Interesting perspectives but HERETICAL in its presentation of the Trinity
357684
Although I was hesitant to get the book because of the negative reviews, I read a few excerpts and was impressed enough with the drawings and the whimsical style of the writing that thought I would try it anyway. After all, I figured, a little poetic license is sometimes used even by preachers to liven up a Bible story. However, after reading just two stories, I became seriously uncomfortable.

- Some additions are reasonable. For example, in the story of Naaman from 2 Kings 5, the author spent a whole page describing the background of the slave girl, how Naaman had killed her whole family, took her to Syria, and made her into his slave. The author mentions the girl crying herself to sleep and struggling with helping someone she hated. Of course all of this narrative was made up. The scripture only mentions her background in one sentence: "At this time, Aramean raiders had invaded the land of Israel, and among their captives was a young girl who had been given to Naaman's wife as a maid." This should give you an idea of the poetic license the author takes. In this particular story, I didn't think it was too bad. It actually brought up a point we my have missed in the Biblical narrative and gives us a different perspective.

- Some changes are so far off that this book could be considered heretical. One particular issue that is most concerning is that it paints a wrong picture of the Trinity (that God exists eternally as Father, Son and Spirit). It starts with the retelling of the Christmas narrative in Luke 2. The star appears, and "God put it there when his baby Son was born... You see, God was like a new daddy... He's here! He's come! Go and see him. My little Boy." As I read this to my daughter, I actually stopped. I felt very uncomfortable. Jesus actually said that he existed before creation (John 8:58). Yet, by emphasizing Jesus as GOD'S BABY this story leads kids to see Jesus as a creation; he is like any baby. Moreover, by stating that he is God's baby, the author inadvertently implies that JESUS IS NOT GOD himself. He is just God's baby. The author wrote, "God's Son has been born," in contrast to the scriptures that state, "The Savior - yes, the Messiah, the Lord - had been born" (NLV). Theologically, the Son was born, not God's Son. The Son is God. So it is more accurate to say that God the Son was born.

The Trinity is also misrepresented in the retelling of the Last Supper. The author quotes Jesus: "'I won't be with you long' he said. 'You are going to be very sad. But God's Helper will come. And then you'll be filled up with a Forever Happiness that won't ever leave.'" This was an opportunity to for the author to explain a little bit about the Trinity, as Jesus does in John 14. But the author fails to clarify this important aspect of the Christian faith. We have to be careful when we try to simplify things because we risk simplifying God and who he is. In this case, the author removed the divine nature of the Spirit and referred to him as a helper who comes to make us happy. In contrast, Jesus said that the Spirit "lives with you now and later will be in you" (John 14:17). God himself will be in us - not just a feeling of happiness (I suspect most kids will not notice the capitals). The misrepresentation of God by this book is a serious issue.

To sum up, while there are some interesting perspectives that can be gained by reading this book, there is a grave danger of being led into theologically inaccurate ideas, especially about who God is. I definitely do not recommend it for children.
1675425
The thesis of Carl Trueman's book is that creeds and confessions are a necessary part of Christian worship. He argues against the idea that the Bible is the only source of creeds and confessions believing that creeds and confessions are important adjuncts to scripture because they define the way the church interprets the scripture. Furthermore, creeds and confessions are public documents that allow for discussion and disputation about beliefs.

While I believe that Trueman has a good point about formal worship requiring a formal grounding, I found the book repetitious. He makes good arguments for the necessity for creeds as a succinct statement of faith. He also presents a short history of the Christian church's reliance on creeds as an adjunct to scripture which I found fascinating.

I can't recommend this book unless you are a pastor or lay person looking for illumination of the question of whether the Bible is sufficient or whether creeds are a necessary part of Christian worship.
4032079
Mike Freeman's book Drifting is too humanistic, too naked in the right sense to avoid the God question and the church question. There is here no "fashionable atheism" by which the author seeks to hide from moral commitments or deny the metaphysics of things, the spiritual life as he calls it.  Instead we find the experience on the Hudson awakening in him thoughts of Emily Dickinson, of being close to God but feeling also the undertow drawing us into nothingness. Yet in the contest between God and no God, he seems to come down on the side of theism, without of course the prop of a church or a revelation.

