in a way that makes sense. In the past I have always been told it's beyond human comprehension and Christians just have faith and believe it. I cannot accept this, so please help me (and many other non-Christians) understand. Thanks.
2007-09-26 02:15:56 · 18 answers · asked by ♥ terry g ♥ 7 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
My mother once told me that the Trinity was "the greatest mystery no one can understand." I didn't argue with her about it; however, I didn't agree what she said.
Personally, it's beyond comprehension how Catholics, Baptists, Seventh-Day Adventists and other Trinitarian Christians believe the doctrine is Biblical, while Jehovah's Witnesses reject it as un-Biblical; yet all of them believe The Bible is God's Word.
2007-09-26 04:45:13 · answer #1 · answered by Shafeeqah 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
This has been answered before.....
In any event, the controversy is based upon whether the Holy Spirit is a "person" or not.
Some insist the Holy Spirit is a "force" from or of God, and therefore the H.S. is not a person.
What if funny to me is that, when you apply their criteria to the Father and the Son, you would have to conclude that they are not persons either.
The Father is described as a Spirit. Both the Son and Holy Spirit are described as coming forth from the Father.
Bottom line: Can a force speak? No, yet Scripture shows the Holy Spirit speaking.
The Trinity "doctrine" (and it isn't really a doctrine) is an attempt to understand the nature of God and in what way the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct from one another, while still being "One."
What helps is to understand that God does not exist like we do. Much of what we experience on this physical plane is designed by God to help us understand, such as when two people, male and female marry and become "one flesh." There are still two people, but in a legal sense, they become one entity.
Also, Christ talks about Christians becoming one with Him and the Father. We become "connected" with God as a whole. A Christian is no longer separated from God.
It is usually those in cults that insist the Holy Spirit is a force. In cults, Jesus is also diminished in some fashion. Therefore I conclude that in false "Christian" groups you see a movement to minimize Christ and the Holy Spirit, seeing as these two serve as witnesses to truth in so many ways. If you are a cult teaching lies, you will disparage the witnesses against you.
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2007-09-26 02:29:20 · answer #2 · answered by Hogie 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The trinity is a man made Idea. There is no such thing There is one God the father. His only begotten son. And the Holy Ghost who is also a member of the Godhead who resides in spirit form. God the father is the only God we should worship we do this in his sons name as he is our only way back to the father. we are heard and receive the communications through the Holy Ghost. They are three separate being or Gods with only God the father having full athority and Glory, they are all as one working with one goal and purpose. I like to compair them for better understanding to a business with a owner a manager and a foreman.
2007-09-26 02:38:48 · answer #3 · answered by saintrose 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Someone on here told me once this in easy form.
Take a Egg and that represents God
inside the egg in the yoke which represents Jesus
and the whites which represents the Holy Spirit
They all are a part of what makes up the egg.
They all are as much a part of God as God is God.
It is God manifested into two others and that is Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Hope this helped.
2007-09-26 02:24:17 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion -- the truth that in the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another.
Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed: "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God." In this Trinity of Persons the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Yet, notwithstanding this difference as to origin, the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent. This, the Church teaches, is the revelation regarding God's nature which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth to deliver to the world: and which she proposes to man as the foundation of her whole dogmatic system.
In Scripture there is as yet no single term by which the Three Divine Persons are denoted together. The word trias (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A.D. 180. He speaks of "the Trinity of God [the Father], His Word and His Wisdom ("Ad. Autol.", II, 15). The term may, of course, have been in use before his time. Afterwards it appears in its Latin form of trinitas in Tertullian ("De pud." c. xxi). In the next century the word is in general use. It is found in many passages of Origen ("In Ps. xvii", 15). The first creed in which it appears is that of Origen's pupil, Gregory Thaumaturgus. In his Ekthesis tes pisteos composed between 260 and 270, he writes:
There is therefore nothing created, nothing subject to another in the Trinity: nor is there anything that has been added as though it once had not existed, but had entered afterwards: therefore the Father has never been without the Son, nor the Son without the Spirit: and this same Trinity is immutable and unalterable forever (P. G., X, 986).
It is manifest that a dogma so mysterious presupposes a Divine revelation. When the fact of revelation, understood in its full sense as the speech of God to man, is no longer admitted, the rejection of the doctrine follows as a necessary consequence. For this reason it has no place in the Liberal Protestantism of today. The writers of this school contend that the doctrine of the Trinity, as professed by the Church, is not contained in the New Testament, but that it was first formulated in the second century and received final approbation in the fourth, as the result of the Arian and Macedonian controversies. In view of this assertion it is necessary to consider in some detail the evidence afforded by Holy Scripture. Attempts have been made recently to apply the more extreme theories of comparative religion to the doctrine of the Trinity, and to account for it by an imaginary law of nature compelling men to group the objects of their worship in threes. It seems needless to give more than a reference to these extravagant views, which serious thinkers of every school reject as destitute of foundation.
