias
Novation Concerning the Trinity c200-258
Athenagoras The Trinity-
Gregory of Nyssa Not three gods
Boethius The Trinity is One God
Hislop: the Trinity derived from Babylon 

          Martin Luther
          John Calvin The Trinity
          Philip Schaff

A trinity of three separated persons first appeard in the Church of Christ, East Wing and published in 1942 out of David Lipscomb College.  Because the Family of Gods REQUIRE communion this leads to removing the confession of Christ off the identifier, naming the group The Family of God as a Community church which is defined in terms of  "commune." This requires a high-stack of ministers to make sure all of the surplus time and money is "protected."

In a secondary sense the neo-trinity or tritheism has emerged by theologians--with no certificate of need--who almost always build on the foundation of their sponsors.  This cut N paste reading of opinions almost always emerges from people who rarely read the true history they espouse.  I certify that no theologian has ever had the time or opportunity to take the documents apart and see how the "lifted proof text" may be radically altered by other IMAGES of the One God. For instance the first two scholars who used the word TRIAS defined God as Paul does in his comparison in 1 Corinthians 2 and Jesus in John 12f.  Father is THOUGHT.  When the One God spoke, the wordS became His Son.  But, really they agree with solomon that Wisdom (Sophia) as the DAUGHTER came before the Words articulated as the Son.

You will see that Allen rests wholly on the REASONING of those popular on the lecture circuit.  We have also reviewed John Mark Hicks tries to convert Alexander Campbell into a trinitarian.  Click Here.

I have an index on the Holy Spirit where I have posted original writings and you will not be happy with their definition of TRINITY.

C. Leonard Allen: For more than two centuries Christian faith has been on the defensive against the steady encroachment of the secular and scientific worldview. Christian intellectuals and apologists have, to varying degrees, sought to accommodate that worldview.

But now, with the decline of the modern worldview, believers can embrace more easily the full wealth of historic Christian convictions, some of which were readily sacrificed or compromised to accommodate modernity.

On the contray Paul Tillich wrote that it was about this time that people began to classify God as three "persons."

"There is much gnostic Marcionism in them, that is, a dualistic blasphemy of the Creator God. They put the Savior God in such opposition to the Creator God that, although they never fall into any real heresy, they implicitly blaspheme the divine creation by identifying it with the sinful state of reality.

Against this tendency Irenaeus said that God is one; there is no duality in him. 
        Law and gospel, 
        creation and salvation,
        are derived from the same God."
        (Tillich, Paul, A History of Christian Thought, p. 42)

"This God is never called a person. The word person was never applied to God in the Middle ages. The reason for this is that the three members of the trinity were called personae (faces or countenances): The Father is persona, the Son is persona, and the Spirit is persona. Persona here means a special characteristic of the divine ground, expressing itself in an independent hypostasis.

"Thus, we can say that it was the nineteenth century which made God into a person, with the result that the greatness of the classical idea of God was destroyed by this way of speaking... but to speak of God as a person would have been heretical for the Middle Ages; it would have been to them a Unitarian heresy, because it would have conflicted with the statement that God has three personae, three expressions of his being. (Tillich, Paul, A History of Christian Thought, p. 190)

One of the important statements of Protestants like John Calvin was that they had NO respect for the "historic convictions" pronounced by councils or creeds.  It is clear that "lectureships" among the scholars is intended to be and has some success in restoring the HISTORIC theology as precident for restoring COUNCILS to modify faith and practice.  Click for Calvin defining the conclave of "pastors" and professors always perverting the Word of God.

But the Romanists have another end in view when they say that the power of interpreting Scripture belongs to councils; and that without challenge.

For they employ it as a pretext for giving the name of an interpretation of Scripture to everything which is determined in councils.

This repudiated the "history" as having any authority for "that which is written" and while errors were stopped by Godly men the history has been that collectivized "pastors" are most likely to multiply error.

Like all historic scholars he and the reformation was built upon the CENI principle which is well documented in the Bible.  See our history about Commands, Examples and Inferences.

There is no "scholar" living or dead who has anything to say beyond what has been said. Being Apostolic meant to early Christian that if it was not well documented in the Prophets or Apostles it could never be used to teach or add practices.  The Restoration Movement meant that such people could not IMPOSE anything which they could not prove from the Bible.

Allen means that we live in a postmodern world which began as a students joke. This view is that all was error in the B.M. (Before Me) area.  However, everything your parents (or you) believed is crap because they were traditionalists or had a heritage. This means that they caught their views of TRUTH like a deadly disease.

The "nothing is certain" view is based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. When adopted by "theologians" both Heisenberg and Einstein got a good belly laugh.  This says that if you can move at the speed of light--meaning you can get to the Moon is a little more than one second--that subatomic particle you were shoot at has been CHANGED by whatever you shoot at it. Therefore, you can NEVER be certain of where the little critter is.  This ticked Einstein and Heisenberg who spoke of the speed of light and those who believed that a parchment read by Jesus with the ink still black CANNOT mean the same thing to us as it meant to Jesus.  Theologians, however, claim the power to do what the laity cannot do.  Of Allen:

He tells us that "seeing the past in a new light, however, can bring clarifying perspective and healing balm...It can provide the impetus toward reconciling old estrangements..." (p.3). When we realize that one of the goals of the promoters of change is a reconciliation with the Disciples of Christ and Christian Churches who departed from us a century ago. The reconciling, they have in mind in for us to do. They think our fathers were wrong in refusing to fellowship those who desired instrumental music in worship and missionary societies. Waddey

C. Leonard Allen:  By far the most important recovery of neglected Christian practice and truth that this change of eras is making possible is a practical or functional doctrine of the Trinity. This claim may sound odd to many Christians, and perhaps even unintelligible at first--which may in itself be a sign of the problem we face.  ;-)

If there is no certainty in this postmodern world, you might wonder how some have a way to discern the indiscernable.  One notable example removes Christ from his confession and sows discord by getting a vision to add instrumental music: the fact that the new insight forces the old text to lie is not wrong by the definition of this revelation. Others have the Holy Spirit tell them to lie about the olden text and another says we should hear an audible voice.

The doctrine of the Trinity has been in steady recession in the modern period, and this eclipse stands behind the rise of modern unitarian, rationalistic, Christological, and other heresies. The reasons for the decline are at least two.

The modern period is where you and your parents went to church to be students of the Bible.  While singing wasn't added until the year 373, if you sing then Paul commands that you use one mouth and "sing that which is written." Romans 15.  This removes any role in the organization chart for anyone to pass judgment on what is written.

First, the traditional Western Trinitarian doctrine was increasingly judged to be an inherited dogma that was dense, arcane, and of little relevance to Christians and to the modern world. It was viewed as remote from the actual needs and concerns of believers. Some Christian leaders thus became hostile to the doctrine and many became indifferent.

I don't think that any trinitarian got their ideas from the Bible: first it was a philosophical concept in trying to explain the meaing of father and son.  I am still at a loss as to where new information filtered in which allowed scholars who read the original languages to miss.  We will quote more above about Barth:

This danger is increased by the fact that, even in the usual presentation of the scholarly treatises on the Trinity,

there is first developed a concept of 'person' derived from experience and philosophy, independently of the doctrine of the Trinity as found in revelation and of the history of this doctrine.

The original writings of true scholars speak the truth so there is nothing confusing or mysterious: Jesus said it very clearly in John 12f.

Theophilus of Antioch to Autolycus

It seems to have been a man named Theophilus of Antioch who first applied the term trinity to this Biblical concept as early as 181 A.D. But it was the Anathasian Creed, completed some time in the fifth century, which stated it most clearly: "We worship one God in trinity, and trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons, nor separating the substance." 

This was always as Campbell words of "relationship" such as Father, Son and Spirit and never names of persons. Trinity is never God, Jesus and a Spirit person.

Chapter IV.-Attributes of God. Theophilus of Antioch, Theophilus of Antioch,

And He is without beginning, because He is unbegotten; and He is unchangeable, because He is immortal.

And he is called God on account of His having placed all things on security afforded by Himself; and on account of any of any foreign means (of) running, and moving, and being active, and nourishing, and foreseeing, and governing, and making all things alive.

But he is Lord, because He rules over the universe;
Father, because he is before all things;
Fashioner and Maker, because He is creator and maker of the universe;
the Highest, because of His being above all;
and Almighty, because He Himself rules and embraces all.

By Him you speak, O man; His breath you breathe yet Him you know not. And this is your condition, because of the blindness of your soul, and the hardness of your heart. But, if you will, you may be healed. Entrust yourself to the Physician, and He will couch the eyes of your soul and of your heart.

Who is the Physician? God, who heals and makes alive through His word and wisdom.
God by His own word and wisdom made all things; for

"by His word were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." [Ps xxxiii. 6.] [Same word as holy Spirit]

Most excellent is His wisdom.

By His wisdom God founded the earth;
and by knowledge He prepared the heavens;
and by understanding were the fountains of the great deep broken up, 
and the clouds poured out their dews. 

If thou perceivest these things, O man, living chastely, and holily, and righteously,
thou canst see God.

But before all let faith and the fear of God have rule in thy heart, and then shalt thou understand these things. When thou shalt have put off the mortal, and put on incorruption,
then shall thou see God worthily.

God, then, having His own Word internal within His own bowels,
begat Him, emitting Him
along with His own wisdom before all things.

He had this Word as a helper in the things that were created by Him, and by Him He made all things.

He is called "governing principle", because He rules, and is Lord of all things fashioned by Him.
    He, then, being Spirit of God, and governing principle, and wisdom, and power of the highest,came down upon the prophets, and through them spoke of the creation of the world and of all other things. (This was the Spirit of Christ, 1 Peter 1:11; Revelation 19:10)

For the prophets were not when the world came into existence,

but the wisdom [Spirit in this instance is Sophia] of God which was in Him, and
His holy Word which was always present with Him.

Tertullian was the next to define the Godhead as ONE God and His own Word and Wisdom

That which has come forth out of God is at once God and the Son of God, and the two are one. In this way also, as He is Spirit of Spirit and God of God, He is made a second in manner of existence-in position, not in nature. [Great diversity exists among the critics as to the date of this Apology; see Kaye, pp. xvi. 48, 65. Mosheim says, a.d. 198, Kaye a.d. 204.]

born 155, /160, Carthage [now in Tunisia] d. after 220, , Carthage

To Tertullian, the "trinity" is God, His Reason and the Word as an expression of that Reason. Because God is pure Spirit, all which He does as Father is Spirit. That which extends from Spirit into flesh is the Son. Tertullian does not think of three, separated persons in the Godhead!

The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that: In Scripture there is as yet no single term by which the Three Divine Persons are denoted together. The word trias (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A. D. 180. He speaks of "the Trinity of God [the Father], His Word and His Wisdom ("Ad. Autol.", II, 15).

[Of course, Theophilus used the word trinity as we might describe our own nature as a trinity of body, soul and spirit. To Theophilus, the trinity is God putting His own Wisdom into operation by speaking His own Words. God's Word and Wisdom are also God]

Tertullian formulated the Godhead in Latin as tres personae, una substantia. The Greek prospon which meant "face" and later "representative" or "type." Pope Damasus (c. 304-384) approved the use of persona and substantia as equivalent to hypostasis and ousia respectively. This meant that there was only one substance in God even though He "wore the mask" of even more than three personified beings.

What Leonard Allen, John Mark Hicks and their councils WANT is to define God so that Father and Son can be diluted and they can claim that the "Spirit" is guiding them to introduce music and other sectarianizing heresies which both Father and Son repudiated.

Unless proven otherwise Leonard Allen etal's working document first defined God and three, independant, separated persons in a lecture by H. Leo Boles and Freed Hardeman College in 1938. This was put into a book form in 1942 and has been the CREED of some preachers since and spread by the Gospel Advocate Sunday school literature.

