Tercel

? I had an argument? I thought I was just trying to explain helpfully.

??? But the doctrine of the trinity says that the 3 persons ARE "distinct" entities and shouldn't be confused (or "confounded" ).

Where exactly did I say that 1+1+1=1?

Clutch

Keith, I find myself with Tercel here. How is this Ayn Rand soundbite relevant?

Presumably the trinitarian will nod and say, "Yes indeed, A is A. For instance, the trinity is the trinity."

I also don't understand the claim that "[a] thing cannot be other than it is", since the negation of this claim seems ubiquitously true. I intend to mow my lawn tomorrow, and have very high hopes for rendering it other than it is, since it is shaggy, untidy, and hurting my property values.

Perhaps you mean that a thing cannot be other than it is without changing. Which does sound true, all right, but carries no discernable payload, content-wise. How was it supposed to refute the trinity?

I think the doctrine of the trinity is bafflegab, myself, and would be keen to see a refutation of it from logical first principles (though how Causality gets in there I don't follow). But I don't see how you've given such a thing, nor made a serious run at it. If you have, at least, I'm not picking up on the implicit premises that make it all work.

Agnos1

Tercel,

Your argument is that "God" can be the object of mono-theism yet still encompass three distinct entities: The Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost (not to mention Nan ;^))

Here's just one example of your statements equalling "1+1+1=1"

Tercel: "...it is Christian teaching that the 3 Gods of the Christian Godhead will as one and act together in what they do."

Therefore each distinct and "not to be confused" separate entity adds up to ONE god. The Father + Jesus + HS = God. 1+1+1=1 is Monotheism with the Trinity thrown in, which of course is not logical and this is why the Trinity is wrong. If you admit that the three entities add up to multi-gods ("Our Image") 1+1+1=3 then you are committed to Pantheism. Or you can continue to be monotheistic but discard the Trinitarian aspect, and this would make some sense since the Bible does not speak of the Trinity; only Christian followers do centuries after the fact as I already showed you in previous posts.

Clutch makes some valid requests. Perhaps Tercel could explain how John 14 clarifies the Trinity issue. Why, for instance, did Jesus depend on "hearing" the truth from the Father? Wouldn't he just "know" the truth since he's God? This just goes to one first principle and that is IF Trinity is correct then WHY does John say this or that?

[ October 09, 2002: Message edited by: Agnos1 ]</p>

Keith Russell

Clutch said:
I find myself with Tercel here. How is this Ayn Rand soundbite relevant?

The concept of the Trinity isn't, as I understand it, the idea that we have three Gods. In fact, again as I understand it, it was designed to allow three distinct concepts (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) that would dictate polytheism, to somehow transmogrify into a monotheistic concept of 'God'.

Clutch: Presumably the trinitarian will nod and say, "Yes indeed, A is A. For instance, the trinity is the trinity."

That's fine, just like a baseball team is composed of a number of individual players. The 'team' is a group; the individual players, together, are a group, so 'the team' doesn't contradict 'the group of individual players'.

Yet, the Trinity does contradict three individual, dinstinct dieties. The Trinity is, supposedly, not three disctinct 'Gods', but one 'God' comprised of three distinct entities. This, as well as I am able to grasp it, is a contradiction of Artistotle's (as well as Rand's) interpretation of the Law of Identity.

Clutch: I also don't understand the claim that "[a] thing cannot be other than it is", since the negation of this claim seems ubiquitously true. I intend to mow my lawn tomorrow, and have very high hopes for rendering it other than it is, since it is shaggy, untidy, and hurting my property values.

Keith: Your grass cannot be shorter until you cut it. It cannot be other than what it is; until you cut it, it continues to grow in accordance with its genetics, the environment of your yard, etc. Grass has as one of its properties that it can be cut, and when you cut it is responds, again, in accordance with its genetic structure, and the environment of your yard--now with the addition of your mower.

Clutch: Perhaps you mean that a thing cannot be other than it is without changing. Which does sound true, all right, but carries no discernable payload, content-wise. How was it supposed to refute the trinity?

Keith: A thing has to act in accordance with its nature; and if a thing changes, it still acts in accordance with that nature. Your grass, when cut, doesn't become strawberries. The tops of the blades of grass, when cut, don't evaporate, or change colours. The concept of the Trinity, however, is supposed to somehow alter the individual nature of the three essences which comprise it, to become 'one' thing.

