Do you have a refutation of Christianity?
And one more thing, while we’re at it—does Ben Stada, who appears in the Babylonian Talmud, in tractate Sanhedrin if I’m not mistaken, refer to Jesus?

No.
I don’t know.

What refutation is there of Christianity? Religion has no refutation. You can twist anything to make it fit the faith. We also have quite a few sects that believe nonsense. Like the Berland sect or dozens of other bizarre Hasidic groups.

In my opinion, if one can prove that one of the principles of faith is false, then we have proven that the religion is false.

A few pieces of evidence can be presented that the doctrine of the Trinity, accepted as a central and virtually unquestioned element throughout almost the entire Christian world, is false—philosophically, theologically, and historically.

A philosophical problem that I find:

It seems that if a certain essence can exist in more than one instance, then as far as the essence itself is concerned, it could exist infinitely many times. Or in other words, one can construct possible worlds in which it is exemplified more and more. The Trinity is such an essence. But in order to be the Creator, God must be a necessary being. Which means that one of the core principles of the Christian religion is false.

In principle, if a being can contain brute facts, it does not exist necessarily. If there is a Trinity, why aren’t there 4 persons, 11,001, or twenty billion?

Copenhagen, welcome back (you haven’t been here in a long time).
In my opinion this is a very weak argument. The distinction between one and three is a matter of definition. For example, with regard to organisms, a human being is one entity even though he is composed of many parts.
Beyond that, God is one entity, but is revealed in three aspects. There is no necessity to claim that those three aspects are themselves necessary. He is a necessary being.
And in general, the gates of interpretation have not been closed, and the Trinity has many interpretations (and there are those who do not accept it, like the Unitarians and other Protestant sects). I do not believe in theological proofs and refutations of different beliefs. Usually they rely on assumptions that are not themselves necessary.
This reminds me of an article that was published in Tzohar (issue 1 or 2), which was a chapter from a book of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda’s notes on the New Testament. It was really bizarre. He engaged in pilpul and found contradictions in their beliefs (some of them based, of course, on Jewish assumptions), when it is obvious that if someone did the same thing to his own beliefs they would find no fewer and perhaps more “contradictions.” The question is how much sympathy you have for the religion under attack, such that you will adopt various interpretations and explanations. That is another reason why I see no point in all these discussions.

According to the Torah there is a simple and easy-to-understand proof refuting Christianity.

The one and only leader is Moses our teacher.

How simple and how easy.

Except that the heretics wandering around here deny this. And so they don’t bring it as evidence. But they are heretics, so it doesn’t really matter what they say or don’t say.

Greetings,

The problem is that all the orthodox definitions are such that if we stretch them to their logical endpoints, we get either three gods or a contradiction. I’d be glad if someone could show me an orthodox interpretation that is not like that. For example, in the Athanasian Creed, among other things, it says (in my rough translation):

And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confusing the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.
For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.
Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.
The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.
The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal.
And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal.
Just as there are not three uncreated beings, nor three incomprehensible beings, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible.
Likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Spirit almighty.
And yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty.
So too the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God;
and yet they are not three Gods, but one God.

What follows from the quotation:

1. There are three “persons.”
2. Each of the persons is God.
3. Each of the persons is distinct from the others.
4. There are not three Gods but one God.

Which is logically impossible. If the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father, then there is more than one God. As you noted, Unitarian writers have always protested the absurdity (Newton argued that it must be the work of Satan), and still this is the accepted belief in mainstream Christianity, and all the groups that deny it are relatively marginal and are considered heretical or “sects” in the eyes of the Christian world.

I mentioned here only the logical problem, and not the theological and historical problems—which in my opinion may be sufficient in themselves to undermine the doctrine.

The complexity in a human being is of different *systems* or *organs*, but these do not make him more than *one* human being. That is, unlike the doctrine of the Trinity, if one defines correctly what one is counting, no contradictions arise.

The possibility of interpreting this as different modes of revelation is called “modalism,” and it was defined as heresy at the Council of Nicaea.

In principle, if we refrain from accepting theological proofs and refutations of different beliefs, we could end up thinking that there is no rational difference between the Chabad divine-man belief according to which the Rebbe’s soul is the very essence of divinity and he is in fact the living messiah hidden from our eyes, or Mormonism or Scientology, or any other sect, and beliefs that are less fantastic. The fact that different writers address other religions with an obviously low degree of intellectual honesty does not oblige others to do the same.

I don’t accept that. Those formulations are too rigid, and so they always miss options. I return to the organism example. There are three people who together create a nation or a family (or an ant/bee colony). That whole is one organic body even though each of the people is a separate person.

