The Bible Teaches God is a Trinity

In Genesis 18, the narration begins with the assertion that what is about to described is an appearance by YHWH to Abraham. The next thing we see is that three men approach Abraham. Abraham bows down and says “Adoni (my Lord).” It does not expressly state the direct object (either as all 3 men or one among them). Who are these three men? Are they the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? I wouldn’t rule that out. Could it be YHWH appearing in the form of three men and there’s nothing more to it? Or can it be that one is a Theophany and He is accompanied by a guard of two angels? There is no reason to favor any of these explanations over the others, other than the fact that immediately after YHWH departs, 2 angels go to Sodom. I do not need to call into question the true faith of the writer to say that this passage does not teach the Trinity.The Shema is not a declaration of monotheism. Monotheistic support is found elsewhere in the Scriptures. Duet 6:4 would be monotheistic if it declared “YHWH is the only God.” The phrase “YHWH is one” does not by itself preclude the existence of other deities. YHWH could still be one God and other Gods could still exist. Since no contradiction exists between those two terms, we cannot write the Shema off as having only (or at all) a monotheistic meaning. Yes, “echod” can mean “one,” even if that one thing (such as a cluster) has multiple parts. If YHWH had claimed to be one/echod triumvirate of divine beings, I would not be asserting what I am asserting about the meaning of one. Simply because “one” can apply to a singular composite thing (cluster, flock) does not mean that we may infer plurality whenever we see “one.” If we do this, we totally deprive the language’s ability to ever declare something is one, and thus set up the rules in a way already biased towards a Trinitarian conclusion.No, Jesus is not misleading when he says one must “hate” even his own life or that he was come to bring a sword. Jesus was a radical and not a pacifist, thus these passages do not stand in contradiction in anything Jesus said. I am not trying to get in any one’s head. What does that even mean? What precisely are you saying that I am trying to do? I am asking if the person who wrote the words down and people to whom it was written (in other words, people infinitely closer to those words than you or I are) would get “such and such” an understanding. If their understanding is different than yours, it really should cause you to question your ideas – especially since these are the people who lived through these experiences and the people who put together the Bible itself. These are not just certain folk. The beliefs of those who wrote the Bible (say, Moses) are relevant to what the Bible teaches. Let’s return to Hosea and make a point about Elohim as well. You are right that Hosea goes from singular 3rd person pronouns to plural verb forms very quickly in a grammatically awkward way. No real meaning is lost, but this awkward construct does not render my grammatical point moot. He goes from referring to Israel as “he” to conjugating verbs as if the subject was “they.” This can be very simply explained. While it is an awkward move, this is common in most languages. Rather than referring to Israel as “they,” he shifts to Israelis as the antecedent. I can see no other explanation for this. This does not disprove my grammatical distinction between singular and plural, and it is not merely “Con’s grammatical rule,” it is an elementary linguistic principle. Now we must look at Elohim. Elohim is a title for YHWH. The –im ending gives it a plural sound, but since it is conjugated to the singular we know that Elohim is simply a title but is actually singular. If Elohim were plural, then its meaning would be “Gods.” The –im may be added just to add an extra level of respect, as is done with 2nd person pronouns in other semitic cultures, but this is just speculation at this point. Elohim is a singular subject as evidenced by the verbs conjugated to it. It is like Israel is singular in Hosea 11:1. Now, since Israel is made up of multiple people, “they” is sometimes applied to it (such as Hosea 11:2) with no need to explain that it is obviously referring to Israelis. I will be forced to make a major concession to Pro if he can demonstrate that Elohim is ever the subject of a verb conjugated to the plural or the antecedent of a plural pronoun. That would prove that just as Israel is singular and made of multiple parts (Israelis), so Elohim is singular and made of multiple parts (or persons, or whatever).Of course the legitimacy of a position is not determined by whether or not it is mainstream. I never gave an indication to the contrary. Because in round 2 I began a section by asking if other views on the Godhead have as much legitimacy as the mainstream one, you assert that legitimacy is not determined by whether or not an idea is in the mainstream? These two statements do not contradict. I merely used “mainstream” to refer to the Trinitarian take on the Godhead. This does not imply that I believe the fact that the Trinity is the mainstream view has any bearing on its veracity. So let’s apply this to Matthew 3. You can look at it as 3 persons of a Godhead here. You can also look at it as YHWH’s appearance as a human is being baptized, YHWH also appears as a dove on his shoulder and speaks from heaven. An omnipresent God can do this easily without being 3 persons. If He chose to, YHWH could make an appearance as 5 humans walking around the earth for an entire human lifetime. They could even have a chain of command and interact and some be subordinate to others and ascend into heaven and sit in thrones. He would not have to be some divine Pentagon for this to work.To answer your question about Gen 1:26 gets to the heart of this debate. I don’t know! That’s the answer. That’s my point. I believe that “I don’t know” is the only honest answer to that question. That’s the difference between our positions. I don’t need to back up that angels may be among the “us” here in order to assert that we can’t know that it’s referring to a Trinity. It could be a Godhead. It could be the angels. The fact that angels are not said to be in God’s image does not mean they aren’t. It could be any number of beings that we have no knowledge of. To leap to a Trinitarian conclusion (or even the conclusion that God is plural in any way) is premature. Evidently, I have to spend a portion of the 8,000 character limit defending myself against ad hominems. So, I do not want God to say things the way I want, whatever that utterly vacuous accusation is supposed to mean. I suppose that I certainly wish things were different than they are (in that I wish there was no Hell, but I believe in its existence anyway). Even then, I gave no indication of even that earlier in the debate. From what is this accusation drawn?I agreed to the a priori assumption of canonical validity, but passages do not “combine” to present some emergent doctrine. Passages teach what they teach and where two passages teach the same thing, all the better. You cannot take one thing from here and one thing from there and make a doctrine. This is invalid hermeneutics. Hosea wrote his scrolls with no knowledge of what Paul would tell the Romans. Therefore, we cannot hold Hosea responsible for what might be taken from his book and mixed with Paul’s letters to make a new doctrine. This is true with any given two authors. Legitimate interpretation involves taking what a passage expressly says, and then comparing it to others to check for support or contradiction. If a seeming contradiction arises between to texts of which inspiration is not negotiable to you, the correct response is not come up with some fancy dogma to explain it away. It should be left a mystery and we should not commit what Job admits to doing in 42:3 “I have uttered what I did not understand, Things to wonderful for me, which I did not know."