He mentions Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, popularizers of atheism but seems cool to their dismissal of God. Perhaps one man in a canoe coming upon the "torrent at Hadley's Falls" in the Hudson River is more aware of hierophanies or the in-breaking of the divine than any academic agnostic might be.  His friend Bill McKibben, a Christian of a kind debunks Original Sin.  "There may be six Christians left," says McKibben, who actually accept the dogma.  Yet Freeman is slow to quit the aboriginal calamity.  How explain our ancestors sense of their wretchedness and need for redemption, he thinks.  How indeed.  Here he has Flannery O'Connor on his side; people can be terribly cruel, even when they emerge from group therapy or the White Horse Inn.

Tertullian, the Roman lawyer who remained a pagan until some time in mid-life when he converted to Christianity has given us the phrase "naturally Christian animal."  The term is not popular today, inasmuch as it suggests that Christianity may be the end point for many lives that are given over to a pale shade of that faith; so many strivers in the row who bear a clouded impress of the fulness of Christianity but may be held back for one reason or another.  In this syncretistic age where all religions from scientology to Christianity are accorded a substantive equality, we blanch at convert stories.  What's the point?  But what are we to make of Walker Percy or Dorothy Sayers, of T.S. Eliot and Tolkein?  There is in Drifting this naturaliter.  It is fed by streams of family piety; this honoring of WASPS, of grouse hunting with his Dad in Pennsylvania, or the recounting of his wife's Irish heritage.  Ethnicity loses its fiber when it loses its religious compass.  Why was the wedding ceremony so prominently displayed in The Deer Hunter?  Whether we are running away from it or running to it in desperation, religion bulks big.  We are not surprised to hear Mr. Freeman bring it to the surface, thanks to his canoe tour of the Hudson River.
4592730
I'll just say that I was a bit surprised at the lack of sophistication of Collins arguments.  I read this book hoping that it would challenge my own beliefs, which as a scientist is actually something that I tend to seek out.  Most of the material you would have seen in any intro level philosophy of religion class, with very little presented in terms of new ideas.  Too much reliance on C.S. Lewis arguments that agnostics/atheists have already done a pretty thorough job of dismantling.  He makes the same mistakes that most writers on both sides do, which is to build a simplistic straw man version of the opposition, demonstrating a real lack of understanding of the potential sophistication of beliefs on both sides.

And most sadly for someone in such a position of power over biomedical research in the US, Collins demonstrates a surprising lack of understanding of evolutionary biology, and its potential to explain various aspects of human behavior that he argues must rely on some divine explanation.  Closer to the biomedical arena, one can only wonder about Collins' thoughts on the potential to explain human behavior in terms of increasing knowledge of brain physiology, and how this could potentially impact US brain research agendas as Europe is pouring at least a billion euro into this area.  While Collins wisely argues against building a "God of the gaps" sort of religious framework, he then ironically goes on to do exactly that in this book by dismissing the entire field of modern social and moral psychology, as he reaches for a divine explanation of his concept of "absolute morality".  I'd recommend reading some Jonathan Haidt for a nice counterpoint.
3137893
The author (Allen Daves) rejects the doctrine of the Trinity.  Since, he does not know who God is, everything else he believes and writes is skewed by his heresy.
4884805
This book is an effort by a noted Episcopalian educator and priest to describe his "understanding of what it means to be an Anglican." By "Anglican," Dean Holmes meant "nothing more than those Christians who worship according to some authorized edition of the Book of Common Prayer and who are in communion with the see of Canterbury." As an Anglican who is trying very hard to understand what is happening in the Anglican Communion today, I looked forward to reading this book. It is loosely organized into 12 chapters, each dealing with the author's assessment of the Anglican perspective on key issues in the church, such as authority, the Bible, the Liturgy, Episcopacy, and like topics.  Each chapter could stand alone as an essay on the subject at issue, which makes reading the book less challenging than it might otherwise be.  The author is articulate and his prose is generally understandable in a single reading. He delights in using vivid imagery to describe the theological topics he is examining; for example, Dean Holmes writes that "the Sacraments are to life in the church as sexual intercourse is to a marriage. They do not encompass it, they guarantee nothing, but out of them springs the possibility of lives changed by an intimacy with God at the deepest level."

