So when we don’t make the connections you think we should, your response is to stomp off and leave us hanging? That’s pretty raw and rude!
I’ve forgotten what McGilchrist has to do with this – what I remember is an analogy for the Trinity that involved water, not anything about diagrams.
Or to find some insight that we’re told we’re deficient for not seeing?
Isn’t God just combustion? Isn’t that what Moses saw… a burning bush?
It is of course a big mistake to confuse what we see of God with the totality of God.
Likewise we see God in these three persons. But God is not 3. God is infinite.
So… all these triangular pictures… Are they like feeling the tip of the truck of an elephant? (that is frankly what they look like to me) Isn’t it nice that we can hold the truck and move it around like a toy to play with. Meanwhile the elephant stands motionless looking down indulgently.
And that is another problem with these analogies… trying to shrink God to these triangular ideas and making an explanation of why God is such a thing. Looks to me like these are all basically an attempt to make Christianity the master of God Himself and thereby imagine ourselves the master of truth and the universe. But of course we are no such thing and God is not just what we see. Christianity is just one finite encounter with God. The God I believe in is DEFINITELY bigger than that.
I’ve already watched the videos except for the movie, and I’ve read the novels (and wasn’t impressed). The official trailer doesn’t leave me with anything more than “meh”.
And I see no connection with the Trinity unless perhaps someone might consider that the equilateral triangle set-up for a three-body system somehow relates by envisioning the Persons of the Trinity as orbiting their common center of mass.
Those “triangular ideas” are just summaries of what is said in scripture, not any attempt to explain God; they explain nothing except the relationships stated for us in the scriptures yet not even that; they apply only to one small aspect of the Trinity. Indeed the triangle diagram for the Trinity is rather apophatic in nature, indicating more of what God is not rather than what He is.
Not to be mistaken for the Almighty, no, but Ezekiel might confuse it for the cherubims’ wheels with eyes!
But being all about God’s providence, I happened upon Matthew Henry’s commentary (which, guess what, I liked ; - ):
The Trinity is the answer to the ancient puzzle, the One And the Many people believe that the answer to the puzzle is that the One is prior and the Many is an illusion. Christianity based on the biblical narrative is clear that God the Creator. Jesus the Savior, and the Holy Spirit of Love are each unique and separate from one another, but still fully GOD.
Thus, they are Many, but yet they are fully GOD, or One
At the same time it says that GOD created humans in Gode’s own Image, fhe Image of the Trinity. We4 have a body, mind, and spirit. Our body is us, our mind is us, our spirit is us, yet each is separate ad unique. We are three and one. We are One And Many., not as completely as GOD is but enough that we can relate and fellowship with GOD
Mitchell,
I think you are saying that a doctrine about God is nothing like knowing God himself. Likewise, we should not believe that the doctrine tells us all there is to know about God. If we fail to grasp these things, we are attempting to dictate to God who and what he is. If I understood correctly, I agree.
Ideally, doctrinal statements should give us the best possible summary of the information we have from Scripture on a matter. (I know you already know this.) And ideally, readers of Scripture don’t dictate meaning to it from the doctrinal statements, which would be backwards. But we know it’s easy to fall short of our ideals.
I don’t see myself as a master of truth and the universe. You’re right, I am no such thing, and God is not merely what I see.
What do you think is a better way of gaining and expressing knowledge of God? How do you think one should go about it? How could we address Mark’s question more adequately?
Thanks,
Kendel
Also, as most every systematics text will note, the sum of all doctrine still doesn’t tell us much about God, it only tells us enough.
Yes… of course.
Not exactly…
My problem is not with the doctrine but only how a portion of Christianity interprets it.
The original doctrine of the Trinity is only that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons but only one God.
The doctrine is not that God is three or a Trinity. We know those three persons are God. We don’t know anything else. We don’t know anything more. But we should not confuse this knowledge we have of God with God Himself. We should not assume more.
Certainly this idea that God is three is nowhere in the Bible. The doctrine of the Trinity isn’t in the Bible either, but it is derived from the Bible – each is treated as a separate person and yet each is said to be God, one God.
Thank you for addressing my question.
I don’t understand the distinction you are making.
My understanding of the term “Trinity” is what you describe the original doctrine.
Could you point out the differences, please?
Thanks.
