Is Polytheism in TRUE Christianity?

CHRISTIANITY’S GOD- THE CRUX OF THE MATTER!! By Derrick Gillespie

The Jews and the Muslims frown upon Christianity's New Testament monotheism, which has the New Testament’s biblical conjunctive "AND one Lord Jesus Christ" when speaking of divinity, as in 1 Cor. 8:6! Why do they object to this teaching? Because, to them, God has no divine Associate, or no creative, redemptive or ruling "Consort", as in Heb. 1:6, 8,10 having God "blasphemously" saying to another "AND thou Lord ["O God"] created...". No orthodox Jew of Judaism believes we are to ever say, as in Matt. 28:19, “in the name of the Father AND of the Son AND of the Holy Spirit" when speaking of divinity, since, they contend, God creates, saves and rules alone!! This is polytheism they contend, no matter how one tries to explain it; even when saying it is ultimately the Father who is supremely God, the Source of all, that he is the ultimate object of all true worship, and that Jesus is just His divine Son that He works through. This they believe is bi-theism (the first stage of polytheism, as seen in pagan religions with a main divine being having another divine being emanating from him). This both Jews and Muslims strongly believe is the truth of the matter about Christianity despite God initially said to another, obviously like Himself (not created angels), "let US make man in our own image" in the very same Old Testament Scriptures they endorse, and despite it was the same Old testament Scriptures that plainly associates a "Son" with the Father in Proverbs 30:4, and asks what is the mysterious name of each of them. This therefore means that a divine consortium of Father and Son is inescapably a part of the monotheistic Old Testament Scriptures that declare one God, who spoke originally about "US" creating humans!! Gen. 1:26, 27. That is the Biblical monotheism the Bible claims for itself from the very

Old Testament. And yet it is precisely upon this Old and New Testament monotheistic principle that Christianity itself is built, that is, there is one God the Father, not two or three of Him, but this one God cannot be known, accepted, or served, without associating Him with, and accepting and serving Him through His equally divine Son and Consort, and also without accepting and serving Him through the unction and indwelling of His equally divine, and personal Holy Spirit, who represents Him everywhere, not only in the universe, but also personally in our heart temples. This is undeniable Bible truth. Now either one accepts this Bible truth as appearing to be, by dictionary definition, polytheism, or one recognizes that God’s ways and definitions are not ours, and so it is not God’s definition of polytheism, no matter how much it so appears to be. Ironically, some in Christianity, while accepting that Father and Son are two separate beings who deserve equal honor as diving beings, even if it be said that the Son's honor is the wish of the Father, they seemingly fail to see how they must equally defend themselves against the charge of polytheism, even as they castigate those who see the Holy Spirit as also part of the whole scope of divinity of "the Godhead" as the "third person" of "the three holiest beings in heaven" (a matter others charge to be tri-theism!)! But note this very important and inescapable fact: The Christians nearest the Bible apostles taught a triad of divinity, but denied a plurality of gods for the Christian. Why? Because, first, this is precisely what the New Testament apostles taught and recorded in their writings, and secondly, the "multiplicity-of-gods" concept does not fit the Godgiven Biblical imagery of the Father being "Head", Jesus being the "arm of the Lord", and the Holy Spirit being the

"finger of God" or the hand of the Lord God". The imagery of the Godhead being LIKE one body with one "Head (as in the Church imagery) totally obliterates the idea of the members being all independent self-originate entities or separate "gods" (just as each member of the true Church is not "a church" by himself). And this has been the chief principle never seen by many from the beginning. See 1 Cor. 12:4-6, 11. The idea of ‘gods’ in the Godhead is one of Satan’s first lies told on earth. This lie, recorded distinctly in Genesis 3:5, was told because he himself knew that more than one Person in the Godhead is properly called “GOD” by nature (Gen. 3:22; 2 Thess.2:4),and because Satan knows that a misunderstanding of *the Godhead unity is what would cause us to either falsely see them as separate ‘gods’ (as seen by those accusing Christians of either bi-theism or tri-theism) or worse, as a monstrous ‘three headed’ individual being (organism)...as the Catholic version of the Trinity teaches. Why? Satan likes to counterfeit or caricature the truth to cast doubt, and ridicule it!! No Christian should therefore seek to promote these pagan lies, or on the other hand go to the other extreme of unwittingly opposing “all that is called God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4) in the Persons of the Father, Son, and their personal Holy Spirit, simply because he cannot understand how, when the Three are spiritually united as "the three holiest beings in heaven" in the Godhead, 1x1x1 =1(one) God, and not 1+1+1=3 (three) gods. This is perfectly illustrated by the family and the Church, with ONLY one "Head" on one body (in imagery) despite differing beings or "members" are involved; not with many heads, as the Roman Catholics falsely portray the Trinity with three faces on one body in paintings. Can you see why SD Adventists rejected this so-called "orthodox" depiction of the Godhead, despite we share with Trinitarians that indeed three persons make up the Godhead? Trinitarianism is not just