I was nevertheless very frustrated by the book. It is less a description of Anglicanism than its 20th century American incarnation; a better title would have been "What is Liturgical Liberalism?" The author neglects the Anglican tradition of the last five centuries as well as that evolving in the rest of the world in favor an "Anglican attitude" that is, as another writer has observed, "averse to the truth claims, disciplines, and passions that make for mission." It is also interesting that an author who repeatedly stresses the need for imaginative approaches to theology and "the penultimate nature of our answers to the character of God and his will for us" can speak so derisively of those who do not share his positions. Dean Holmes refers to the "simplemindedness of Pietism," characterizes the worship of Protestants as "homogenized," refers to those who think that the Gospel of Matthew could possibly support the infallibility of the Pope as "foolish," and labels as "absurd" the views of those who see in the book of Revelation prophecy about our present circumstances.  So much for the much-vaunted Episcopalian tolerance! The reader in search of an objective answer to the question of "What is Anglicanism" should, quite frankly, look elsewhere. As an alternative, consider The Anglican Spirit by Michael Ramsey or Our Anglican Heritage by John Howe, either of which outshines this volume.
4827994
To put it somewhat mildly, Origen was an interesting fellow who had a complex role in Early Christianity as an intellectual whose hostility to the Jews led him on the one hand to promote a Hellenistic Christianity I am deeply critical of, but whose obvious brilliance led him to advocate some positions I am fond of that were contrary to later developments in Hellenistic Christianity [1]. Although he is certainly an obscure figure to contemporary readers of the Bible as well as books about the Bible, anytime I can read a short but important book by or about him I will generally take full advantage of, and such is the case here. Readers of this book should likely do so with the idea of finding out more about what Origen thought from his own writings, as this book contains some important ideas that later became of great importance to later thinkers in justifying their own actions and behavior. And for that reason the letters of Origen are worth being familiar with, along with some appreciation that they have survived at all from an era where a lot of writings are lost to history.

The 40 pages or so of this book consist of three letters. The first letter is the one I agreed with the most, and it was intriguingly enough a letter by a fellow named Africanus to Origen in which he points out the obviousness of the spurious nature of the additions to Daniel that are found in the Septuagint, like the story of Susana and the elders, where he points out that the puns are in Greek and not in Hebrew. The second letter is the reply of Origen to Africanus, which takes up most of the book and is a lengthy letter at 30 pages. In this letter Origen uses his intellect to make specious arguments about the possibility of the Jews hiding unflattering aspects of their own culture and history in scripture and refuses to accept what the Jews view as canon. Perhaps the most important of the letters for the intellectual history of Christianity, though, is the third letter, which is written to a young man named Gregory in which the young man is urged to learn enough of heathen scholarship to "plunder the Egyptians," which is a defense of Christian involvement in heathen educational systems and Christian use of secular technologies in order to promote the interests of preaching the Gospel.

While these letters are short they are definitely significant in terms of Christian thought and practice. For one, the letters demonstrate that even in the ancient world that there was considerable debate about the validity of certain additions to Daniel. The textual criticism of early Christianity, especially within Hellenistic Christianity, was of the sort that would eventually lead to the actions of the Council of Trent in viewing the Greek additions to the Hebrew Bible as authoritative. Likewise, it is unsurprising that Daniel and Esther were early among the books where discussion of textual criticism was at a high level. It is also noteworthy, though, that Origen's letters seek to provide a defense of heathen education among believers so that they may be better Christian intellectuals, something that would become of increasing importance throughout the first few centuries of Christianity and even to our own day where plundering the Egyptians is a motive for the behavior of intellectually inclined believers. All of this makes this short collection of letters a truly interesting book that is definitely well worth reading, even if Origen does not come off the best among the letter-writers.
2370279
If, like me, you're a nonbeliever interested in Christian apologetics, I would recommend checking out this book, but I think you'll come away from it slightly disappointed.  The theology is in fact interesting (although the plot is not), and it presents a compelling worldview that attempts to answer many of the common issues people have with faith.  (See other reviews for a synopsis.)  It was an enjoyable read, and I actually found myself wishing I could buy into it all.  Unfortunately, it does an inadequate job of really delving into the issues.

The main character, Mack, talks with God about the problem of evil, free will, God's nature, love, relationships, forgiveness, etc.  But while what God says is often surprisingly insightful and refreshing, the author insults our intelligence by having Mack (supposedly a former theology student) react with bewilderment or astonishment or a small-minded "this was going to take some time to get his head around" response whenever God explains something.  The reader is left waiting for a real conversation to start, but the author seems to expect that we'll be just as astounded by these ideas as Mack is, and leaves it at that.  Anyone familiar with standard atheist-believer debate points will be intrigued by God's fresh approaches, but let down by Mack's lack of engagement with them.  I suspect the author crafted his clever points and either didn't have the space in his story or lacked the will to explore how they stand up to intelligent criticism.

