The Evangelical Universalist Forum

The Trinity

Theology Biblical Theology
#1

It’s my belief that God is one God revealed in three persons. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father. The Spirit of love that flows between them overflows and out of this overflow of grace the universe was created. God didn’t create out of need as if He lacks something. No, it was by the overflow of His grace that He created. I say grace because you cannot deserve to be created. Now, the Father loves the Son and delights in the Son. Scripture tells us that the Father said “this is my Son in whom I am well pleased”. The scriptures also tell us that Christ is in the exact image and likeness of God. So, when the Father beholds His own beautiful image in the Son He is infinitely happy. God delights in His own beautiful image of holiness. We can put it this way:

The Father is God

The Son is God

The Father delights in the Son

Therefore, God delights in God

God delights in Himself

This overflow of joy is the Holy Spirit who also delights in the Father and Son.

We can go even further here.

The Father is God

The Son is God

The Son worships the Father

God worships God

Therefore God worships Himself (loves Himself more than anything)

#2

Just a few things which don’t make sense to me:

  1. What do you mean by “one God revealed in three persons”?

2.Where do you find this idea in the Bible?

3.The word “God” is found 3859 times in the Bible. Are there any of those 3859 instances in which “God” denotes a trinity of persons?

  1. About your syllogism:

Your use of “Himself”(which is singular) in your conclusion “God worships Himself” suggests you are using the word “God” as an individual. In order for this conclusion to follow from your premises then the sentence “The Son is God” would have to be tantamount to “The Son is the Father”.

On the other hand, if you are using the word “God” as a compound Being consisting of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then it is not true that “The Father is God” or “The Son is God” since neither one of them is the Trinity.

The third possibility that I can see, is that you might be using “God” in a generic sense — that “The Father is God” and “The Son is God” in the same sense that we might say “You are man” and “I am man”. But even in this case the conclusion seems a stretch.

By way of analogy, we could pose the argument:

George is man
Sarah is man
George loves Sarah
Sarah loves George
Therefore man loves himself.

Somehow the conclusion doesn’t follow. But perhaps it would be more so if George and Sarah were the only instances of man on the face of the earth. But even then the clause “Man loves himself” seems to imply that George loves himself and Sarah loves herself. However, this does not follow from the premises.

I think there is nothing in the Bible which implies that the Father loves Himself and the Son loves Himself.

#3

Hey Paidion!

I can’t go into a defense of the Biblical support for the trinity. But there is a good book on it by James White called “The Forgotten Trinity”

God is unique in that He is One God but three persons. The Bible tells us that Jesus worshped the Father. Since there is only one God this is God worshipping God. God worships Himself.

#4

Sorry, but I just can’t let you slide on this one. This is a logical fallacy know as* Escape via relativism.* Basically, it’s just circular logic, aside from being a very faulty syllogism.

I understand how it feels to be searching for an answer and all around you can see nothing but more questions. Maybe you might be better served by just asking some open ended questions, and waiting for the thoughts of people here, than making declarative statements that are drawn from weak logic.

#5

Where’s the circle?

The Father is God

Jesus is God

Jesus worships the Father

God worships God

God worships Himself

God loves His own humility and holiness more that anything.

#6

The circle is in your logic. Please provide some scriptural reference that God loves His own humility(loving one’s own humility makes one an egotist by definition) and holiness more than He loves the people that He created. Your circular, unscriptural argument in this case makes God nothing more than a narcissist.

I’m thinking that you’re nothing more than an agitating forum troller(and one with a very limited knowledge of the Bible), and the fact that you’re starting numerous threads in different forums without offering any sort of real, concise, and solid rebuttal to responses posted in other threads is evidence of that. Keep throwing your trolling hook into the waters here as much as you like, but this fish won’t be silly enough to bite on your troll bait anymore.

At any rate, goodbye. I will be availing myself of the forum’s ‘ignore’ function for you from now on. I’m sure that you will simply condemn me as someone that doesn’t want to hear ‘God’s Truth’, at least as you claim to see it from your own prophetic view.