about a three-faced singular organism, but also involves the notion of a group of three personalities/beings/persons united. THAT IS INESCAPABLE IF ONE LOOKS AT ROOT MEANINGS OF WORDS. If this was not so then how could trinitarianism be misconstrued to be 'borrowed' from ancient religions with groups of divine 'threes', even of different sexes? This does prove that the critics of trinitarianism themselves do not believe that a trinity always means one being only. But be that as it may, any belief that accepts and worships more than one being as divine has to defend itself against the charge of polytheism (both from within Christendom as well as from without). The very same arguments used therefore by binitarians and semi-Arians to justify more than one divine being worthy of highest religious worship is basically the same logical arguments which the modern Adventist could appeal to as a defense against polytheism. Whether it is two or three divine beings involved, it boils down to the same issues which must be resolved. Many of the very same critics of so-called tri-theism within Christianity usually have the Supreme Being, the Father, as God, and yet also accept Jesus as God worthy of religious worship like the Father. This could also be called bi-theism, or the worship of two Gods, that is, if the arguments leveled against SDA's 'unorthodox' trinitarianism, which believes in the separate being of Father, Son and Holy Spirit were actually true. A binitarian and semi-Arian who believes Jesus deserves religious worship, and is properly called "my Lord and my God"(John 20:28) is called upon to balance all those views in light of the first of the Ten Commandments. To properly do this they MUST accept the spiritual unity of the Father and Son as divine beings, or else polytheism stares both the binitarian and semi-Arian critic squarely in the face, since worship is exclusively reserved ONLY for the being called God . But back to the point.

The Godhead has only one "Head", the Father; not three "heads" as Catholic teaching illustrates sacrilegiously, despite there are indeed three personal entities involved (who all have similar qualities within the divine specie). Do you notice the plural word “all” in 2 Thess. 2:4 referring to who is called "God", or who is to be worshiped? And can you then see why God chose the human family of two persons initially (Gen. 1:26), but later with the complete family (with offspring from the unity of the first two persons), to illustrate the Godhead of one God the Father, who is inseparably united with His Son, and with both united producing their personal Holy Spirit? Can you see too why God, who knows that LOVE is a fellowship principle, and also knowing that for the statement “God is love” to be true then he could not picture Himself in isolated alone-ness as the only divine being, but as working in harmony with another/others divine like himself? Thus from the very beginning he said “let us”; not ‘let me do this or that’, or ‘I will’, etc. And can you then see why God used the human family, the first earthly institution of love, as the model “imaged” after him to demonstrate His essence on earth? Can you see why "man" as a family (Gen. 5:2), or "man" in the church as an entity, can both be used to illustrate the unity of the Godhead since both can be called "he" or "she" respectively, and yet different personal beings are involved, with the union having only one "Head", and with all the other members operating as if they are one body in subjection to the "Head"? Thus "man', as an individual person, and "man" as a family, or "man" as the church does illustrate more effectively the Godhead IN IMAGERY, and more so than any man-made illustrations can ever do. This is what I believe, and it is perfectly grounded in the Bible,

and is the fully revealed MONOTHEISM of the full Bible; not just the teachings of the Old Testament that lacks the amplification of the New.

*POST SCRIPT- Christians from the first, second and third centuries simply believed that that there is one God the Father, who begot from eternity his co-equal and co-eternal Son who perfectly works with, and perfectly represents this one true God, that both the Father and Son and are perfectly represented everywhere by their personal Holy Spirit, and that all three deserves equal honor in the one Godhead. This is in no way “similar” to the ancient “triads” of gods among the multitude of gods found in the ancient pagan religions, and in fact this Christian teaching predated by hundreds of years the arrival of the notorious Papacy. The Papacy is charged by the antiTrinitarian teaching with the so-called “invention” of the Trinity, and yet this argument SERIOUSLY lacks historical foundation, since the Papacy itself (arriving on the scene only after the fourth century) INHERITED Trinitariantype teachings from the Christians before it, and, like many other doctrines it inherited, it added on its own perspectives and endeavored to mix truth with error!! It is the error mixed with the truth that should be opposed; not all of the teaching about the triadic Godhead.