I believe we should be concerned with trying to understand God’s revelation of himself as best we can AND seek to understand and obey what he requires of our lives:
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40, emphasis added).
I don’t think ethics and theology are mutually exclusive pursuits. Please also note: trying to understand God’s revelation of himself as best we can does not mean seek to have an perfect and exhaustive definition of what God is like. And I don’t think anyone in this post is claiming that that have or are pursuing such a definition. I’m certainly not.
So there is the Father the Son and The Holy spirit. They are one God right? Im so confused about that topic. Can someone explain to me what we are arguing for ? Isnt that what we believe as Christians?
You won’t find “God in 3 persons,” or consubstantial or hypostases in scripture. Those are extrapolations and interpretations and conjecture. But if you don’t accept them, you are technically “unorthodox” and not a Trinitarian.
Yes, Nick, the doctrine of the trinity teaches that God the Father, Jesus (the son), and the Holy Spirit are three persons of one God. Even though we can describe this, it’s still a mystery to us how it works, but most Christians accept the trinitarian viewpoint by faith because that seems the best way to summarize what the Bible teaches about the nature of God. There are some who question whether Jesus was actually one of the persons of the trinity and say he was simply “divine” or just God’s son sent by God the Father. Perhaps this is what Vance is working up to arguing for. Time will tell.
In the common modern English usage of the term, “God [the Father]” is not triune – Abrahamic faiths are monotheistic
However, the “Godhead” is triune and the three Persons are described in the first three verses of the Bible:
God created heaven & earth (Gen 1:1)
God created everything through His Word, “God said, ‘let there be…’” (Gen 1:3)
God’s Spirit hovered over the primordial waters (Gen 1:2)
Saint Irenaeus described God’s Word & Spirit as “His [the Father’s] two hands” with which He reaches into creation from His transcendent realm beyond:
“One God, [the] Father, uncreated, invisible, Creator of all, above whom there is no other God & after whom there is no other God. And as God is verbal, therefore, He made created things by the Word…” Irenaeus, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 5
Were it not for the Gnostics, we would apparently be calling the Word & Spirit “emanations” of God [the Father] into Creation from beyond. As “emanations” of the Deity, the Deity’s Word & Spirit are fully Divine by nature / essence / being, despite being distinct entities / persons:
No, I don’t have a secret agenda that I am working up to.
This goes back to Christy’s claim that the Apostles’ Creed is Trinitarian. I am simply pointing out that is not the case and that the doctrine of the Trinity goes past what is revealed in scripture.
From the responses, it looks like a lot of people claim to be Trinitarians without realizing what the doctrine actually specifies.
Ask yourself this about your relationships to those close to you (perhaps a child or a parent or a younger sibling … somebody who you not only love, but have some responsibility for). What is the most important ingredient in that relationship … their correct and complete conceptions about you? Or the love that binds you together? I suggest that all doctrine (including trinitarian stuff) might be compared to the legal documentation that demonstrates your recognized connection to the other party. Now imagine that your house is burning down - which do you attempt first: the rescue of your sleeping child, or the file containing his birth certificates that shows he’s your child? Of course that file is important - but it is as nothing compared with the living child and your relationship. Paul might stand “accused” of giving us nearly everything that we now see as doctrine, and yet this same Paul writes that we could comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge and yet still … without love, have nothing more than a load of rubbish. But with love, all the other eventually is given whatever attention it needs. The caring parent will teach their child to think correctly as best they can because that’s what love does. So I propose that doctrine, properly seen, is an outgrowth of love - and our best attempts to correctly understand God. After all it is a bit difficult to grow to trust Christ if you don’t really believe he is anything more than just another good man. But not impossible. You can be a thief hanging on a much-deserved cross - having squandered your entire life and certainly having nothing of any “proper” doctrine and yet still reach out in desperation to the mysterious figure suffering beside you, and in that moment realize the most important relationship of your life. Or you can be the growing (and yet dense) disciples spending years being taught and yet still stumbling and being wrong at many points, and that all-important relationship ends up trumping all your mistakes and truths too. The saying “it’s not what you know but who you know” is an established cliche for a very, very good reason.
The Nicene Creed clearly says, “one God, the Father” in agreement with Saint Irenaeus from 150 years earlier, yes?
The Orthodox have always maintained the “Monarchy of the Father”, acknowledging that the Father is the font from which originates the rest of the Godhead. The Father is the root cause origin of all else, including even His Word & His Spirt – which, however, as direct “emanations” of Him, share His Divine nature / essence / being; and were “emanated” (by begetting & spiration, respectively) prior to / as prerequisite for Creation, prior to the emergence of our creation space-time fabric of the universe
So they were “emanated” beyond time & space, not in time & space
And so they were not “Created”
One God, the Father
who begot His Word & generated His Spirit in the transcendence beyond space & time
with which He then created heaven & earth (and all “created” beings therein, including even Angels)
Monarchy of the Father
Orthodox for 2000 years, yes?
