I once explained to Brandon (age 5) that his Daddy was at one and the same time his father, his Mommy’s husband, and his Grandma’s son. “All at the same time?” he asked with a this-better-not-be-one-of-those-made-up-stories expression. From his point of view, it didn’t make sense. People are one thing, not a whole bunch of different relationships. He was totally shocked when he complained about my whiskers after kissing me, and I apologized, telling him that I knew what he meant, because I had the same problem with my grandfather’s whiskers when I was his age. The idea that I had been a little kid with a man my present age as my grandfather back then was just a bit too much.
Like I keep pointing out, no metaphor works, and all the imagery we construct, no matter how metaphysical, is merely a means of accounting for a reality that Christians down through the years have perceived. Without insulting anyone’s intelligence, I think we’re in the position vis-a-vis concepts of God that Brandon was relative to the question of his father’s relationships.
And don’t be too hard on Joel – he’s essaying an attempt at Libspeak, after all!
Can you see the relation between a word being perfect and a sentence being perfect (complete)?
It is the reality of this relationship of love. You can’t have a father without a child of that father, right?
Yet, you and your self are not quite the same entity. If I said “you are full of yourself” (as an example!) you wouldn’t start a philosophical debate as to how you could be full of you – we all know what that means. You could say you love, but you don’t say what. And who says “myself loves me?”
Is the Son the Father’s “self” in some way? I’ll have to think about that, but you might be on to something.
So again, they are separate, but you can not have any one or two without the rest (or we’d be arguing about God’s inherent ungrammaticalness), so they have a oneness also.
Oh, aye; a word is part of a sentence. But you cannot say “a word is fully and wholly sentence” in the manner that Christians say “Jesus is fully and wholly God.” If Jesus was simply a part of the one God in the same manner that a word is part of a sentence it would be considerably more understandable.
We aren’t? I am one person, and I can love myself.
Yes, but it seems they are only metaphorically separate, in the same manner in which I may seem to see myself as other-than-me to love me. It is simply self-awareness, the awareness that “I” exists, and thus you can love yourself and be loved by yourself without actually existing as a separate person…this would be impossible to be aware of without the russian doll of self-awareness: you must recognize that the self exists, but who is doing the recognizing? The self. Your relationship to yourself may change, but the “you” is the same person in all common defintions of the term, only performing different actions. If God’s three personas exist only in the manner that, say, the “I that loves” and the “I that is loved” exist I would not call them “persons”.
No, you aren’t. For example, when Jesus said to deny yourself, he didn’t mean for his followers to deny their existence! (hey, where is Lib these days, anyway?) We have nothing to fear but fear itself. There is a slight difference between “fear” and “fear itself”, right? You don’t look at you in the mirror, you look at yourself. Know thyself? If you are yourself, what dumb advice that is!
They are more than metaphorically separate. For example, the father says killing is wrong and does not love those who kill (unless they repent). But, wait! God is Love, so how is this possible? Because this repentance is offered through the Son, and the Father loves the Son. And the Son never killed anyone which makes God no hypocrite, since the Father is not asking anything of anyone for his love that he does not ask of the Son.
But they perform different rolls. You, Gaudere, can not be your own daughter or mother. But, every child has a mother and every mother has a child, right? (in my best Frank Sinatra): “You can’t have one without the other.” Thus they have a Tao-like unity.
If God is who he is, you can not just have a Father and no Son, or a Son and no Father, and the love which is between them is what makes this the Christian God.
Perhaps there is a Grand Unification Sentence that would make this work out right but I think you’d have to diagram it in the fourth dimension.
No, he wished them to deny the desires that stood in the way of communion with God. Nevertheless, these “desires” were not a separate person. If you wish, you can describe the actions of his followers as the superego choosing the ego’s desire over the id’s, but that does not split the followers into three seperate persons in the usual manner that we consider “persons”.
Still, I am the same person, both me-who-sees and me-who-is-seen. A self-aware person does have that sort of perceiving-self while still being-self, and may “argue with themselves” and so on, but except in the case of MPD the self is accepted as one person; the person who perceives and the person who is perceived is not different. Let’s not go overboard with literal interpretations of metaphorical “seeing the self as other”.
A bun is the lowest form of humor. ::d&r:: Ahem. Well, so can I, and still be me; I can love and be loved and remain the same person. There does not seem to be a need to have separate persons to perform each action, and indeed it seems that doing so literally makes each of the three persons “lesser” than the whole. If God is the lover, and Jesus the loved, are you saying that Jesus cannot love? If all three can be love, lover and beloved, the attemopt to separate out “persons” based on roles again seems to only be a description of an action understake by one whole person, rather than actual separate persons—and how could Jesus be wholly God if He lacks an ability of God the Father, if He cannot love? I do not have to split into separate persons to love and be loved simultaneously.
