I love the Trinity – the concept just feels right to me, aside from (I believe) being supported by the whole witness of scripture.
I see the Trinity throughout nature and symbolized in many places in scripture. I would agree that its beauty and artistic perfection also recommends it to consideration. Among many compelling images, the concept of God being love from and to all eternity (imo) absolutely depends on it, unless He is self-love.
But . . . as Jason says – to each his own best understanding with the help of the Holy Spirit. Father does not reject us because our theology is a bit off – or we’d all be toast.
But . . . as Jason says -- to each his own best understanding with the help of the Holy Spirit. Father does not reject us because our theology is a bit off -- or we'd all be toast.
Yes I certainly agree with this comment from both of you .. <img src="/uploads/default/original/1X/15680453330e74f929b585a237613f0bdf61e069.gif" width="15" height="17" alt=":mrgreen:" title="Mr. Green"/>
So while I do have time these days ... I will enjoy being here ... even though being an Egalitarian is
probably considered being more than a "bit off" by the Hierarchical bunch of Trinitarians ...
( which might include Jason :laughing: )
I will try to share my Artistic view as much as possible since Jason has already presented
so many posts for the more ortho trad position for the Trinity .... :wink:
May the bountiful blessings flowing from the anticipation of participating within the Grand Dance at the Eschaton
continue to profoundly influence our minds, hearts and bodies through these coming days...
Since you keep signing off with that bit about the Grand Dance at the Eschaton, I must subject you to a song I wrote several years ago – sorry. But you know, I HAVE to.
Just read verse one clear through, chorus, verse 2 clear through, etc. I wrote it this way so I could more easily pencil in guitar tabs.
The Dance
(Verses)
Be-fore the beginning, and soon, at the end where eternity dances with time
While we dance in the arms of mir-aculous love, You are working Your grace in our hearts
As the love of the Father flows into the Son and the love of the Son returns home
Is the Lamb God did send; Son of God, Son of Man; Our great savior, redeemer and friend.
And You make us anew In the image of Him who is loveliness pure, purely true.
So Your love flows in us, knits us all into one 'till Your glory be seen in Your own.
(Chorus)
Dance and joy in His love; lose yourselves in your Lord in the One Who fulfills all in all.
He Who holds all the keys, Who returned from the grave with a power that conquers the fall
bravo !! encore !! encore !! exceptionally marvelous filling the air with a breath taking Awe for msg of the Gospel of the Grand Dance i even showed your artistic song writing skills to Chinese woman eating lunch with me just now n the beauty of your song fills the heart with harmonious melody flowing from the perichoresis between Father Son n Spirit while the while the clanging of the gong echoing the sounds of fingers running amok in the search for dogmatic proof texting
I think there is actually a way to see this from a logical perspective.
God says that he is one. Think for a moment about the concept of “one.” If you try to define the concept of one numerically, you write a vertical line as follows:
1
But that symbol by itself has no meaning until you assign it value. It must equal something. Where could we go from there? We might try saying that it equals itself. So:
1=1
But if you’ve taken a course in logic you’ll recognize that as circular reasoning. A thing defined as itself doesn’t tell you what that thing actually is. Let’s take it a step further. Every number that exists has a denominator of 1. So:
1/1=1
Here we have a complete relationship that no other number can satisfy. This relationship makes 1 unique, and so defines it. If we tried any other number,
As you can see, any number that has a denominator other than one reduces to something other than itself. But let’s look at the definition for a moment.
1/1=1
Here we have the number 1 expressed as three operands: Numerator, Denominator and Result.
Each operand is equal to the whole value of the expression as well as to each other.
There is only one value of 1 expressed.
The expression is defined by a form of the word “to be” (a Being)
The Numerator is a concept that “just is.”
The Result is a concept whose value is generated (begotten) by the Numerator.
The Denominator is a concept that logically follows from the equation.
Furthermore, the Denominator is the active force that seeks out the meaning of the Numerator and reveals that meaning as the Result.
The equation 1/1=1 is an eternal concept: there can never be a moment when the statement is untrue.
Each of the three operands is dependent on the other two for its existence, meaning they are equally important.
Now go read the doctrinal statements about the Trinity. Sound familiar?
By the way, the expression can be re-written: 1=1x1.
What happened when Jesus was baptized? The Holy Spirit came and equipped him with power for ministry. The purpose of that ministry was to bring glory to the Father.
I haven’t found this illustration ever used before, but I realized it one day while I was sitting in a math class (My mind wanders in weird directions). I hope it helps. I cannot be certain that this illustration is perfect, but I haven’t found any errors in it yet. I’ll gladly drop it if ever I do find an error, but I think it’s more helpful than many of the other illustrations offered by people.
What claims are you not making? Do you deny premise 1? I don’t think so. That is the very definition of “Trinity”.
Do you deny premise 2? Maybe you do, Jason, but I have heard MANY Trinitarians affirm it.
