Spin-off Trinity discussion from mind, soul, spirit thread

Friend,

I don’t think this is necessarily the case. I’ve read tons of work written about the Trinity and seen a lot of different articulations and explanations of the Trinity. In my opinion, these can do more harm than good. To say that the Trinity should be articulated as mere functions, for example, is not something I am sure the Church Fathers would agree with.

Hence my saying that Trinitarian doctrine is a divine mystery–because ultimately, I believe that it is. A divine mystery revealed to us in Scripture, similar to Jesus being fully God and fully man, similar to God’s sovereignty and human freedom and responsibility. We can attempt to articulate these things, and perhaps this can, indeed, be helpful. But I’ve found that such an attempt is incredibly difficult and fraught with potential pitfalls.

And I’m not supporting Modalism, just in case you thought I was. Never hurts to cover all bases.

I appreciate your response, of course.

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If there’s a new dialectically superior, more parsimonious argument against uniformitarianism, immutability, I’m all eyes.

And step.

I don’t see the economic Trinity as an analogy for God the Eternally Begotten Son also becoming the Only Divinely Begotten Human Son of God. They are not comparable mysteries. And the latter is not necessary, whereas the former is if the economic Trinity is the ontological. If God the Son became the Son of God as well as remaining the inseparable, indivisible Second Person of God, He did at the same time as He became the incarnate Child of God on countless worlds. And always has. Because immutability. But that is mysterious to the point of losing meaning. A Person of God also becoming a growing infinity of people.

And twirl.

Whereas a growing infinity of people having a divine nature is more semantic.

And people, persons are real. They arise in brains. Naturally. Orthodoxy says Jesus was one person. With two natures. Not a Person and a person.

I came up with a metaphor or two over the past 20 years that only work for me I’m sure. At first I had the concept of a window opening on the divine, initially the size of a human ovum. Over 30 years it grew to the size, the person of a man always with full divine light shining through that growing, enculturated, human capacity. It abruptly closed and three days later opened wide to infinity. But the initial window is not unique, as C. S. Lewis knew. There have always been such windows. Incarnations on every inhabited world. On each of the infinity. From eternity. And the re-opened windows manifest on the infinite Second Person gloriously. This is where it gets really absurd I’m sure: God the Son an infinite octopus covered in an infinity of chromatophores, each a glorified Child of God person still of two natures. Local, only begotten, to each world.

And fling!

That’s how God manifests. His nature through people. Some, one per inhabited world, 100% The rest of us much less.

YMMV

Cha-cha-cha.

Based on my understanding, uniformitarianism does not necessitate an eternal multiverse, does it? Is that even the thrust of your statement here?

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Please clarify.

And step.

Sounds reasonable to me, I think.

I don’t think the cosmos is eternal, so this is not an issue for me.

Twirled.

I completely agree.

God is magnificent, truly.

Flung.

So, are you saying that the Incarnation, the conception by the Holy Spirit via the virgin, Mary, did not happen?

Cha-cha-cha. And bow.

Our disagreement really does seem to stem from our difference of opinion about the eternal nature of the cosmos. Even then, I feel like we are really talking past each other due to semantics. It seems like we agree on just about everything we’re talking about.

Why should what anyone else believed make any difference? Paul almost certainly believed the world to be flat.

The nature of God is. it does not rely on what any human thinks it is. The Trinity is a human concept derived from trying to rectify apparent physical and temporal impossibilities revealed in Scripture. It would be foolish to state that anyone has got the perfect understanding of the nature of God. God, by definition is beyond our comprehension so the Trinity cannot be a perfect or an exact understanding. It may be the “best guess”, or even Orthodoxy, but that does not mean that we cannot have our own “take” on it, or the nature of God in general.
On the TF forum I was ridiculed for suggesting that God could be more than three persons. The Trinity incorporates what we know, but surely God is bigger and greater than anything man can conceive or define? Before Christ came to earth the Trinity was meaningless and not needed, at least in human belief or understanding. If God reveals more of Himself that understanding may have to change as Science and discovery forces our view of the world to change.

There is a reason that the anathema was removed from the Nicene creed. Dogmatism is still wrong, no matter how orthodox. Faith must always be personal, not dictated.

Richard

Well that depends. The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is that the Father, Son, and Holy spirit are distinct persons but only one God – not that they are just functions, or roles , or modes but actual persons. Now you CAN say that these 3 persons play three different functions or roles. That is fine. But saying that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not distinct persons is considered Modalism and heretical. And it is not a really so much a matter of dogma but a matter of the definition of the Christian religion as distinct from other religions, and point of heresy is not to allow people to hijack Christianity for their own personal agenda. I am all for complete religious freedom and tolerance as long as people are honest about it. And I don’t agree with any religion having control or monopoly on God as if they can speak for Him. But they don’t speak for other religions either – that would not be right.

God is not one and three. That is not the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is that God is one. God is one despite the fact that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons, and yet the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. The number three really doesn’t come into it. God could be an infinite number of persons and we only know three of them. I think it is typical human arrogance to think they know all there is of God.

Friend,

Because the Church Fathers were the first to articulate the Trinitarian doctrine and establish it as Orthodoxy. Historical Theology is an important facet of interpreting and understanding the Scriptures, of doing theology. We do not exist in a theological vacuum–we have inherited the faith from those who have come before us.

I agree. That was my point about articulating the doctrine of the Trinity, friend. Hence why it’s a divine mystery.

But our “own take” can lead us and others away from the faith. As Christians, we are meant to exist in community, and to do theology in community.

Progressive revelation, yes.

Not in all cases. Christianity’s core is dogma–the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Yes, you’re right. It must be personal. But we do not exist in a theological vacuum and Christians need to exist in community with one another.

Thank you for sharing your views on things, my friend.

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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. :slight_smile:

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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. :slight_smile:

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!

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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. :slight_smile:

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:

image

You can’t beat the classics! :wink:

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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.

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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.

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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! :slight_smile:
Just letting you know (and everyone else who might be reading, by extension).

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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.