I would put this in GQ but I don’t think all of it has a factual answer.
I know little about theology, but I enjoy reading the debates here about different aspects of it and I’m curious why most of Christianity considers god to be 3 in one (Father/Son/Holy Ghost?) instead of maybe 2 in 1 (Father/Son)?
Was this threeness something that started from the beginning or some kind of evolution, and where did people feel the third came from. I can understand Jesus very well, God the father less so, but still to some limited sense, I have very little concept of what the holy ghost is and where it came about.
Is there anything about this third entity in the bible, and/or where do Christians look to concerning this?
I won’t drag out the entire complexus of cites of the Holy Spirit, but take a quick look at the Farewell Discourse that Jesus is said to have given at the Last Supper, John 13:31 through the end of chapter 16. It’s laden with references to Jesus sending an “Advocate” – another like unto Himself, called the Spirit of Truth therein – from God the Father. Later, at Pentecost and other times, the early Christians believed themselves to be touched by, communicated with by, a Person meeting the description Jesus had given.
The Holy Spirit is fairly difficult to get a handle on as a separate-Person concept; that’s, I believe intentional, much as the purposes of telescopic optics is not to provide telescopes for people to study, but to provide telescopes for people to do astronomy with. Pneumatology (study of the Holy Spirit and spiritual things) is secondary to the big picture of God’s relationship to man.
But for typical Christians, there is very little doubt that the Holy Spirit is indeed (a) God, and (b) a separate Person from Father and Son.
The Dogma of the Trinity is merely an attempt to put into terms humans can conceive what is an observed fact (to them at least) – that there is one God who nonetheless manifests Himself in three different Persons. I’ve always felt it important that in that Farewell Dialogue, which is probably the richest source of Trinitarian theological Scripture anywhere (being the observations of One Member of the Trinity about His relationships with the other Two), he never once gets into what’s called in theology the essential Trinity, the classic definition of ousia/substantia and hypostases/personae, but rather speaks of the economic Trinity – how Each works in conjunction with the other Two for the benefit of mankind.
If you’re looking for a factual answer instead of a theological one, trinities and the number three had a mystical significance, and triads of Gods appeared throughout the Pagan world. The development of the trinity was a way to accomodate Pagan traditions in a monotheism. This is supported by the fact that there’s no references to the trinity in the Bible. I’m sure Diogenes will be along in a while with a more comprehensive answer.
A plausible psychological explanation, to be sure – though you’d get a lot of Christians upset with you for that “accommodate” comment. (Not me, BTW.) However, the fact of the matter is that Christian thought appears to have dealt with the matter much as I suggested above: Early Christians recognized the Father as God (obviously), Jesus as God, and the Holy Spirit as God – and when somebody asked the obvious question, “Hey, how come we have three different people that we call ‘God’ when the Sh’ma says that God is one, and there is none other like unto Him?” the time came to come up with a bit of metaphysical calesthenics to explain how that could be – and the result was the Dogma of the Trinity.
There are oodles of Scriptures which reference each Person of the Trinity as God, separately, though with one debatable exception and one blessing, nothing groups all three together. The blessing is in the closing of II Corinthians (what Paul sent when they wrote back! at 13:14:
The debatable passage is in I John, at 5:7, which is part of the Textus Receptus, but which modern scholars are fairly certain is an ancient gloss to the original text:
I’m not qualified to get into a deep debate on this, just offering my so-called “factual” explanation (which the OP asked for) as I understood it.
My only other tidbit of knowledge is that the debate over the trinity in Greek came down to similar words, one meaning “same,” the other meaning “similar,” and that the difference was “one iota.” That’s where the saying comes from. Interesting story.
More or less – the debate was over whether Jesus, wearing his “God” hat, was of “the same” (homo-ousios) or “similar” (homoi-ousios) substance with the Father – i.e., “one iota” of difference.
I can’t imagine any reason why God should not take three different forms. God is not alone in taking three different forms- water is another example. At different tempereatures water can be liquid, solid or gas.
I mean, the overall thrust, context and words of the bible do not support duality, let alone the trinity. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that there is no biblical basis for the trinity.
Rather than cloak this with all this stuff like, “It’s a mystery…” (a common refrain for those trying to supprt the trinity from the bible, from which it almost impossible…) why not take God on his word when He describes Himself, and Jesus when he describes himself?
Feel free to conceptualize the relationships between God (i.e., Whom Jesus referenced as “Father”), Jesus, and the Holy Spirit however you list, Raindog – but the question as asked is why traditionally people have seen the relationship as Trinity rather than Duality, and that’s what I strived to answer. Many of us are quite comfortable with the Trinity concept, and don’t see it as erroneous, false, or unScriptural. It’s not like we’re going to burn you at the steak for heresy!
Hm, off the top of my head, I can’t recall any Roman/Greek/Hebrew or other regional religions (pagan or otherwise) that hold the number 3 to be of special significance. Could you clarify? Maybe my Classical knowledge is a bit rusty, it’s been a while since I was entranced by Greek and Roman myths.
For that matter, the number 3 does not have much more significant meaning than other numbers - especially any prime number. 7 and 13 are much more relevant numbers. 2 is also a relevant number.