This is not a question of intellectual honesty. People grasp something that wording does not always express precisely. When a problem is presented to them, they sharpen it. That of course also happens in Judaism exactly as in Christianity. Think of the union of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Presence, with the Torah and with the Jewish people (= they are one).

Copenhagen,
Your attempt to expose the logical skeleton of Christianity and then subject it to criticism seems right to me. That is how, as I understand it, one interprets a cultural phenomenon and religions.
The problem with your analysis, in my opinion, is that you identified that skeleton incorrectly and jumped directly to the second floor, which is not necessary in the same way.
Belief in the Trinity, even if perceived as a necessary principle in historical Christianity, is most likely a kind of excess baggage that is not part of the first floor. By contrast, what probably is necessary to that floor is the principle of God’s incarnation in flesh.
Hence also the centrality of Jesus’ role not only as a mediator between man and God but also as the sacrifice that the “Father” was willing to make for man. From a “logical” standpoint there is no need for the third person of the Holy Spirit, and in any case you can’t “crucify” that person. And the crucifixion is the main thing here.
Therefore even if you are right that the Trinity dogma is not coherent (and I’m not sure of that), Christianity will neither stand nor fall on that basis.

Rabbi,

You are claiming that this may only be an apparent contradiction or a merely verbal one rather than a real contradiction—fair enough, I’d be happy to hear a coherent formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity that meets the standards accepted in orthodox Christianity and resolves the contradiction problem.

In the example of a whole, we are indeed dealing with one organic body, but you could not say of each of its components that it itself bears the properties of the complete body. By contrast, in the doctrine of the Trinity each of the persons by itself is God. The comparison to the example of a whole is therefore not equivalent. What would be equivalent is something like this:

In a given family, Reuven is a human being, Shimon is a human being, Levi is a human being. The three of them are one family. And yet one must not say that there are three human beings, but only one human being.

By “lack of intellectual honesty” I meant the book you described, presenting remarks (bizarre, in your words) of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda on the New Testament (I haven’t read it, but I’m familiar with similar phenomena).

I agree that one can sharpen things further down the road in light of difficulties. But up to now I have not seen an orthodox refinement that resolves the matter for me (though I haven’t made too much effort to dig into it). When one shows a clear contradiction, the burden of resolution lies on the one adhering to the theory.

When a Jew hears “the Holy One, blessed be He, is one with Israel,” he most likely does not imagine ontological identity, but rather a hyperbolic unity of purposes, relationships, intentions, and the like. By the way, Jesus is attributed with a similar statement regarding his unity with God, and if he had not elsewhere expressed himself in exactly the same way regarding his unity with his followers, you would think he was claiming to be God.

Doron,

I’m not quite following why there should be a logical or theological necessity for the principle of incarnation in flesh in historical Christianity. Christians didn’t really hold it in the first or second century and still did quite well in spreading Christianity. Paul knew nothing of all this. The original meaning was probably that the “word of God” or the “logos” (thought, plan) took shape in flesh and blood, not that God himself took on a human nature. The doctrine of incarnation does not add to the magnitude of the sacrifice for man, since even according to the theory Jesus is sacrificed through the human nature and not through the supposedly divine nature (which cannot die).

Replace the word “human being” with the word “creature,” and you’ll see that the problem disappears. Reuven is a creature, Shimon is a creature, and Levi is a creature, and yet the three of them are also a whole, which is likewise a creature.

And it still comes out that there are three creatures.

You might perhaps say that it would also be correct to say that there is only one creature (though in a different sense, but that is a separate discussion). But the doctrine of the Trinity forbids saying that there are three gods. That is, logically there are three gods, but you are required to deny it.

Cop,
The logical necessity I’m talking about is only given the historical Christian religion. Once it appeared on the stage of history, the interpreter must look for the logical skeleton embedded in it. That is what you also tried to do, and in my opinion failed at. All I’m saying is that if you want to undermine the logical structure at the base of the Christian argument, you need to aim at the trunk and not the branches that extend from it.
Therefore, for our discussion it also doesn’t matter when and how the idea of incarnation in flesh developed concretely. As long as you agree with me that the discussion is first of all about that and not about the Trinity, you can move forward in the “logical” assessment of Christianity.

Religions are not based on principles of faith, but on the faith of the masses.
Principles of faith are formulated after the religion is formed by the religion’s sages. They do not have great significance.

All religions and beliefs are based on a mistake in understanding how reality works.

What kind of mistake in understanding?

What the Posek is trying to tell us, with remarkable consistency to his credit, is that everything is psychology. Everything.
If so, then what he himself says also stems solely from his psychological motives, and in any case one should not seek any truth value in his words.

On the ground of reality, however, things work a bit differently: not only does no one live as the Posek describes, there isn’t even anyone who thinks as he does.
In other words: contrary to the Posek’s self-defeating position, people’s views are made up of many motives (and the psychological motive is only one of them—sometimes a minor one).

I’m aware that in this response I’ve strayed from the plane of the discussion. Sometimes when you need to, you need to.

Doron,

What matters is that the moment you show there is a contradiction, or that one or more of the principles of faith are false, you have refuted the religion (which was the original question here). The principles of faith basically say, “I believe in P and in Q and in… etc.” The moment one of the propositions linked by those “ands” is false, the truth value of the conjunction of all those propositions together is false. If one tries to argue that one can give up one of the principles of faith, or add one principle or another, that is something else. It creates a different religion, and each religion must be examined on its own terms.

I tend to agree that first came the claim of embodiment in flesh (in the sense that: Christ is ‘God the Son’ as distinct from ‘God the Father,’ and has a divine nature and a human nature), and only afterward the Trinity. It is true that Christianity can also be undermined on that basis alone, by proving that (philosophically) there cannot be more than one God (or: there cannot be distinctions within divinity). But if one can show that a contradiction arises within the principles of faith themselves, the problem is more serious—because unlike a claim of mere falsehood, a logical contradiction is completely impossible. And besides, to show that there is no duality or distinctions in God requires longer arguments than simply presenting a straightforward contradiction that emerges immediately from the wording of the doctrine of the Trinity.

By the way, I once had an Austrian roommate from a Catholic background who told me how he gradually came to understand the problem in the fact that historically the Church decided to move the day of rest to Sunday, which had been the day of cessation from work for worshippers of the sun god, in order to encourage pagans to come to church—and in the process more and more idolatrous elements got mixed in as well (the guy had come to volunteer at Yad Vashem instead of military service).

Doron,

I wrote, “All religions and beliefs are based on a mistake in understanding how reality works.”

That is, it is also possible not to make a mistake. Only then it would no longer be a religion.

And saying that everything is psychology doesn’t add much understanding. For if that really is the case, then it says nothing.

To say that everything is psychology and thereby erase all uniqueness is like saying that everything is atoms and thereby erasing the different materials and the different forms that can be made from atoms.

What you said stems from a mistake in understanding how reality works and how to understand my words.

Cop,
The structure of Christianity is built of many stories, and the story of the Trinity is definitely a foundational story, but in no way the ground floor. If you managed to undermine it, at most you may have managed to topple everything above it. So what? You are still left with the story below it (the incarnation). If you claim that this is enough to bring down all of historical Christianity, maybe I would even agree with you (though I’m not sure: ask yourself whether removing a principle of faith such as the World to Come, for example, from Judaism would collapse it). And still, you have not given a fair philosophical account of the logic (or lack of logic) of the first story.

The First Questioner

A mistake in understanding nature, the forces of nature, causes in nature.
A mistake in understanding the human being: the forces of the soul, causes in the soul.
A mistake in understanding the relation between nature and man, and between man and nature.

In my opinion that is enough. You can see how pressured they get by Unitarian arguments that occasionally appear online (roughly the way coronists get pressured when they are confronted with data showing there is no excess mortality :-)) It seems that they perceive it as to be or not to be. Why? I don’t understand. Without it, their religion would be less incoherent, more coherent, less in contradiction with Scripture, etc.

In my opinion, if you knock down the World to Come in its original biblical and rabbinic sense, you have knocked down Judaism as it is understood traditionally. If you cannot infer such fundamental things from the words of the prophets, if the rabbinic tradition is so mistaken, then maybe a lot of other things you inferred are mistaken too. In such a case, maybe progressive sects like light religious people, Conservatives, Reform, or even committed Talmudists like Rabbi Michi would remain—but it is possible that over time they too would dissipate in light of the fact that the core itself had disappeared.

I didn’t try to give an account of the incarnation because it would be long—maybe it would be worth a separate discussion.

Copenhagen, what do you mean by the World to Come in the biblical sense (“a fundamental thing that can be inferred from the words of the prophets”)?

Cop,
You are not dealing with the problem. Even if all of historical Christianity collapses as a result of knocking down the doctrine of the Trinity (which, as noted, is far from certain), that religion still brought into the world the idea of incarnation and the principle of the sacrifice that God makes in the form of “his son” in order to redeem the world.
The original question of the questioner wondered whether Christianity has any logic at all. The principled answer to that ultimately has to be directed at those dogmas, not at the dogma of the Trinity.
My answer is yes: those dogmas are the sexiest idea ever created. But that’s my own answer, and it is less important to our discussion.