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Let Us make man in
our image
There are several verses in the Old Testament
where God speaks as a plurality. Many Trinitarians quote these verses
to help support the Trinity
doctrine because they strongly suggest that there is more than one
person in the godhead.
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"Then God said,
“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them
rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over
the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creeps on the earth,” (Gen.
1:26, NASB).
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"Then the Lord
God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and
evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the
tree of life, and eat, and live forever," (Gen.
3:22, NASB).
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“Come, let Us
go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand
one another’s speech,” (Gen.
11:7, NASB).
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"Then I heard
the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for
Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah
6:8, NASB)
Those opposed
to the doctrine of the Trinity
say that God is speaking of Himself in any "royal" sense, in a "plural
of majesty." They can say this, but biblically there is never any
account of a king or a ruler speaking of himself in a plural sense or in
the third person. So, there is no biblical support for God using it of
Himself in this way.
In regards to Gen.
1:26, those who deny the Trinity say that God
when God says, "Let Us make..." He is speaking with the
angels
in mind. The problem with this is that angels do not create. There is
absolutely no biblical evidence that angels created anything at all. We
see in Isaiah
44:24, "Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,
and the one who formed you from the womb, “I, the Lord, am the maker of
all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself, And spreading out the
earth all alone." God made all things alone. Therefore, the "us"
in "Let Us make man in our image" cannot be the angels.
Furthermore, people are not created in the image of angels, but of God.
The three verses in Genesis do not prove that the Trinity is true.
However, they cannot be dismissed by the assumption that God is speaking
of himself in a type of third person way.
Furthermore, notice in the force verse above,
Isaiah 6:8,
that's God is speaking in the singular and then switches to the plural.
He says, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" This is on
the unusual construction. The singular speaker refers to himself in the
plural.
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