#7

Eric,

Pride is loving and thinking of yourself more highly than you ought to. God’s loving and thinking of Himself is direct proportion to who He is - the most glorious of all Beings. God loves and delights in His own image in the Son. Which is first and foremost - His humility. (This is my Son in whom I am well pleased). God’s not egotistical. Moreover He glorifies Himself for the joy of all people. This is love. Jesus prays to the Father and asks Him to reveal His glory to His children in John. God is in the business of transforming people into His own image. He must love it or He wouldn’t be doing that.

#8

removed by me.

#9

The Trinity is not three individuals, but it IS three persons who are so entirely one in unity and purpose that they comprise one God. Jesus prayed (to the Father), “Father, make them one as We are One that the world may know that You have sent Me.”

So we are to be one just as Jesus and the Father and the HS are One. Does it therefore follow that if I love my sister in the Lord, I am loving myself? Well, in a sense, it does. My sister’s welfare is my welfare, so my love of her is also loving myself. That said, if I make her a gift, the gift is for her and not for me. If I call her on the phone to comfort her, the comfort is for her benefit more than it is for my own benefit. If I praise her for a poem she’s written, then the praise is for her and not for myself.

I am not praising myself when I praise her, even though we are one in Christ. I am not comforting myself when I comfort her, nor am I making myself a gift when I make a gift for her. In the same way, when Jesus worships the Father, He is not worshiping Himself, but the Father. Yes, Jesus is divine just as are the Father and the Spirit. They choose not to be separate individuals, though they are distinct persons; they are One. When the Father commands all the angels to worship the Son, He is not at that moment commanding worship to Himself, but to His Son.

A husband and wife are one flesh, yet when a husband buys flowers for his wife, he is not buying himself a gift, but rather a gift for his wife. If a wife drops her husband off at work, she is not dropping herself off, though they are one. She is dropping her husband off.

The Father sent Jesus to the earth as a man, and while the Father never left the Son, but indwelt Him by the Holy Spirit, the Father did not send Himself to earth as a man, but rather He sent the Son. The Father did not die on the cross (though He was in Christ Jesus, reconciling the world to Himself), but the Son died on the cross. When Jesus raised from the dead, did the Father raise from the dead? No, for the Father did not die.

I think what you’re doing with your train of logic here is that you’re confusing sameness with oneness. The three members of the Godhead are One, but they are not one and the same. They are distinct persons united into One God.

Blessings, Cindy

#10

Hi Cindy!

That’s correct. I never said that the Father worships Himself or that Christ worships Himself but that Christ worships the Father. We see this when Jesus was tempted by Satan and He told Satan that it was written " To worship the Lord your God and serve Him only". Now since Jesus is God and He worships the Father then this is God worshiping God. God worships Himself. Again, I’m not saying that Jesus worships Himself or that the Father worships Himself. I’m saying God worships Himself. God worships God. Therefore I worship God.

Lot’s of grace to you!

#11

I see what you’re saying, Cole. Technically you’re right – however, I wonder whether it communicates? As you’ve seen, it requires a LOT of explaining. Perhaps in the interest of clarity it would just be easier to say that God the Son worships God the Father (and of course God the Father commands worship of His Son), and therefore you worship God. And then of course we worship Him because He is worthy, and because we who know Him can do no other.

Interestingly, a friend preaches that the Greek word for worship (“proskuneo”) comes from a root that means to draw near for a kiss. I think he may be stretching that a tiny bit, but it points out something hugely important. It points to the fact that worship is first and most vitally an act of love; the love of a child for his Father; a bride for her Bridegroom; a younger sibling for his/her Elder Brother, the Firstborn; of a sheep for its loving Shepherd; of a lost one for the Savior of all the world.

Blessings, Cindy

#12

It’s still not logical, Michael.

An analogy would be (Note that a person is said to be “man”, below, in the sense of being human):

Now since George is man, and he loves Susan (who is also man) , then this is man loving man. Man loves himself.