I don’t see a pre-existing obsession over the number 3 being a likely cause for the Catholic Church to adopt the trinity. Granted, they did mix a lot of pagan European festivals/celebrations/etc into their religion as a way of gaining popularity and acceptance, but the trinity is very early in the history, and as I’ve said, I don’t recall the Romans or Hebrews adopting the number 3 in any really special way, much less in a way as important as the trinity was/is to Catholic Christianity.
My best hypothesis is that you’re looking at it from the wrong end. You take the number 3 and try to make it “fit” with something - look at it from the early Christian’s point of view. It just was. It wasn’t there to replace anything, or to merge with pagan gods - it was the trinity as Jesus said it. I mean, as Raindog brings up in his first sentence - if there were 2, you would probably be asking why a duality instead of a trinity, and so on.
I feel like I should expand on this. This phenomenon is very common, at least in our society. People take a set of symbols or numbers, and try to make them fit into some vast plan. This goes anywhere from “666” to “69”. I guess the best way I’ve seen it put is in the movie Pi, where Sol rips into Max over the number 216 - “You’ll find it everywhere you look” he says. The idea is that you don’t notice every day things unless you are looking for something in them, or them in something. I can’t put it very eloquently.
That’s worth discussing, in a less tempery way than I’m afraid I’ve used in this thread to date. If you’re referencing what I think you’re referencing, you’ve been fed some less-than-accurate historical info. But let me hold off on getting into lecture mode, and find out what you meant by what you said first, and see if we can scare up some methodology for getting at the truth behind the questions implied in what we’re discussing.
As far back as Babylonia, the worship of pagan gods grouped in threes, or triads, was common.
That influence was also prevalent in Egypt, Greece, and Rome in the centuries before, during, and after Christ.
Historian Will Durant stated: “Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. . . . From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity.”
Siegfried Morenz notes: “The trinity was a major preoccupation of Egyptian theologians . . . Three gods are combined and treated as a single being, addressed in the singular. In this way the spiritual force of Egyptian religion shows a direct link with Christian theology.” (the book Egyptian Religion) Morenz considered “Alexandrian theology as the intermediary between the Egyptian religious heritage and Christianity.”
In the preface to Edward Gibbon’s History of Christianity, it says: “If Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true that Christianity was corrupted by Paganism. The pure Deism of the first Christians . . . was changed, by the Church of Rome, into the incomprehensible dogma of the trinity. Many of the pagan tenets, invented by the Egyptians and idealized by Plato, were retained as being worthy of belief.”
A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge says that many say that the Trinity “is a corruption borrowed from the heathen religions, and ingrafted on the Christian faith.” And The Paganism in Our Christianity says, “The origin of the [Trinity] is entirely pagan.”
In the Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, James Hastings wrote: “In Indian religion, e.g., we meet with the trinitarian group of Brahma, Siva, and Visnu; and in Egyptian religion with the trinitarian group of Osiris, Isis, and Horus . . . Nor is it only in historical religions that we find God viewed as a Trinity. One recalls in particular the Neo-Platonic view of the Supreme or Ultimate Reality,” which is “triadically represented.”
partially re-quoted:
I don’t know of any quote of Jesus that supports the trinity; no quote of his that shows that his position before human existence was equal to God in stature, certainly not while human, and not even when he anticipated being re-united with his Father in heaven. On the contrary, he always shows himself subordinate to his Father. Nor do I recall any text that show himself as part of a triune god.
As you’d probably guess, I would consider the bible to be the prime source for either supporting or rejecting the basis of the trinity.
No matter the flavor of the “scholar” they all have to start with the bible as the cornerstone of their theories. In that respect they have no more advantage than you and I.
Of course, non-biblical history is both relevent and necessary to gain a complete and full contextual understanding.
At any rate, the discussion of the trinity can be an exhaustive discussion. I’ve heard both sides of the argument. (and was raised a trinitarian) I have no predisposed bias either way. I’ve gone over, in detail, the texts that are used among those who believe in the trinity.
Yet, from my reading the doctrine can’t be supprted biblically. The evidence against it is overwhelming. The handful (and there are quite literally no more than a handful) of texts [ostensibly] supporting it are overwhwlmed by the hundreds (thousands?) that show God in the singular (not to mention His own descrptions of Himself!) and virtually never as part of a three headed god head.
Respectable collection of cites there. I’m not denying that the trinity concept existed at all, I’m just saying that it wasn’t majorly defined by pagan religion. The fact that your cites mainly center on Egypt and pre-Classical times somewhat reinforces that the concept wasn’t strong in the region at the time Christianity arose; Rome in 100-400 CE. It wasn’t something created by early Christians to intermix with pre-existing pagan beliefs. I believe (can’t say for sure, wasn’t there) that the trinity was simply re-invented along with the other Christian mythology in very early Christiandom (before the New Testament was outlined).
I just don’t see the evidence for a trinity existing at the time, so my conclusion must be that it is just one of those things that got adopted by other means (AKA, Jesus said something and it was interpreted as meaning something).
Most of the Catholic intermixing with other pagan groups came post-Pax Romana.
You know more about it than me, obviously, but I will re-quote Polycarp
I don’t know how theologically sound that is (your area of expertise, not mine), but it sounds more reasonable than them borrowing it from an Egyptian pagan system that died out 1000 years before.
at 13:14: