The Trinity is Biblical

Pro's argument that because Jesus receives and answers prayer, he must be God, is unsound. In the first place, there is no passage in scripture which teaches that only God can receive or answer prayer; so there is a problem with Pro's major premise. In the second place, the word often translated "prayer" is "proseuchomai", and it is not even used of Jesus, so there is no Biblical evidence that anyone "prayed" to Jesus anyway [1]; Pro may try to argue that in Acts 1:24, the disciples are "praying" to Jesus, but even in that passage it is unclear as to whether the "Lord" mentioned is actually Jesus. In the third place, the word that is translated "ask" in John 14:14 is "aiteo;", and the word used in 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 for "besought" is "parakaleto;"; both of these words mean "ask", but "parakaleto;" implies a more persistent kind of asking [2], but asking Jesus for something does not make him God. Lastly, the fact that Jesus was given "all authority in heaven and in earth" and "the name that is above every name" qualifies him to do things that ordinary humans can't do; he is also the head of the church; therefore, it makes sense that both Peter and Paul (who are both members of his church) would ask him for things; in fact, it would be strange for them NOT to ask him for anything. Pro argues that there are no exceptions to the Granville-Sharp rule; however, this premise overlooks a couple of important considerations: firstly, the Granville Sharp rule is based on Sharp's analysis of the grammar found in the Greek New Testament; extra-Biblical Greek literature was not consulted, and no "rule" can truly be a rule of Greek Grammar if it does not apply in the entire Greek language. However, in Smyth's Grammar of the Greek language he does examine ALL Greek literature, and while Smyth recognizes no "Granville-Sharp rule", he does point out several explanations for the pattern Sharp thought he saw in the New Testament. Smyth states that when two nouns are referring to the same "notion" then the article may be omitted on the second noun [3]. Although this sounds a lot like Sharp's rule, the examples he gives prove otherwise; Smyth gives an example of "the generals and captains", and "the largest and smallest ships". Since no one would argue that "the generals and captains" are the same persons because there is no article on "captains", or that "the largest and smallest ships" are the same ships for the same reason, these examples shows that Smyth's rule is NOT the same as the Granville Sharp rule, and that the omission of the article does not demand that the two nouns are the same. The explanation as to why the article is omitted in these examples rests on the fact that "the generals and captain" and "the largest and smallest ships" are two distinct parts of a larger whole (i.e., the commanding officers and the whole fleet, respectively), and therefore shouldn't be referred to as completely separate things (which is what Smyth says that a repeated article signifies [4]); the same would of course apply to God and his only begotten son; they are not two completely different entities, but two parts of a larger whole (i.e., the architect and the instrument of salvation = the larger whole of the plan of salvation). Another one of Smyth's rules is that if a word denoting class is used of a person, then such a word may omit the article [5]; it is clear that "savior" is definitely a class of being, so the fact that Jesus is called a "savior" in these passages could also explain why the author omitted the second article. Furthermore, "savior" is also an appellative treated as a proper name, and this kind of speech also fits into yet another of Smyth's rules [6], providing further reason for the omission of the article, without a resort to Sharp's so-called "rule". In light of the fact that Sharp's rule cannot even be called such in Koine Greek, as well as the rules cited by Smyth, Pro's claims that the Granville-Sharp rule has no exceptions, and that these passages are calling Jesus "God" ignores important counter-evidence that even some Trinitarians recognize (e.g., the KJV translates 2 Peter 1:1 as referring to two separate people). Furthermore, apart from Smyth's rules, there are good reasons why these passages should not be interpreted as references to Jesus. Titus 1:4 reads "From God the Father and from our Savior Jesus Christ"; it would make very little sense for Paul to make such a clear distinction between God and Jesus in the 1st chapter, and then obliterate that distinction only one chapter later; if Paul was referring to God the Father in 1:4, it makes the most sense to say that he was referring to him in 2:13, considering the fact that he refers to God the Father as "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" in almost every one of his epistles, and only refers to Jesus as "God" 3 times (all of which are in disputed texts). In reference to 2 Peter 1:1, it is even more unlikely that Peter would call Jesus "God" in verse one, and in the very next verse, refer to God and Jesus as two separate persons, than it is that Paul would do similarly in Titus 2:13; again, the more likely explanation is that he is using both terms the same way in both verses, and since verse 2 clearly a reference to 2 different people, verse 1 should be as well. Pro also claims that because the Bible does not say that God is one person, he is not one person; however, such an argument is fallacious, because the Bible ALSO does not say that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or even Jesus are persons, and yet we know that they are. The word "person" is an English word, so of course none of them would be called persons anyway; instead of following a red herring, we should look for what a Hebrew-speaking person would use to describe a single person, and that word is nephesh. Therefore, the Bible actually does refer to Yahweh as one person, because it uses the exact same word/phrase that is invariably used to describe a single person, and that single person is said to have created the world ALONE. Pro also begs the question in assuming that the phrase "Yahweh is one" is an incomplete statement; he has no reason from the context to do so, because the phrase IS a complete thought in Hebrew grammar. He insists that "one" means "one substance", but where is the evidence? Unless there is evidence that Yahweh means "a divine substance", he has no basis for believing that two persons can be one Yahweh. The only definition of Yahweh that the Bible gives is that of a person: he speaks, he walks, he sits on a throne, he is a soul, etc . . . ; the Bible never defines God as a substance. For Pro's argument that both Jesus and the Father can both be Yahweh, but there is only one Yahweh to stand, Pro must show a passage in the Bible in which either the word "Yahweh" or any of the words translated "God" (e.g., "elohim", el, or "theos") are defined BY THE BIBLE as "substance" or "divine nature"; if he cannot do this, then he must admit that his definition is unbiblical, and since this definition is required for the Trinity to be true, the Trinity is unbiblical as well. [1] http://www.blueletterbible.org... [2] http://www.blueletterbible.org... ;http://www.blueletterbible.org... [3] Smyth, Herbert W., Greek Grammar, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), section 1143. [4] Ibid., section 1144. [5] Ibid., section 1129. [6] Ibid., section 1140.