Decepto-Meter

Deceptive quote: Trinitarian

Gives false impression that the majority of top scholars and the author adopt the "Plural of Majesty" view of Gen 1:26

How anti-Trinitarians quoted it

What they didn't want you to see!

"Many critics, however, of unimpeachable [Trinitarian] orthodoxy, think it wiser to rest where such divines as Cajetan [a theologian] in the Church of Rome and Calvin among Protestants were content to stand, and to take the plural form as a plural of majesty." (Synonyms of the Old Testament, R. B. Girdlestone)

The Name ELOHIM and the Trinity. It is clear that the fact of the word Elohim being plural in form does not at all sanction polytheism - but we have now to consider whether it may fairly be taken as a testimony to the plurality of Persons in the Godhead. It is certainly marvelously consistent with this doctrine, and must remove a great stumbling-block out of the path of those who feel difficulties with regard to the acknowledgment of the Trinity in Unity. Great names are to be cited for taking a step further, and for adducing, as a proof of the Trinity, the words I Elohim said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness' (Gen. 1.26). Father Simon notes that Peter Lombard (1150) was the first to lay stress upon this point; though probably the argument was not really new in his time. Many critics, however, of unimpeachable orthodoxy, think it wiser to rest where such divines as Cajetan in the Church of Rome and Calvin among Protestants were content to stand, and to take the plural form as a plural of majesty, and as indicating the greatness, the infinity, and the incomprehensibleness of the Deity. Perhaps the idea unfolded in the plural form Elohim may be expressed more accurately by the word Godhead or Deity than by the word God; and there is certainly nothing unreasonable in the supposition that the name of the Deity was given to man in this form, so as to prepare him for the truth that in the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons. As long as the passage above quoted stands on the first page of the Bible, the believer in the Trinity has a right to turn to it as a proof that Plurality in the Godhead is a very different thing from Polytheism, and as an indication that the frequent assertions of the Divine Unity are not inconsistent with the belief that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. (Synonyms of the Old Testament, Oxford scholar Robert Baker Girdlestone, p22)