If Jesus is God, how could he die for our sins?

Many people view the Trinity as “the central doctrine of the Christian religion.” According to this teaching, the Father, Son, and holy spirit are three persons in one God. Cardinal John O’Connor stated about the Trinity: “We know that it is a very profound mystery, which we don’t begin to understand.”

Why is the Trinity so difficult to understand? The Illustrated Bible Dictionary gives one reason. Speaking of the Trinity, this publication admits: “It is not a biblical doctrine in the sense that any formulation of it can be found in the Bible.”

Because the Trinity is “not a biblical doctrine,” Trinitarians have been desperately looking for Bible texts—even twisting them—to find support for their teaching. One example of a Bible verse that is often misused is John 1:1. In the King James Version, that verse reads: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God Greek, ton the?

On? , and the Word was God the? Os?.”

This verse contains two forms of the Greek noun the? Os? (god).

The first is preceded by ton (the), a form of the Greek definite article, and in this case the word the? On? Refers to Almighty God.

In the second instance, however, the? Os? Has no definite article.

The Gospel of John was written in Koine, or common Greek, which has specific rules regarding the use of the definite article. Bible scholar A. T.

Robertson recognizes that if both subject and predicate have articles, “both are definite, treated as identical, one and the same, and interchangeable.” Robertson considers as an example Matthew 13:38, which reads: “The field Greek, ho a? Gros?

Is the world Greek, ho ko?smos.” The grammar enables us to understand that the world is also the field. What, though, if the subject has a definite article but the predicate does not, as in John 1:1?

Citing that verse as an example, scholar James Allen Hewett emphasizes: “In such a construction the subject and predicate are not the same, equal, identical, or anything of the sort. To illustrate, Hewett uses 1 John 1:5, which says: “God is light.” In Greek, “God” is ho the?

Os? And therefore has a definite article. But phos for “light” is not preceded by any article.

Hewett points out: “One can always . . .

Say of God He is characterized by light; one cannot always say of light that it is God.” Similar examples are found at John 4:24, “God is a Spirit,” and at 1 John 4:16, “God is love.” In both of these verses, the subjects have definite articles but the predicates, “Spirit” and “love,” do not.

So the subjects and predicates are not interchangeable. These verses cannot mean that “Spirit is God” or “love is God. Many Greek scholars and Bible translators acknowledge that John 1:1 highlights, not the identity, but a quality of “the Word.”

Says Bible translator William Barclay: “Because the apostle John has no definite article in front of theos it becomes a description . . .

John is not here identifying the Word with God. To put it very simply, he does not say that Jesus was God.” Scholar Jason David BeDuhn likewise says: “In Greek, if you leave off the article from theos in a sentence like the one in John 1:1c, then your readers will assume you mean ‘a god.

’ . . .

Its absence makes theos quite different than the definite ho theos, as different as ‘a god’ is from ‘God’ in English.” BeDuhn adds: “In John 1:1, the Word is not the one-and-only God, but is a god, or divine being.” Or to put it in the words of Joseph Henry Thayer, a scholar who worked on the American Standard Version: “The Logos or, Word was divine, not the divine Being himself.

Many of today's trinitarian theories are based off of ancient Triune God's that the pagan's worshiped. And throughout the years many of these teachings have crept into the churches of Christendom, creating the strange and confusing doctrines of many of today's religions. But in short, your right, if Jesus and God were one, Jesus would not have been able to die because God cannot die.

Jesus is the closest resembling entity to God in way of personality.

Your reasoning falls well short. You say God is omnipresent yet it is abundantly obvious that Jesus was not omnipresent but local. Obviously because He took on human nature.

He was fully God and fully man. On the cross He yielded up His spirit and the body died. After three days and three nights He was raised from the dead in that body.

Now what is so very difficult in understanding such a simple thing?

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.