How does the trinity work?

We can know about God through reason, but since he is personal, we cannot know him personally through reason alone – there has to be interaction.

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Moral: It’s not enough to have a potential dance partner at a dance: ya gotta dance, … or go home alone.

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Hey, that’s a decent analogy! :sunglasses:

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Nice diagram, Rave!! Just say that you and I are not God, and He is not us…and then all is well…(sort of)…

Three-in-One…very complex nature…like an object has width-depth-height while still being one object…but maybe not entirely like that…

The idea of a complex deity existed within Judaism before the time of Jesus, and it just got more complex with His arrival. You want to know what they are/He is like and what are their/His natures? and identical–how? This reminds me of a Hare Krishna who once told me he knew God’s home address (yes he did!)

All you and I have are the fact that He kept His face hidden from Moses. And lines like: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” And there is that other statement about God only being knowable to the extent that He has chosen to make Himself known.

So it is hard to make any grand comprehensive dissertation about “their natures” and all that—given the high unlikelihood that a Being who conceals Himself from even those whom He calls His friends (presumably for our sake)— would just discuss His good days and bad days with anyone…

…and I leave it at that.

We don’t need the doctrine of Trinity. The church was doing just fine without this so called “central doctrine of christianity”. it was near the 4th century before it became an official doctrine of the church. So what had happened in the previous time?

Paul did not know this doctrine. None of the apostles did not teach this doctrine. Even Jesus did not teach this doctrine. It was however became necessary to hold to this doctrine when arianism became a dominant heresy within the church. they believe that Jesus is actually a created being and therefore need not to be worshipped. (the present form could be found in JW). to combat this heresy, the church out of necessity at that time hold to the present formulation of the Trinity.

Now what was the belief before the doctrine of Trinity became a central doctrine? The early church fathers, the apostles and Paul himself knew that there were tension between their belief in one God and there is no other and Jesus as the son of God who claimed He was also God. so, what did they do? Nothing. it was a mystery to them. They did not try to resolve this. Smart and humble in my own opinion knowing who we are as humans to understand the nature of God. Like an ant try to understand the shape of an elephant. It is beyond us. Unless God reveals Himself to us, there is no way for us to formulate what kind of God he is.

So, I understand where the doctrine of Trinity was coming from. It does create many unanswered questions and it solves many other. Though, I understand the doctrine, I prefer to leave it as a mystery.

We have it because the church was fighting the rise of the Arian heresy, so the church was not doing just fine. Also, the church had to define just what that meant.

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What i meant was, in the first three century, the church had rapidly growing and multiplying throughout the kingdom of Rome. The church had done all that without the doctrine of Trinity.

It also did all that without a formal doctrine of the incarnation, Holy Spirit, church, or sacraments. It also did it all without Bible commentaries, lexicons, or youth pastors. The Early Church not having something, is not the same as the church not needing it.

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So what? Do you think the church should have kept silent when the divinity of Jesus was being challenged from within? At the 4th ecumenical council (the council of Chalcedon) the church answered the Nestorian heresy. So we now have the Chalcedon definition of the faith, where the church defined and explained the two natures of Christ.

If you read what I wrote, I said that it was necessary to combat the heresy.

This is however my take on why I rather believe in mystery rather than the doctrine of Trinity.

  • is there any hierarchy in the trinity? it seems to me that all things including Jesus will be subjected to the Father. I personally could not reconcile this with the doctrine of Trinity.

  • Doctrine of Trinity is such a foreign concept to our human mind and logic. When you read the bible (without knowing the doctrine of Trinity), and after you read it thoroughly and study it thoroughly and you close the bible and say, 'hmm, my God is the God of Trinity. He is one God in three persons." that seems unlikely because even today we cannot find a similar analogy to accurately describe Trinity. That is fine if it is explicitly taught or described in the bible, but it is not.

  • related to my second point, the doctrine of Trinity is the result of ingenuity of a human mind trying to resolve the tension between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. it is not the revelation from God concerning His nature.

Those things that you mentioned are explicitly taught in the bible.

The word ‘algebra’ does not need to appear in an algebra textbook for the book to teach algebra.

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Where exactly does the Bible teach hypostatic union again? It doesn’t even contain the word.

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it is not with the word “Trinity”. the problem is with the definition of Trinity.

The concepts of algebra are taught in the textbook without the word, too.

Thank you for your helpful clarification. But the does not change the fact that the Bible does not contain definitions of countless doctrines that were later systematised. The Bible, for example, does not contain a definition of the hypostatic union. Principally, because the Bible is not a theology book, it is a collection of texts that tell unified story.

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sorry for my ignorance. I have to look up the word. Wow, another big interesting subject. Jesus is fully God and fully man. So many angles to look. Another late doctrine development. Of course, the bible never explicitly taught this.

Yes. But my point is that just because the Bible doesn’t explicitly teach it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Much like Jesus isn’t explicitly mentioned in the Old Testament, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t there, right? :slightly_smiling_face:

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you are right. just because they are systematised do not meant that they are explicitly taught in the Bible. if it is not explicitly taught, then you better have the wisdom to choose whether to hold it or not.