I have perhaps added more to the original post which your reply is responding to… but…
Shall I use an analogy? (of the distinction I am making… NOT an analogy of the doctrine of the Trinity)
Suppose I study a particular church, and meet three pastors of that church. Shall I then say that the leadership of the church is triune and consists of those three pastors. That is mistaking my knowledge of the church with the totality of the church. And I shouldn’t do that.
What difference does it make?
…well it comes up in speculations about other intelligent beings in the universe and assuming that they cannot have any knowledge or experience of God apart from what we have. By doing that we have shrunk God down to only a God of Christianity, humanity and the earth. There is no reason why God must be so small as that. …though of course I don’t know that there are any other intelligent beings in the universe any more than I know that there are other persons of God than the three we have encountered. I just don’t think we should make that assumption.
I understand it as the essence of God is identical - simple, non-composite. In human terms, this means there can be only One God. The doctrine talks of God, the Father and Creator, His Only begotten Son (not created) and the Holy Spirit. These are aspects of God that are discussed in the Gospel.
I find a lot of what you say misleading.
And according to most definitions of the word “aspects” this would be modalism. To really get it right you should say instead…
These are persons of God.
Jesus is not an aspect of God or part of God or a mode of God. Jesus is God.
You can say Jesus is part of our understanding of God, or an aspect of how we perceive God. That works.
According to most uses of the words “simple” and “non-composite,” these do not describe God at all. God is not simple in the sense He is easy to understand. There are a lot of things we can certainly say God has, like intelligence, morality, and love. He is not simple and non-composite in that sense either. I believe we will be learning about God for an eternity. In that sense, He is the least simple of all things. He is only simple and non-composite in the sense that there is nothing which is not God which makes God be God. His existence does not depend on other things, like parts, or atoms.
I think you are making a problem when there is none.
aspect - a particular part or feature.
The doctrine of simplicity has been discussed for a long time; it refers to the ontological status, in that the divine nature is beyond the reach of ordinary categories and distinctions. It does not mean a simpleton. God is a unified entity with no distinct attributes as His existence is identical to His essence. The entirety of God is whatever is attributed to Him.
Problem for who?
For those buying the package handed out at the door? Probably not. But I don’t buy such packages. Never have.
Indeed and I thought it was total nonsense for a long time. Until someone gave that explanation to me: “there is nothing which is not God which makes God be God.” I could agree with that.
Your words…
would mean that all theology is nonsense.
I don’t buy it.
We CAN think about God. But we should never confuse our thoughts about something with the thing itself. That is true of everything, not just God.
That is a total strawman and rather unworthy of you. I never said anything similar to that.
Where would you put God on this scale of things from simple to complicated?
I would put God WAY past number 5. I don’t see anything simple about God – not in that sense.
I don’t find your addition of these other words to be all that helpful either.
All of these sound VERY wrong to me.
I do not know where to begin. For example, the Orthodox teaching on the simplicity of God is that God is without any capacity to be divided. There is no composition or complexity of any kind in God, whether substantially or accidentally. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share one simple will, and so all activity toward creation bears the mark of that simplicity.
Perhaps you can begin with this statement so that I can try and comprehend your comments. I am trying to understand your point of view. Thus, God is simple, he is pure act without potency, there is nothing he could be, but failed to become; and there is nothing he is but might not have been.
Are you arguing against this, and classical Christian tradition that is more or less unanimous that God is simple; divine simplicity is affirmed by writers like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and Eastern fathers like St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus Confessor, and St. John Damascene. These affirmations are not philosophical speculation from the pagan philosophers, nor feeble affirmations that God is a fellow of steady temperament. The development of Trinitarian and Christological dogma correlates with the rising prominence of divine simplicity precisely because, without divine simplicity, the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas are not coherent.
This might help:
The Simplicity of God - Sinclair Ferguson
Oh, that’s very nicely put!
Quite so. But this is not why:
The reason is that the substance of God, His essence, is a singular whole without parts or divisions but is the same throughout: it is simple because it is a single thing.
I’m not sure that even makes sense.
He consists in three Persons who are distinct, and each has distinct attributes.
The problem being that “ordinary categories and distinctions” are for the most part all we have to work with. None of those categories can encompass God, but they can point in the right direction.
Not bad at all!
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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