What I love about the doctrine of the Trinity are as follows (many are ironically reasons why other people don’t like it).
The doctrine of the Trinity is not actually in the Bible. At most it is a conclusion we draw logically from what is in the Bible and we can say it is the view of God most consistent with all of the Bible taken together. But since it is not actually in there, it punches a hole through ridiculous notions that all truths must be found in the Bible in order to be accepted by Christians.
This gives us a picture of God which is nothing like human beings, so this is not a God made in our own image. And yet it is a God who is more than we are rather than less – a trans-personal God rather than some fragment of a person like a cosmic mind, energy, moral law, force, or principle of love.
It is logically messy and difficult to understand which reminds me a great deal of the way in which quantum physics challenges many of our naïve notions of the way things “should be.”
It helps a tiny bit in building a bridge to polytheism and thus does not give quite the basis for the kind of irrational hostility to other religions (often characterized as polytheist) that we find in some monotheistic religions.
Things I do not like about the doctrine of the Trinity.
The tendency of many to overstate the doctrine as a limitation of God to the number three, which I see no justification for anywhere in scripture. The doctrine is simply that the Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons but only one God. The only limitation here is our own knowledge of God and I see no reason to limit God Himself to that. I believe in a God who is infinite, not a God who is three. In the discussion above we have observed that our knowledge of the Holy Spirit is somewhat lacking and perhaps tongue in cheek we can say this is more of an understanding of God as two and a half. For me this suggests even more strongly that these three persons of the Trinity is just a matter of the limitations of our own knowledge of God.
The tendency to employ some kind of modalism in making even more of the number three – even to saying it is like we are mind, body, and soul, or something like that. I see this as a total distortion. This problem follows logically from the previous problem, for if God is three then people want an explanation for why it is three and not some other number.
Agreed. Good theology must be so precise with its words that it borders on the pedantic. In first year Christian Doctrine, our lecturer set us a task for the following lesson “Come up with an illustration or analogy to explain the Trinity to a small child.” Simple.
Next lecture we took it is turns to present our analogy after which our lecturer pointed out which ancient heresies we had inadvertently foisted on this poor hypothetical child. By then end of class all out well thought out ‘perfect’ illustrations lay tatters. Her point was simply but effective: analogies for the Trinity don’t work, don’t use them. That lecture still shapes how I teach the Trinity some 12 years later.
I wrote a chapter about this once… quite a few years ago. Tertullian coined the word trinitas, so before him (155-240) it’s not quite right to say anyone was a Trinitarian.
But I think @LM77’s comments are right that functionally people were Trinitarian. And I think this is one of the best examples of how practice shaped or informed theory in the lives of the first generations of believers. They didn’t have the concepts for explaining their experience, but they couldn’t deny that experience of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The earliest formulations of doctrine include these, even though they don’t explain them. It took a few centuries (and the invention of some more terms) for Christian theology to explain what was experienced.
It would probably be fair to say that a lot of them were at least somewhat confused or muddled in their thinking. Most understood that Jesus was a human like themselves, yet that that God has somehow became flesh, visited us, and reconciled us to Himself through Jesus. Many were probably not sure how to reconcile these two propositions, but were probably also content to simply abide with the mystery.
They were thus equally unclear how there could be just one God, and yet Jesus spoke of Himself and the Father as both one and distinct - and then talked about this “Holy Spirit” or “Comforter” as well. Again, most were content just to abide with the mystery.
Given that we are talking here about things that really are beyond our capacity to fully understand, I am not at all sure that we can fault them for being content to abide with the mystery. This apparently worked for most of them just fine.
The end of Matthew’s gospel has Jesus telling the disciples to baptise in the name of F,. S and HS, and Paul sometimes makes reference to God is a way that. could support a Trinitarian formulation. It left the church with puzzles how to fit it all together that led to the later definitions.
Paul Tillich, very liberal, in his Systematic Theology, defended the Trinity on the grounds that the formulations were necessary to safeguard the doctrine that the presence of the divine and the New Being to be given to us had come into the world.