C. Leonard Allen: Second, the traditional doctrine did not fare well against the criterion of “reasonableness” that became ever more dominant in the Enlightenment. The Deists and other proponents of “natural religion” found the doctrine an offense to reason and simply lopped it off. Most others did not reject the doctrine outright, but it became functionally peripheral to a Christian faith increasingly measured and limited by the canons of human reason.

Because it was dogma and not Biblical teaching, it was derived by councils who used their OWN reason. This gave others the right to judge the council's rationality by their own: who can reject my using my reason to question your reason when yours has no Biblical foundation?

This more subtle form of eclipse can be seen in the line of “supernatural rationalism” that runs from the Christian philosopher John Locke down through Alexander Campbell and other progressive Christian thinkers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

John Locke is slandered and used to slander the Campbells and it is certain that the common mantra is never informed by Locke Himself.  For now, the motive is clear:

nor could any help be had or hoped for from reason, which could not be heard, and was judged to have nothing to do in the case 

the priests every where,

to secure their empire,

having excluded reason from having anything to do in religion.

And in the crowd of wrong notions, and invented rites, the world had almost lost the sight of the one only true God.

Logos or Word or rational is directly opposite to rhetoric, music or playing instruments.

See Justin on The Greeks,

the ideas of things in the mind of God were the realities;
the things themselves, as seen by us, were the images of these realities;
       and poetry, therefore, describing the images of realities,
       was only at the third remove from nature.

Jesus as the WORD is the LOGOS or rational discord of God:

1. plea, pretext, ground, would have admitted of an explanation,
2. statement of a theory, argument, to be explained
        c. in Logic, proposition, whether as premiss or conclusion
        d. rule, principle, law, as embodying the result of logismos
4. thesis, hypothesis, provisional ground,
5. , ground 6.formula (wider than definition, but freq. equivalent thereto), term expressing reason,
7. reason, law exhibited in the world-process,
        c. in Neo-Platonic Philos., of regulative and formative forces,
        derived from the intelligible and operative in the sensible universe
IV. inward debate of the soul 1.thinking, reasoning, 
    explanation, opposite perception, in Logic, of discursive reasoning, opposite intuition  
 

IF HUMANS CAN COMMUNE WITH THEMSELVES MAYBE GOD DOESN'T NEED A WHOLE FAMILY Plato, Theaetetus Socrates  Excellent. And do you define thought as I do?Theaetetus How do you define it? Socrates   As the talk which the soul has with itself about any subjects which it considers. You must not suppose that I know this that I am declaring to you. But the soul, as the image presents itself to me, when it thinks, is merely conversing with itself, asking itself questions and answering, Plato, Sophist 263e Stranger Well, then, thought and speech are the same; only the former, which is a silent inner conversation of the soul with itself, has been given the special name of thought. Is not that true? Theaetetus. Certainly. Xenos. But the stream that flows from the soul in vocal utterance through the mouth has the name of speech? [Logos] John 7:37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying,         If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. John 7:38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said,         out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. John 7:39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive:         for the Holy Ghost was not yet given;         because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

 2. reason as a faculty,

V. continuous statement, narrative (whether fact or fiction), oration lego
        4.speech, delivered in court, assembly
VI. verbal expression or utterance, lego, lexis
PROSE OPPOSITE poiêsis,  A. fabrication, creation, production MELOS B. esp. musical member, phrase: hence, song, strain, 2.music to which a song is set, tune, 3. melody of an instrument,

Lexis A.speech, opposite ôidê, 1.art of song 5. = eppsdê, spell, incantation
4.text of an author, opposite exegesis [Peter's private interpretation outlaws exegesis]

i In Robert W. Jenson’s judgment, “the inherited doctrine of the Trinity was by the opening of the nineteenth century nearly defunct in all those parts of the church open to modernity.”

The fact is that Allen's trinity never existed in history. On the contrary, we quoted Paul Tillich above to say that at THIS TIME people began to call God persons: that was based on THEIR rational other than the rationale of the LOGOS which outlaws rhetoric and music.

ii To put the matter over simply, God’s relationality was overshadowed by mechanism. Mystery was eclipsed by method.

The word music derives from mystery and always meant "to make the lambs dumb before the slaughter." If the preacher preaches MYSTERIES and denies the audience the right to think or question the Jesus is made dumb all over again even if His name means RATIONAL.

René Girard

1. mimetic desire: imitation is an aspect of behaviour that not only affects learning but also desire, and imitated desire is a cause of conflict,
2. the scapegoat mechanism is the origin of sacrifice and the foundation of human culture, and religion was necessary in human evolution to control the violence that can come from mimetic rivalry,
3. the Bible reveals the two previous ideas and denounces the scapegoat mechanism.

5.4.2 Behind the anthropological predilections against the victim's perspective, there is a very practical, quasi-historical reason: namely, the victim is shunned and often killed. In the ancient world, the role of music during ritual sacrifice was often to drown out any cries from the victim. It is crucial that the victim not be heard. The practical mechanics of making victims means that it is unusual for the victim's perspective to survive. In the world of ancient ritual it was probably impossible.

45. The Greek verb myo means to close the mouth or shut the eyes. There is debate about whether myo plays a crucial role in the etymology of other significant words such as myth, mystery, and even music. These etymologies make sense within the Girardian hypotheses. Myth means to close ourselves to the victim and tell the tale according to the perpetrator's perspective; mystery cults are based on the silence of the victims; music derives from drowning out the voice of the victim.

3466. musth/rion musterion, moos-tay´-ree-on; from a derivative of mu/w muo (to shut the mouth); a secret or “mystery” (through the idea of silence imposed by initiation into religious rites): -- mystery.

C. Leonard Allen: Other forms of eclipse have been added to these older ones in more recent years. Some biblical scholars, for example, have in effect become binitarian by insisting that the New Testament does not compel us to make a person out of the Spirit as in traditional Trinitarian doctrine.

False! The Nicene Creed treated the Godhead as Father and Son: not God and Jesus.  As an afterthought they wrote "and we believe in the Holy Spirit." Because the Spirit OF Christ is HIS OWN spirit we do not rationally count that as another god person.

iii All this is not to say that the traditional Trinitarian doctrine in the West was free of problems. These older Enlightenment, as well as the more recent, rejections of Trinitarian doctrine are based, in part, on the assumption that the classic Western doctrine is the doctrine of the Trinity.

The traditional trinity has been formulated by theologians using their "reasoning" power which is HISTORYLESS and ignores the classical trinity which never separates God into three people.

C. Leonard Allen:  But the received Western doctrine (strongly indebted to Augustine for its formulation) was marked by abstract, heavily philosophical analysis and alien, Hellenistic assumptions about deity. God was assumed, for example, to be “impassable” (or passionless), an attribute that directly counters the biblical story of God’s anguished interaction with Israel. As a result, the classic form of the doctrine, with its distortions, helped precipitate its modern eclipse.

St. Augustine brought together several strands of thinking:

• 1. there are “triadic” traces of the Trinity in the human soul: For example:

  • triad of self-knowledge (memory, understanding, will)

  • triad of self-love (Lover, Beloved, Love)

• 2. the Spirit is the basis of the union between God and believers, and believer to believer. That is, the Spirit is the giver of community

• 3. “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16)

In the sixth [Book], the question how Christ is called by the mouth of the apostle "the power of God and the wisdom of God," is so far argued that the more careful handling of that question is deferred, viz. whether He from whom Christ is begotten is not wisdom Himself, but only the father of His own wisdom, or whether wisdom begat wisdom.

But be it which it may, the equality of the Trinity became apparent in this book also, and that God was not triple, but a Trinity; and that the Father and the Son are not, as it were, a double as opposed to the single Holy Spirit: for therein three are not anything more than one.

We considered, too, how to understand the words of Bishop Hilary, "Eternity in the Father, form in the Image, use in the Gift."

In the seventh, the question is explained which had been deferred: in what way that

God who begat the Son is not only Father of His own power and wisdom,
        but is Himself also power and wisdom;
so, too, the Holy Spirit; and yet that they are not three powers or three wisdoms,
but one power and one wisdom, as one God and one essence.

It was next inquired, in what way they are called one essence, three persons, or by some Greeks one essence, three substances; and we found that the words were so used through the needs of speech, that there might be one term by which to answer, when it is asked what the three are, whom we truly confess to be three, viz. Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit.

John calvin said there were THREE ASPECTS in the ONE God.

C. Leonard Allen:  The new environment that many like to call “postmodern” is aiding the recovery of a robust and sounder Trinitarian faith and practice. The recovery of the doctrine was launched in the early twentieth century by Karl Barth, though his own doctrine was not sufficiently freed from the Western distortions. Over the last twenty-five years other theologians from a variety of traditions have advanced this recovery in fresh and faithful ways.iv

Allen and others have rebuked the Church of Christ for being without history: that is, it does not take into consideration the views of similar theologians down through history.  As with all groups, the Restoration Movement was based on the views of the Bible which cannot be changed to fit whatever culture or evolved eyeballs occur.

No one seems to know from whence this unique-in-history VISION arrives: some see visions, hear audible voices and have the Holy Spirit tell them to lie about the Bible.

However, it is the NEW CONCEPT that God is three persons.  There are UNholy spirits.

"He (Karl Rahner agreeing with Karl Barth) believes that in light of the modern development of the concept of person, its unqualified use in the Trinitarian doctrine leads unmistakably to tritheism." Matei then quotes:

        "There can be no doubt about it: speaking of three persons in God entails almost inevitably the danger (as a rule we try much too late to overcome it through explicit corrections) of believing that there exists in God three distinct consciousnesses, spiritual vitalities, centers of activity, and so on.

This danger is increased by the fact that, even in the usual presentation of the scholarly treatises on the Trinity,

        there is first developed a concept of 'person' derived from experience and philosophy, independently of the doctrine of the Trinity as found in revelation and of the history of this doctrine.

Next this concept is applied to God, and thus it is demonstrated that there are three such persons in God. " (Eugen Matei,  THE CONCEPT OF 'PERSON' IN TRINITARIAN CONTEXT: HISTORICAL AND ECUMENICAL PERSPECTIVES)

Review of Barth on the Trinity.

Although Barth's treatment of the Trinity is past by the time the doctrine of election is reached, the conception takes here new form and definition. The triune God is defined as one whose reality takes shape in election: 

"in the primal and basic decision in which He wills to be and actually is God, in the mystery of what takes place from and to all eternity within Himself, within his triune being, 

God is none other than the One who in His Son or Word elects Himself, and in and with Himself, elects His people" (II/2, p. 76). In the explication of this election, the characteristically Barthian terms of love and freedom have a central place. Election is good news ("the sum of the gospel," p. 3), the outcome of both the love and the freedom in which "God is what He is." But election, like freedom, is not shapeless and arbitrary; it is to a particular end.

There is a counterpart to God's self-election and election of human beings, and it consists in the fact "that for his part, man can and actually does elect God" (p. 177). This human election which responds to the divine is described as autonomy: "a simple but comprehensive autonomy of the creature which is constituted originally by the act of eternal divine election and which has in this act its ultimate reality" (ibid.).  

Barth's major achievement in this area lies in his inauguration of a decisive shift toward a more truly relational conception of the Trinity, in which greater attention is paid to the being of God as consisting in threeness.There is clear influence on Barth (as on Calvin before him) from the Cappadocian tradition of trinitarian theology, for example, in his adoption of the expression mode of being from the Greek. But there, also, the problem is to be found. By using that term Barth's stated intention was

"to express ... not absolutely, but relatively better and more simply and clearly the same thing as is meant by 'person'" (I/1, p. 359).

C. Leonard Allen: What has emerged from these efforts is a recovery of God’s relationality--or what is sometimes called the social Trinity (see John 17:20-26).

In this view God is understood as a community of persons rather than as three modes of being. God is not a solitary, domineering individual who rules through arbitrary exercise of power

But the outcome is that Augustine's weakness in this very area is simply repeated. Instead of theologically reclaiming the concept of the person from the individualism that has impoverished it, Barth allows the weight of emphasis to remain on the unity of God.

