My friend,
I don’t disagree with your articulation above. Saying that God is one and three is just a very simplified and common way of describing what you just did. 
3 Likes
The bible encourages fellowship It does not dictate it. Ultimately your faith is between you and God, it can be nothing else. You cannot force anyone to believe anything, even basic Christian dogma let alone the Structure of the Trinity. Having been preaching it for over thirty years I can tell you now that there is a wide diversity of thought as to how the Trinity is manifested and/ or possible or impossible. And it is all conjecture. Individuality does not destroy communion, it actually enhances it as per Romans 12 (et al). If an analogy or model helps a person then it cannot be a bad thing. Ice, water and steam is technically modalism, but if it helps then it still has a place. As long as people understand that there is no such thing as a perfect analogy, especially where God is concerned. However Paul states that the Nature of God is revealed in His creation so using elements of creation as analogies must be legitimate.
If you wish to cling to the mystery of the Trinity that is your prerogative but that does not make it so,
Richard
My friend,
It does not directly dictate it, no. But the writers of the Scriptures, and Jesus, assume that we will live together in community. When Jesus talks about Christians gathering together, He is assuming that we will. You can see this clearly in His language about loving one another, about sharing the Lord’s Supper together, about baptizing, about prayer, and about evangelism. You cannot participate in the sacraments, which are very important for spiritual health, without coming together with other Christians. And what good are the spiritual gifts, given to us by the Holy Spirit, if we don’t use them in Christian community?
I don’t disagree with this.
Of course not, friend. I never said that you could. What I said was that dogma is not always wrong, and that as Christians we need to do theology together. We don’t live in a theological vacuum.
Hence my saying it was a divine mystery, which you said caused more problems than it solved. That was my original point–that the Scriptures indicate that there is one God, but that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while all God, are distinct. Any articulation of this is difficult or, in your words, conjecture, hence why it is a divine mystery and why I believe that this position is the most helpful.
I don’t necessarily agree with this.
And this is why I don’t necessarily agree with the previously quoted statement. If it leads someone to Modalistic thinking about God, then it’s not actually helpful, my friend.
Concluding Addition: I feel that this conversation has gotten off the topic of the thread, so we should either continue it elsewhere or let it be as it is. Thank you for talking with me.
JW
Uniformitarianism
I have been smacked round the ear 'ole by the implications of uniformitarianism. Up until less than five years ago, already in my 60s, I was blithely ignorantly going with God triunely boogying for eternity and then creating the universe.
The substantive argument against God manifesting once in all infinite, eternal creation as a bloke, whilst the rest of infinity from eternity experiences nowt, not so much as a by your leave, is that it’s an infinitely complex anomaly in terms of uniformitarian Kolmogorov complexity, just as a multiverse is simpler than a single idiosyncratic universe:
An entire ensemble is often much simpler than one of its members. This principle can be stated more formally using the notion of algorithmic information content. The algorithmic information content in a number is, roughly speaking, the length of the shortest computer program that will produce that number as output. For example, consider the set of all integers . Which is simpler, the whole set or just one number? Naively, you might think that a single number is simpler, but the entire set can be generated by quite a trivial computer program, whereas a single number can be hugely long. Therefore, the whole set is actually simpler… (Similarly), the higher-level multiverses are simpler. Going from our universe to the Level I multiverse eliminates the need to specify initial conditions , upgrading to Level II eliminates the need to specify physical constants , and the Level IV multiverse eliminates the need to specify anything at all… A common feature of all four multiverse levels is that the simplest and arguably most elegant theory involves parallel universes by default. To deny the existence of those universes, one needs to complicate the theory by adding experimentally unsupported processes and ad hoc postulates: finite space , wave function collapse and ontological asymmetry. Our judgment therefore comes down to which we find more wasteful and inelegant: many worlds or many words. Perhaps we will gradually get used to the weird ways of our cosmos and find its strangeness to be part of its charm.
— Max Tegmark
As below, so above. And the above in the below.
That wedded to the dawning realization that reality wants for nothing. I was beguiled by William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument but the current Planck tock of universal indeterminate relativity was caused by the previous tick. And always has been, back through the Big Bang, cosmic inflation and the initial perturbation in the cosmic foamer; bubble blower.