I know Trinitarians deny the conclusion. However, the conclusion follows logically from the two premises, and thus those many Trinitarians who accept the premises disbelieve the conclusion which follows from these premises. Contradiction!
Sam C, I don’t think the concept of one being in three persons is a logical contradiction. Suppose a birth occurred in which a baby was born with three heads and three separate brains. Would this not be a single being, but three persons?
No, I don’t see the concept as logically incoherent. I just think the concept was absent in first and second century Christianity. I think the concept is absent from the Bible, though some passages can be interpreted as expressing a Trinity, by examining them through a Trinitarian lens.
Your syllogism is faulty, even if you choose not to see it. Just because you’re trying to make three premises from reductio ad absurdum arguments doesn’t give you a well-formed syllogism
I agree with Paidion. His syllogism is logical. Hence to deny the conclusion and affirm the premises is illogical. Perhaps you could show which premise you reject, and why?
God is the Eternal Father. Therefore he must have an Eternal Child. God is eternal love. There must exist an eternal object of this love.
God is self-conscious. Like all self-conscious beings, he contemplates his own reflection in the mirror of his mind. Because He knows himself perfectly, God’s image and God himself are indistinguishable, absolutely identical in every way that matters. ie. They are essentially the same.
How Jesus could be the Perfect Image of God (in every way that matters) and the human son of Mary is a mystery, not a contradiction. Should I be surprised? I have no idea how I exist, let alone how God exists. My mind is 100% me. My body is 100% me. A body without a mind is meat. A human mind without a human body is (so far as we know) impossible. Yet my body is not my mind. And here I am! A walking, talking mystery.
This is a logically valid argument. Here is another example of it:
Any equilateral triangle is an equiangular triangle.
Any equilateral triangle has three sides.
Therefore any equiangular triangle has three sides.
God is a Trinity of three persons.
God was born on earth.
Therefore the Trinity was born on earth.
The only way one could show this argument to be invalid would be to claim it to be the equivocation fallacy.
That is to claim that the word “God” is used in two different ways. One could claim that in the first instance “God” was used as tantamount to “The Trinity” whereas in the second instance “God” is used to denote one particular person of the Trinity.
My Family is a Hexinity of six persons. I, the Father, am Family. My son Alex is Family. He is one with the Family, distinct from the Family, and shares the same human essence as all persons in the Family. My dog, through love and election, is also Family, but by his nature can never be Family in the way Alex is Family.
God is a unified community of persons, just as a good family is a unified community of persons. Though each person in God is distinct, each is essentially identical. (They share the same essence. The same nature.)
Jesus is the perfect image, essentially identical to God, identical to God in every way that actually matters. He is the superposition of two natures, human and divine, just as a harmonious musical chord is the superposition of two or more distinct (but united) frequencies of sound.
Do you know the superposition of God the Son and Jesus the Man is impossible? Can a divine note be played at the same time and place as a human note to produce a harmonious chord? You yourself are the superposition of distinct natures. You are simultaneously good, evil, natural, spiritual, mortal, immortal, mind and matter.
I’m told the entire universe (when unobserved) is not only a “wave of probability”, it is the superposition of an infinite number of waves of probability. Hearing this sort of stuff, you begin to realize that reality may well be far stranger than common sense would have us believe. (And Unitarians make much of common sense. )
Perhaps many of the “philosophical attributes” of God that we think really matter, do not in fact really matter.
Rather than reject the actual divinity of the Son (the perfect image), it would be far more Christian to reject the “philosophical divinity” of the Father. “Why do you say, “Show us the Father?” If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”
If that’s what Trinitarians believe about God then I would be a Trinitarian (if I believed the Holy Spirit to be a third divine Person rather than being the Persons of the Father and the Son).
But I think they mean more than that. First they say that “God” is a Trinity. Then they use the personal pronoun “He” in reference to the noun “God”. If God is a Trinity of three divine Persons, how can God be called “He”? Why not They?
The pronoun “He” implies one individual person.
For a Trinitarian, God is three Persons, and God is “He”. Does that mean there are FOUR Persons? Namely Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and God (the “He”)?
This is what I believe about God; I don’t know about other Trinitarians. Although perhaps I believe it in a way that you would disagree with. You’ve read my explanation which is, I feel certain, just something Father showed me that I was capable of understanding. One day I’ll see it much more clearly – we all will.
As to saying “He,” it plays better than “They” when I’m having a discussion about something else. Believe me (and think you’ll probably agree) using “They” would instantly derail the conversation and send it off to a completely different track. I’m happy to discuss the Trinity, but not when what I want to discuss is, for example, UR. That’s too many irons in the fire at one time. I think that all the believers with whom I’m intimately associated believe more or less the same as I do regarding the Trinity, but even for them using “They” would be a bit of a bump. Maybe I’ll try it next time we get together, just to stir up conversation!
