Actually the answers are mine, I write them myself, I copy them and then just submit them to the AI to polish some grammatical errors because I’m not writing in my own language, that’s all.
Jus to clarify. 
Edit: I write them in English, I don’t use translators, but my English is less perfect than I wished so…
Fair enough. I guess I should be impressed you are taking the time to polish unlike the rest of us posting with our typos and run ons. 
I basically write them in notes, then I do a copy and paste and I submit them to ChatGPT with the request “my English has to be perfect”. 
This is actually a very appropriate use of AI tools, carry on. (I just needed the people who used to post long AI-generated manifestos that are now banned to know that I occasionally try to enforce the “share your own thoughts” rules.)
One friend who is a retired Presbyterian pastor noted that the Sermon on the Mount describes what Christians DO. Alas, 300 years later the Creed described what Christians “believe”. We do seem to forget that the Apostle Paul noted that “we see through the glass, darkly”. The idea of a Trinity arises from the statement of Jesus that “I will not leave you alone”. Followed by the arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday.
Without denying that God is love, I like to say that we say so much about things that we know so little about. How much do we know about the heavenly realms? Who is the 24 elders? Was God alone before He created everything else? These knowledge are beyond us. To say that The Godhead has to be 3 to be able to have mutual love is not wrong, but just a guess of what our God is like. Unless it is revealed by the Scripture, I suspect that what we assume to know about God is probably on the wrong tract.
I admire Dallas Willard with his intellectual and spirituality. I read all his book with the exception his academic textbook. He did talk about the same thing about God is love and how in the Godhead, there are unceasing joy and mutual love between the three Persons of the Godhead. As much as I admired Dallas, I have to question how does he know such things? Does he work it out with his great mind which I am sure He did because there is nothing in Scripture talking about that especially if we are talking about the Holy Spirit. The Bible is completely silent about the role of the Holy Spirit in the Godhead. I am not saying that you are wrong, but the problem is how will I know that you are right?
I hesitate to respond because I am not sure if it is fruitful to our discussion, but perhaps I must. At least to give input to the future dialogue that you might get into.
I am amazed that since you hardly know me with the exception of my name, you think that my problem with trinity is a complete isolation from the major body of believers. That I thought everything thru by my own thought without regards of the wealth of information available concerning the subject of trinity.
My struggle with the doctrine of trinity has spanned more than 3 decades. I guess it’s on and off. Every time I decided to embrace the doctrine, I encountered passages in the Bible that I can’t fit into the framework of classical trinity doctrine.
agreed completely with what Michael Bird wrote. I came from evangelical christian background. As such, I have a very high regard for the authority of the Bible which is the tradition of evangelical christian. Thru that high regard, I came to question the validity of the trinity doctrine.
the question about trinity didn’t come from outside source, but from the Scripture itself or specifically from the saying of Jesus Himself. Though I have read all I can the books or articles of pro and con of trinity, it is thru the simple reading of the Scripture that make me question the validity of trinity doctrine.
Perhaps I need to make clear my view about Jesus incarnation. I believe that Jesus in His incarnation was fully God and fully Man. He was always both at the same time and at no time He wasn’t both. Therefore, I take the teaching of Jesus or the saying of Jesus as having eternal value. His parables, the Sermon on the mount, His explanation about the Kingdom and His relationship with the Father. Therefore when the saying of Jesus contradicts the tenet of the classical trinity doctrine, I could not bring myself to interpret the saying of Jesus as having temporal meaning.
Example of this
Mark 16:19 So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.
(Why at the right hand, not together? does it imply hierarchy?)
Matt 24:36 No One Knows That Day and Hour
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. (Jesus said so Himself while He was fully God-man at the time)
Matt 20:23 He said to them, “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” (clearly this mean that only the Father has the authority to give that place)
John 10:17-18 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” (Doesn’t this mean that Jesus receive that authority from the Father?)
There are many examples in the writing of Paul and others that seem to emphasise hierarchy which I could dig for you if you are interested.
while what you said is correct, oral teaching and oral tradition can only last so long. By the second century AD, all the apostles and their direct disciples were gone. How did they know that the oral teaching that was still around is reliable? By testing them with the written word (Scripture). So, Yes, forgive me if I put such a high regard with the written Scripture and for that I have no regrets.
Longer for some books than others.
The process started with the writing that happened during a period of decades.
It took time for the writings to spread and be either recognized or rejected within local/regional churches.
There were many traveling teachers and some wrote competing writings that challenged the previously accepted teachings. The process of rejecting the false writings while accepting the trusted ones took some time.
The accepted writings were read in the services of the local/regional churches, which gave to these writings authority. The list of writings read in the different local/regional churches included a set of widely accepted scriptures + a set of writings that were read in many/some churches but not elsewhere.
The widely accepted and used writings formed the ‘core’ of the canonical library (Bible) as the participants of the ecumenical councils could easily accept their authority - it was just a matter of accepting the existing situation.
The status of the writings that were used in some but not in all regional churches needed to be debated. It took time before there formed a consensus of which books should be included in the basic collection (Bible) and which should be left out as ‘useful/recommended but less authoritative’ writings.
The ‘core’ writings included at least the four gospels, Acts and most of the Pauline letters.
Muratorian fragment (c. 170-200 AD) included these (with 13 Pauline letters) and also Jude, 1-2 John and Revelation.
Irenaeus (c. 180 AD) listed 21 of the 27 NT writings, highlighting the core gospels and Pauline epistles.
Origen (c. 250 AD) listed all the 27 NT writings, although some were still disputed.