Despite struggling with his faith in the face of great pain, Mack remains a Christian throughout the story.  Accordingly, God must help Mack deal with his anger, his lack of trust in God's goodness, and his will to be independent instead of close with God.  Nonbelievers will recognize these as versions of typical misconceptions Christians have about them (e.g., "atheists are just mad at God" or "atheists just want to sin without consequences").  So the concerns of REAL nonbelievers -- the kind who see religion as an institution that exists only because of tradition and because of our fear of death and need for community, the kind who object to God on logical terms, the kind who often know more about the Bible than most Christians -- (not that this book is written for them), aren't addressed.

All in all, The Shack is worth checking out, if for no other reason than that it's become so popular amongst our more friendly neighborhood believers (but check the one-star reviews: the real fundies seem to object to it as being too liberal new-age-ey!).  Expect to be pleasantly surprised; just don't expect to be impressed.
1015298
The main theme of this book is that of the Other John 3:16 - the one through whom God addressed the Laodiceans:"Because you are neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth." The style is very readable, but the "we've got it right" smugness is over-repetitious, and the case-studies at the end of the book are naive. This is not a book for churches - it is very much about the individual alone, and presents a God who expects more of us than most of us are able to give - whose yoke is certainly not easy, and whose burden seems almost Pharisaic. If only Chan had read two verses further, and told us more about listening to God!
2652372
Hello,

I just finished this book and I must say that it is not a well thought out refutation of trinitarianism. Strawmen, ad homs, red herrings and a belittling tone keep the book from being helpful.

"Most of the so-called Christian world professes belief in an imaginary God." (pg 24) A dismissal of anyone that disagrees with him.

Trinitarians face the delemma of whom to pray to if they look upon God as three seperate beings. (pg 24) Strawman!

On page 56 Welch argues that using trinitarian baptism and believing in the trinity while rejecting other aspects of Roman Catholic teaching is "hypocritical." Does he use a bible with 66 books in it? Does he use terms like incarnation, theology, oh and lets not forget the word bible?

On pages 60-61 he makes the comment that Catholics and Protestants baptize using the triune formula making the claim that it started at Nicea. Well he is going to have to deal with the people baptizing in the triune formula before Nicea.

The chapter on the name of God is laughable. Scripture speaks clearly here;

Exo 3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
Exo 3:15 And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

The chapter on the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man does the oneness hopscotch to another book with out dealing with the text. Also he fails to discuss the testimony of Jesus when he stood before the Jews in Mark 14.

On page 198-199 he quotes Isa 45:21 And says, " This verse does not allow two or more deities... The presumption that there is more than one God is just the imagination of unlearned scholars." Insults and strawman arguments do not make for an honest evaluation of a position you disagree with.

On page 235 he starts a discussion on the Lamb in Rev 5. Guess what he never got to?

Rev 5:13 And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.

Divine worship by ALL CREATION, (Literally every created thing), is given to the Lamb. According to Mr. Welch the Lamb is created but every thing created is worshipping.

It just goes on and on and on. The book is typical of oneness theology. Do not pick it up unless you find it on sale and want another resource to have a catalog of Oneness errors and misrepresentations.

Inconsistency is the symptom of a larger disease. . . heresy!
3047538
I gave this book two stars because it isn't all together void of usefulness for someone beginning a discipling process (though this is not the book I would use even for that.)  But in truth, this book's biases overwhelmed whatever usefulness found within it.

I left this book believing that the writers' idea of discipleship is more about control and manipulation than relationship and equipping.  The authors describe the disciple-maker as someone who chooses the person for discipling after selectively weeding out people not deemed acceptable.  Then, once selected, the disciple-maker is urged to pray and ask God for a Divine vision for the one discipled.  In addition, there are multiple sections dealing with how to confront and discipline wayward pupils.

All of this seems wayward and off balanced from the role of spiritual director - the ancient way to describe disciple making.  I think the authors could appreciate the work of Kenneth Leech or even Bill Hull.

One more bias: The authors don't reveal much about the vast, rich history of Christian spirituality from more than the American Protestant perspective.  The Anglican, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox spiritual traditions could help clear up much of the power-game biases of this text - but I think the authors are disinterested.