But perhaps it’s more true to use “He” in any case (since we don’t have a gender-neutral pronoun in English). God is community so very perfectly that IMO it’s absolutely accurate to refer to Him in the singular. “She” would be just as accurate, I think, except that we typically see the male of the species as the dominant leader, which certainly describes God, though God is not a human (except in the form of the Son) and our gender ideas can’t apply to Him. (Oops – side track there!) God is One. I think of marriage in that the man and the woman become one person. For us, that is very imperfect, though ideally the relationship will grow more unified through the years of intimate interaction. For God it is absolute. He who has seen the Son has seen the Father (and I would add), has seen the Holy Spirit.
But, any time you read me referring to He (unless I’m directly referencing the Father or Son or HS), you can substitute “They.” I know we don’t agree on everything, but in that I think we are not so very far apart.
Did you bother to note what we actually claim when I rewrote your syllogism to what we actually claim?
No – you just stuck with the faulty claim.
Maybe you thought I was only quoting you in reply and forgot to put the quote tags around it. I’ll print it again for reference:
Two Premises (which Trinitarians claim are true):
God is a Trinity of Three Persons.
[size=150][The Second Person of][/size] God was born on earth as a man.
Conclusion:
Therefore the [Second Person of the] Trinity was born on the earth as a man.
Trinitarians affirm that (or put another way we do [not] not deny it, as I joked when correcting your syllogism to what we actually claim.)
I put the corrections to what we claim in some more obvious formatting this time, since you missed them the first time.
If the 2nd Person of the Trinity Incarnates, this does not mean all Persons of the Trinity Incarnate. Trinitarians don’t simply claim “God” Incarnated and stop there. That’s modalism. (We talk of God Incarnating when there is no point distinguishing the Persons, but we don’t mean all three Persons of God were born human. We do sometimes mean all three Persons are in operation in Jesus, but not strictly that they all Incarnated as Jesus.)
One apex of a triangle may be touching the ground, and someone could say that therefore the triangle is touching the ground, but that doesn’t mean all apexes of the triangle are touching the ground.
(The Persons don’t relate to one another in a spatial fashion like that, so the illustration has many limitations. But that point is similar in principle.)
Only if you oversimplify and ignore what is actually being claimed.
God is still a single personal topic. When we speak of a team in English, we can use singular or plural grammar (depending on what characteristics we want to emphasize), so Trinitarians do sometimes speak of the Trinity as singular or plural, but the term itself emphasizes plurality of persons so usually we use plural grammar. The Hebrew authors sometimes used singular terms with plural grammar when talking of God, or sometimes used plural terms with singular grammar (or even plural grammar) even though talking of one God Most High. We could do that in English, too, but we try to reduce the confusion a little, since we aren’t talking about three Gods Most High.
In this case,
X is set-Y;
element 2 alone of set Y has quality Q;
therefore element 2 of X has quality Q but not other elements of X.
It isn’t that your logic per se is invalid (which I never said though other people did); it’s that your data doesn’t represent what’s actually being claimed, by means of an oversimplification being treated as though that silently excludes the extra details actually being claimed. The argument is invalid by that route. (Hasty generalization? Probably something else, but similar.)
The claim would be more like:
Any equliateral triangle is an equiangular triangle;
One angle of this equilangular triangle is touching the ground;
Therefore this equilateral triangle is touching the ground, even though not all angles and none of the sides.
Your argument would work if you appealed to a different argument first and imported that conclusion as an extra premise, but then the dispute would go back to how you arrived at the other premise.
P1.) The one and only God Most High (hereafter “God”) is a Trinity of three distinct persons (claimed by trinitarians).
P2.) It is impossible for any of the persons to have any distinct qualities or characteristics compared to the other persons (claimed by modalists and other anti-trinitarians), in effect also meaning the three persons don’t exist as such. (counter-P1)
P3.) God was born on earth (claimed by trinitarians, and by modalists).
C1.) Therefore the Trinity was born on earth (denied by trinitarians, who deny P2; claimed by modalists who in effect deny P1.)
Modalists would not affirm P1, but could still talk about the Trinity in their own terms as (merely) modes of God’s operation, like Husband, King and Judge; so they could affirm a simpler version of P1, e.g. God is a Trinity. (They might even say “a Trinity of three persons”, but they wouldn’t really mean “three” “persons”.) Trinitarians would not affirm P2.
Yes, one can think of a married man and woman as one person. It is also true that the couple will grow more unified throughout the years in a good marriage relationship. But the fact remains the man and woman are never ONE PERSON at any stage of their marriage. Nor are the Father and the Son ever one person, though Oneness groups insist that they are. Trinitarians however do not believe that they are one person. They believe the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three persons, and yet one God. However, they seem unable to adequately explain what they mean by “One God”. There are plenty of references in the Scripture both Old Testament and New to “One God” but not one of these references denote “The Trinity”.
Interestingly, two of these references in the NT distinguish this “One God” from Jesus Christ:
*For us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live. (1Cor 8:6 )
For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus…(1Tim 2:5)*
But you know, I HAVE to.
Thanks, Bro. 
