The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Why Believe in the Trinity? (Non-Debate Please)

Theology Biblical Theology
#1

On another thread I started, I had asked for reasons from non-trinitarians why they believe what they do on the matter. I received much great feedback, but I needed to get the other side of the issue. Why do Trinitarians believe what they do? Originally I was seeking info from the Bible and the Early Church Fathers but I can take the ECF’s or leave them.

Like the other thread, this is meant as a non-debate thread and I am just looking for reasons for holding the belief. If you are non-trinitarian, you are still welcome to participate, I just ask to not argue. I realize there maybe other threads on this topic here but for some reason when I try to do a search on this site or with a search engine about this site, I frequently run into problems with the search not loading so I am not able to view any results if any. Likely an issue on my side of the internet connection. So if this has been covered, I do apologize but I assure you, I have looked for info.

Thank you in advance!

EDIT: For the record, as mentioned in my non-Trinitarian thread, I do believe in the Trinity, but am having some personal theological and non-theological issues I am fighting with in my life and this topic keeps rearing its head. I am “attempting” to come at this with as little bias as humanly possible.

Trying to understand non-Trinitarians. (Present your cases?)
#2

That link in my signature to Sword to the Heart, features over 800 pages of my progressing metaphysical argument arriving at orthodox trinitarian theism (including the filioque, with apologies to our EOx brothers, whose difficulties I am sympathetic to and take into account). It’s useful for a number of related purposes, too, naturally–unitarians, modalists, and non-Christian supernaturalistic theists like Jews or Muslims could follow along with it in agreement quite a way, in principle, I think. This is also where I first became convinced I ought to be expecting some kind of Christian universalism to be true.

I’ll try attaching a pdf here, though I’m unsure of what the limits are for a comment…Sword to the Heart (Full 3rd Edition).pdf (2.06 MB)

Trinitarian Digest.pdf (266 KB)

This is an 80ish page discussion, summarizing the contents of several books (and on occasion my own researches), that I originally posted here on the forum back in late 2008. I’ve deleted and corrected some things since then, and added some things, but I could still add quite a lot of things (I haven’t even touched the Riddle of Psalm 110 yet, which would be a whole chapter to itself); and I haven’t yet integrated some interesting discussions I had with Aaron (one of our literate unitarian members) on Old Testament issues.

So it’s very much still a work in progress. But features a lot of data and argument. :slight_smile:

JRP vs scriptural crits vs ortho trin.pdf (384 KB)

This is a compilation of a thread I created back in late 2008 for discussing a spate of anti-Trinitarian criticisms from scripture. It’s a companion piece to the Digest, which was a more positive-establishing-argument reply to that spate.

There is a parallel thread (which can be found here), where I discuss anti-Trinitarian criticisms from metaphysics (also part of the same spate at that time. :wink: ) But I haven’t gotten around to collecting that thread into a pdf yet.

Now let’s see if I crash the system by posting this with the attachments… :mrgreen:

#3

Wow Jason… for a moment there I was thinking you had actually done some research on this. I am disappointed (tone of joking sarcasm there).

Being serious, I truly am grateful for all the work you have done and I greatly look forward to reading those PDF’s you posted and I will go through that other discussion thread you provided. It probably won’t take me too long to go through it all as I tend to soak this stuff up like a sponge.

Again, thank you! :smiley:

#4

The link to the thread regarding contra-Trin metaphysical crits, also has a link to the original thread regarding scriptural criticisms, so you can check the context of some of the things I wrote in the collected pdf of that thread if you want.

That link also features, toward the end, some discussion of what the death of Jesus can and cannot mean if supernaturalistic theism is true regardless of whether ortho-trin is true (as well as what it can and cannot mean if ortho-trin specifically is true), including an attached paper of analysis on “How Far Anyone Can Die”.