Sunday, February 1, 2015

The Old Testament shows The Trinity *

One of the more common objections Muslims pose to Christians is that they want to see where the Trinity is taught in the Old Testament.  This is difficult as  Christians are not as familiar with the Old Testament, and this topic does not receive a lot of attention in sermons.  Also some of the verses require some understanding of Hebrew to be fully appreciated.


Muslims often quote the verse below to show there is no Trinity in the Old Testament:

 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:
--Deut 6:4 (KJV)

There are three responses to this:

1)  We must remember that the first believers were Jews.  The New Testament is full of Old Testament quotations. Therefore, if the Jews in Jesus' day had believed in strict monotheism as the Muslims say they did, then why do we not see a lot of disputation about this in the New Testament?  Was the life of Jesus and his resurrection so compelling so these questions were not raised?

2)  The Old Testament does not show the oneness of God as much as you would think.
The word translated as "God" (KJV) in Genesis 1 is actually "elohim".  This word is masculine plural.  It occurs around 2570 times in the Old Testament.

3) Also, we see "us" applied for God frequently:

God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness"
--Gen 1:26

I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"
--Isaiah 6:8 (KJV)










No comments:

Post a Comment