It is as one that God is personal,
rather than being one only in what the three persons give to one another.

In his Book Six the footnote is: ¹⁴ [The Divine Unity is trinal, not triple.
        The triple is composed of three different substances. It has parts, and is complex.
        The trinal is without parts, and is incomplex.
        It denotes one simple substance in three modes or forms.
        "We may speak of the trinal, but not of the triple deity."
                Hollaz, in Hase's Hutterus, 172.-W.G.T.S.]

So, you are back to the HIGHEST form of communion: that which exists internal to a solitary person sitting beside still waters and never in a "spectacle of worship."

The internal triiune nature of the ONE JEHOVAH is never separated into "being" other than through personification:

Psa. 33:4 For the word of the LORD is RIGHT; AND ALL HIS WORKS ARE DONE in truth.
Psa. 33:5 He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD.
Psa. 33:6 By the [1] word of the [2] LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the [3] breath of his mouth. 

Spirit is NEVER a people: 7307. ruwach, roo´-akh; from 7306; wind; by resemblance breath, i.e. a sensible (or even violent) exhalation; figuratively, life, anger, unsubstantiality; by extension, a region of the sky; by resemblance spirit, but only of a rational being (including its expression and functions) 

Psa. 33:7 He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: 
        he layeth up the depth in storehouses.
Psa. 33:8 Let all the earth fear the LORD:
        let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
Psa. 33:9 For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.

One of the "council" leaders is Rubel Shelly who says that John got the LOGOS idea from the Greeks.  If so, and LOOGOS means to be RATIONAL and word-centered excluding rhetoric and music then we understand why the urge to remove the logical, rational (spiritual) mind God created for that purpose.

Clement in Stromata. How to set the world on fire. But the first and generic barbarous dialects have terms by nature, since also men confess that prayers uttered in a barbarian tongue are more powerful. And Plato, in the Cratylus, when wishing to interpreter (fire), says that it is a barbaric term. He testifies, accordingly, that the Phrygians use this term with a slight deviation. Incentor, o-ris, m. [id.] , one who sets the tune or begins to sing, a precentor, singer (post-class.).I. Lit.: carminis, Paul. Nol. Carm. 15, 32 : [1] incentore [2] canam [3] Phoebo [4] Musisque [5] magistris, Avien. Perieg. 895 ; Isid. 6, 9, 13.-- II. Trop., an [A] inciter, exciter: [B] igneus [C] turbarum, Amm. 15, 1, 2 : civilis belli, Oros. 5, 19 : rebellionis [renewal of war] totius, id. 6, 11 . Flamen Hislop Incensor I. one who kindles or sets fire to, II. Trop., an inciter, instigator: turbarum, [1]  one who sets the tune or begins to sing, a precentor, singer (post-class.). Her. Only one more God! I should like to know about Hermes, of whom I am said not to be a true son. Let us make him out, and then I shall know whether there is any meaning in what Cratylus says. Soc. I should imagine that the name Hermes has to do with speech, and signifies that he is the interpreter (ermeneus), or messenger, or thief, or liar, or bargainer; all that sort of thing has a great deal to do with language; as I was telling you the word eirein is expressive of the use of speech, and there is an often-recurring Homeric word emesato, which means "he contrived"- out of these two words, eirein and mesasthai, the legislator formed the name of the God who invented language and speech; and we may imagine him dictating to us the use of this name: "O my friends," says he to us, "seeing that he is the contriver of tales or speeches, you may rightly call him Eirhemes." And this has been improved by us, as we think, into Hermes. Iris also appears to have been called from the verb "to tell" (eirein), because she was a messenger.

To reputiate the usual matriarchal religion Jesus is presented as the SON of a FATHER as opposed to the DAUGHTER of the MOTHER.  Father, Son and Spirit define the roles Jesus PERSONALLY fulfilled and are never the names of PERSONS (people).  Jesus said "if you have seen me you have seen the Father": not MUCH community here.  He said the Father and I are ONE: no more community there.  He said that the FATHER was WITHIN: the same community of classical trinitarians who speak of Thought, Breath and Words as spoken.  Jesus told the apostles that the Spirit had been WITH them and would be IN them: BOTH father and son are IN the faithful and the faithful are IN the Father and Son.  IN does not meant INSIDE OF literally. 

Phil 2:5 Your attitude [mind] should be the kind that was shown us by Jesus Christ,
Phil 2:6 who, though he was God, did not demand and cling to his rights as God,
Phil 2:7 but laid aside his mighty power and glory, taking the disguise of a slave and becoming like men.
Phil 2:8 And he humbled himself even further, going so far as actually to die a criminal's death on a cross.

The MIND that was in Christ who WAS God is the word:

MInd is: G5426 phroneo fron-eh'-o From G5424 ; to exercise the mind, that is, entertain or have a sentiment or opinion; by implication to be (mentally) disposed (more or less earnestly in a certain direction); intensively to interest oneself in (with concern or obedience):set the affection on, (be) care (-ful), (be like-, + be of

For US Paul equated the MIND of Christ to the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 2).

Heb. 1:1God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, 

1Pet. 1:11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.

Heb. 1:2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; 

God created all things by His WORD: therefore as trinitarians agreed, the Word of God is the one God's SON.

Heb. 1:3 Who being 
        the brightness of his glory,
        and the express image of his person,
        and upholding all things by the word of his power,
        when he had by himself purged our sins,
        sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

This is the "majesty" He laid aside to take on the form or clothing or Jesus of Nazareth.

No one thought of God being the persons as in people but:

Person; 5287. hupostasis, hoop-os´-tas-is; from a compound of 5259 and 2476; a setting under (support), i.e. (figuratively) concretely, essence, or abstractly, assurance (objectively or subjectively): -- confidence, confident, person, substance

That was GOD Who laid aside His OWN majesty and glory and used "a body prepared for me" meaning the MAN Jesus of Nazareth who became a son about 2,000 years ago.  This is what God promised Moses when the people refused to hear God:

Deut. 18:15 The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee,
        of thy brethren,
        like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;
Deut. 18:18 I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee,
        and will put my words in his mouth;
        and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.
Deut. 18:20 But the prophet,
        which shall presume to speak a word in my name,
        which I have not commanded him to speak,
        or that shall speak in the name of other gods,
        even that prophet shall die.

Therefore, as the human son Jesus of Nazareth is called Jesus the CHRIST of God: thereafter the FATHER is the one God who sent His IMAGE or inaudible word as a visible and audible ARTICULATER of what the "father breathed into Him."

John 17:18 As thou hast sent ME into the world, even so have I also SENT them into the world.

Mt 28:18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

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

Peter and all of the Bible and early history proves that they were baptized in the NAME of Jesus Christ.

John 17:19 And for their sakes I SANCTIFY myself, 
        that they also might be SANCTIFIED through the TRUTH.

John 17:20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also
        which shall believe on ME through THEIR WORD;

John 17:21 That they all may be ONE;
        .as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,
        .that they also may be one IN us:
        .that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

This relates only to the WORD: the son spoke the Words which came from the father who was within.  As we have noted, common knowledge understood that we talk to ourselves and we don't "shoot off our mouth without our mind being in gear."  The object was that the Apostles all spoke only that which had been taught to them in audible words.

Jn 12:48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words,
        hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken,
        the same shall judge him in the last day.

Jn 12:49 For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, 
        he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.

Jn 12:50 And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: 
        whatsoever I speak therefore, 
        even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.

The COMMUNITY is being IN the body of Christ or the Church of Christ or the ekklesia which is a synagogue or school of the Bible--only.

C. Leonard Allen: In this view God is understood as a community of persons rather than as three modes of being. God is not a solitary, domineering individual who rules through arbitrary exercise of power

True: we MUST insist that God be a committee so He doesn't just screw up! We we let God have HIS way there is not telling what He would do. Where in the name of heresy will we find God being put into HIS place by other "gods?"

Why would being a solitary ONE GOD make Him domineering: to whom would He have to prove His Sovereignty?  As we have noted above the INVENTION of a radical definition of trinity goes hand in hand with removing CHRIST from the confession and resting on the "spirit" to tell them to lie about all of the "music" passages imposed BECAUSE of the worship of a trinity at Mount Sinai:

"Jesus said, 'I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind'" (John 9:39). Jesus ultimately brings judgment against them by letting them judge him and by letting them execute him in an act of righteous violence."

If we could think of the universal pagan triad the message would always be that some ONE or the other would domineer.  Why would their be a polytheistic "three centers of consiousness" unless each one had their own views.

Psa. 115:3 But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.

Dan. 9:14 Therefore hath the LORD watched upon the evil, and brought it upon
        for the LORD our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth:
        for we obeyed not his voice.

Heb. 12:28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace,    
        whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:
Heb. 12:29 For our God is a consuming fire.

Pretty hard on God! 

John 3:31 He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all. 

John 3:32 And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth; 
        and no man receiveth his testimony.

John 3:33 He [Jesus] that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true. 
John 3:34 For he whom God hath sent
        speaketh the words of God: 
        for God giveth not the Spirit by measure [METER] unto him.
 
John 3:35 The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. 

That means that the Father sent the Son into the Word.
What God sent by breathing out His "spirit" was the Word.  Therefore, the Word was the Son.
That means that the Father thinks and the Son speaks and the Words ARE Spirit and Life.
John 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: 
        and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life;         but the wrath of God abideth on him.  

I doubt that there were THREE PERSONS having a friendly chat and the "son" and "spirit" persons challenged the "father's" authority. He is GOD and does not nead a "by your leave" to lay down conditions which save or damn arrogant humanoids.

C. Leonard Allen:  but rather the perfect model of loving community--becoming vulnerable, entering into partnership, sharing the divine life, loving like a parent. As a contemporary spiritual writer has put it:

God is not a solitary.
That is why He is not alone.
He is a Trinity.

Wouldn't that be "they is a trinity?"  Trinitarians of old would say that God "always had His Word and Wisdom with Him." They be NOT three people.

The Shema in Deuteronomy 6 can never define a TRIAD: Jesus confirms it:

Mark 12:28 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together,
        and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him,
        Which is the first commandment of all?
Mark 12:29 And Jesus answered him,
        The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel;
        The Lord our God is one Lord:
Mark 12:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God
        with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
        and with all thy mind,
        and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
Mark 12:32 And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth:
        for there is one God; and there is none other but he:
Mark 12:33 And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.
Mark 12:34 And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him,
        Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.
        And no man after that durst ask him any question.

The Prophesy by the Spirit OF Christ rejects the idea that God is INCAPABLE of being the SOLE power in our world.  Just look at all of the roles the Son can juggle without having to call in other "god" people to keep Him from being lonely.  Those who want to COMMUNE with Jesus will not be able to engage in pillow talk:

Is. 53:3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief:
        and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Isa. 53:4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows:
        yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
Is. 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: t
        he chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Wounded is: 2490. lchalal, khaw-lal´; a primitive root (compare 2470); properly, to bore, i.e. (by implication) to wound, to dissolve; figuratively, to profane (a person, place or thing), to break (one’s word), to begin (as if by an “opening wedge”); denom. (from 2485) to play (the flute):--begin (x men began), defile, x break, defile, x eat (as common things), x first, x gather the grape thereof, x take inheritance, pipe, player on instruments, pollute, (cast as) profane (self), prostitute, slay (slain), sorrow, stain, wound.