If one has three small glasses of water, and one pours them all into a larger glass, one no longer says one has 'three pieces' of water; the combination of the three is still described as 'a glass of water'. One cannot distinguish the three original portions; one now has one unit. The Trinity violates the Law of Identity by claiming that the Trinity retains the individual identity of its parts, while losing the identity of its parts.

Clutch: I think the doctrine of the trinity is bafflegab, myself, and would be keen to see a refutation of it from logical first principles (though how Causality gets in there I don't follow).

Keith: Sorry if I didn't live up to your standards. How would you refute the Trinity?

Clutch: But I don't see how you've given such a thing, nor made a serious run at it.

Keith: Fair enough.

Clutch: If you have, at least, I'm not picking up on the implicit premises that make it all work.

Keith: Again, fair enough.

B. H. Manners

Here is BH's country bumpkin understanding of the Trinity concept:

There is one congress but many congressmen. The Godhead is the equivalent to congress and Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are equivalent to congressmen.

[ October 10, 2002: Message edited by: BH ]</p>

Kenny

Convenient or not, it is true. Just as there is more than one way to skin a cat, there is more than one way to deny the doctrine of the Trinity. Some of those who call themselves Christians but deny the Trinity do so by asserting that Jesus is not God (such as the Jehovah’s witnesses). Others, however, affirm the divinity of Jesus, but they deny that Jesus (as well as the Holy Spirit) is a distinct person from the Father (a modern day example of this would be Oneness Pentecostals). Both views are considered heretical by mainline Christian denominations.

Well, in terms of classic Christian doctrine, the word “relinquished” is somewhat problematic. The doctrine of Christ’s dual nature asserts that in the incarnation Jesus took on the additional nature of humanity while still retaining His divine nature to its full extent. In fact Christian doctrine asserts that since Jesus rose as a glorified human being and physically ascended into heaven, this state of affairs continues even to this day. Jesus is still both fully human (though glorified) and fully divine, and will continue to be for all eternity.

Now, it is also true that in some sense Jesus did “empty” Himself in His incarnation prior to his resurrection. But the sense in which this is typically understood by orthodox Christian theologians is that He “laid aside” certain privileges and powers he had as deity, but still retained those privileges and powers in latent form. There are certain facts that the pre-resurrection Jesus did not know, for example (such as the date of His second coming), but this is not because Jesus ceased to be omniscient. He still had access to such knowledge if He so desired it, but He willingly laid that knowledge aside. Of course, the precise relationship between Christ’s human nature and his divine nature remains a mystery.

I don’t see how Jesus’ being human or having (self) limited knowledge precludes the possibility of His knowing about his divine status. I don’t know when Jesus actually “realized” Who he truly was. Perhaps there wasn’t a full realization of His divinity until His baptism. Scripture does not provide sufficient data to address this question so all one can do is speculate. But, Scripture does indicate that the human Jesus always had a close and unique relationship with the Father, so I would imagine that any realizations which came to Him were gleaned through that relationship as the Father chose to reveal more to Him.

No. First, as Tercel has already pointed out, the notion that the doctrine of the Trinity was “invented” in 381 A.D. is historically absurd. That may be when it was given its fullest and most explicit creedal confession, but we see proto-Trinitarian affirmations and creedal statements as early as the undisputed Pauline letters in the NT itself, and we also see them in the early church Fathers right on through the second century. Second, it is true that an explicit fully developed doctrine of the Trinity is not to be found in any single place in the NT, but that’s not a problem because the Trinity is a synthetic doctrine. Its function is to synthesize and (to a certain extent) make sense of the Scriptural data concerning the nature of Christ which we find scattered throughout the NT. So it doesn’t matter if one can point to a specific passage and say “Here’s where the doctrine of the Trinity is laid out.” All that matters is that one be able to show that all the various aspects of the doctrine are represented in the NT. Finally, as far as the “Roman pantheism” charge is concerned, I think that New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has made a good case in his book What Saint Paul Really Said that Paul’s proto-Trinitarian doctrine borrows heavily from Jewish categories (such as Jewish Wisdom tradition in which divine Wisdom is both identified with and distinguished from God and from Jewish tradition concerning the Spirit which likewise is both identified with and distinguished from God), rather than pagan ones.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ October 13, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Kenny

I fail to see the point. Since I gave an analogy for illustrative (and not even argumentative) purposes, I fail to see how the fact that my analogy differs in some respects from the situation it is being compared to (as all analogies do) is supposed to count against the way I used it. Actually, your points here only further illustrate the point I was making – that there are different meanings attached to the word “greater” and that A can be greater than B in one sense but not in other senses. In case at hand, the Father is greater than Jesus in terms of the organizational relationships with in the Trinity but not in terms of orders of being.

