What is the Trinity?

Here is part of a statement of faith that I have been using for a couple of years.


B. The True God

We believe in one living and true God who is the Creator of heaven and earth;
who is eternal, almighty, unchangeable, infinitely powerful, wise, just and
holy.

We believe that the one God eternally exists in three Persons: the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit; and that these three are one God, co-equal and
co-eternal, having precisely the same nature and attributes, and worthy of
precisely the same worship, confidence, and obedience. Matthew 3:16, 17;
Matthew 28:19, 20; Mark 12:29; John 1:14; Acts 5:3, 4; II Corinthians 13:14.

C. God the Father

We believe in God the Father, Creator and Sustainer of all things, perfect in
holiness, wisdom, power and love. We believe that He concerns Himself
mercifully in the affairs of men; that He hears and answers prayer; that He
sent His Son into the world; that He saves from sin and death all who come
to Him through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Genesis 1:1; Psalms 7:9;
Matthew 5:48; John 3:16; Acts 13:17-25; Acts 14:15-17; Acts 17:24-28.

D. The Person and Work of Jesus Christ

We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, that He was conceived of the Holy
Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, lived a sinless life, and is fully God and fully
Man. We believe that our redemption has been accomplished solely by the
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was made to be sin, and made a curse for
us, dying in our place that we might be forgiven. We believe that He died not
only for our sins, but also for the sins of the entire world. We believe that He
was raised from the dead in bodily form and that He ascended into heaven,
where He sits at the right hand of God the Father interceding for us.

We believe in the personal, bodily, imminent and pre-millennial return of our
Lord Jesus Christ for His Church and His subsequent millennial reign over
restored Israel and the kingdoms of the world. Luke 1:30-35; 2:7; John 1:1-4;
Romans 9-11; Philippians 2:5-11; Colossians 1:13-19; Hebrews 1:1-3; I Peter
3:18; I Corinthians 15:3-7; Hebrews 7:25; Acts 1:11, 15:14-17; I
Thessalonians 4:13-18; I John 2:2.

E. The Holy Spirit

We believe that the Holy Spirit is not merely an influence, but a divine Person;
that He is the source and power of all acceptable worship and service and is
our abiding Counselor and Helper. We believe that the baptism of the Holy
Spirit occurs at the moment of conversion and is that act whereby believers
are united with Christ as part of His body; that the Holy Spirit permanently
indwells all believers in Christ; that He will never depart from the Church nor
from the weakest believer; that by His indwelling the believer is enabled to
live a godly life. John 14:16,17; 16:13-15; Acts 1:8; 5:3,4; Romans 8:9; I
Corinthians 6:19; 12:13; Galatians 5:22,23.


A servant of Christ,
Drew

 

Well, I can get partway to an understanding in my own little mind. I consider God as eternal and infinite. I consider God to be the sole source and definer of God. Nothing else can suffice.

God in His aspect as the creator of Himself is God the Father.

God in His aspect as the result of His own creation is God the Son.

This is possible for God (tho impossible for us) because He is infinite, and an infinity can be equal to a part of itself.

This is all well and good, but it doesn't play out so logically for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit "testifies" of Christ. He is the comforter. Perhaps something along the lines of God in his aspect of being testified of is God the Father or Son and God in his aspect of He Who testifies is God the Spirit . ..?

 

"the creator of Himself"???

 

The Great I Am...always was...God has no beginning and no end...He just is.

Abiyah...I'm coming into this discussion a little late...but I always had a hard time reconciling the trinity with my own human reasoning as well. But I believe that God should not be completly explainable or comprehensable by a mere human such as myself. I will give this one example of the trinity though...that may help...or it may not. A human is body, mind and spirit...all coexisting in the same being...3 seperate, definable attributes...but all wrapped up into one being. Did that help? Or just make it more confusing? I believe that God made us like himself...in more than appearance.

