Monday 28 July 2008

Trinity hunting

The closer you examine the New Testament, the more types of the trinity you find. Take the name Jesus: a common enough cognomen in the area at the time. It is applied to precisely three figures in the NT. In his Epistle to Colossians St Paul identifies one of his co-workers as 'Jesus, who is called Justus' [Col. 4:11]; and Acts 13:6 reads: 'and when they had gone through the isle unto Paphos they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-jesus' --which is to say, 'the son of Jesus'. So the NT contains three Jesuses, one of them the messiah, one of them the son, and one 'Justus' ('Lawful'). A Jesus who embodies the Law, a Jesus identified as the son, and a Jesus who transcends materiality.

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