Sorry you feel that way, but thanks for saying that I’m smart

God Bless,
Kenny

[ October 12, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]

[ October 12, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Kenny

It seems to me that what you are calling the “Law of Identity” here is merely the Law of Non-contradiction: A cannot be not-A in the same sense and in the same relationship. But the doctrine of the Trinity does not explicitly (you may argue that it does so implicitly if your like) assert anything that would violate this law. The doctrine of the Trinity does not assert that Jesus is both the Father and not the Father, for instance, or that God is one being and three beings. The doctrine of the Trinity asserts that God is one being and three persons; thus, it is being asserted that God is one and three in differing respects, not in the same respect. The mere fact that there is nothing else fully analogous to this situation in our daily experience does not mean that it is contradictory. If you argue the doctrine is contradictory, then it is incumbent on you to demonstrated how.

As far as I understand this, I agree wholeheartedly. I fail to see how this is incompatible with the doctrine of the Trinity.

I don’t know how to make sense of this. I am both myself (in terms of my essential nature) and many other things as well (such as a husband, a student, a brother, a son, etc.) So indeed I am “myself” (in essence) and “something else” in addition to myself simultaneously.* I agree that I cannot be myself and not-myself simultaneously, but that just brings us back to the Law of Non-contradiction.

God Bless,
Kenny

*Note: I am not making any analogies to the Trinity here, merely seeking clarification on Keith's point.

[ October 12, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Tercel

Agnos are you actually wanting help in understanding the Trinity or are you just trying to enlighten silly Christians like me as to the "truth" about Christian doctrine?

An interesting point of view. What's wrong with the more standard idea that the doctrine of the Trinity is the result of later Christians trying to understand what the Bible writers and early Christian thought on the subject?

Hmm, "starting from" is slightly misleading. If Matt 28:19 had never existed, I cannot believe the doctrine of the trinity would be different, the are too many other related bible verses.

Some straight factual history for once as opposed to interpretation.

Hmm, I'm wary of the connitations of "adopted". If you think that an entire religious group that's been going for almost 300 years is going to suddenly "adopt" a completely new belief about God...
Just imagine if the top Muslim leaders held a council and "adopted" the belief that their God was a Trinity.
Given the lack of riots across the Christian world, I would suggest that the average Joe Christian already believed something close at the time of the formal declaration in 325.

I take it you mean "why does Matthew say to baptise in the name of the Trinity, while Acts has only Jesus?". Well, a number of possible reasons come to mind: 1. They are independent traditions. 2. Matthew's tradition is a later development resulting from the Trinitarian belief of the Christians at the Gospel's time of writing. 3. The verse in Matthew is a later insertion. 4. The writer of Acts assumes his readers are already aware of the Baptismal formula and simply doesn't bother to repeat it.
I'm sure there's other possible reasons too.

How exactly is it not a "creed"? My dictionary defines a creed as a statement of beliefs, and it certainly looks like one of those to me. I know it was not composed by St Athanasius - it was named after him as he was one of the more famous defenders of the orthodox view of the Trinity.

I'd have to agree really, I don't think much of the Athanasian creed at all. I have more than a little objection to it condemning people to hell for not believing it. (I'm a liberal) And I think the creed tends too far towards meaninglessness and incoherency. That all said, I see nothing wrong with the orthodox view of the Trinity that the creed is trying to present.

Agnos1

Tercel, I don't think you're silly and will get back to you soon. I appreciate your effort in addressing these points, believe me.

Understanding the history of any belief system is important for the critical thinker. Beliefs don't just happen in a vacuum, so obviously later Christians took many things "into account" when "adopting" certain views. No-one questions the Roman influence of on Christian beliefs. Do some digging.

Yours
Agnos1