I’ve read through this thread and would like to suggest the following points and then a conclusion:
(1) Based on what was said by those who have weighed in on the topic, there seems to be very little Scriptural evidence stating (not just used to support or refute) the idea that God is Triune, and a lot more to support the idea that “God is God”.
(2) What evidence there is supporting the notion of the Trinity seems to be based on Jesus’ own words – references to “the Father”, “the Spirit”, etc. – or on the words of those who were, very likely, grappling with the legacy of Jesus’ words.
(3) Ergo it seems far more likely that Jesus was using a metaphors to speak of the nature of himself and of God to his disciples. Think about how many parables he told in the gospels; Jesus is never more than a few breaths away from speaking in a metaphor. So why should he choose to speak literally on, of all things, the nature of God Himself? Why should we take it that way?
We see the same sort of thing today; many people today still read Genesis as literal truth. It might be that many of the disciples and later apostles took what Jesus had said literally, not metaphorically. Which is not surprising: you try waking up one day to the realization that this man/prophet who has been your friend might actually have been divine; you’re gonna hang on every word he’s ever said and analyze them to death. (On the other hand, if you think he’s speaking metaphorically, then maybe he’s not literally “the Son of God” either?)
As a result, early theologians developed the notion of the Triune God in order to reconcile otherwise contradictory notions about God. This dogmatic “codification” would be very important, I would have thought, to the early Christians. The divine nature of Jesus became the most significant characteristic which distinguished Christianity from Judaism, so if Christianity wanted to be taken seriously, it had to offer some kind of explanation, however imperfect, for these apparent contradictions about the nature of Jesus relative to the Father and the Spirit.
As you have demonstrated through your discussion on this thread, if the concept of the Trinity was developed to “explain” the nature of God, it clearly doesn’t do a good job. Doesn’t this suggest that the problem resides not in the “mystery” of the Trinity (i.e not in the nature of the Godhead itself), but rather in the decision of the disciples and early theologians to take Jesus literally?
Granted, abandoning the idea of the Trinity does not clarify the nature of the Christian God. But that’s a different issue. The OP was about the concept of the Trinity itself.
Gaudere Your point about the dependency of Jesus on the Father, a few posts back, was interesting. I think the schism between the Eastern Orthodox and the Western Orthodox (Roman Catholic) churches resulted partly from dogmatic differences about the relationship/dependency of the Spirit vs. the Father and Jesus. The Orthodox Church could not accept the line in the Nicene Creed about the Holy Spirit: “… the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” No doubt there were other factors at work, too, but I believe this was one of them.
I don’t think I’ve been unfair, and I did not intend to even be critical. But you are asking people to define something inherently indefinable by reference to our own limited human experience. People therefore do the best they can in such circumstances – they try to explain their concept of the Trinity using terms they think people with a common human experience would understand: God is like a car, God is like a cheeseburger, God is like water. You respond pointing out that God is not a car, or a cheeseburger, or water, and that therefore the analogies are deficient. Well, of course they are; if there was a perfect analogy for the nature of God, we could just point to it and say “there He is.”
Perfect, no, but useful, yes – if it is the best we can do. You are asking for explanations of the unexplicable and then complaining that the explanations are not good enough. Again, I’m not criticizing – you have every right to do this; I just don’t think you ought to be surprised that no one is able to come up with a smashing analogy or metaphor for the Trinity.
[quoteIf y’all want to simply say “it’s a mystery, you can’t possibly make it understandable”, fine . . .[/quote]
Actually, most people have gone out of their way not to give you that ultimately accurate but extremely unsatisfactory answer; instead, they have employed the analogies you reject. It seems to me that perhaps the only way to even approach explaining the truly unexplicable is to say “it’s sort of like this, but not really; and sort of like that, but not exactly . . .” and hope through the employment of several admittedly bad analogies you can approach what you’re trying to convey.
And I think people have done the best they can to help you “understand the concept.” And, frankly, I think you do “understand the concept;” you appear to have a pretty good grasp on it. You just don’t agree with it, which is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. And – again – perfectly fine.
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Nor do all agree that the concept of the trinity truly is ineffable.
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Well, it seems like the vast majority of people responding to this thread do. Those who do not appear to follow the reasoning that God is not truly “three in one” but that the Christian Trinity is actually three gods – which is itself a fundamental Christian heresy and therefore not really a “Christian” answer.