I think legal documentation is one of a number of helpful ways of thinking about doctrine. Certainly, good doctrine is not essential to salvation. As you alluded to, the thief on the cross had simple trust that Jesus might be able to show him undeserved mercy and grace (“remember me…”). So I would say, as a good Reformed boy that all that is required for salvation is that by faith in Christ one might receive grace. That can be a firm trust with confident expectation flowing from a deep awareness of God’s character and promises or it can be weak and faltering hope that he ‘just might have mercy on one like me.’ So on that point, I’m with you. I also think that far too many people think their vast theological knowledge means they are somehow superior to others, so again, I agree, without love, it’s all fairly futile. So I also agree that good doctrine is an outgrowth of love.
To carry on your family analogy, I also would compare doctrine to learning to pick out dad’s face. Earlier I was changing my two years old’s nappy and he pointed a photo on the wall and said: “look that’s my daddy”. Now, his statement is only true if he is pointing at an accurate picture of me. It might not be a complete picture of me, maybe just a headshot, but it is still me, his dad. But if he points at a picture of our border collie, Moses, and says “look that’s my daddy”. No matter how sincere he is, or how much he believes it is me. It still isn’t me. Doctrine, then, helps to teach us what God looks like. The picture might be incomplete, slightly out of focus in places, or might not show every angle, but it is still God.
My point is that God has already defined Godself by revealing that God the Father created the universe with God the Logos, and God the Holy Spirit.
By God the Father naming Jesus YHWH is the Savior.
By God revealing God’s Name to be I AM WHO I AM.
By revealing that God is Love.
and much more.
I would generally agree, but it seems to me that the Church has defined Who is God and Jesus for a long time, while dissenters are the ones challenging this.
What I am doing in this blog is not to challenge Who Jesus is, but to point out that Evangelicals are mistakenly confusing Jesus, the Word of God and the Second Person of the Trinity with the Bible to book of God.
What I like about this OP is that it seems to recognize that “orthodoxy” and salvation are not the same thing. I doubt any of us really understands the Trinity, even if we ascribe to the orthodox description of our church. Thank God He’s more accommodating than we are, knowing our own weaknesses, since He made us.
While I don’t disagree with this, I wonder if you have noticed that your term “God the Holy Spirit” is not found in scripture. No canonical writer referred to the Holy Spirit that way.
This is an indication your conclusion is excessively specific.
Maybe people understand the “Trinity,” when that is their construct of God. That doesn’t mean they understand God, only that they understand their definition of God.
God has revealed Godself as Trinity. That is the way God wants to be understood. You appear not to have a problem with the Trinity, but with the view that God can be understood.
If God did not want to be understood then God would not have revealed Godself through Jesus Christ. We can agree to disagree on some aspects Who God is, but it is helpful to come to some agreement on the basics, which is what the Trinity tries to do.
However if it is true that we cannot understand God, then we cannot serve God, we cannot communicate or pray to God, we cannot love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Love is real and God is Love. We can understand Love and we can understand God. We cannot manipulate Love and we cannot manipulate God.
Godself is a new word for me, so I looked it up. Google popped up this:
“GodSelf is an amalgamation of all that we are and all that we are capable of becoming. It includes living in the physical world, ingesting life with our five senses, while Remembering our spiritual nature and the Oneness that defines our existence. … It includes living in one’s body and Knowing one’s spirituality.”
Is that really the term you wanted to use?
As to whether God has revealed Himself as Trinity, where did that happen? It is not clearly presented in the Bible, so are you saying there was divine revelation of this at church councils in the fourth century?
Your view that in order to serve God we must understand God is a strange claim, I think. On what do you base that view? Isn’t it possible to serve God by doing what He has told us to do, without fully understanding God?
You and your dictionaries. Godself is used by people who do not want to use gendered pronouns for God. You will notice Roger does not use he, his, him, or himself when referring to God, because God is not male.
Who’s endorsing anything? There’s dictionaries. And then there’s reality. Most of us live our lingual lives in the latter [real] world. Feel free to join us!
that all that is required for salvation is that by faith in Christ one might receive grace. That can be a firm trust with confident expectation flowing from a deep awareness of God’s character and promises or it can be weak and faltering hope that he ‘just might have mercy on one like me.’ So on that point, I’m with you. I also think that far too many people think their vast theological knowledge means they are somehow superior to others, so again, I agree, without love, it’s all fairly futile. So I also agree that good doctrine is an outgrowth of love.