And that's a pity.
1530298
Appendix L - A Summary of Proofs That God Is Not a Trinity.
Would you buy this bible if you knew of Appendix L in it?
I should have researched the author more. I do not recommend this bible. The packing and binding are impressive but the work is a product of one person's opinion and passion which unfortunately contains bias. There are useful notes but these can be found in other bibles or reference books.
1692713
This book "Encounters with Jesus: Studies in the Gospel of John" by Frances Taylor Gench is one of the more aggravating reviews I have had to write and I find myself vacillating between 2 and 3 stars. Here are some of the highlights as well as some of the disappointments I had with the book.

There are some unique comments and thoughts throughout this book and it is very accessible. In one place the author says, "Jesus is the fleshed out truth about God" which I thought was a nice way to communicate ideas about the incarnation. Throughout the book she says things which are useful for preaching to students who are new to the ideas of John. She is thoughtful and if she had been able to continue the momentum of chapters  1 and 2 it would have been excellent. Her chapter on "entries and exits" was a unique look at the life of Jesus and the relationship with his earthly Mother. The final chapter was actually very good as well and she made some solid comments about the story. The author comes across as a kind and professional minister with a clear ability to communicate with general readers.

I wish I could leave the review at this but unfortunately there are some other factors that reflect negatively on the book. First of all, with the exception of a few ideas the bulk of the book was somewhat generic. Gench is very liberal in her approach to John's Gospel and follows the lead of Bultmann in interpreting the scriptures. She is sold "lock, stock and barrel" to the interpretation of the "establishment". She interpreted most things using the "Johannine Community" model which contains numerous anachronisms. In addition to this she practically avoided any and all passages which contained some of the more polemical interactions that Jesus had with the religious authorities of his time.

Something I found to be problematic was the fact that much of what she says is slanted towards a feminist approach, which I felt was somewhat out of place in this work. She is even one of those who believe the gospel may have been written by a woman. Is that possible? sure. Is it Likely? Not really. I felt that she allowed present issues to influence her perspectives on the past. In an attempt to tone down the alleged anti-semitism in the gospel of John she even paints the Pharisees as a merciful group who brought the woman caught in adultery to Jesus cause they knew he would find a way to show her mercy. She presumes that may have been their motive.  She used all the modern buzzwords by engaging post-colonialism, questioning the Father language used of God, feminism and the scriptures as well as tolerance for homosexuality. She places them as a "marginalized" group who are more less victimized by the church. Her stance on homosexuality was clear and lets just say it was not in accord with the scriptures.

The literary aspects were excellent but some of the theology and historical interpretation was questionable and occasionally heretical. Overall it is okay and has some merit but it is not something that I would read again and unfortunately it is not something I would recommend either.
2182808
"Grace In Eclipse" is a study on eternal rewards and is the 2nd segment in a three-part series on the absolute freeness of the gift of salvation.
The author argues that passages dealing with eternal rewards  (for one's works) are often misinterpreted as being passages dealing with  salvation (a free gift.)  In order to understand the freeness of our  salvation, the often neglected, yet vitally important concept of eternal  rewards must be correctly taught to the believer.  This issue along with  the issue of mistaking discipleship passages (works) for salvation (free  gift) passages - discussed in "Absolutely Free" by the same  author - make up the great bulk of misunderstood scripture which leads many  to combine both concepts into a single doctrine of salvation and ending up  with a (disguised) "works salvation."
Hodges also maintains  that words such as "believe" and "faith" have basically  the same meaning that they do in English and that they are often  interpreted to say more than they actually do by well-meaning theologians  and lay-persons.  He cites several examples from scripture where the words  use their common meaning where it would be clearly erroneous to ascribe to  them extra meaning.  Many of these passages are the same ones used to  support the concept of works being a necessary result or fruit of one's  salvation.
The concept of the total freeness of salvation contained in  the book often draws the accusation of "antinominanism" -  "against law" or "lawless."  However, the author makes  clear in the book that a saved person is profoundly responsible for his  actions, and that there are consequences in the life to come for one's  disobedience in this life - which is clearly not advocating lawlessness,  but does teach the concept of eternal rewards.
1480707
Somewhere, sometime I read an assessment of the writing of C.S. Lewis.  The commentator suggested that Lewis' arguments were so subtle that one missed the profundity.  After finishing a chapter or an essay, the reader accepts Lewis' argument as obvious, failing to realize that Lewis' writing itself had affected a change.  Although I readily grant that Drs. Purves and Partee are engaged in dogmatics and not apologetics, the same assessment could be applied to "Encountering God."  The book wrestles with such difficult topics as the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, human suffering, predestination, and the perseverance of the saints.  Throughout it all, the reader is attracted to the clarity of their arguments.  The reader accepts as obvious what once was clouded.
On the back cover of the book, Eugene Peterson writes, "For some of us, thinking about God is a practical matter--indeed the most practical matter."  Purves and Partee do not allow the doctrines of the church to remain stale, abstract and esoteric.  The authors view dogmatics ultimately as a pastoral function.  Their use of narrative allow the teachings of the church to bear fully upon the Christian life.  At the very least, the book should remind pastors of their need for theological study in the pastorate.  As the authors make obvious, theological inquiry must serve the church and ultimately the God to whom we bear witness.
4713169
Mr. Webster takes a swing at reading the early Christians and the Church Fathers, which is commendable for a Protestant Christian, but he selectively and sparsely quotes from their writings to try to prove they supported Protestant teachings.