	King	Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God. Isaiah 44:6
	Wonderful Counselor	Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him? Isaiah 40:13 ---For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; 1 Timothy 2:5
The Son is	Mighty God	And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jn.20:28 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. Revelation 1:8
	Ever- lasting Father	Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O Lord, art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting. Isaiah 63:16 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. John 14:10 Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works sake. John 14:11 Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? we shall not die. O Lord, thou hast ordained them for judgment; and, O mighty God, thou hast established them for correction. Revelation 1:12
	Prince of Peace	Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. Acts 5:31

Apparently the disciples did not grasp the COMMUNITY they had with nothing lacking in Jesus Christ:

Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. John 14:8
        Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you,
        and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?
        he that hath seen ME hath seen the Father;
        and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? John 14:9

The word they used was PERSONAE. One time when someone got away with forcing Calvin to change his terminology caused him to speak of the THREE ASPECTS of the ONE God. Paul Tillich noted that before the 19th century to call God a "person" would be heresy.

	Father	Thought
Jesus	Son	Word	God With Us
	Spirit	Breath

In these views Father THINKS, Son SPEAKS and Spirit (breath) breathes forth the word. Never forget that Jesus spoke to the BRIGHT LIGHTS in parables to PREVENT them from getting control of the SPIRIT and retailing it as Isaiah 48 makes clear.

Here is the confirmation by Jesus as SON who speaks what the FATHER thinks:

Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?
the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself:
but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. John 14:10

Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works sake. John 14:11

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. John 14:12

Works means ERGS or the expenditure of suffering and sweat and blood: No, you do not hear the voice of God because NO MAN HEARETH God and that is why GOD came to us with vocal cords.

And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do,
that the Father may be glorified in the Son. John 14:13
If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it. John 14:14

That is why Peter understood baptism in the NAME of "father, son and spirit" meant baptize in the NAME of Jesus Christ (Jehovah-saves)

Note the conditional IF:

If ye love me, keep my commandments. John 14:15
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another [fuller] Comforter,
THAT he may abide with you for ever; John 14:16

Jesus as man was not immortal: his life was limited but as SPIRIT He can abide with us always. IF we REPUDIATE Jesus the Christ of God by claiming that the SPIRIT tells us to lie about the Word of Christ we MARK that person as one of the generation of Vipers or a Crooked generation MARKED by their musical styles along with the dogs and wolves.

What is the NAME of this "fuller" Comforter?

1Jn.2:1 MY little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate [comforter] with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:

Is HE another little person to fit in your carnal body? NO. Spirit is PERSONIFIED and CODIFIED:

Even the Spirit OF truth; whom the world cannot receive, 
        because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him:
but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. John 14:17

I am not aware of a book in the "brotherhood" on the Holy Spirit which can quote this verse.

I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. John 14:18

Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me:
        because I live, ye shall live also. John 14:19
At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. John 14:20

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing:
the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. John 6:63

And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. 1 Jn. 5:20

If ye had known me,
ye should have known my Father also:
and from henceforth ye know him,
and have seen him. John 14:7

That is because there is only ONE Divine Being: Jesus was filled with FULL DEITY.

Col 2:9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
Col 2:10 And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:

C. Leonard Allen: If He were only unity, He would be a solitary. But, being love, He is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit.

ALL people who express love are SOLITARY: we don't know anything about God before the history of the Hebrew people began to be written.  Most rhetoricians are IN LOVE with their own words.

Because God is a consuming fire:

Heb. 12:29 For our God is a consuming fire.

Does it take THREE GODS to create a consuming fire and have someone to burn?

You may Click to Return above to see that the ONE SOLITARY GOD is the SOLE object and source of Love. You don't NEED three people to express or bestow love.

2John 6 And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it.

1John 1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;
1John 1:2 (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;)
1John 1:3 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.
1John 1:4 And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.  
1John 1:5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

Gal. 3:20 Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.

Jer. 51:14 The LORD of hosts hath sworn by himself, saying,
        Surely I will fill thee with men, as with caterpillers;
        and they shall lift up a shout against thee.
Amos 6:8 The Lord GOD hath sworn by himself, saith the LORD the God of hosts,
        I abhor the excellency of Jacob, and hate his palaces:
        therefore will I deliver up the city with all that is therein

C. Leonard Allen:   The Father is life, and He is the source of all things; the Son is the image of the Father, and He is light; the Holy Spirit is the love which unites them, and He is a divine person.

We need to restate that God is ONE: He is manifested as Fathe, Son and Spirit.  The Son was the image of GOD and not the "father" which was another manifestation:

2Cor. 4:3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:
2Cor. 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not,
        lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ,
        who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

Holy is never a name but an adjective: God is holy or wholly Spirit in nature.  Spirit never speaks of a person but the mental disposition of that person: WIND is used because we cannot see the SPIRIT of God or man except when it manifests itself.  Spirit is never defined as LOVE: God is Love.

John 1 teaches the same spiritual truth as Genesis 1 to prove that there were not THREE PERSONS required:

John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

C. Leonard Allen: God, being love, is communication. . . .
The love of the Trinity is the new kind of love proposed to man.

But it is impossible to live it without the Trinity within us.
That is why the Christian is ‘inhabited.’
He is ‘inhabited’ by the Trinity.
“Anyone who loves me will be true to my word, and my Father will love him; we will come to him and make our dwelling place with him” (John 14:23).v

The prophecy of the seven spirits which would rest upon Messiah as the Brahch all speak of forms of divine knowledge (Isaiah 11:1-4).  When the dove rested on Jesus this was a Rock Pigeon and speaks of communicating a message: the spirit was not like a little man.  None of the apostles are said to have a Spirit person INSIDE or inhabiting their bodies.  We are indwell by Spirit when the Words of Christ dwell in us as the inspired text?

The another Comforter who bestows love is named "Jesus Christ the Righteous."

I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. John 14:18

Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more;
        but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. John 14:19
At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. John 14:20

John 14:21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them,
        he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father,
        and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

What? Father and Son would be IN those...
How?  when they obeyed His Commandments
Father as the DIVINE THOUGHTS can dwell within
Son as the articulated thoughts can dwell within
No carnal body has three PEOPLE living inside of them.
The Spirit rested UPON Jesus because it was the breath of God infusing His Words.

You will notice that the Spirit is never loved by the Father or Son nor bestows love. That is because SPIRIT is breath or that invisible "wind" which passes between the Father or Thought and the Son or Word--articulated Breath. The SPIRIT indwells the believer as the WORD indwells the believer:

John 14:22 Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him,
        If a man love me,
        he will keep my words:

When we keep the Words of Christ which ARE Spirit and Live, we have both the Thought of God and the Word of God indwelling our hearts or spirits:

and my Father will love him,
and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

When father and son dwell in us and we dwell in the father and son there is just ONE:

Col. 1:27 To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles;
        which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:
Col. 1:28 Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom;
        that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus:

IN does not mean INSIDE OF.

John 14:24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings:
        and the word which ye hear is not mine,  [the Word articulates only]
        but the Father’s which sent me. [the Father within thinks]
John 14:25 These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.
John 14:26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost,
        whom the Father will send in my name,
        he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance,
        whatsoever I have said unto you.

Because Jesus Christ did not select and teach the theologians face to face and validate the authority of the WORDS by supernatural signs, they have NOTHING in their memory to remember and should know that "the imaginations of the human heart are continually evil."

Jesus said "the Father and I are One." The Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son. The Spirit's NAME will be Jesus Christ.

What is the NAME of this "fuller" Comforter?

1Jn.2:1 MY little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate [comforter] with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:

When the Spirit Lord appeared to Paul He said "I am Jesus of Nazareth}\."

Acts 26:16 But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose,
        to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen,
        and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee;

Only those who were eye and ear witnesses of Jesus Christ and saw Him after the resurrection were Apostles: only they had any further communication from the Spirit whos name was "Jesus the Righteous."

THE CLAIM THAT GOD IS ECSTATIC IS CONSISTENT WITH LYING ABOUT THE BIBLE TO IMPOSE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC TO DELIBERATELY SOW DISCORD.

I have posted a long list of data on ecstasy or enthusiasm which is the PURPOSE being DRIVEN by false preachers any time they speak of "Musical Worship Teams" or affirm or add instrumental music.  You may want to skip down to the following C. Leonard Allen in red.

"Here singing served as a means of inducing ecstatic prophecy (speaking in tongues). Thus the essential relationship between music and prophecy can be clearly seen. This relationship also explains why the expression for "making music" and "prophesying" was often identical in the ancient tongues. origen contra celsum 8.67. The Hebrew word Naba signifies not only "to prophesy" but also "to make music." (Quasten, Johannes, Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, p. 39)

C. Leonard Allen: In this view God is essentially dynamic, relational, and ecstatic (going outside oneself). God is the very paragon of love in relationship, of living in intimate community and submissive freedom--

Is he saying that God was ob-stupidus, amazed, confounded, beside one's self, senseless, stupefied. That is the only conclusion because:

PLAUTUS 1216

MILPHIDIPPA  (aloud) . Why do you stand stupefied? Why don't you knock?
ACROTELEUTIUM  (aloud) . Because he is not within whom I want.
PYRGOPOLINICES  (to PALAESTRIO) . She is a diviner. Because she is in love with me, Venus has made her prophesy. VENUS is Zoe or Lucifer.

Phaon of Lesbos: Sappho, the poetess, was enamoured of Phaon the Lesbian. When he deserted her, she threw herself from the Leucadian promontory or Lover's Leap, which was supposed to provide a cure for unrequited love. Her death was the consequence. See her Epistle to Phaon, the twenty-first of the Heroides of Ovid

Ekphron

Plato, Ion [534b] in certain gardens and glades of the Muses--like the bees, and winging the air as these do.¹ And what they tell is true. For a poet is a light and winged and sacred thing, and is unable ever to indite until he has been inspired and put out of his senses, and his mind is no longer in him: every man, whilst he retains possession of that, is powerless to indite a verse or chant an oracle. Seeing then that it is not by art that they compose and utter so many fine things about the deeds of men--

[534c] as you do about Homer--but by a divine dispensation, each is able only to compose that to which the Muse has stirred him, this man dithyrambs, another laudatory odes, another dance-songs, another epic or else iambic verse; but each is at fault in any other kind. For not by art do they utter these things, but by divine influence; since, if they had fully learnt by art to speak on one kind of theme, they would know how to speak on all. And for this reason God takes away the mind of these men and uses them as his ministers, just as he does soothsayers and godly seers,

Psa. 86:9 All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee,
        O Lord; and shall glorify thy name.
Psa. 86:10 For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art God alone.

Isa. 37:16 O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubims,
        thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth:
        thou hast made heaven and earth.

Isa . 45:18 For thus saith
        the LORD that created the heavens;
        God himself that formed the earth and made it;
        he hath established it, he created it not in vain,
        he formed it to be inhabited:
        I am the LORD; and there is none else.

Luke 5:21 And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying,
        Who is this which speaketh blasphemies?
        Who can forgive sins, but God alone?

He really is saying consistent with the Vineyard and New Wineskins and all pagan worship: make love to God in orgasmic ecstacy (Wimber).  Jesus died to remove the laded burden which is "spiritual anxiety created by religious rituals."  The burden

Phortos , ho, ( [pherô] ) A. load, freight, Erôs 2. object of love or desire, aprosiktoi erôtes Pi.N.11.48 , cf. Luc.Tim.14. 3. passionate joy, S.Aj.693 (lyr.). IV. name of the klêros Aphroditês, [Zoe] Charizesthai erastais Pederasty musicians, odes, Mousa paidikee, which are mere play for him. A nomos for cinaedi by a Sybarite Hemitheon is mentioned

Xenophon, in Symp. 8.32, say that pederasty was the usual custom in Elis and Thebes, and Plato adds that charizesthai erastais was not considered dishonorable because the people there were too inarticulate to persuade with words.

Ekstasis , eôs, hê, ( [existêmi] ) degeneracy, 2. distraction of mind, from terror, astonishment, anger, 3.entrancement, astonishment, b.drunken excitement   Ekstassis 2. distraction of mind, from terror, astonishment, anger, manikê, 3.entrancement, astonishment, b.drunken excitement, 

Manikos a madwoman in Corinth according to Paul, extravagant, unbalanced, 2. frenzied, enthusiastic, inspired, poietikos mousikoi and poetry restricted to MYTHMONGERS. Pharmakia is the sorcery John identified with speakers, singers and instrument players under the mother of harlots (Rev 17-18)

Frenzied, enthusiastic, inspired in music or poetry was effective as inducing madness.