Something has always made universes. 11 dimensional 25 transcendental fundamental physical constant universes. It is infinitely powerful and ordered. Is it purposeful?
It’s most postmodern to say that eternity is just a story and we have no idea. That’s just denial.
We have to stare in to the ultimately vertiginously worse pit than Nietzsche’s.
Beyond, surrounding its infinite depths, panenthesistic God stares back (because Jesus as testified by the early Church).
He’s a tad bigger than a single, anomalous, finite universe kinda guy.
The Economic Trinity - God as we know Him by His relationships, including with us.
… later!
1 Like
Wow. Thank you so much for that explanation. Gives me something to think about. And some new vocabulary words.
And thanks for this whole conversation. 
Since St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner, I thought it might be worth mentioning one of the earliest and best (IMHO) metaphors for the Trinity:
You can’t beat the classics! 
2 Likes
This concern is made defunct by modern physics which does away with the whole idea of absolute time. The temporal measure in the physical universe is a geometric property of the universe, beginning with the rest of the universe in the big bang. God can employ whatever measure of time He chooses without being subject to some measure of time outside Himself.
I find it amusing that you play with multiverses in your mind while being so absolute about impossibility of star travel. The separation in the former case is far more extreme and a far better subject for Sagan’s dragon in the garage argument. At least in the case of God, this dragon in the garage might take a bite out of you if it chooses.
1 Like
You, Mr Wagner Sir, are most welcome.
You asked previously, ‘So, are you saying that the Incarnation, the conception by the Holy Spirit via the virgin, Mary, did not happen?’.
No way.
I want, I need it to be true. As testified by the remarkable early Church.
I have issues with angels and prophecy is problematic. Not least because the future hasn’t happened. Separate conversations hopefully. And no, I’m not a complete nay sayer in a binary situation. I want to find a way above the line.
Cheers Josh.
I welcome all responses.
1 Like
I understand this well.
Indeed!
We’d have to discuss those elsewhere, I suspect. Talking about the Trinity, as wonderful as it has been, has gotten us off topic and I don’t believe that’s appropriate to continue on this thread.
I like to think that the prophecies about Jesus are not so problematic.
Cheers to you, Martin. I actually prefer Joshua. Not that I make a big deal about it, but it is my preference and I feel that people should probably know at some point.
It’s made ‘defunct’ by the bunk of the B-Theory of time, block time, the block universe, eternalism, perdurance necessitated in some great minds by the Relativity Of Simultaneity. A slight proliferation of entities there. All of past and future eternity of infinity are as real as now.
Yeaaaah.
Happy to be so defunct.
And what have the rational certainties of the multiverse and the impossibility of any form of interstellar communication got to do with each other? That’s an open question by the way. There may well be some sublime logical connection. As there is with our being alive to notice that the sun and moon - both drivers of evolution - subtend the same angle. A coincidence in time of hundreds of thousands of years over billions, 1:10,000 - 1:1,000 to give nice eclipses. As usual, always, no magic required.
My apologies Joshua.
No apology necessary!
Just letting you know (and everyone else who might be reading, by extension).
2 Likes
The problem with uniformitarianism, immutability is that it is false. The universe is constantly changing. It has a beginning, even if it is a multiverse.
In The One And the Many debate you have chosen the One, but for Reality to be really One, it would have to be purely static and really uniform. God is One, but God is also Many. That is the meaning of Jesus Christ and the Trinity.
God is both One and Many, even if this goes against Philosophy and Science. The only way to truly understand the universe is to reconcile the One and the Many using the And (Spirit.) See my essay on Academia.edu.
The change is changeless, not qualitative. The universe had a beginning in the multiverse: there is no beginning of beginnings, no end of them. Or asymptotic entropy and ending. There is no meaningful change. Universes come and go in dynamic uniformity.
God is one.
I AM WHO I AM, not Who humans think or want God to be.
God gets to choose Who God is. We do not.
Universes always were?
Choice? What’s that?
Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eḥad
Correct . .
God is One, but you have confused One with Simple. God is not Simple.
God is Trinity. God is One and Many.
You know. It’s that thing you did when you decided to type that. 
1 Like