Laurenda

 

You are not missing anything Abiyah.What you believe is what scripture states and we must accept by faith, what is revealed even if it stretches beyond the understanding of our finite minds. In some ways I'm thankful that God is infinitely beyond the human comprehension of His creation.God wouldn't be to awesome if we could comprehend everything about Him. For now I accept thatwe see through a glass darkly, but someday we shall know as we are known. Til then,join the crowd of those who don't deny the trinity even when we can't quite grasp it.
chet

 

This is exactly right. The trinity is one of those paradoxes--those seeming contradictions--that we hold to because we are all trying to comprehend the infinite with finite pea brains. It is when we try to make God into something that we can grasp--that we can wrap our brains around--that we get heretical ideas like modalism and tritheism.

 

Then add to that,another biblical truth that we must accept by faith.And that is that Jesus was fully God and at the same time fully human and you really have some mind boggling theology that will fry your brain if you try to rationalize it into something understandable by humans.It's no different than many earthly concepts that are beyond comprehension. For example what is the biggest number? what about infinity etc.
One thimg I know and do understand though is that God has forgiven my sins through the blood of Jesus and the world definitely needs to understand that above all else.
In Christ chet

 

We are doing okay--just taking things one day at a time, and everything seems to be going well enough.

Seems to me this is what everyone does. I don't know anyone who "understands" the trinity. I don't understand how Christ was fully God and fully human, either, but that doesn't mean I don't believe it is true.

As long as you believe the three (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are eternally coexistant and yet are not actually three separate gods, even though you can't explain how that works, then as far as I can see you are a Trinitarian.

 

The doctrine of the Trinity is only more or less a crude human attempt to come to terms with a divine reality that is beyond us. The doctrine points to a transcendent God who could yet simultaneously become a human being and then after the resurrection also indwell other human beings (that is, the Holy Spirit). He is a God great enough to rule the universe, caring enough to live a fully human life and intimate enough to live in each believer. This is the reality that the doctrine points to. This is the truth that John teaches. Try as we like, we will never understand this divine depth, yet we can still enjoy the reality of God being with us that the doctrine points to.

 

Abiyah - how do you understand John 1:1

 

To me the Trinity is one eternal God revealed to me as 3 distinctly different persons(not in the humanly sence that we understand person to mean), yet still one God Not 3 persons, but one, revealsed as 3 aspects of who He is.

 

God the Father - Creator
God the Son - Intercessor
God the Holy Spirit - Comforter

I have about driven myself crazy with trying to grasp the Trinity, but in the end I have to go on faith and admit that I can't fully comprehend everything. That dark glass again. This is how I explain the Trinity, but even then it leaves so much out.

Ronnie

 

1 John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

God the father
God the Son
God the Holy Spirit

 

The classic Trinitarian formula is that God is Three Persons in One Essence. I can't really give you an analogy of that, but I can give you an imperfect analogy of something approaching the opposite - three essences in one person:-

Let us suppose that we know a caterpillar, whom we'll call Cyril. We watch him throughout his life-cycle: he changes from a caterpillar to a pupa and finally a butterfly -three distinct manifestations of the same life-form, yet genetically identical - all three are Cyril. NOw let us suppose that we can manipulate time so that we have all three versions of Cyril co-existing; you would then have something approaching the opposite of the Trinity.

Two errors to be wary of: Modalism (One Person expressed Three Ways) - I'm afraid Wisdom Seeker's definition seemed to be veering in that direction; and Tritheism (Three Gods). Neither of these two extremes is correct and we need to make sure the theological compass is kept firmly in the middle between the two.

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

Here are some models.

God the Father = Origin of Creation
God the Son = Word spoken in Creation
God the Holy Spirit = The Action of Creation

God the Father = Lover
God the Son = Beloved
God the Spirit = Love

Mind, Memory, Will

God is fountal plenitude (source of all things and supremely perfect); therefore, God is both perfect love and supremely simple in being). The love that God is is reflected in human love (though imperfectly). Love cannot be perfect with one, it must be shared: thus at least two. However, love is not perfect only between two, because more is added to the love of the two when they share love for another: thus at least three. Because love is also supremely simple, then he can be no more than three and must be at the same time one.

I affirm that God is beyond our complete apprehension, but God is still intelligible otherwise we would have no knowledge of Him.

Grace and Peace, Danny