Aristotle Poetics 1447a the poetry of tragic drama, and, moreover, comedy and dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and harp-playing, these, speaking generally, may all be said to be "representations of life...so is it also in the arts which we have mentioned, they all make their representations in rhythm and language and tune, using these means either separately or in combination. For tune and rhythm alone are employed in flute-playing and harp-playing and in any other arts which have a similar function, as, for example, pipe-playing. Rhythm alone without tune is employed by dancers in their representations, for by means of rhythmical gestures they represent both character and experiences and actions. 

Note: The explanation of mimêsis, as Aristotle uses the word, demands a treatise; all that a footnote can say is this:--Life "presents" to the artist the phenomena of sense, which the artist "re-presents" in his own medium, giving coherence, designing a PATTERN. That this is true not only of drama and fiction but also of instrumental music ("most flute-playing and harp-playing") was more obvious to a Greek than to us, since Greek instrumental music was more definitely imitative. The technical display of the virtuoso Plato describes as "a beastly noise." So does God in the Old Testament

Philo "developed a doctrine of ecstasy or ek-stasis, which means sstanding outside oneself.' This is the highest form of piety which lies beyond faith. This mysticism unites prophetic ecstasy with 'enthusiasm', a word which comes from en-theos-mania, meaning to possess the divine. From this there comes finally the fully developed mystical system of the Neo-Platonists, for example, of Dionysus the Areopagite.

In this mystical system the ecstasy of the individual person leads to a union with the One, with the Absolute, with God." (Tillich, Paul, A History of Christian Thought, Touchstone, p. 13)

Entheos, on, in later Prose contr. enthous Ph.2.542, App.Hisp.18, Aen.Gaz.Thphr.p.12 B.:--full of the god, inspired, possessed, e. gunaikes, of the Bacchantes II. of divine frenzy, inspired by the god, technai A.Ag.1209 ; mantikê

Para-phora
A.going aside para phoras poieisthai
II. mostly of the mind, derangement, distraclion, A. Eu.330(lyr.) ; têsaisthêsios Aret.CD1.5 ; p.enmethêi Id.SD1.6 ; frenzy, p. kai ekstasis

Aeschylus, Eumenide
Chorus

This is our song over the sacrificial victim--frenzied, maddened, destroying the mind, [330] the Furies' hymn, a spell to bind the soul, not tuned to the lyre, withering the life of mortals.

All sacrificial music intended to force the victim to be "silent before the slaughter priests." Music or mystery was to silent the voice of the victime.

Of Apollo's Oracle at Delphi:

No one was present but a priest, called the prophêtês (and prophêtis), who explained the words she uttered in her ecstasy, and put them into metrical form, generally hexameters. In later times the votaries were contented with answers in prose. The responses were often obscure and enigmatical, and couched in ambiguous and metaphorical expressions, which themselves needed explanation. The order in which the applicants approached the oracle was determined by lot, but certain cities, as Sparta, had the right of priority.

Why hasn't some "doctor of the Law discorvered that of Jesus:

John 3:34 For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by METER unto him.

Ecstasy Britannica

(Greek: ekstasis, "to stand outside of or transcend [oneself ]"), in mysticism, the experience of an inner vision of God or of one's relation to or union with the divine. Various methods have been used to achieve ecstasy, which is a primary goal in most forms of religious mysticism. The most typical consists of four stages:

(1) purgation (of bodily desire);
(2) purification (of the will);
(3) illumination (of the mind); and
(4) unification (of one's being or will with the divine).

Other methods are: dancing (as used by the Mawlawiyah, or whirling dervishes, a Muslim Sufi sect); the use of sedatives and stimulants (as utilized in some Hellenistic mystery religions); and the use of certain drugs, such as peyote, mescaline, hashish, LSD, and similar products (in certain Islamic sects and modern experimental religious groups).

Most mystics, both in the East and in the West, frown on the use of drugs because no permanent change in the personality (in the mystical sense) has been known to occur.

In certain ancient Israelite prophetic groups, music was used to achieve the ecstatic state, in which the participants, in their accompanying dancing, were believed to have been seized by the hand of Yahweh, the God of Israel, as in the case of Saul, the 11th-century-bc king of Israel.

The Pythia (priestess) of the Greek oracle at Delphi often went into an ecstatic state during which she uttered sounds revealed to her by the python (the snake, the symbol of resurrection), after drinking water from a certain spring.

Her "words" were then interpreted by a priest to help a suppliant find a way to avoid calamities, especially death. In primitive religions, ecstasy was a technique highly developed by shamans, religious personages with healing and psychic-transformation powers, in their "soul," or "spirit," flights. (See Delphic oracle.) "ecstasy" Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Commentary on Vergil, Aeneid. book 6, line 100.

[100] `Wrapping truth in mystery.' Cerda comp. Eur. Or. 891, kalois kakous Logous helissôn, which Virg. may have had in his mind, though the reading there is not certain, Valckenaer conjecturing kalôs, which Porson adopts. `Ea' has the force of `adeo:' see on E. 1. 54. The reference is not, as Wagn. thinks, specially to `obscuris vera involvens,' but generally to the whole description of the Sibyl's ecstasy, which is ascribed to the agency of Apollo.

PARABLES FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD TO FOOL THE FOOLISH SAYS JESUS

C. Leonard Allen:  the God who loved Israel like Hosea loved Gomer and who so loved the world that he sent his only Son. And God invites human beings, his creatures, to share the rich life and fellowship of the divine community, and through partaking of that life to become like his Son.vi

I suppose this is the ecumenical impulse but doubt that God Himself consorts with prostitutes.  If God be THREE PERSONS wouldn't that be ABNORMAL and disgusting?

When Israel became a prostitute they were sent into captivity and death.  Judah was not far behind and the tiny REMNANT does not give much encouragement to "fellership" wicked people.

Hos. 1:2 The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea,
        What? Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms:
        Why? for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.
Hos. 1:3 So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; which conceived, and bare him a son.

Though the majority have affirmed the Father, Son, and Spirit, modern churches have had a functionally weak doctrine of the Trinity.

Jesus affirmed that HIS NAME was that of Father, Son and Spirit: the Father was Divine Thought WITHIN Him. The Spirit was the Spirit OF trouth. That spirit OF Truth and been WITH them because the Words of Jesus WERE Spirit and truth. That Spirit would be IN the apostles when Jesus had finished instructing them and moved back into the spirit World.

What? Father and Son would be IN those
How?  when they obeyed His Commandments
Father as the DIVINE THOUGHTS can dwell within
Son as the articulated thoughts can dwell within
No carnal body has three PEOPLE living inside of them.
The Spirit rested UPON Jesus because it was the breath of God infusing His Words. 

Alexander Campbell affirmed the statement of Father, Son and Spirit and rejected theology trying to go beyond what is written. But,, father, son and spirit are not names of god persons: the name (singular) of father, son and spirit in the baptismal formula informed Peter to command baptism in the NAME OF JESUS CHRIST.  He knew better than the "community of gods" of paganism.

This may at first appear to be an odd, even outlandish, claim. “Of course we believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Three in one, one in three. What’s the problem?” The problem is not believing in the Father, Son, and Spirit, of course; any serious biblicist does that.

But three in one is clearly defined in the same way that one human is defined as body, soul and spirit: Paul says that the Holy Spirit is to God what OUR spirit is to us. In God's Image we "father" a thought, we breath out "power" and we articulate that into words with our lips called "a double-edged sword."

The problem is a Trinitarian theology and practice, a functional doctrine of the Trinity that centers and deeply shapes not only one’s theology but especially one’s worship. There is a large difference between affirming a doctrine of the Trinity and being Trinitarian.

One of the facts within the grasp of the Restoration scholars is that Jesus didn't send people out to collect worshippers in order to collect their ungodly tithes and offerings. The ekklesia or synagogue was a School of the Bible.  This was commanded as the Qahal or church in the wilderness to read and rehearse the Word of God.

Rom. 15:2 Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification.
Rom. 15:3 For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written,
        The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me.
Rom. 15:4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,
        that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.
Rom. 15:5 Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded
        one toward another according to Christ Jesus:
Rom. 15:6 That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God,
        even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Eph. 5:17 Wherefore be ye not unwise,
        but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
Eph. 5:18 And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;
        but be filled with the Spirit;
Eph. 5:19 Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
        singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;
Eph. 5:20 Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father
        in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;

Col. 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom;
        teaching and admonishing one another
        in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
        singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
Col. 3:17 And whatsoever ye do in word or deed,
        do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
        giving thanks to God and the Father by him.

We never worship other than in Paul's unique worship word meaning to "give heed" to the Word of God.  Besides literally falling on our face IMPURE religion or Threskia is defined by speaking, singing and playing musical instruments.

C. Leonard Allen: As I have stressed over and over to theology students over the years, the doctrine of the Trinity is not about some strange heavenly arithmetic that theologians like to play with. It is rather a kind of shorthand for referring to what we know of [1] God now that [2] Jesus has come and the [3] Spirit has been poured out.

Though a deep mystery, the Trinity is a crucially practical doctrine--practical in the sense that it fundamentally shapes our practices. For the way we understand God’s way of loving and relating to people sets the pattern for how his followers conduct their life together and carry out their ministry to the world.

Because it is not possible to know the father but by what the Son examples for us, we are never called to IMIATATE God but of His slave Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is never invoked as an example because IT was the Spirit of God or the Spirit of Christ: the Mind of God and never a people.

John 13:15 For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
Heb. 8:5 Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things,    
        as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: 
        for, See, saith he, that thou make all things
        according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.
James 5:10 Take, my brethren, the prophets,
        who have spoken in the name of the Lord,
        for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.
1Pet. 2:21 For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us,
        leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:

The trinity is not a mystery in the Bible or among classical trinitarians: we have linked you to:

Theophilus of Antioch to Autolycus
Tertullian was the next to define the Godhead as ONE God and His own Word and Wisdom

C. Leonard Allen:  The Trinity provides our pattern or exemplar for unity and fellowship. God leads a relational life as Father, Son, and Spirit. That life is characterized by submissive love, as each member of the Trinity pours his life into the other.

1Pet. 1:11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify,
        when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.

We saw that the Spirit of Christ was the Spirit of the Lord and not another people.

James 5:10 Take, my brethren, the prophets,
        who have spoken in the name of the Lord,
        for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.

1Pet. 1:12 Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves,
        but unto us they did minister the things,

Paul ministered "spirit" by PREACHING: prophets ministers "spirit" by writing.

        which are now reported unto you
                by them that have preached the gospel unto
                you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven;
        which things the angels desire to look into.

Rev. 19:10 And I fell at his feet to worship him. 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.

We have noted that our comfort or consolation is said to be through the Word of God "as it is written." Any imagined comfort whould have to have the members IN one another.  This comfort is rarely supplied by God but by fabricating programs to employ others as out Family Life Minister or maybe Comfort Minister.  We comfort one person at a time whe the single "we" helps the single "you."

C. Leonard Allen: In God’s own self there is an abundant outpouring of life, so abundant that it overflows and creates community with God’s creatures--those outside the relationship within God. Through the sending of the [1] Son and the outpouring of the [2] Spirit, [2]  God pours this rich life into his creatures. As Diogenes Allen puts it: “The life of the Trinity is a perfect community and it is the kind of community for which we long; it satisfies our craving to be loved perfectly and to be attached to others properly.”vii

The prophecy of pouring out of God's Spirit come in two forms: in Joel quoted by Peter this was a SIGN.  When young people began to "prophecy" the word implicates singing, dancing and playing instruments.  After these signs or MARKS Zechariah says that any one who continues to claim contact with God as such a "prophesier" shall be killed by their parrents.  