2007-09-26 02:26:35 · answer #5 · answered by Sentinel 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
ok well in the bible says the holy trinity is God, The Holy Spirit, and Jesus. They all make up one God. It is extremly confusing though even to me and im a christian. Like in a way it is beyond our knowolodge to comprehend because in a way they are three seperate beings but they are also one. But the Trinity can refeer to anything like with Jesus The Death, Burial, and Resurection. The trinity symbol in istself it shaped like three spearte rings but they are connected as well
2007-09-26 02:25:32 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
There is only one God, but He consists of three distinct persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The word "trinity" is not found in Scripture. It is a word used by Christians to express the doctrine of the unity of God as consisting of three distinct Persons. This word is derived from the Greek word trias, first used by Theophilus (A.D. 168-183), or from the Latin trinitas, first used by Tertullian (A.D. 220), to express this doctrine.
The propositions involved in the doctrine are these:
That God is one, and that there is but one God (Deut. 6:4; 1 Kings 8:60; Isa. 44:6; Mark 12:29, 32; John 10:30).
That the Father is a distinct divine Person (hypostasis, subsistentia, persona, suppositum intellectuale), distinct from the Son and the Holy Spirit.
That Jesus Christ was truly God, and yet was a Person distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit. (John 20:30-31)
That the Holy Spirit is also a distinct divine Person.
Notice the use of the words "us" and "our" when the Son of God ("The Word") created Man (Gen. 1:26).
Although equal in divinity, the Father is in a position of authority or hierarchy over Jesus Christ, incarnate Son of God (John 14:28, 13:16; 1 Cor. 11:3; Phil. 2:6-8).
The teaching of the Bible concerning the Trinity might be summarized thus. God is a Tri-unity, with each Person of the Godhead equally and fully and eternally God. Each is necessary, and each is distinct, and yet all are one. The three Persons appear in a logical, causal order. The Father is the unseen, omnipresent Source of all being, revealed in and by the Son, experienced in and by the Holy Spirit. The Son proceeds from the Father, and the Spirit from the Son. With reference to God's creation, the Father is the Thought behind it, the Son is the Word calling it forth, and the Spirit is the Deed making it a reality.
We "see" God and His great salvation in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, then "experience" their reality by faith, through the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit.
Both Old and New Testaments teach the Unity and the Trinity of the Godhead. The idea that there is only one God, who created all things, is repeatedly emphasized in such Scriptures as Isaiah 45:18:
"For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; …I am the Lord; and there is none else."
A New Testament example is James 2:19:
"Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well; the devils also believe, and tremble."
The three persons of the Godhead are, at the same time, noted in such Scriptures as Isaiah 48:16:
"I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; From the time that it was, there am I; and now the Lord God, and his Spirit, hath sent me."
The speaker in this verse is obviously God, and yet He says He has been sent both by The Lord God (that is, the Father) and by His Spirit (that is, the Holy Spirit).
The New Testament doctrine of the Trinity is evident in such a verse as John 15:26, where the Lord Jesus said:
"But when the Comforter is come whom I will send unto you from the Father, He shall testify of me."
Then there is the baptismal formula:
"baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 28:19).
One name (God) -- yet three names!
JESUS -- That Jesus, as the only-begotten Son of God, actually claimed to be God, equal with the Father, is clear from numerous Scriptures. For example, He said:
"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty" (Revelation 1:8).
HOLY SPIRIT -- Some cults falsely teach that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal divine influence of some kind, but the Bible teaches that He is a real person, just as are the Father and the Son. Jesus said:
"Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak; and he will show you things to come" (John 16:13).
2007-09-26 02:32:47 · answer #7 · answered by Gardener for God(dmd) 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋
A shamrock has three sections to the leaf, but it is one leaf.
Water can be a gas, a liquid or a solid but it is still water.
God is Father Son and Holy Spirit. He is not a one or two dimensional idol.
2007-09-26 02:30:35 · answer #8 · answered by Pearly Gator 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Here's an easy explanation: It's not right.
Jesus is not Yahweh. He never claimed to be. He told us to pray to Yahweh, called Yahweh his god, and told us that he was not good, only Yahweh is good.
The holy spirit is not god either.
That's just the theology that won the emperor's approval during the times of Constantine.
You have to do big time twisting of scripture to make it work.
In the old testament we learn a few things:
1 - there is only one god
2 - he never changes
The trinity stuff changes both.
They try to say same god just three aspects but that's bunk.
I think it was a way of adapting some pagan ideas to christianity to make it appealing to everyone.
2007-09-26 02:24:20 · answer #9 · answered by Emperor Insania Says Bye! 5 · 1⤊ 2⤋
It is the Christian's way of masking Polytheism as Monotheism.
Edit: Thumbdowners- why then does the Trinity not exist in Judaism, the predecessor to Christianity? Why did God not reveal "himself" in the Hebrew testament as three persons?
2007-09-26 02:19:09 · answer #10 · answered by coralsnayk 3 · 1⤊ 3⤋