[quoteSo Jesus is God in fleshly form, and the Holy Spirit is God in Spiritual form. What is God the father? Is He the same as the unified God, or does He have a separate personality–aside from the Unified God–as God the father?[/quote]
God the Father encompasses God the Son and God the Spirit. He is whatever He wants to be. Yes, He is the same as the Unified God. I do not conceive of Him as having a “separate personality,” but this of course is all IMO.
In short, I agree with Polycarp (and Tris):
Potential bad analogy alert! (But, heck, it’s a good way to try to explain something): To me, the realm of human thought and experience can be thought of as a circle drawn on a blank page. Everything we can do or be or even conceive in this iteration of “being” is inside the circle. Outside the circle is everything else, but not only can we not explain it, we can’t even understand it because it is so far beyond our frame of reference as to be beyond our present understanding. I see God as being inside and outside that circle. We understand Him as “Father” or “Son” or “man” (in appearance and mythos) because those are the metaphors that best exemplify our experience of Him. I don’t think that means that this is all He is, or what He is outside our realm of experience.
To me, it’s like the Hindu tale imagining a tadpole asking what it is like to be a frog. Will it be wet? No; it will be dry. But the tadpole has only known wetness and cannot even conceptualize what the absence of wetness might be, and so the word “dry” conveys nothing to the tadpole, except perhaps a sense of alarm.
In short, I take absolutely no issue with your desire to explore the issue, and I’m sorry if it sounded as if I did. I just don’t think you’re ever going to get an answer that totally satisfies you. All religion – but Christianity especially – is grounded at bottom in faith – faith in the existence of God and (for Christians) faith in His fundamental goodness. Exploring the idea of the Trinity is just one more way to explore the nature of God; and while I think you might arrive at a good idea of people’s concepts of the nature of God – and some pretty representative answers have been given here, IMO – you are never going to get any closer to “the truth” about His true nature. But don’t take this as criticism of your exploration; I assure you it isn’t. I just hope you’re not under the illusion someone is going to post the Irrefutable Answer, because that ain’t gonna happen.
Dough! People who make puns like that should be bread out of existence (or at yeast consider leaven)!
But, you aren’t your desires. If you cease desiring something, you don’t cease being you. Yet, your desires are a part of you. But, let’s not get into Freud.
But that is not a person being percieved, only a reflection.
“cinnamon & sugery & softly spoken lies, ya never know just how ya look though other people’s eyes…” – Butthole Surfers.
You can’t really ever see yourself as others see you, nor can they see you as you see yourself. But I think this is somewhat OT.
Well, yeah, but love whom, and be loved by whom?
You are correct. The Son has everthing except he is neither the Spirit nor the Father. The Father has everything except he is not the Son nor is he the Spirit. Etc.
The Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, I guess. The Spirit is what enables the Son to love the Father and the faithful to have the indwelling of the Trinity.
As Polycarp said:
Is the love a father has for a son, the same as the love a son has for a father? I don’t know! I still don’t get how you think a son and a father can have that reciprocal relationship and be the same person. Father can’t be the verb in the sentence, nor can Son.
That they are “one” isn’t too far from some ideas in Taoism – hope, they say, is one in Tao with despair. Why? Because you can only hope where you might otherwise despair, or despair where you can otherwise hope. Like the Yin and Yang they each have a little bit of the other in them and chase eachother around Tao’s pivot.
This is merely an added dimension. Not just saying hope is undespair, despair is unhope, I am un-not-me, etc., which are existential statements using the good old “to be” verb in which the subject is the object (depending on what your meaning of is is), much like “I am he who am.” “The lover loves the beloved, (who loves the lover)” is the more complex case where the subject and object are not the same person, yet it is a truth that this is a statement wholly about God.
“Not because we loved Him, but because He first loved us” – somewhere in the First Letter of John.
The mutual love between Father and Son is what generates the Holy Spirit, according to St. Ambrose or St. Augustine (I’m not sure whether teacher or student first came up with it. Joel, Tom, happen to recall?)
After that baker’s dozen of puns, I think I can be forgiven for observing that in view of the Hebrew verb that led to the term “carnal knowledge” the average Jew or early Christian might hear Socrates’s advice as a thinly-veiled insult!