John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing:
        the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

In the second sense, the tongues of fire and the sound of wind gave the apostles the power and courage to speak the words they had learned: this was a spirit of BURNING to the Jews and the gospel to those who believed.

Turn you at my reproof: behold,

Wisdom or Sophia claims priority over Word or Logos as indeed "before God had a Son He had a daughter called Sophia" so say trinitiarians who understand FIGURATIVE language which Jesus called PROVERBS to fool the foolish:

John 16:25 These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father. 

I will pour out my spirit unto you,
I will make known my words unto you. Proverbs 1:23

Naba (h5042) naw-bah'; a prim. root; to gush forth; fig. to utter (good or bad words); spec. to emit (a foul odor): - belch out, flowing, pour out, send forth, utter (abundantly).

For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty,
and floods upon the dry ground:

I will pour my spirit upon thy seed,
and my blessing upon thine offspring: Isaiah 44:3

However, in Joel there is another form of prophesying like that of Zechariah which was "bowing to Baal" as musical or poetic pretensions:

Joel 2:28 And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:

This is a different word for prophesy:

H5012 naba naw-baw' A primitive root; to prophesy, that is, speak (or sing) by inspiration (in prediction or simple discourse):prophesy (-ing) make self a prophet.

The fact that a person prophesies does not make it true. That is why Philip's daughters prophesied as this sign but God sent a PROPHET to deliver a message to Paul.

"Here singing served as a means of inducing ecstatic prophecy (speaking in tongues). Thus the essential relationship between music and prophecy can be clearly seen. This relationship also explains why the expression for "making music" and "prophesying" was often identical in the ancient tongues. origen contra celsum 8.67. The Hebrew word Naba signifies not only "to prophesy" but also "to make music." (Quasten, Johannes, Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, p. 39)

That is why when the FINAL prophetic message was delivered by hand picked apostles and prophets, anyone who PRETENDED which was always a singing and musical ritual to bring on madness was worthy of death. Even when they do not get as violence they are violent:

C. Leonard Allen: We partake of the Trinitarian life in several ways: sacramentally through observing Christ’s ordinances,

BAPTISM is in the singular name Jesus Christ.

Neither Father, Son or Holy Spirit is a name of God. According to Zechariah His Name would be Jesus or Joshua which means Jehovah-Saves.

And Paul said

For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Col 2:9

Therefore, Paul and the rest of the New Testament baptizes in the name of Jesus Christ. This was continued for many years.

Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Acts 2:38

This is A holy spirit or A good conscience resulting from the washing away of our sins. 

"The nearest approach to a formal announcement of the doctrine of the Trinity which is recorded from Our Lord's lips, or, perhaps we may say, which is to be found in the whole compass of the NT, has been preserved for us, not by John, but by one of the synoptists. It too, however, is only incidentally introduced, and has for its main object something very different from formulating the doctrine of the Trinity. It is embodied in the great commission which the resurrected Lord gave His disciples to be their 'marching orders even unto the end of the world.' (Int Std Bible Ency., p. 3017)

"It does not say, 'In the names [plural] of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost"; nor yet 'In the name of the Father, and in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Ghost,'

as if we had to deal with three separate Beings. (Int Std Bible Ency., p. 3017)

THE LORD'S SUPPER

The Lord's Supper is to remember the death of Jesus and has no trinitarian component unless one wants to DILUTE the honor paid to Jesus Christ.

1Cor. 11:23  For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you,
        That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread:
1Cor. 11:24 And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said,
        Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
1Cor. 11:25 After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying,
        This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it,
        in remembrance of me.
1Cor. 11:26 For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup,
        ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.
1Cor. 11:27 Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread,
        and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily,
        shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

There is no trinitarian component: that would deny that Christ came fully in the flesh and that would define Anti-Christ.  WE be mortals and God always works through external means: that is Jesus Whom God picked to be his IMAGE in the sense of teaching the very words of God.

C. Leonard Allen: doxologically as we draw near to God and God to us,

The "ecumenical" doxology is: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and always, to the ages of ages. Amen.

Catholic Encyclopedia (2) The witness of the doxologies is no less striking. The form now universal, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," so clearly expresses the Trinitarian dogma that the Arians found it necessary to deny that it had been in use previous to the time of Flavian of Antioch (Philostorgius, "Hist. eccl.", III, xiii). It is true that up to the period of the Arian controversy another form, "Glory to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit," had been more common (cf. I Clement, 58, 59; Justin, "Apol.", I, 67).

Because Father, Son and Spirit were not names but roles of the NAME of Jesus Christ, this would still not be a trinity of three separated persons.  As Paul put it:

2Cor. 13:14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
                and the love of God,
                and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.

If you are not careful you might think that Grace only comes from Christ, love only from God and the only COMMUNION or community is with the Holy Spirit.

There, the Bible does not speak of a trinity of persons but Lord is Jehovah who is NEVER a trinity:

Num. 6:22 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
Num. 6:23 Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying,
        On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them,
Num. 6:24 The LORD [yhwh] bless thee, and keep thee:
Num. 6:25 The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
Num. 6:26 The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
Num. 6:27 And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them.

Jesus or Joshua in Zechariah is the usual hyphenated name: Jehovah -- Saves.    We saw that the Spirit of Christ was the Spirit of the Lord and not another people. 

The prophets who spoke by the LORD	Spoke by the Spirit OF Christ
James 5:10 Take, my brethren, the prophets,         who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.	1Pet. 1:11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify,        when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow

There were many gods or elohim but we are assured that Jehoval is NOT one of many:

2Chr. 13:10 But as for us, the LORD is OUR GOD,
        AND WE HAVE NOT FORSAKEN HIM; AND THE PRIESTS,
        WHICH MINISTER UNTO THE LORD, are the sons of Aaron,
        and the Levites wait upon their business:

Deut. 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:
Deut. 6:5 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God
        with all thine heart, [1]
        and with all thy soul, [2]
        and with all thy might. [3]

Deut. 6:6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
Deut. 6:7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

Deut 32:10
..........HE found him in a desert land, and in the WASTE howling wilderness
..........HE led him about,
..........HE instructed him,
..........HE kept him as the apple of HIS eye.

The same meaning of creation:

De 32:11 - AS an eagle stirreth up her nest,
..........fluttereth over her young,
..........spreadeth abroad her wings,
..........taketh them, beareth them on her wings:
Deut 32:12 So the Lord [Jehovah] ALONE did lead him,  [and that ROCK was_________]
..........and there was no strange god [Elohim] with HIM.

By the
...........(1) WORD (dabar is same as logos) of the
.......... (2) LORD (Jehovah is I Am not We are) the heavens were made, and all their host by the
...........(3) breath (h7307 spirit) of HIS mouth (means of blowing wind or double-edged sword). Psalm 33:6

Psa. 89:18 For the LORD is OUR DEFENCE;
        AND THE HOLY ONE OF ISRAEL IS our king.
Is. 33:22 For the LORD is OUR JUDGE,
        HE LORD is OUR LAWGIVER, THE LORD is our king; he will save us.

Isa 42:6 I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee,
        and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles;
Isa 42:7 To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison,
        and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.
Isa 42:8  I am the LORD:
        that is my name:
        and my glory will I not give to another,
        neither my praise to graven images.

For thus saith the Lord [Jehovah]
..........that created the heavens;
..........God [Elohim] HIMself
..........that formed the earth  [The earth is the dry, fruitful places NOT the globe]
..........and made it;
..............HE hath established it,
....,.........HE created it not in vain,
..............HE formed it to be inhabited:
.....................I  AM the Lord; and there is none else.Isaiah 45:18

And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh;
and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine:
 and all flesh shall know that I the
...........[1] Lord am thy
.......... [2] Saviour [yâsha] and thy
...........[3] Redeemer,
...................the mighty ONE of Jacob. Is.49:26

Is. 54:5 For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and
        thy Redeemer
        the Holy One of Israel;
        The God of the whole earth shall he be called .

He hath made the earth by his power,
he hath established the world by his wisdom,
and hath stretched out the heaven by his understanding. Jer 51:15

His role is Jehovah--Saviour:
3467.  yasha, yaw-shah´; a primitive root; properly, to be open, wide or free, i.e. (by implication) to be safe; causatively, to free or succor:—x at all, avenging, defend, deliver(-er), help, preserve, rescue, be safe, bring (having) salvation, save(-iour), get victory.

Isa 59:16 And he saw that there was no man,
.......... and wondered that there was no intercessor:
.......... therefore HIS ARM brought salvation unto HIM;
.......... and his righteousness, it sustained HIM.

And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and
.......... unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord. Isa 59:20

C. Leonard Allen: charismatically (another very awkward word) through divine gifts of grace, and pneumatologically through the mystery of the indwelling Spirit.

The Bible has to redefine many common words as a way to contrast the GRACE which teaches us to deny ungodliness from the GRACE or CHARIS which pointed to all musical, perverted pagan religions.  Click for the Charismatic Mark

I am the Charismatic

"Charisma is a presence that excites us. It comes from an inner quality - self-confidence, sexual energy, sense of purpose, contentment - that most people lack and want.

This quality radiates outward, permeating the gestures of Charismatics, making them seem extraodinary and superior. They learn to heighten their charisma

with a piercing gaze, fiery oratory, an air of mystery.
Create the charismatic illusion by radiating intensity while remaining detached.

Symbol: The Lamp. Invisible to the eye, a current flowing through a wire in a glass vessel generates a heat that turns into candescence. All we see is the glow. In the prevailing darkness, the Lamp lights the way.

charis or pleasure includes:

4. love-charm, philtre, Luc. Alex.5, Merc.Cond.40.

2. esp. in erotic sense, of favours granted (v. charizomai 1.3 ), alochou charin idein Il.11.243 , cf. A.Ag.1206: more freq. in pl., X.Hier.1.34, 7.6, etc.; biai d' epraxas charitas ê peisas korên; Trag.Adesp.402; in full, charites aphrodisiôn erôtôn Pi.Fr.128 , cf. Pl.Phdr.254a, al.

Aphrodisios [From Aphroditê] [Or ZOE or Lucifer]
I. belonging to Aphrodite, Plat.
II. Aphrodisia, ta, sexual pleasures, Xen.
2. a festival of Aphrodite, id=Xen.
III. Aphrodision, ou, to, the temple of Aphrodite, id=Xen.
IV. gratification, delight, tinos in or from a thing, sumposiou Pi. O.7.5

See how the symposium was often a wine festival of males where the flute-girls were always prostitutes and the male musicians were Sodomites. Paul told the elders to NOT GO NEAR WINE which spoke of these gatherings even when the wine was heavily watered so you didn't have to turn around and puke too often.

V. daimonôn charis homage due to them, their worship, majesty, A.Ag. 182 (lyr.); athiktôn ch. ib.371 (lyr.); horkôn E.Med.439 (lyr.)

Daimôn [Perh. from daiô B, to divide or distribute destinies.]

I. a god, goddess, like theos, thea, Hom., Trag., etc.:--in Hom. also deity or divine power (theos denotes a god in person), Lat. numen; pros daimona against the divine power; sun daimoni with it, by its favour, Il.:--so, kata daimona, nearly = tuchêi, by chance, Hdt.; en tôi d. theôn en gounasi, Soph.

2. one's daemon or genius, one's lot or fortune, stugeros daimôn Od.; daimonos aisa kakê id=Od.: absol. good or ill fortune, Trag.; esp. of the evil genius of a family, Aesch.

II. daimones, in Hes., are the souls of men of the golden age, forming the link between gods and men:--later, of any departed souls, Lat. manes, lemures, Luc.

III. in NTest. an evil spirit, a demon, devil.

Paul warned the Corinthians against RISING UP TO PLAY which was like the Greek symposium involving food, drink, singing, music and homosexual PLAY.