One example is his claim that St. Augustine taught sola scriptura.  One quote from Augustine is given in the footnotes at the back of the book.  However, Webster does not mention even one of the avalanche of quotes from Augustine where he praises Tradition, the authority of the Catholic Church, etc., which sink his claims about Augustine.

Also, though Augustine allegedly taught sola scriptura, later on in the book Augustine is teaching the truth of Purgatory!  What a strange thing for a sola scriptura believer to do, right?  Similarly, St. Jerome, who Webster alleges didn't think that the deuterocanonicals (aka the apocrypha) were inspired, also taught the belief in Purgatory!  This is in spite of the fact that, Webster maintains, 2 Maccabees (one of the deuterocanonicals) contains the primary support for Purgatory.  What were Jerome and Augustine thinking?

Mr. Webster's main argument rests on his own personal and erroneous definition of "unanimous consent".  He asserts that this means that all the Fathers of the Church always agreed on matters of both Tradition and Scripture interpretation.  This is a false definition.  Unanimous consent refers to the moral unanimity of the Fathers in interpreting Scripture (not Tradition).  Moral unanimity means some of them could (and did) disagree about some scriptural interpretation.  Why didn't he research to see what this phrase actually meant before staking his entire claim on it?

It is about St. Thomas Aquinas, however, that Mr. Webster shows the level of his scholarship.  Webster "summarizes" Aquinas' landmark work, the Summa Theologica, in six (six!) short sentences and then "concludes" that Aquinas does not teach that a Christian must have faith in Jesus Christ to be saved.  This is like a modern-day scientist mischaracterizing the discoveries of Einstein, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, and then concluding that they were bad scientists.  It is worse than irresponsible.

As another reviewer mentioned, Webster undercuts his entire thesis when he runs into Baptism.  By his own admission, the early Christians, the direct disciples of the apostles themselves, immediately went off the rails and into error by teaching baptismal regeneration.  All the Fathers also taught this; the Church taught it; Luther taught it; everyone got it wrong except Webster got it right (thank goodness!).  If Christ's Church immediately fell into error on a fundamental issue of the faith like baptism, what else did the Church get wrong?  How about the 27 canonized books that make up the New Testament?  How do we know those are inspired and none others are?  How about Jesus and the Father being declared "one in being" with each other at Nicaea in 325 AD?  Etc.

But don't take my word for it or Webster's.  Instead, I challenge you to go and read what the early Christians and Fathers wrote yourself--it is all freely available online on both Protestant and Catholic sites.  Read Aquinas yourself and Augustine yourself, and come to your own conclusions.
2920155
Frankly, I'm unimpressed. The author claims to know may things he does not. Firstly, he's obvioulsy working from a 20th/21st century perspective. Would going through a Wendy's drive through make sense coming from a First Century source? No. Of course not. So we must read the Scriptures from their appropriate context. He fails to do so. Secondly, his arguement that God cannot be trinity and unity is based on being and not persons. Let's use the St. Patrick's example. A three-leaf clover has three separate and different leaves, right? But it's still one three-leaf clover, right? Three leaves, one essence of a three-leaf clover. Three persons, one divine essence.