The Evangelical Universalist Forum

How Do You Explain the Trinity?

Theology Christology
#41

Here is two examples of a statements which are paradoxes:

Example 1:
In a particular town, a barber shaves all men and only those men who do not shave themselves.
Question: Does the barber shave himself?

  1. Assume the barber shaves himself. But the statement affirms that the barber shaves ONLY those men who do not shave themselves. Therefore the barber does NOT shave himself.

  2. Assume the barber does not shave himself. But the statement affirms tat the barber shaves ALL men who do not shave themselves. Therefore the barber DOES shave himself.

If you include the barber, the statement is inherently a contradiction. We can’t just say that we have to get outside our rational mind and accept the contradiction by faith. That is nonsense. But if one excludes the barber from the statement, then the paradox evaporates.

Example 2: Russell’s Paradox

Set P is a set of all sets and only all sets which are not elements of themselves.
Question: Is set P an element of itself?

  1. Assume that set P IS an element of itself. But the statement affirms that P contains ONLY those sets which are NOT elements of themselves. Therefore P is NOT an element of itself.

  2. Assume that set P is NOT and element of itself. But the statement affirms that P contains ALL those sets which are NOT elements of themselves. Therefore P IS an element of itself.

If you consider set P to exist, then the statement is inherently a contradiction. We can’t just say that we have to get outside our rational mind and accept the contradiction by faith. That is nonsense. But if you affirm that set P does not exist, then the contradiction does not exist.

Conclusion: Paradoxes cannot express reality unless one removes some element of the paradox.

If the Trinity (God is one and yet three) is a paradox, then we must remove some element or the Trinity concept is inherently a contradiction and does not express reality. What is that element? I say that element is that God is three. The reality is that God is one. (Rom 3:30, Gal 3:20, Jas 2:19)

#42

Paidion,

Nobody is saying that God is three. We say that God is one God revealed in three persons. Because paradox undermines dual thinking at its root, the dualistic mind immediately attacks paradox as confusion. The history of spirituality tells us that we must learn to accept paradoxes or we will never see anything correctly. One God three in persons. One in essence three in persons. Not God is three.

#43

Why should anyone accept this statement as true, given the classical Christian understanding of the transcendence of the infinite God. If the one God reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then who are we to reject this self-revelation on the grounds that the churchly articulation of the trinitarian doctrine is expressed in the language of antinomy and paradox? The theologians who originally formulated the doctrine knew that they were pushing language to the breaking point and beyond; but they believed that they needed to do so in order to be faithful to the divine self-revelation in its entirety.

#44

That’s a mighty big [size=150]“If”[/size].Nowhere in the Bible is God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And who is this “himself”? You say “God reveals himself”. “Himself” is a singular pronoun. It seems to suggest that God is one person—then there’s Father, Son, and Holy Spririt. That adds up to four persons!

That means that God is a compound being—analagous to a human being with three heads. Is that what you believe? It is so much easier to believe in the God depicted by Jesus and the early Christians.

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. (1Tim 2:5)

This sentence doesn’t suggest either that Jesus is the One God or a part of the One God, but the One Mediator between the One God and man.

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (Joh 17:3)

In this passage, Jesus addressed His Father. He called His Father “the only true God”. He didn’t indicate Himself as either “the only true God” or part of “the only True God.” Rather by use of that little word “and”, He seemed to indicate that he was Someone Other than “the only true God.”

#45

Paidion, the question I posed to you in my previous comment is not whether the ecumenical doctrine of the Trinity is true, but rather, why should the fact that the doctrine is expressed in the language of antinomy and paradox be counted against it, as if apparent “contradiction” demonstrated that it is false. If the transcendent God has in fact revealed himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then that is simply the way of things, and all we can do is to articulate the mystery as best we can.

God after all is not an object of empirical investigation or scientific experimentation. He is not a finite being within the universe. He does not belong to the genus “god.” That he is a unity of three hypostases may come as a surprise to us, but if he reveals to us that this is so, how can we reject his revelation simply because it does not conform to our logic. God transcends being. God transcends number. God is God. Our job is not to fit him into our philosophical systems. Our job is to conform our thinking to his reality. There can be no knowledge of God apart from this kind of spiritual and cognitive humility.