But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. 1Co.10:20

These were the BULL DEMONS representing the Egyptian trinity:

Daimonion (g1140) dahee-mon'-ee-on; neut. of a der. of 1142; a doemonic being; by extens. a deity: - devil, god.

These demons DISTRIBUTED GIFTS. That is why Paul compared the counterfeit gifts in Corinth as out of their own spirit. Jesus defined the Jewish clergy as sons of the Devil because they SPEAK ON THEIR OWN. Therefore, if you had the best singing, dancing, clapping, playing instruments and speaking in "gibberish" every known--even speak the tongues of angels, you should be WATCHED because often the demonic spirits steal in when you OPEN yourself.

Daimon (g1142) dah'ee-mown; from daio, (to distribute fortunes); a doemon or supernatural spirit (of a bad nature): - devil

VI. Special usages:

charis 1 [chairô]

1. acc. sg. as adv., ch. tinos in any one's favour, for his pleasure, for his sake, charin Hektoros Il.; glôssês charin for one's tongue's pleasure, i. e. for talking's sake, sên charin for my, thy pleasure or sake,  

2. with Preps., eis charin tinos to do one a pleasure, Thuc.; ouden eis ch. prassein Soph.:-- pros charin prassein ti id=Soph.; pros charin legein Eur., etc.; pros charin boras for the sake of my flesh, for the pleasure of devouring it, Soph.:-- pros charin alone, as a favour, freely, to their heart's content, id=Soph.:-- en chariti for one's gratification, pleasure, en chariti didonai or poiein tini ti Xen., Plat.:-- dia charitôn einai or gignesthai tini to be on terms of friendship or mutual favour with one, Xen.

V. daimonôn charis homage due to them, their worship, majesty, Aesch.; so, horkôn ch. Eur.; euktaia ch. an offering in consequence of a vow, Aesch.

C. Leonard Allen: The Trinity is the doctrinal center and fulcrum of the Christian faith. To change the metaphor, it is the prism through which all other doctrinal features of the faith are lighted and put in perspective. Indeed, the Trinitarian doctrine encapsulates and preserves the uniquely Christian view of God’s relational character.

Since the Baptismal Formula which has just ONE NAME for father, son and spirit I am at a loss to think of one aspect of our Christian SCHOOL OF THE BIBLE that we do under the name of TRINITY.

Col. 3:17 And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.

C. Leonard Allen: When this doctrine functionally recedes, as it has done in the modern period, there are many, often subtle, consequences.

One easily falls prey to sectarianism
or overly narrow views of God’s Kingdom;
to various forms of legalism, all of which misconstrue the nature of God’s relationality;

to authoritarianism, which misconstrues the character of Christ’s exercise of authority;
to spiritual triumphalism, which downplays the cruciform nature of discipleship;
to spiritual elitism, which distorts the purpose of the Spirit’s power and gifts;
to constricted or mechanical understandings of the ordinances or sacraments in Christian life;
and other assorted ills, heresies, and disruptions in the life of the church.

Psa. 115:3 But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.

C. Leonard Allen:One challenge in today’s emergent churches is for Christians to recover a discipleship rooted in a Trinitarian pneumatology.

I am quite certain if any Scribe or Pharisee Jesus called Hypocrites pointing to speakers, singers and instrument players used the word PNEUMATOLOGY He would have cast them out like dung as He did the musical minstrels.  Pure and simple for anyone who ever read 1 Corinthians 2 they would have grasped that:

The Holy Spirit
       Is to God
What our spirit
       is to us

But, we (the apostles) have the MIND of Christ.

I have set aside some comments and links to SPIRIT:  Firstly, the words speaks of a violent wind or the anger of God: only in a FIGURATIVE sense does it speak of God who IS wholly spirit or to the mental disposition of a person.

Note that spirit is not always a good thing. That is why many words are given a distinctly Christian interpretation to mark the charismatic "spiritists" whose worship was with wine, women and song or often of a homosexual encounter which "bound the spirit and flesh together." pneuma II. breathed air, breath, salpinx broteiou pneumatos plêroumenê III. divine inspiration, agria . . pneumata theuphoriês AP6.220.4 (Diosc.); ei mê ti theion . . enên p. têi psuchêi Pl.Ax.370c ; to hieron kai daimonion en mousais   . Latin flatus, a blowing, breathing, snorting  (sc. tibiae II.Transf., a pipe, flute (orig. made of bone; Cano. fistula):), , Carbasa mota sonant,  so of the wind,   a breaking wind,   B. Transf., concr., the breath of life, the soul,   A. A breath, breeze (the fig. being taken from wind): cum prospero flatu fortunae utimur, ad exitus pervehimur optatos, Cic. Off. 2, 6, 19 : ad id, unde aliquis flatus ostenditur, vela do, id. de Or. 2, 44, 187 . -- B. Pride, haughtiness (mostly in plur.): pneuma-ikos , ê, on, of wind or air, kinêseis p. [organon] a machine moved by wind, The Organon includes a musical instrument as a machine for doing hard work mostly in making war or in creating the ECSTASY used to fleece the lambs. 2. of the nature of wind or air, taa dry vapour, [HOT AIR] b. of subtle substance, to p. Str.1.3.5 ;   3. inflated, distended with air, husterai Arist.HA584b22 . 4. Act. (= pneumatôdês 1.3 ), causing flatulence, oinos  5. breathing, exhaling  II. of the breath or breathing, to p. morion, ho p. topos,   III. of spirit, spiritual, interpol. in Plu.2.129c; opposite sarkikos, psuchikos, Ep.Rom.15.27, 1 Ep.Cor.2.13, etc. Adv. -kôs ib.14. IV. hoi P. a school of physicians who referred all questions of health to pneumatic agencies, Gal.8.749, 15.111. V. conveying pneuma, koilia, of the left ventricle of the heart (opp. haimatikê), Erasistr. ap. eund.UP6.12, cf. Placit.4.5.7. VI. Rhet., Adv. -kôs in one breath (cf. pneuma VI), apoteinesthai Hermog. Inv.4.1 . apoteinô --stretch out, extend,  dianoian  c. 2. extend, prolong, of the line of an army, make long speeches,  of brazen vessels, makron êchei kai a. [tên êchên] Id.Prt.329a; phônê salpingos oxun a. phthongon  3. strain, tighten:-- Pass., paradeigmata akribôs apotetamena tais grammais severely drawn,  4. refer, allude,   II. intr., extend, apo . ., eis . ., Arist.HA 503b16, 514a34; mechri . . Id.Mete.343b22 ; a. porrô to go too far, Pl. Grg.458b: c. part., continue doing, a. machomenoi Plu.2.60a .  Pneumatophôs , phôtos, ho, epith. of a daimôn, shining spirit, PMag.Par.1.593. daimôn , onos, voc. daimôn S.OC1480 (lyr.), daimon Theoc.2.11 , ho, hê, god, goddess, of individual gods or goddesses,   2. the power controlling the destiny of individuals: hence, one's lot or forlune,           II. daimones, hoi, souls of men of the golden age, acting as tutelary deities,   2. generally, spiritual or semi-divine being inferior to the Gods,   ekballousa daimonas PMag.Par.1227 . 3. agathos d. the Good Genius to whom a toast was drunk after dinner,  B. = daêmôn, knowing, d. machês skilled in fight,  More probably the Root of daimôn (deity) is daiô to distribute destinies;; cf. Alcm.48.) Spirita-lis or spi-ri(tu(a-lis (the MSS. vary between the two forms), e, adj. [spiritus] . I. Of or belonging to breathing, to wind, or to air (post-Aug.): machinarum genus spiritale, a kind of wind-instrument,   II. Of or belonging to spirit, spiritual (eccl. Lat.): Pneumato-poios , on, producing flatulence, Apollon.Mir.46. II. producing breath or spirit,  psuchogon-imos , on, producing life or spirit, stoicheia Ph.2.96 (Sup.). phusi-zôios , on, producing life, Diônusos IGRom.4.360.15 (Pergam., ii A. D.) (elsewh. as f.l. for foreg.). elp-istikos , ê, on, producing expectation, Arist.Mem.449b12. II. hoi e. a sect who made hope the only stay of life, Plu.2.668e. phusi-zoos , on, as epith. of earth, prob. producing zea,  but reinterpreted as from zôê ( [zoê]  producing life, phusizoou . . genos   zôogon-os , on, producing animals, generative,  name of Apollo, producing life,  rhoizêma , atos, to, rushing, whirring noise or motion, as of birds,  ; of the planetary spheres, I tragik-os , ( [tragos] ) of or like a goat, goatish, in this sense first in later authors,in a double sense, to pseudes trachu kai t.goatlike and tragic, Pl.Cra.408c . Pl.Cra.408c . Plato, Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman Plato, Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman Socrates You know that speech makes all things (pan) known and always makes them circulate and move about, and is twofold, true and false. Hermogenes Certainly. Socrates Well, the true part is smooth and divine and dwells aloft among the gods, but falsehood dwells below among common men, is rough and like the tragic goat ; for tales and falsehoods are most at home there, in the tragic life. Hermogenes Certainly. Socrates Then Pan, who declares and always moves (aei polôn) all, is rightly called goat-herd (aipolos), 1 The chorus of the primitive performances from which tragedy developed appeared as satyrs, clad in goat-skins. Hence the name tragôidia (goat-song). The adjective tragikos may mean either "goat-like" or "tragic." In this passage it has both meanings. The she goat was called CAPELLA.

C. Leonard Allen: Christian discipleship involves following the risen Lord, in the power of the Spirit, to the glory of God the Father.

Here is the way the Bible states it: the power of the Spirit of God was given only to those eye-witnesses who were PROMISED this abiding power which would pass away.  Here is the way to see the power when the evangelists have a GO button as commanded. Again this seems to leave Jesus Christ out of the loop:

 
Rom. 15:18 For I will not dare to speak of any of those things
        which Christ hath not wrought by me,
        to make the Gentiles obedient, by word and deed,
Rom. 15:19 Through mighty signs and wonders,
        by the power of the Spirit of God; [His Words]
        so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum,
        I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.

Rom. 6:3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
Rom. 6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death:
        that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father,
        even so we also should walk in newness of life.

John 10:18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.
I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.
This commandment have I received of my Father.

Rom. 6:5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death,
        we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
Rom. 6:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him,
        that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
Rom. 6:7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.
Rom. 6:8 Now if we be dead with Christ,
        we believe that we shall also live with him:

C. Leonard Allen: In the Trinitarian economy the present work of the Spirit is primarily eschatological. That is, the Spirit, using means that are finite and contingent, anticipates and makes real the life to come in the present life of the Christian community.

Wouldn't Jesus hurt you if you ever said "eschatological"?

Because Jesus said my WORDS are Spirit and life; and because Spirit is equated to the WORD; and the NAME (siongular) of the Holy Person is Jesus Christ, that work CONTINUES as faithful teachers "teach that which has written."

The Synagogue was not a COMMUNE but a school of the Bible.  Therefore, there is NOTHING which can EMERGE which can change the nature of the SCHOOL, the TEACHER or the TEXTBOOK.   Only those Jesus called doctors of the Law who took away the key to knowledge ever have any need to REinvent themselves and their fodder.

C. Leonard Allen:Full and faithful discipleship, then, is supernatural or Spirit empowered; the believer walks in a way and engages in practices that are humanly impossible but that in the power of the Spirit become possible. When discipleship is not rooted in the Spirit’s power it gets tamed or toned down to what seems humanly possible, simply reasonable, and culturally appropriate.

Of course this is rank Calvinism: Jesus never commanded us to do anything beyond our power. Once we have "obeyed that form of doctrine" by a conscious choise then He frees us from sin by giving us A holy spirit: our spirit is made holy when our sins are washed away.

2Th. 1:6 Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation
        to them that trouble you;
2Th. 1:7 And to you who are troubled rest with us,
        when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels,
2Th. 1:8 In flaming fire taking vengeance
        on them that know not God,
        and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:
2Th. 1:9 Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction
        from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;

1Pet. 4:17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?

