reniaa

Jehovah's witnesses are one of I think 2/3 christian religions that don't subscribed to the trinity, believing in a single God aka Jehovah/jahweh who is a total separate being to jesus his "only begotten son" who currently sits on his right hand and the holy spirit is jehovah's dynamic energy.

The Unitarian church also subscribes to a single god but I think currently hold jesus as an exemplar and prophet but not god's son

Oneness pentacostals believe in one god but still see jesus as god on earth but that he becomes God completely again when he was resurrected so no trinity but it's a little bit greyer than other two.

dog-on

Mormon Jesus is a separate personage from Heavenly Father, but does act in unity of purpose with him and his ghost buddy on the heavenly council.

reniaa

I wasn't sure whether to class mormons as a christian faith as they have their own writings which they refer to over and above the bible for authority hmmm.

Lucretius

The best way to explain the concept of the Trinity is to compare it to a shamrock.

A shamrock has 3 distinct leaves yet is still one plant ,therefore God is small and green and there are lots of Him in Ireland.

(Apologies to the writers of the film Nuns on the Run )

RareBird

In my view the "trinity" is not a god phenomenon representing three personages of god but a human phenomenon--a solemn reckoning of past, future and present made at times of grave decision. Instead of calling the past the past, it has been "characterized" poetically as "the father"--and done so typically male as would be the tradition of ancient culture. The future is characterized as "the son". Between past and future--or father and son--is the present where the spirit lives in the moment of NOW.

I don't know this to be the true foundation of the trinity but it makes sense to me that at grave times of dire decision a person would have to call deeply upon the past and think with extra sight about the future in order to exercise spirit which does honor to the past and future in the present. But if you start trying to get this across to primitive people using this father, son and spirit metaphor their natural tendencies to think hierarchically and project power and authority into symbology may wind up coming back as it incorrectly does IMO--as the father, son and holy spirit meaning three cockamamie personages of god which are even harder to understand instead of the meaningful framework for spiritual reckoning that it was probably meant to be (as merely seeing the self at a critical crossroads where the past and future need be brought to bear in the mind so that good actions can be decided in the now).

Toto

It used to be that you could say that Unitarians believed in at most one god. But with the rise of neo-pseudo-paganism in UU churches, you can now say that Unitarians believe in one god, more or less. Or whatever works for you.

Roland

You mean like "My Lord and...oh my God!"?

gstafleu

Recalling from memory a passage in Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus," the only place where the concept of the Trinity appears in the NT is the Johannine Comma. As you can see from the Wikipedia entry, it's authenticity is rather in question. For example, when Erasmus made the first "edition" of his Greek NT, he didn't include the comma. This had theologians twist their gowns in a knot, as with that the justification for the Trinity was gone. Erasmus answered them to the effect that the comma didn't seem to be there in the (older) manuscripts, but if they (the theologians) could produce a manuscript that had it, he would put it in. So the theologians produced a manuscript.

As I remember from previous discussions on this forum, the first mention of the Trinity is by Tertullian (ca. 155–230). This makes it a "catholic" concept only in the sense that at that time (or actually a little later, after Constantine had done his bullneckdozing), the catholic church was the "only" one--at least protestantism didn't exist yet.

As an added note, the whole concept is really unnecessary, even from a Christian point of view. After all, the idea of a god manifesting himself in various forms (Zeus as a bull and a golden shower e.g.) was well known. So why the Christians felt the necessity for the trinity remains a bit of a mystery, at least to me.

Gerard Stafleu

Salam

Without the concept, the idea of Jesus carried peoples sins will not survive. He must be devine to do such a thing.

douglas

I remember reading somewhere (Karen Armstrong's "History of God" maybe) that the trinity was originally established as a way of visualizing an otherwise ineffable being. In your mind, picture...

a father
a son
a holy spirit/ghost

If you contemplate these things in just the right way (while putting your left index finger aside your nose) then the correct image of God will be held in a kind of suspension between these three concepts. Take any one of the elements away and the image is lost.

There's also something about the magic number 3 that plays into all this, but I'm getting in over my head.