Well, analogies are intended to be metaphorically the same, so if they are lacking an essential feature of the thing they are intended to explicate the metaphor is ineffective. I didn’t object to Yue Han’s hamburger comparison because it was comparing hamburgers to God, but because it was comparing Perfect A and Perfect A with Perfect B and Perfect C. I objected to your mind/body/soul analogy, not because it compared Jesus to the body, but because it was comparing three parts of a greater whole with three things that were not intended to be perceived as a “part” of the whole. Halfway-there analogies can often be useful, but not if they lack one of the essential features that are what make the concept so difficult to understand–I’m left saying “sure, that makes sense, but the Trinity is just as incomprehensible as ever.” However, I apologize for making this thread into “The Care and Feeding of Analogies”.
Yeah, but keep in mind that I was not aware that there wasn’t. There are decent analogies–not perfect, but not fundamentally flawed for their purpose–describing God’s love, God’s motives, etc., so I did not assume that there wasn’t a really good analogy describing the trinity out there. And Poly hissownself said it was effable, darn it! You know, I don’t automatically assume theistic beliefs are utterly incomprehesible.
I started the thread since I mistakenly claimed that Jesus was the same as Jehovah, which apparently, He is not, although both He and Jehovah are wholly perfect and wholly God (I still don’t get how they are truly “different”, but I can repeat the phrases I have learned). I have learned a little better the proper thing to say, and personally think that Yue Han’s idea that God is simply perceived as three people is the simplest and most sensible explanation, if not a traditional one.
jmullaney:
Uncle, Uncle! No more!
Well, I can love myself, and be loved by myself, if no one else is around.
Yes, but if Jesus loves, isn’t He the Lover, then???
Well, I do think we should base the existence of separate persons on more than the fact that one is called father and one is called son. I can give names to the two “sides” of myself that are internally arguing a point, but that does not make them separate persons. Being loved and loving is possible to do and yet be the same person.
Polycarp:
Sometimes, when two personas of a Godhead love each other very much…
The Son has the Holy Spirit because the Father loves him, not the other way around. The Spirit proceeds to us from them both, some say, but that’s another issue. Don’t take “love” too literally – you didn’t ask the hamburger guy if it was a whole wheat bun and what that signifies!
Why? One is the father and one is the son, they aren’t merely called that.
True, but missing the point. Perhap you should become a Taoist for a while and come back?
But that’s assuming the truth of your conclusion, that they must be separate persons for the love-lover-loved bit to work. I mean, if we need separate persons so God can love because you need both father-son love and son-father love, why don’t we also have friend-friend love, sister-sister love, husband-wife love, etc. But you’ve pretty much lost me at this point, anyhow.
I’ll put that on my list, right below “Sell all of my possessions, reject the use of money and become an itinerant preacher.”
“Trinity” and its roots in ancient pagan worship. The “Trinity” of Christendom, as defined in the creed of Nicea, is a merging of three distinct entities into one single entity, while remaining three distinct entities. We are told to speak of the three gods as one god, and never as three gods which would be considered heresy (Isaiah 43:10). They are considered to be co-eternal, co-substantial, and co-equal. However, only the first was self existent. The others preceded from the first. This Neo-Platonic philosophical doctrine has its roots not in the inspiration of God, but in ancient paganism. Most ancient religions were built upon some sort of threefold distinction. Deities were always trinities of some kind or consisted of successive emanation in threes. In India we find the doctrine of the divine trinity called “Tri-murti” (Three-forms) consisting of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. It is an inseparable unity though three in form. Worshipers are told to worship them as one deity. Such concepts posed no problem to the logic of a Hindu worshipper since they were already used to worshipping gods with the body of a man and the head of an elephant(Ganesh), or monkey-faced gods (Hanuman), or gods with six arms, and so forth. Remember, classical Hinduism dates back to at least 500BC, with roots extending as far back as 2000BC.
The Brahmas also have their trinity. In their trinity, Vajrapani, Manjusri, and Avalokitesvara form a divine union of three gods into one god called “Buddha.” The citizens of China and Japan also worship Buddha, but they know him as “Fo.” When they worship him they say “Fo, is one god but has three forms.” Sir William Jones says:
“Very respectable natives have assured me, that one or two missionaries have been absurd enough to in their zeal for the conversion of the Gentiles, to urge that the Hindoos were even now almost Christians; because their Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesa (Siva), were no other than the Christian Trinity.” The ancient Egyptians also worshipped a trinity. Their symbol of a wing, a globe, and a serpent is supposed to have stood for the different attributes of their god.
The Greeks also had their trinities. When making their sacrifices to their gods, they would sprinkle holy water on the altar three times, they would then sprinkle the people three times also. Frankincense was then taken with three fingers and strewed upon the alter three times. All of this was done because the oracle had proclaimed that all sacred things ought to be in threes. Remember that the philosophy of these people (The Greeks) is what was primarily responsible for defining the Christian “Trinitarian” nature of God. This was done through the writings of the Greek philosopher Plato regarding his “Logos” (“word”). Further, remember that the Gospels of the Bible were named the “Greek Gospels” for a reason: they were written in their language and based upon their philosophy.
