Implications of Monotheism (Truth Matters) [34:34]
by Danny Dixon rated at 2.3 (8 votes so far)
Danny Dixon is a graduate of Abilene Christian University (1981: B.A. In Biblical Studies, New Testament emphasis; 1984: M.A. in Bible and Related Studies, stressing New Testament text). He has served churches as a Youth Minister in Nevada, Kansas, and California. He has also served as a Campus Evangelist with churches in discipleship ministries with students at Virginia Tech, UCLA, and USC in Los Angeles. In May of 2009 he graduated with a Master of Education in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona.
As a minister Danny was sent a copy of Anthony Buzzard's The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound and as a result began to question whether or not the doctrine of the Trinity was biblical. He was surprised when two of the elders at the church where he served adamantly discouraged him from even investigating this subject. Nevertheless, the other two elders supported him and Danny pressed on to unravel the mind-numbing nuanced distinctions endemic to the doctrine of the Trinity. After some time, he found the texts which support the ancient Jewish-Christian belief that God is strictly one individual to vastly outweigh the handful of trinitarian proof-texts he used to cling to and he found himself changing his position on the issue.
In our conversation, Danny describes what this process was like and also how shifting from complex "monotheism" to simple monotheism has aided him in following Jesus more closely. If this show interests you, feel free to visit Danny's online discussion forum 4OneGod.net, watch the documentary The Human Jesus, or check out his free downloads from christianmonotheism.com.
books
These books, written by people from diverse backgrounds, express the simple truth that God is one. Some of them are more scholary while others are more autobiographical. In addition, a few of them are available to read online. If you would like more in depth treatment of christian monotheism, these books are the next step to take. Note: if you know of other books, not listed here, please leave us feedback.
featured item
John 1.1 Caveat Lector (Reader Beware)
by Anthony Buzzard [13 pages]
rated at 1.6 (out of 6 votes)
In all probability John has been "turned on his head." What he intended was to stave off all attempts to introduce a duality into the Godhead. For John the word was the one God Himself, not a second person. The later, post-biblical shift from "word" as divine promise from the beginning, the Gospel lodged in the mind and purpose of the one God, to an actual second divine "person," the Son, alive before his birth, introduced a principle of confusion and chaos from which the church has never freed itself. This shift was the corrupting seed of later Trinitarianism. God became two and later, with the addition of the holy spirit, three. It remains for believers today to return to belief in Jesus as the human Messiah and in the One God of Israel, his Father, as the "one who alone is truly God" (John 17:3). God is one person not three.