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The Trinity is, no doubt, one of the most problematic doctrines in Christendom. Most of the Trinitarian formulations are extra-biblical in nature and involve concepts foreign to Scripture, such as “substance,” which was borrowed from Hellenic substance metaphysics. The problem is that the Bible is not a book of metaphysics or systematic theology. The Bible actually says very little about how God is built. All we have are snap shots that often conflict. In some passages Christ is identified with God, in others, no. That’s why the fathers looked to Hellenic metaphysics, to put together a systematic picture of God as he is in his own nature. The Bible presents a highly anthropomorphic picture of God, attributing emotion and also change to God. The Greeks, however, enshrined the immune and the immutable. Quite a contrast. The fathers went on Hellenic standards of perfection, which enshrined the immune and the immutable. God was defined as a wholly simple, immutable, nonrelational being, a monad. Then they turned around and tried to introduce the highly complex, relational machinery of the Trinity into this monad. The result was confusion and contradiction. Si I firmly believe that if we are to make any real progress with the Trinity, we need to rethink our basic model of God.
Why do we need to make progress with the Trinity?
At first there was one God. Then certain men crept in and changed God into a Binity. Some decades later, the Holy Spirit was added to complete the Trinity and men have been arguing over that since. Is this not foolish? Changing God into an idol or an image born from a mere human’s mind is not a good thing.
God declares himself. The spirit of man cannot fathom God. Why even try? Just believe what God has revealed about himself. That is being led by God’s own spirit.
These are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
That isn’t the way it happened, t8. What did go down is that teh early fathers, working with Scripture, received, from the texts, strong implications that there was a Trinity. The prologue to Jn. is one exam[le. Also, Christ says, “I and the Father are one.” At the same time, there were biblical passages that did seem to contradict the notion Christ was God, such as those stressing Christ’s subordinate statue to the Father. The problem was how to reconcile these. Is the Divine that rules in Heaven identical with teh Divine that makes it’s presence felt on earth? That was the big question. Largely, the Holy Spirit was ignored at first, as they were having too much trouble deciding about the Christ event and so had no time to discuss a more ubiquitous sense of God’s presence. So, early Christians were often mocked for being “ditheists,” not tritheists. Augustine himself said that very little had been written on the Spirit. Gregory of Naizanzus said that there was great confusion over the Spirit, that some considered it God, others energy, and still others did not know what to think,” out of reverence to Scripture, which makes no clear statement.” Although Trinitarians are fond of saying the Nicene Creed is one of the finest early affirmations of the Trinity, much depends on what version of the Creed you read. The original only mentioned the Holy Spirit, said absolutely nothing about whether it was Deity or not. The section we currently have on the Spirit was not added until around 500 AD. While it implies the Spirit is Deity, it never comes out and says so, never says the Spirit is “very God of God, of one substance with the Father,” etc. I hold the Spirit is God, in that he Bible early speaks of God’s Spirit, whereby God’s omnipresence is denoted.
As a theologian, I have to do justice to both sides of teh equation. I do so by acknowledging that the Trinity has always been a very complicated matter, that the Bible is ambiguous here. Those who affirm the trinity have ample Scripture to back them, and those who deny the Trinity also find biblical passages to back their position. I think both sides get hung up on the whole question of whether God is omnipresent, largely because both sides followed the dualistic, classical model of God.
Hi Hoghead,
Yes men have wandered far into the marshes of confusion trying to understand God with their carnal minds.
They pile insult upon insult to their Maker in doing so.
Come out of her.
@hoghead1
That isn’t the way it happened, t8. What did go down is that teh early fathers, working with Scripture, received, from the texts, strong implications that there was a Trinity.
The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies. Initially, both the requirements of monotheism inherited from the Hebrew Scriptures and the implications of the need to interpret the biblical teaching to Greco-Roman religions seemed to demand that the divine in Christ as the Word, or Logos, be interpreted as subordinate to the Supreme Being. An alternative solution was to interpret Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three modes of the self-disclosure of the one God but not as distinct within the being of God itself. The first tendency recognized the distinctness among the three, but at the cost of their equality and hence of their unity (subordinationism); the second came to terms with their unity, but at the cost of their distinctness as “persons” (modalism). It was not until the 4th century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons.
The Council of Nicaea in 325 stated the crucial formula for that doctrine in its confession that the Son is “of the same substance [homoousios] as the Father,” even though it said very little about the Holy Spirit. Over the next half century, Athanasius defended and refined the Nicene formula, and, by the end of the 4th century, under the leadership of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (the Cappadocian Fathers), the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since. It is accepted in all of the historic confessions of Christianity,
Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Trinity-Christianity
Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” – John 20:28
Thomas was affirming Christ’s earlier teaching to him that to see and believe in him was to see and believe in the Father. Christ declared and explained the Father in terms of everything he said and did. He is the way to the Father and through him we know the Father. Christ explained that they saw the Father when they saw him because the Father abiding in him did the works.
Since seeing Christ meant seeing the Father, Thomas said t, “My Lord and my God.” Thomas is confessing what the entire Gospel of John is about.
Christ made the Father known to the people of the world. The only begotten declares and explains the Father. For that reason, to see Christ is to see the Father. To see the Lord Jesus is to see the Father, our God, and Jesus Christ’s God. In the same way when other see Christ in us, it does not make us literally Christ, but rather Christ by the Holy Spirit working through us.
Blessed are you Thomas. Because you have SEEN, you have believed. – John 20:29
He who believes in me, does not believe in me but in Him who sent me.
He who sees me SEES Him who sent me. – John 12:44-45
That is the meaning of, “My Lord and my God.”
Hi P and N,
You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
That is the confession of Peter and mine too.
To understand the words of Thomas go to Jn 14.
You see he was in the audience when the Lord said
”He who hs seen me has seen the Father…Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?”
Compare 2Cor 5.19
”namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself”
Thomas listened well and he said when he saw Jesus.
”My Lord
AND
My God”
Hi Planks,
Looks like you understand John 20:28 : )
You are right, you must conflate
what John said, with what
Jesus said to Phillip.____________
God bless
Ed JHi Plankandnails. Thanks for your input on this subject. I tend to agree that two are being referred to. And that he is the image of the invisible God.
I feel sometimes God was talking thru His Son. I don’t know what passages or book it was in. I’ll have to do some research.
God speaks through his servants by inspiration. I don’t think he speaks through them in the same manner he used a donkey. The latter is a type of possession where God directly speaks. In the case of scripture and the disciples, you can see that the vessel is speaking as them, but the words are God’s will or message.
Hi T8,
So when Jesus spoke about rebuilding this temple in 3 days in Jn 2 were the words from him alone?
The Spirit of the Father speaks through us when we are called in front of a judge he told us.
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