On the Trinity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLfgaUoQCw
From a practical standpoint, while the doctrine of the Trinity can be deduced from what the Bible says, it clearly is not a critical doctrine since it is never clearly taught. It is, frankly, a doctrine rooted in philosophers playing word games with Scripture instead of focusing on what is already clearly taught. If a clear description of the Trinity was required for salvation, we’d all be damned. And no, the creeds developed by philosophers are NOT in any sense clear. They are just words approved by men who may well have been non-Chrisitans, given what they were arguing about!
8 Be careful that nobody spoils your faith through intellectualism or high-sounding nonsense. Such stuff is at best founded on men’s ideas of the nature of the world and disregards Christ!
9-10 Yet it is in him that God gives a full and complete expression of himself (within the physical limits that he set himself in Christ). Moreover, your own completeness is only realized in him, who is the authority over all authorities, and the supreme power over all powers.
11-15 In Christ, you were circumcised, not by any physical act, but by being set free from the sins of the flesh by virtue of Christ’s circumcision. You, so to speak, shared in that, just as in baptism you shared in his death, and in him are sharing the miracle of rising again to new life—and all this because you have faith in the tremendous power of God, who raised Christ from the dead.
You, who were spiritually dead because of your sins and your uncircumcision (i.e. the fact that you were outside the Law), God has now made to share in the very life of Christ!
He has forgiven you all your sins: Christ has utterly wiped out the damning evidence of broken laws and commandments which always hung over our heads, and has completely annulled it by nailing it over his own head on the cross. And then having drawn the sting of all the powers ranged against us, he exposed them, shattered, empty and defeated, in his final glorious triumphant act!
16-19 In view of these tremendous facts, don’t let anyone worry you by criticising what you eat or drink, or what holy days you ought to observe, or bothering you over new moons or sabbaths. All these things have at most only a symbolical value: the solid fact is Christ.
Nor let any man cheat you of your joy in Christ by persuading you to make yourselves “humble” and fall down and worship angels. Such a man, inflated by an unspiritual imagination, is pushing his way into matters he knows nothing about, and in his cleverness forgetting his head. It is from the head alone that the body, by natural channels, is nourished and built up and grows according to God’s laws of growth.
20-23 So if, through your faith in Christ, you are dead to the principles of this world’s life, why, as if you were still part and parcel of this world-wide system, do you take the slightest notice of these purely human prohibitions—“Don’t touch this,” “Don’t taste that” and “Don’t handle the other”? “This”, “that” and “the other” will all pass away after use!
I know that these regulations look wise with their self-inspired efforts at worship, their policy of self-humbling, and their studied neglect of the body. But in actual practice they do honour, not to God, but to man’s own pride. - Colossians 2, J.B. Phillips New Testament
While I’m on a roll, I’m an arminian. Not a calvinist. But when folks discuss predestination, free will and the details of who God saves us, we all are trying to describe something beyond our knowing! God is not an insect to be dissected on the table. Nor did God see fit to deliver us a Bible that reads like a Systematic Theology text, because theology - as taught in books - is a game.
True theology is knowing God, and no one who tries to dissect God has any clue about the nature of God. Only the extremely proud can pretend they can dissect the Creator of the Universe!
“There was a man in the country of Uz named Job. He was a man of perfect integrity, who feared God and turned away from evil.” - Job 1
“Then Job replied to the Lord:
I know that You can do anything
and no plan of Yours can be thwarted.
You asked, “Who is this who conceals My counsel with ignorance?”
Surely I spoke about things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
You said, “Listen now, and I will speak.
When I question you, you will inform Me.”
I had heard rumors about You,
but now my eyes have seen You.
Therefore I take back my words
and repent in dust and ashes.” - Job 42
“I had heard rumors about You,
but now my eyes have seen You.
Therefore I take back my words
and repent in dust and ashes.”
May we all respond like that!