One of my reasons for belief, came from existentialism. For I was definitely a fan, particularly of Camus. It might seem strange given all his scathing criticisms of Christianity but from the ashes of Camus’ criticism of Christianity and theism, I found a better understanding of theism which could rise like a phoenix from them. After all, what I had from childhood was nearly always criticism of Christianity rather seeing anything of value in it.
The link to this topic is in my search for an understanding of God which best serves that purpose of a faith that life is worth living. This is enhanced by a God who can interact with us more completely and thus a personal God with at least the same capacities for relationship that we have ourselves – to be starkly contrasted with a cold universe of mathematical laws which cares nothing about us. In the doctrine of the Trinity we have a God with an excess of personhood rather than any lack of it as we see in many other notions of God. This is perhaps one reason why Paul Tillich’s notion of the God as the “ground of being” doesn’t appeal to me very much – far more philosophical and conceptual than personal.
At the same time, the skepticism and criticism many have had for the idea of a personal God (a group including many I have admired like Albert Einstein) is also answered by the doctrine of the Trinity. To many our notions of a personal God seemed like we were anthropomorphizing the universe and projecting an image of ourselves upon it. But the God of the Trinitarian doctrine is not a God made in our own image at all – nor like anything else in our experience either – so strange and contrary to our common sense expectations of the way things should be, that it reminds me of quantum physics. And that is one of the things infuses a sense of reality into it – yeah because reality IS very much like that, contrary to what we expect and what seems sensible and plausible. It stretches our rationality rather than just reaffirming the limits of our usual complacent use of reason.
There are hints of polytheism among the early Christians including the New Testament passages.
1 John 3:9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.
Greek “seed” is the word for sperm. This is saying that people born of God have Gods seed implying divine nature.
1 Peter 1: 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed , but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
Same concept.
2 Peter 1: 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divinenature , having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
No this is false.Stop spreading false facts.This is not polytheism.Its the doctrine of Theosis in the Eastern Orthodox church.Also this is not a historical approach rather than the thoughts of the writter.
What’s the difference between polytheism and theosis? We are talking many Gods existing in both instances, are we not? Or are we just expanding the Trinity in which case why call it Trinity?
Explain to me what theosis is.Or you know stop spreading lies.Also maybe read a thing or two about the doctrine.They werent that naive to have polytheistic ideas in their one God religion.Its irational to even say that
Also finding articles spread over the internet are not any different than YEC facts.So actuall studies and historical facts could be helpfull instead of random pastor beliefs
Maybe if that was a uni page i would be interested.After i read that i realized not only the limited knowledge he had of the doctrine but also the lack of evidence or historical ones have
Theosis:Become like what God intended .Free of sin,but no God.Anyone saying he can become God is anathema and should be carefull of spreading fake words.
Theosis (“deification,” “divinization”) is the process of a worshiper becoming free of hamartía (“missing the mark”), being united with God, beginning in this life and later consummated in bodily resurrection. For Orthodox Christians, Théōsis (see 2 Pet. 1:4) is salvation. Théōsis assumes that humans from the beginning are made to share in the Life or Nature of the all-Holy Trinity. Therefore, an infant or an adult worshiper is saved from the state of unholiness ( hamartía — which is not to be confused with hamártēma “sin”) for participation in the Life ( zōé , not simply bíos ) of the Trinity — which is everlasting.
This is not to be confused with the heretical (apothéōsis) - " Deification in God’s Essence ", which is imparticipable.
Alternative spellings: Theiosis, Theopoiesis
I think you are confused with Theosis and apotheosis
Ok but this is what Athanasius said from my link above:
First, we’ll start with these quotes from Athanasius who was the Bishop of Alexandria and lived between 296 and 373 A.D.
“The Word was made flesh in order that we might be made gods. … Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life.”
“For the Son of God became man so that we might become God .”
I suggest it might be a translation issue and God was meant with a small g. Maybe
@bluebird1 or @Vinnie can help i think since they putted great answers above
If so i really dont have another explanation.What i do know is from historical facts that he didnt believed he could become a god.Only Mormons hold that belief and only gnostics had a similar one.Pagans didnt .At least in my Ancient Greek religion which im very fluent ive never encountered such a doctrine