This is a continuation of the critique of The Making of The Passion of the Christ. The actual Trinity (Matthew 28:19) is a reference, not to the "Three Persons" of God, but to the Three Functions or Manifestations of God. The Holy Spirit is, not an "It," contrary to what Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong contends (just as he uniquely errs in saying there were, not Three Persons, but rather Two Persons, in Eternity Past), but rather the very Spirit of the Father. That's why Jesus, in having been conceived by the Holy Spirit, is thereby the Son of the Father, rather than being the Son of the Holy Spirit instead of the Father. Consider an ordinary human being, created in the image and likeness of God, consisting of a soul (an animated body) and an individual spirit; however, not, again, as two persons, but rather as one (just as the mortally human soul and spirit are separated, at the point of physical death, Hebrews 4:12). God the Father was the separately Creative Manifestation of God, in the beginning; and, thus, the Symbolic Image of the Word, or the Son; until, that is, He became the Father. But, while the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father, Jesus had an individual human spirit, which united with the Father's, after His water baptism in the Jordan; so that the two had become one, and blended, in the most uniquely, virtually indistinguishable way of all. . . . However, that very process had been unavailable to Fallen man, in the most Judicially open sense, until Jesus had become a totally Perfected and Glorified participant in the Holy Spirit, so that this Spirit was actually Their Spirit, in the most Completely Finished sense. Moreover, Scripture further confirms the extent to which Jesus had to be Perfected (Hebrews 2:9-10); in a manner which would not have been necessary, for Him, had He "simply" and "unequivocally" or "unparadoxically" been God! That's why Pentecost could not have occurred before all this was fulfilled (John 16:5-11). The most which can be said for the concept of the "Three Person Trinity" is that, paradoxically, the very language being employed, here, in defense of the Real Trinity, could also be quite logically, consistently applied to the concept of "Three Persons," too; however, in a manner to where the very question of whether "Three Persons" are actually involved becomes, at best, something hopelessly, paradoxically insoluble. Moreover, at least some of the reasons the "Three Person Trinity" is no less structurally disjointed than strictly superfluous per se, should be explicitly clear enough by now. Even the very best possible manner of defending it is necessarily as inadequate as the very thing being defended in the process, as an "adaptation" of the polytheism of pre-Christian Rome. . . . When carefully examined, the only real difference (aside from Rome's uniquely historical predominance, as the Mother of all cults), by way of Mainstream Protestant Fundamentalist definition, between a "sect" and a "cult," is that the former embrace the doctrine of the Trinity, while the latter do not. Indeed, aside from this one essential difference, Rome fits virtually every Mainstream Protestant Fundamentalist definition of a "cult." Just to cite but one "minor bit" of such predominantly astonishing blindness in this respect, particularly among professing Christians of all "sectarian" denominations; where does, for instance, Romans 14:5-6, appear to condone the teaching that everlasting torment is the inevitable result of "unrepentantly" missing a Mass on Sunday, or a "Holy Day of Obligation," or eating a piece of meat on Friday? Such regressions into spiritual bondage are quite elaborately exposed for what they really are in Paul's Epistle to the Galatians. Grace, in general, as opposed to Law, is also poetically symbolized in the outline of Daniel's Seventieth Week (Daniel 9:20-27), which begins with a baptism (Matthew 3:13-17) and ends with a baptism (Acts 10). Just as John the Baptist, who symbolized Law, had said he must "decrease" (John 3:30); so, also, did the order itself symbolically "evolve," from that of the Holy Spirit following the baptism itself, to that of this same "Baptism of Fire" preceding the baptism itself. More accurately, Peter, at the end of Acts 10, is commanding, as such, not that baptism be mandatory, but rather that it not be forbidden. There's an infinity of difference, in spirit, between having to be baptized, and having no reason not to be, as beautifully ushering in as well as symbolizing the overall spirit of New Covenant obedience. A real Christian is free rather than bound to be baptized--after the fact.
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