By Frank Nelte
In 1993 the Pastor General of the Worldwide Church of God, Joseph W. Tkach, Sr. oversaw the introduction of a series of changes to the church's fundamental doctrines. As part of this change Dr. Kyriacos J. Stavrinides produced 27 hours of lecture on video tape entitled "Understanding the Nature of God". This paper was written by minister Frank Nelte to detail his objections to the doctrinal implications of Stavrinides' lecture material.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
(Please note: This edition is the work of a third-party's translation of Nelte's printed version
into Internet/Web compatable HTML coding. Of necessity there are a few slight formatting differences
in regards to the original. The most notable of which is that no Greek or Hebrew text
is included. The page number refer to the pages in the print version and
are not available in this version. The paper makes frequent reference to handouts, which
are also not available.)
| Part | Description |
| Forward | |
| Part I | AN OVERVIEW, Page 3 |
| Part II | ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH'S NEW TEACHINGS, Page 5 |
| Part III | A CLOSER LOOK AT DR. STAVRINIDES' APPROACH, Page 9 |
| Part IV | THE USE OF HUMAN REASON, Page 12 |
| Part V | GOD AND "SPACE", Page 14 |
| Part VI | DEUTERONOMY 6:4, Page 20 |
| Part VII | THE HOLY SPIRIT IS NOT "GOD", Page 28 |
| Part VIII | GOD IN THE O.T. AND JEWISH UNDERSTANDING, Page 30 |
| Part IX | THE SEPTUAGINT VERSION (LXX), Page 42 |
| Part X | THE FACTS ABOUT "HYPOSTASIS", Page 56 |
| Part XI | GOD AND "TIME", Page 66 |
| Part XII | PSALM 110, Page 74 |
| Part XIII | JOHN 10:34 AND "YOU ARE GODS", Page 81 |
| Part XIV | "EVEN AS WE ARE ONE" (JOHN 17:22), Page 87 |
| Part XV | GOD IS A FAMILY, Page 94 |
| Part XVI | THE BIBLE AND "ANALOGOUS LANGUAGE", Page 99 |
| Part XVII | "ANTHROPOMORPHIC" LANGUAGE IN THE BIBLE, Page 100 |
| Part XVIII | THE MEANING OF "ELOHIM", Page 105 |
| Part XIX | GENESIS 22:12, Page 112 |
| Part XX | STRIVING ABOUT WORDS, Page 117 |
| Part XXI | A SUMMARY, Page 121 |
| Part XXII | THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER, Page 125 |
| Appendix #1 | LIST OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES, Page 128 (Not Available) |
| Appendix #2 | GREEK N.T. WORDS WITH "STASIS", Page 131 |
| Appendix #3 | SOME ENCYCLOPEDIA REFERENCES, Page 132 |
| Appendix #4 | JOHN 1:1 AND THE PREPOSITION "PROS", Page 137 |
| Appendix #5 | "THE GOD OF OUR FATHERS", Page 143 |
| Appendix #6 | ZECHARIAH CHAPTER 11 EXPLAINED, Page 148 |
Forward
In November 1993 the full-time ministry of the Worldwide Church of God received a set of 14 video tapes, with a playing length of about 28 hours ... plus a 48-page supplementary handout entitled "Understanding the Nature of God" and a 31-page supplementary handout entitled "The Modern Trinitarian Problem". All this material is from Dr. Stavrinides and is supposed to "prove" that the Church needs to change its teachings about the nature of God.
To get the volume of material presented to us into some kind of perspective, consider that there are many sets of audio-tapes available today, where the NEW TESTAMENT is recorded on 12 hours of tapes. Thus one can readily see that the material presented to the ministry requires even more time to view and to read than it takes to read THE ENTIRE NEW TESTAMENT ... TWICE OVER! And this is referring to "reading it out aloud to an audience".
This material is presented to a group of men who are already "Bible literates" ... most of us in the ministry have read and studied the Bible and Bible-related literature for well over 10 years. And so the question naturally arises: is there ANY single Biblical teaching that requires more time to explain to people who are "Bible literates" than it does to read the entire New Testament twice over? In I Corinthians 2:7 Paul tells us:
But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, [even] the hidden [wisdom], which God ordained before the world unto our glory: (I Corinthians 2:7)
The Greek for "the wisdom of God in a mystery" is "theou sophian en mustêriôi". Note the emphatic position of the genitive "theou" which makes quite clear that this is GOD'S wisdom. The Greek for "(even) the hidden (wisdom)" is "tên apokekrummenên" and this is the articular perfect passive participle of "apokruptô", defining even more precisely the wisdom of God. Does the material Dr.Stavrinides presents to us qualify as a part of that "wisdom of God"? If it does, does verse 10 also apply? ...
But God hath revealed [them] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. (I Corinthians 2:10)
At the start of his lectures (on tape #2) Dr. Stavrinides said: "I will confine myself to what is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for the minister". Really? Does it really require over 30 hours (40 hours in the first presentations) of intense concentration to present one of the "deep things of God" that God's Spirit is intended to help us to understand? Why is it that the material cannot be presented in an easy-to-follow format in 5 or 10 pages? Why is such an involved and complicated presentation "necessary"?
WHY does it require 30 hours of explanation in order to make one statement consisting of 12 words (i.e. "God is one being in three hypostases --- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit")?? You have to conclude that it is EITHER the expression of a very muddled mind ... OR there has to be an awful lot of covering up and explaining away of obvious scriptures before the hearer/reader is "ready" to receive this "new" understanding. A third possibility is a combination of the above two possibilities.
I have carefully studied all the material presented to us. I have taken 134 pages of notes on these 14 video tapes. In addition I have also made very extensive notes and comments in both of the handouts and it is very clear to me that Dr. Stavrinides' theory is riddled with errors and in opposition to the Bible.
The material is presented in a rather jumbled-up and difficult-to-follow fashion. For example, Handout #1 gives the "SUBJECT OUTLINE" consisting of 10 parts with an epilogue. However, the titles for these parts seldom agree with the titles Dr. Stavri-nides himself gives us during the lectures.
Example: PART 7 is titled "MAN'S NEEDS" in the Handout, but in his lecture Dr. Stavrinides titled it "DISCUSSION OF SIN".
This makes it very difficult to follow his ideas. Further, in the 26 hours that Dr. Stavrinides is "on camera", somewhere between two and 3 hours are spent talking while his back is turned towards us ... which isn't exactly very considerate of the viewers. He spends that time writing and drawing on the board and then talking to the board. The end-results on the board, which he is not slow to frequently praise, are rather chaotic and confusing. A lot of the time the camera does not even bother to zoom in on what is being written on the board, making it difficult for the viewers to actually read what has been written down.
While the physical details are obviously somewhat annoying for the viewers, we really need to focus on THE CONTENT ... the ideas that Dr. Stavrinides wants us to embrace. In his concluding comments on tape #14 he referred to the second Handout #21 on the "CONCLUSIONS ON THE NATURE OF GOD" (the first Handout #21 is titled "STEPS IN THE ARGUMENT") and he said:
"I went to Mr. Tkach (with these 14 points in the conclusions) and Mr. Tkach approved these 14 points as the position of the Church. ... now we can rest and celebrate".
This confirms what should have been obvious all along: the entire presentation represents the ideas of Kyriacos J. Stavrinides. And right at the outset he makes equally clear that he didn't get these ideas from the Bible, since the Bible is NOT "a textbook for theology".
So now let us take a closer look at what has actually been presented to us ...