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The previous poster makes a very good point: the concept of divine “triumvirates” is not new to Christianity.
The Greeks had several “trinities”. In some cases the gods were thought of as three separate entities who shared some similar trait or characteristic; for instance, the three “virgin goddesses” were Athene, Hestia and Artemis. After the defeat of the titans, the world was divided into three parts, each ruled by one of the three original gods: Zeus, Poseidon and Pluto. In other cases the distinctions between the divine personae weren’t so clear; Artemis, Hecate and Selene were all moon-goddesses, but were they distinct persons, or different faces/aspects of the same goddess (as the moon itself presents us with different “faces”)? Well, yes to both.
We find similar residual pagan “trinities” in the Tarot as well. The High Priestess, the Empress and the Moon are a feminine trinity (and related to the Moon-trinity above); the Magican, Emperor and Hierophant are a male one.
These “trinities” are, of course, quite different than the Triune Christian God – because Christian dogma clearly states that there are three persons in only one god. So the answer is, “Yes, they are all one god,” but also, “Yes, each represents a different aspect of the same, indivisible god.”
The point is, the early evangelists and theologians were perhaps pre-disposed to find significance in the number three. Jesus’ words seem to have encouraged this, which ultimately led to a very difficult and rather tenuous explanation of the nature of God.
*Jodi makes a good point, too; that we can’t hope to understand what is outside the “circle” of our comprehension except in the most approximate way, by use of metaphor and analogy.
But my question is: what if the nature of God is not triune, and Jesus’ words which seem to indicate this were actually metaphors for an entirely different concept of God? In other words, what if Christianity has been using metaphors to explain other metaphors? Then the truth is truly a mystery, because we have very few clues about how to think of it.
Assuming the truth of my conclusion?? I think you are just being difficult at this point!
You can’t even deliniate between you and yourself! If you can’t figure out this simple human thing most of your fellow people understand, I doubt you will understand the divine.
But the question remains: what does God love? What does it mean to say God is Love?
Because parent-child love is unique. How else do you want it put? God is not perfect in the Taoist sense because he loves. This creates a “defect” in the otherwise perfect being-non-being that would be united to Tao. With love there is a lover and an object of that love. The almighty part of this being is the almighty, and must be the part from which love flows. The “Son” part is the all weak, who recieves the love (which is itself yet a third element) of the almighty, and everything else which is to be given through this Spirit named love and is thus ultimately co-equal with the almighty Father part, this divine love giving the Son his power.
(You could call these parts the almighty husband and the all weak wife but for her husband’s love if you insisted, but I think N.O.W. would want a few words with you!)
The “metaphorical” image of Father/Son as an eternal reality works fairly well.
Taoists are atheists – I think such a journey would suit you. But if you have no interest in gaining wisdom of any sort, be off with you!
I and myself are not truly separate persons. If the three-in-one of the trinity is no more truly separate persons than the me-myself-I it’s not the setup I had been led to believe it was.
God can love Himself. I don’t see the need for Him to split into actual separate persons to accomplish this.
So is sister-sister, friend-friend, etc; this doesn’t seem to be a very strong point.
And persons are entirely capable of being the lover and the loved at the same time.
If it’s just a metaphor to describe the nature of love, I don’t have any argument with that.
I have read a little on Tao. However, my decision to become a Taoist would depend on more than a suggestion from an anonymous stranger on a message board.
Jodi, those flares you see in the distance are the torches of the Montana Association of Evangelicals coming to get you for that one!
**Gaudere answered JMullaney:
Gaud: I’ll put that on my list, right below “Sell all of my possessions, reject the use of money and become an itinerant preacher.”
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My dear, you are absolved from that. The Lord has other plans for you, involving your skills at web design and a truly ironic experience based on your middle name. But I second Joel’s idea that the Tao has something to say on the subject of the ineffability of spiritual things. I’d post some excerpts, but:
You have “I”(=“me”) twice and are missing the active being again.
But the nature of the part of himself that he loves is opposite from the nature of the part of himself which does the loving except that the love then makes them co-equal.
Almighty and all-weak might be a more apt analogy. They are co-dependant in any case.
If there is a divine love which realtes to us, it is the reality of how it would have to be. Just a three dimensional yin-yang, ya know?
I am one person, and I can love myself.
I think you are just being difficult at this point!