Category: Les Burch

Next, we will see the roles of the Father and the Son in creation. We will examine the challenges of Les Burch regarding Jesus Christ as a separate being who is essentially “less” than the Father, and see if the Scriptures actually teach this Arian position. Is Jesus Christ the “created creator” of all (other) things?

In this post, we will examine Mr. Burch’s assertion that Jesus can be “the image of the invisible God” while being a finite, created being of Yahweh. Mr. Burch uses a lot of flowery language to get the reader to appreciate his henotheistic view of a God and His created Son. We will see, rather, how beautiful it is to know that God of very God did, in fact, invade His own Creation and satisfy His own demands for justice by which He pours out His mercy. We will see that the Image of the Invisible God cannot be a creature of the One True God.

If you remember earlier in this series, we saw many statements God (Yahweh) made about Himself, especially in the book of Isaiah. He alone is the True God. He alone has the power to declare future events. This part will focus especially on the last qualification that Yahweh made about Himself: as the One True God, He alone is worthy of worship! We will compare Yahweh’s statements about Himself regarding worship with statements about Jesus to see if He measures up to being the One True God, sharing the same being of Yahweh with the Father.

In Part 2 of this series, we observed that there are only two categories of the title god in the Bible. There is the category of true God (consisting of Yahweh alone) and false god consisting of everything else. One could be made “like God” or “as a god” to someone else if he is the representative of the true God, but this does not make him a true god by Yahweh’s definition of the term. A true god is worthy of worship, can proclaim the future, and created the universe.

In Part 1, we determined a working definition of the Trinity: God is one Being, three Persons. We carefully observed the difference in meaning between being and person, and how understanding these categories can annul the confusion that arises both among those who casually affirm the Trinity and those who deny it. Now, we will examine the challenges that Les Burch poses in his book It Isn’t The Way We Think It Is, chapter 5 “The Trinity–Help or Hindrance?”

And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. –Ecclesiastes 4:12 The Trinity is a doctrinal understanding of the essence of God that has a long history of both ardent defense and constant attack. It is an official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, and many Protestant denominations confess belief in it as well. Many creeds, confessions, and statements of faith have expressed it in different words ranging from a short sentence to paragraphs and pages. In recent years, many that confess the name of Christ are beginning to question the doctrine of the Trinity, and the numbers of those in other religions that reject this doctrine–such as Islam and Judaism–are growing.