The first ecumenical council of Nicaea happened in the year 325 AD, so the major development had already happened before the ecumenical councils. Yet, it took time to agree the status of some writings, so that the canonical list of 27 writings were officially solidified later in the council of Hippo (393 AD).
During the modern era of critical historical/theological study, the writer and authority of some writings have been questioned. That is a separate question because the canonical list was solidified by 393 AD. Whatever the history of the writing was before that, the final text was considered to be authoritative.
This is not true. All indications are that the church was unabashedly a mix of binitarian and trinitarian from the start; the problem in the 3rd century came from people mixing pagan philosophy with the teachings of the faith.
It may not be revealed directly, but it is in plain sight: the scriptures speak of the Father as God, of Jesus as God, and of the Spirit as God, all while affirming that there is just one God. That’s the whole thing right there, just a summary of what the scriptures say.
“Coequal” is there to keep the idea biblical and reject pagan philosophy that held that gods could have ranks" one God, so all members are equal since all are God.
No, the heresy consisted of implicitly maintaining that God was not always Father: if there was a time when the Son “was not”, then there was a time that God was not Father, so fatherhood for God becomes something artificial about Him.
That’s not in the text; it says nothing about where anything “started”.
Jesus is comparing His love for us with the Father’s love to Him. Isn’t it clear that Jesus loves us first and in that same sense that the Father has loved Jesus first? Isn’t it also clear that we abide in Jesus love by being obedient to Him just as Jesus abide in His Father’s love by being obedient to the Father?
Most of this is indeed well beyond our grasp. However, if the Bible tells us that God is love (not merely that He loves) this carries significant implications. Love, by its very nature, is relational. Therefore, if God is love, as Scripture affirms, relationality must be intrinsic to His very being. There is no real way to avoid this conclusion.
If there had ever been a moment in which God existed as a solitary monad, it would imply that there was a time when God was not love itself, for love cannot exist in isolation. Such a notion would directly contradict and logically contradict the biblical claim that “God is love.”
1 John 2,22-23: “This one is the antichrist: the person who denies the Father and the Son. Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father either. The person who confesses the Son has the Father also.”
we are dealing with a very hard topic indeed. “God is love” What does it mean? Such a wide and deep word to explore with so many angles to see. What does it mean that “God is love”? Since God present Himself to us as such, then perhaps He wants us to see Him that way. That God loves us as the good Shepherd, as the door, as the light, as the Saviour, etc. Other than that, we can put out any statement about “God is love” and I am not sure whether that statement can be proven right or wrong. There is no objective standard to measure by other than just saying that God is love meaning that God loves us.
This become a philosophical argument. I can’t even comprehend what does it mean “when God was not love itself”. For this I must admit my limitations. It is beyond me.
If, as you suggested, there were ever a moment in which God existed as a solitary monad, this would certainly contradict the assertion that God is love. Love is essentially relational; therefore, if God is love, relationality must be intrinsic, not accidental, to His nature. Which means that relationality is eternal within the Godhead. This also implies that it is impossible that there was ever a moment in which God was “alone,” in the sense understood in Islam.
Words have meanings. “God loves us” is very different from “God is love.” The latter carries clear ontological implications, and one cannot avoid them by claiming it means something else.
There is another passage which has clear implications regarding the relational nature within the Godhead: John 17:24.
“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory,the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”
When Jesus says “you loved me before the foundation of the world,” the phrase “before the foundation of the world” is not just a timestamp, not at all, In biblical usage it points to what precedes all created reality. That is, to God’s own eternal life.
“The love here spoken of is that which existed from all eternity between the Father and the Son.”
The Gospel According to John XIII–XXI, Page: p. 744 (Anchor Bible, Vol. 29A)
“the love of the Father for the Son is presented as existing before creation, i.e., within the sphere of God’s own eternal existence.”
Saint Augustine, De Trinitate, Book XV, Chapter 17
“the Father and the Son exist in an eternal relation of love, not one that begins in time.”
May I ask where is the Holy Spirit? Kind of left out from Trinitarian Godhead.
Well, in classical Western theology, the Holy Spirit is understood as the subsisting Love, namely the personal communion, between the Father and the Son, not as an impersonal bond, but as a divine Person who proceeds as Love itself.
If you are asking me where in the Bible the Holy Spirit is identified as God…
Acts 5:3-4: “Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”
Lying to the Holy Spirit is lying to God.
1 Cor 2:10-11: “these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
In other words: the Spirit knows God fully and internally, and In biblical thought, only God has this kind of knowledge
This implies the Spirit is fully divine, not a creature.
Also Genesis 1:2: the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
And the Book of Job 33:4: “the Spirit of God has made me.”
The Spirit is active in creation, which is uniquely divine act.
Finally, in 2 Cor 3:17: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
“Lord” (Kyrios) is the title used for God, and Paul identifies the Spirit with the Lord.
In short, while there is no passage (at least to my knowledge) in which the Holy Spirit is explicitly called God (unlike Jesus, whom Saint Paul describes as “God over all, blessed forever” in the Epistle to the Romans, and whom the prologue of the Gospel of John identifies as the Word, who was with God and was God) Scripture nevertheless identifies the Spirit as God by equating Him with God (Acts 5:3–4), attributing to Him divine knowledge and works, and placing Him within the divine identity alongside the Father and the Son.
Edit: almost forgot…
Gospel of John 14:16: “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate (Paraklētos), to be with you forever.”
Notice that Jesus does not say “a different kind of helper,” but “another” of the same kind. Jesus Himself is the first Advocate (cf. 1 John 2:1) and the Spirit is another Advocate like Him.
And if Jesus is divine and acting with God’s authority, then “another” like Him must share that same divine status and nature, not be a mere creature or impersonal force.
“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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