Please note: I am not asserting here that the doctrine of the Trinity is true. I am challenging your insistence that God must conform to our creaturely norms of rationality. I submit that it is irrational to expect God the infinite God to fit into our little philosophical boxes.

#46

Akimel, in your post above, you have referred to “our logic” and to “our creaturely norms of reality”. As I see it, such references “our logic” (as if we had some logic inferior to logic itself) are an attempt to allow oneself to accept contradictions as reality. There is not “our logic” and “God’s logic”. If “our logic” is an inferior logic, then it is NOT logic at all! For God to create a stone so large that He can’t move it, is as illogical for Him as it is for us. Yet it does not limit His omnipotence. For contradictions are not objects of power. God cannot draw a square circle just because He’s God. Again, contradictions are not objects of power.

If we believe in the existence of a God who is an inherent contradiction, we are not believing in a God who exists; we are believing in a contradiction, contrary to logic. Could I ever convince you or anyone else that I have a statue in my house which is made entirely of wood, and yet is made entirely of gold? Would it make any difference is the statue were an omnipotent god?

#47

Paidion, your examples do not obtain. The first example “Can God create a stone so large he can’t move it?” is linguistic nonsense. No question is being asked. Clearly we aren’t talking about this kind of contradiction. Your second example relates to a physical object. Clearly it can’t be both made completely or stone and completely of gold at the same time.

But God is the transcendent Creator. Respectfully, my friend, I do not believe you fully understand what this means and entails. Your argumentation presupposes God as in some sense an inhabitant of our logical world, as a substance that can be clearly differentiated from other substances. God is one, you say. One what? How do we count? It’s not like saying, “I’ll have one hot dog, not two, please.” God does not belong to a category of which he just happens to be the only member. And this is why Aquinas could insist: “There is no number in God.”

Let’s say we bring together all the scientists in the world, and we ask them to make an exhaustive list of everything that exists. The list will no doubt number in the billions, trillions, zillions. After the list is finished, would it then be legitimate for someone to say, “But you have omitted God. Don’t forget to add him to the list”? No! God cannot be counted in any list of the ‘everything that is.’ God plus the world does not equal two.

This is not irrational gobbledygook. This is a matter of recognizing the limits of our knowledge and speech when it comes to the transcendent source of all that is. If this one transcendent God should reveal to humanity (as I believe that he has) that he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I’m sure not going to say to him, “You can’t be. That isn’t logical.”

Quite honestly, straight atheism makes a lot more sense to me than the kind of kind of rational theism for which you are arguing.

If I may, I’d like to put in a plug here for David B. Hart’s The Experience of God, about which Robin Parry recently gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

#48

I agree. I think it is simply unmeaning to predicate contradictory things about God. He’s not somehow “above” the rules of logic. God is truth, and truth cannot be false and it must be self-coherent. If we mean anything when we say words like “true” or “false” when applied to God then we have to affirm he’s not totally outside our categories. Presumably, we would all think we’re saying something true when we say “God is good”. Yet, if he’s totally beyond our logical categories, this statement can’t be distinguished from it’s opposite - “God is bad”. Indeed, we can’t even affirm he “exists”, since we’d be predicating something about him (existence) which is totally beyond our own meaning of the term.

Yes, Aquinas may have said “there is no number in God” but (and I’m not saying I find Aquinas that great of an authority) but he also never went so far as to DENY our ability to predicate things about God. He left our knowledge at “anagogical”.

In other words, if we can affirm things about God AT ALL (e.g. he IS this and NOT that), then God must agree/conform to our logic. Or rather, our logic must somehow conform to God. I’m not saying God somehow is confined by us and our modes of thought, but that our thinking is such that we are actually really able to grasp things about him in a sense consistent with his fundamental essence.

#49

Being just a man I’m inclined to think Aquinas was just plain wrong… “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!” My vote – God is NUMBER ONE. :mrgreen:

#50

For the Christian truth is a living person. These are spiritual truths not the truths of either/or logic.

#51

If these “spiritual truths” are not “the truths of either/or logic”, then they are not necessarily true or false. If follows that these truths might be false, as Chrisguy explained in his first paragraph.

If “human logic” is invalid, then there’s no more to be said. Anything anyone says may be either true or false or neither, or both. Everything which is affirmed becomes meaningless. Indeed nothing can be affirmed, for the opposite is just as acceptable (if there IS an opposite when there’s no logic).