Paul MINISTERED the Spirit by preaching and people RECEIVED the spirit by hearing the Word which has been once for all times delivered to WE saints.

But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear. Zechariah 7:11

They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the LORD Almighty was very angry. Zechariah 7:12

Therefore it is come to pass, that

as he cried, and they would not hear;
so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the Lord of hosts: Zechariah 7:13 

Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Acts 7:51

Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: Acts 7:52

Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. Acts 7:53

Luther in Law and Gospel wrote:

"But Paul says that the Spirit, through his preaching, has wrought in the hearts of his Corinthians, to the end that Christ lives and is mighty in them. After such statement he bursts into praise of the ministerial office, comparing the message, or preaching, of Moses with that of himself and the apostles. He says:

"Such confidence have we through Christ to Godward: not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God.

8. These words are blows and thrusts for the false apostles [PAGE 227] and preachers. Paul is mortal enemy to the blockheads who make great boast,

pretending to what they do not possess and to what they cannot do;
who boast of having the Spirit in great measure; who are ready to counsel and aid the whole world;

who pride themselves on the ability to invent something new. It is to be a surpassingly precious and heavenly thing they are to spin out of their heads, as the dreams of pope and monks have been in time past.

"We do not so," says Paul. "We rely not upon ourselves or our wisdom and ability. We preach not what we have ourselves invented. But this is our boast and trust in Christ before God,

that we have made of you a divine epistle; have written upon your hearts,not our thoughts, but the Word of God.

We are not, however, glorifying our own power, but the works and the power of him who has called and equipped us for such an office; from whom proceeds all you have heard and believed.

9. It is a glory which every preacher may claim, to be able to say with full confidence of heart:
        "This trust have I toward God in Christ, 
        that what I teach and preach is truly the Word of God."

There is a role for PROFESSORS and Rhetoricians and Sophists but we quoted Luther above to say that it WAS NOT of ANY value in the spiritual realm: that is why Jesus repudiated the Doctors of the Law who might go and make a living in Canon Law:

In short, let him who would be wise, who would boast of great skill, talents and power, confine himself to things other than spiritual; 

C. Leonard Allen: Gordon Fee, gathering up the fruit of his extensive exegesis of all the Spirit texts in Paul, has put this recovery in terms that can resonate with contemporary churches in emergent culture: “a genuine recapturing of the Pauline perspective will cause the church to be more vitally Trinitarian, not only in its theology, but in its life and Spirituality as well. This will mean not the exaltation of the Spirit, but the exaltation of God; and it will mean not focus on the Spirit as such, but on the Son, crucified and risen, Savior and Lord of all.”viii After modernity, such recovery has become more possible.

Amazing that you could write such a huge book on Paul and the Trinity because scholars agree that Paul never spoke of the Spirit as a separated "person."

Martin Luther

1. This epistle is read today because the festival of Holy Trinity, or of the three persons of the Godhead--which is the prime, great, incomprehensible and chief article of faith--is observed on this day. The object of its observance is that, by the Word of God, this truth of the Godhead may be preserved among Christians, enabling them to know God as he would be known. 

For although Paul does not treat of that article in this epistle, but touches on it only in a few words in the conclusion, nevertheless he would teach that in our attempts to comprehend God

we must not speculate and judge according to human wisdom,
but in the light of the Word of God alone.

For these divine truths are too far above the reach of reason ever to be comprehended and explored by the understanding of man.

And our knowledge is confirmed and proven by great miracles, even to the present [11] day. These Scriptures declare, concerning this article,

that there is no God or divine being save this one alone. 
They not only manifest him to us from without,
        but they lead us into his inner essence,
        and show us that in him there are three persons;
            not three Gods or three different kinds of divinity,
            but the same undivided, divine essence.

Gordon Fee is from the Assemblies of God and rather than a baptism of the Holy Spirit in the immediate sense teaches that the "Holy Spirit" guides people through life. Paul Gaffin fearful of denying the historical trinity writes.

"It seems to me, however, that both Dunn and many who oppose his view share a mis-taken assumption--namely, that to admit a reference to the Holy Spirit in v. 45 necessitates the functional Christology argued by him and others.

The way out of this impasse is to recognize Paul’s clearly Trinitarian understanding of God. And here we are indebted to no one more than Gordon Fee himself for so admirably demonstrating that understanding. As far as I can see, this treatment is without a peer in recent literature on Paul’s theology and ought to settle the matter for anyone with doubts. 

At any rate, asume its basic conclusions here. Paul’s Trinitarian conception of God is not at issue but is properly made a presupposition in the interpretation of 1Cor 15:45.

However, with Gordon Fee solving for all times the meaning of "spirit" in verse 45 he missed the context:

1Cor. 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; 
the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

1Cor. 15:46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural;
        and afterward that which is spiritual.
1Cor. 15:47 The first man is of the earth, earthy:
        the second man is the Lord from heaven.

Therefore, the quickening spirit is The Lord from Heaven! Did read that?

1Cor. 15:48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy:
        and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.
1Cor. 15:49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy,
        we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

2Cor. 3:14 But their minds were blinded:
        for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament;
        which vail is done away in Christ.
2Cor. 3:15 But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
2Cor. 3:16 Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
2Cor. 3:17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
2Cor. 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,
        are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Reading the Words of the Lord is reading the Spirit words.  Jesus removed all doubts when He said:

John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing:
the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life

John 6:67 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?
John 6:68 Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
       thou hast the words of eternal life.

To claim that the last Adam was made a quickening spirit was the Holy Spirit which Fee says was a SEPARATE PERSON is to deny that full Diety dwelled in Jesus Christ and that makes you an ANTI-Christ says John.

That means that the Spirit OF Christ was not another member of the Family of Gods.  That is why Peter declared that these assured prophecies are NOT open to judgment passed by "doctors of the law."

2Pet. 1:19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy;
        whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place,
        until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
2Pet. 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

Peter said that if you reject this DIVINE MEMORY which he wrote it is because you are a false teacher.  Corrupting the Word is "selling learning at retail" and has the same meaning as adultery.

1Pet. 1:11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.

Rev. 19:10 And I fell at his feet to worship him. 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

One universal scholar observation is that Paul NEVER speaks of the Spirit as something separated: it is the Spirit OF God or the Spirit OF Christ in the same passage.

One wonders what happened in the ME ERA which allowed the RECOVERY of the truth which was not POSSIBLE to those in history who NEVER defined the trinity as a community or COMMUNE of three, separated Divine Beings. If something has been UNCOVERED it may smell of an UNholy spirit of merchandise.

This excerpt of Leonard Allen’s new book, Things Unseen: Churches of Christ in (and after) the Modern Age, used by permission. To order, go to Leafwood Publishers.

NOTES

i John Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures (1695), towers over this lineage.

For Allen etal who mouth "Locke" to slander the Restoration scholars without having read Locke (as evidenced by the footnote) here is some real John Locke  Locke will say that it is the theologians who use their OWN REASON rather than the simplicity of the gospel.

But, it is never scholarly to quote the originals. Locke said:

"238. Though the works of nature, in every part of them, sufficiently evidence a Deity; yet the world made so little use of their reason, that they saw him not, where, even by the impressions of himself, he was easy to be found.

Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. Romans 1:19

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Romans 1:20

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Romans 1:21

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, Romans 1:22

"Sense and lust blinded their minds in some, and a careless inadvertency in others, and fearful apprehensions in most

(who either believed there were, or could not but suspect there might be, superior unknown beings)
        gave them up into the hands of their priests to fill their heads with false notions of the deity,
        and their worship with foolish rites, as they pleased;
        and what dread or craft once began, devotion soon made sacred,
        and religion immutable.

Perhaps both Locke and the Thomas and Alexander Campbell are hated with a purple passion and slandered because Alexander Campbell wrote:

"Give money to make poor pious youths learned clergy, or vain pretenders to erudition; and they pray that they may preach to you; yes, and pay them too. Was there ever such a craft as priestcraft? No, it is the craftiest of all crafts. It is so crafty that it obtains by its craft the means to make craftsmen, and then it makes the deluded support them!" (Campbell, Alexander, Christian Baptist, Dec. 1, 1823, Vol. 1, p. 91).

"In this state of darkness and ignorance of the true God, vice and superstition held the world;

nor could any help be had or hoped for from reason, which could not be heard, and was judged to have nothing to do in the case  

the priests every where,

to secure their empire,

having excluded reason from having anything to do in religion.

And in the crowd of wrong notions, and invented rites, the world had almost lost the sight of the one only true God.

Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands Mark 7:5

He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Mark 7:6

Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Mark 7:7

The rational and thinking part of mankind, 'tis true, when they sought after him, found the one, supreme, invisible God: but if they acknowledged and worshipped him, it was only in their own minds.

They kept this truth locked up in their own breasts as a secret, nor ever durst venture it amongst the people, much less the priests, those wary guardians of their own creeds and profitable inventions.

Hence we see that reason, speaking never so clearly to the wise and virtuous, had ever authority enough to prevail on the multitude, and to persuade the societies of men, that there was but one God, that alone was to be owned and worshipped.

ii Robert W. Jenson, Christian Dogmatics (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 1:150.

iii See for example C. F. D. Moule, The Holy Spirit (Oxford: Mowbray, 1978), 43-51. This form of eclipse has a few proponents among Church of Christ scholars.

iv Particularly noteworthy are Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981); Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (London: Burns and Oats, 1970); Eberhard Jungel, The Doctrine of the Trinity, trans. Horton Harris (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1976); John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (London: Dartman, Longman, and Todd, 1985); and Robert W. Jenson, The Triune Identity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982). Noteworthy works focusing particularly on the practicality of the Trinitarian doctrine include Catherine M. LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and the Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1991), and L. Gregory Jones, Transformed Judgment: Toward a Trinitarian Account of the Moral Life (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1993).

v Carlo Carretto, The God Who Comes (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1974), 79, 83.

vi Recent advocates of the social Trinity include Colin Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 1:259-336; LaCugna, God for Us; Ted Peters, God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in Divine Life (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993; Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, esp. 171-76; and Pinnock, Flame of Love, 21-48.

vii Diogenes Allen, The Path of Perfect Love (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1992), 52. This is one of the best discussions of God’s relational life and how that life creates community with human beings. See pp. 39-59.

viii Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 902. See also his more popular treatment of Trinitarian pneumatology in Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 36-48.

In fact, it is well recognized that Paul never uses the word "spirit" to speak of a third member of a trinity: it is the Spirit OF Christ or the Spirit OF God which is the same thing: the MIND of God. The flesh versus spirit is PAUL'S own spirit in conflict with his human nature.

Gordon Fee from the Assemblies of God argues against the immediate baptism of the Holy Spirit and for a life guided by the Spirit

Fee answers the question in two ways. First, he says that the “time frame” attached to subsequent Spirit baptism is, for all practical purposes, irrelevant. What is, in fact, relevant is that Christians experience the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit throughout their entire life. This is th heart of the New Testament Christian. Fee says that “to early believers, getting saved, which included repentance and forgivenessobviously, meant especially to be filled with the Spirit.” The second way he responds to the question is to speak to the idea of Spirit empowerment for the contemporary believer. And the Pentecostal, says Fee, has attempted to recapture for the church an empowering dimension of life immersed in the Spirit

C. Leonard Allen directs Leafwood Publishers. Previously he was visiting professor at Biola University, La Mirada, CA, adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, and professor at Abilene Christian University. He holds the Ph.D. in Christian Thought from the School of Religion at the University of Iowa, and is the author or co-author of several books, including The Contemporaries Meet the Classics on Prayer, The Cruciform Church: Becoming a Cross-Shaped People in a Secular World, Participating in God's Life: Two Crossroads for Churches of Christ, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875, and other books. He and his wife, Holly, live in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, where she is professor of children's and family ministry at John Brown University. They are the parents of three grown children.

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