When we abandon logic, we’ve got nothing left with which to reason. Nothing makes any sense. We may as well go howl at the moon.

#52

Paidion

Spiritual truths are experienced in life. Either/or is good in areas like math but Christ is a paradox. It is here that we must experience them. The Bible says “my word is truth”. Jesus is the word made flesh. He is the truth. It’s about a personal relationship with Christ.

#53

I’m always a bit uncomfortable when someone knocks ‘rational theism’.
I do agree that our faith is not ‘rationalistic’, but certainly it is not ‘irrational’?

In the same way, our faith is not based on ‘logic’, but that does not mean it is ‘illogical’.

Our faith is not one thing - relationship. It is not one thing - mental agreement to a set of propositions.

As human beings, in our totality and in the image of our Maker, we are relational beings and logical beings. We can easily talk at cross purposes if we forget that fact.

Even the most ‘spiritual’ truths must be expressed in language that is understandable; and language without logic is nonsensical.

For God as well as for us, A [size=180]≠[/size] -A. This does not limit God! - but it does give meaning to our being made in His image.

#54

Quantum physics and astrophysics are filled with paradoxes. For example, light is both a wave and a particle. We also see that in the Bible Christ is both human and divine. All opposites are held together in Christ. This is why He is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.

#55

I don’t think so.

I don’t think so. Light BEHAVES in the way that waves behave as well as the way that particles behave. At one time, light was considered to be a wave. So physicists postulated that since light travels through space, then space must be filled with a substance, since waves require a medium through which to travel. They called this theoretical substance “ether”. However, the Michelson-Morley experiment proved that ether does not exist.

So they began to say (as you do) that light is both a wave and a particle—a paradox! But that was a mistake. Light in NOT both a wave and a particle. Light consists of photons, which exhibit PROPERTIES of both waves and particles.

#56

Paidion,

That’s just your way of trying to get around it. Light is both a wave and a particle. Besides that does nothing to refute the truth that Christ is a paradox. It’s about a relationship with Christ. Not trying to figure Him out.

#57

A lot of things go into a relationship, of course. Being married, as we all discover, is getting over the infatuation and getting into the rewarding work of actually growing up with and for another person. That means providing what we are able to in the way of income, emotional support, caring for the larger family, mowing the lawn, raising the kids, doing laundry, paying bills, figuring out the future goals, cleaning up the dog poop - everything that goes into living.

In order to do that type of relationship, we have to know the person we are married to, we have to know how to earn a living/pick up poop/fix a lawn mower or whatever - in other words, relationship involves the whole person, right?

To understand the Christ we want to relate to, we must understand who He is, and to do that takes the best of our logical minds, the best of the depth of our reasoning, the best of our moral striving. It is multi-faceted and neither logic/reason nor relationship can be dismissed - it takes the whole person.

A relationship with Christ that does not include our thinking, our testing of ourselves, our relationship to the world and to others - is just a gnostic approach to spirituality; and if we fall into that, we need to read and understand 1 John.

#58

Dave,

Here’s how we express love. Gifts, words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, physical touch. We come to know Christ through a committed relationship with Him, spending time with Him in contemplation and meditating on spiritual truths and acts of service. When it comes to people we don’t sit around trying to figure them out using our rational minds. We visit and communicate with them, take out the trash, wash the dishes, mow the lawn, hug, kiss, play football, buy them flowers, go to the movies, tell them we love them and appreciate them. That they look nice. We learn who they are through experience.

#59

Of course. But Christ is not here physically, so we have to learn about him in other ways as well .
I’m not arguing with you about relationships; just trying to point out that we are rational AND relational beings, in the image of our Maker, and both of those faculties are important.

What started this was someone above gently dissing ‘rational theology’. We MUST have a ‘rational’ theology, we certainly don’t want an irrational one, right?

What we don’t want is a theology based solely on ‘autonomous reason’ - that is, rationalism. But we are created as rational beings and it dishonors our Maker to dishonor the image in us.

#60

Dave,

I’ve learned more about Christ in going to A.A. and listening to people share their experience, strength, and hope. Systematic theology is a waste of time. You cannot put God in a box. The wind blows wherever it will.