The Trinity

[Vladimir Lenin]

Do you believe in it?

[MehemtAli_Pasha]

I went to church(protestant) for a year, attended many bible studies, but naah..i still don't get it.

[basics]

" I went to church(protestant) for a year, attended many bible studies, but naah..i still don't get it."

MehemtAli_Pasha,

Even after I was converted I too still didn't get it but with constant reading and prayer, the Holy Spirit fed me all that was necessary for me to understand, to see, yes, from the Scriptures, that the Lord Jesus Christ is Almighty God, just as the Father and the Spirit Himself are also Almighty God.

This is the mystery spoken of that even the angels were not party to and never were until He was raised from the dead. When Scripture talks of God it does not mean angels and when it talks of angels it does not mean God. Jacob wrestled with God. Abraham talked person to person with God as did Moses. How can that be for God, the Father, is a blinding light on whom no man may look and live?

All them that saw God, saw Him in the personification of the Son in whom we are the likeness of just as it is said in Genesis. We were made in His image, but we cannot have an image if we are but spirit and soul, but we can have an image if it is as the Son is. According to John we were made by Him as was everything else, both good and evil, confirmed by Isaiah centuries before.

When students hear lessons taken in part, without rebirth these parts are but the dead letter. They don't contain the Spirit of God, so therefore He having nothing to say says nothing and that is the difference between a Christian made regenerate and them claiming the name with no rebirth. That indeed is what Scripture teaches and is the experience of them truly converted.

[ket222]

Karahan,
You raise an excellent point. Since no one bothered to respond to me previous message on the previous page, I will quote again my thoughts on the value of God becoming fully man as a historical figure. I don't just believe it comes down to the question of sinlessness and redemption as the guy above mentioned (not saying it's wrong).
The more important point to me is because God understands/empathizes with man (having become a man) only now can we truly say "God is love."
To quote below (please give me your thoughts)
For me, the idea of Christianity is most profoundly held by the view that God has taken up human nature (in the historical figure of a single man, Jesus) into himself. That is, God is essentially EMPATHETIC with mankind because he walked this earth; sinless yes, but having the same temptations and above all agonies as we do (the agony of the cross, even to the point of feeling abandoned by God at the end, all the while remaining faithful to Him by remaining on the cross-my personal view).

As Hegel said, God brings pure negativity into his own nature (death) while remaining God.

One small example of the profundity of this idea for me. Elie Weisel famously writes of seeing a child on the gallows in Auschwitz. He quotes a Catholic priest who basically says that God is there with the child (because He understands human agony in Christ)--Wiesel, a Jew, is forced to reject this idea and merely lament "where is God?" (basically, God is not here in Auschwitz).

Only the CHRISTIAN idea of God brings him most intimately with man in all our human experience and need. Most importantly, this characteristic that is essential to God's nature is one of LOVE. We are loved bc we are known (God has become human). If you look at Jewish mysticism, you will often see that God is ineffable and impossibly far away. Forgive me if I am wrong, but from what little I know of Islam, I've the sense that Allah is often removed from mankind, his will is often seen as inaccessible--and there is little talk of Allah's LOVE for men, only that man must 'submit' (Islam means submission) to his inscrutable will.
[again, my moslem brothers, if I am wrong forgive me, and simply look at the rest of my argument.]

[karahan]

Karahan,
You raise an excellent point. Since no one bothered to respond to me previous message on the previous page, I will quote again my thoughts on the value of God becoming fully man as a historical figure. I don't just believe it comes down to the question of sinlessness and redemption as the guy above mentioned (not saying it's wrong).
The more important point to me is because God understands/empathizes with man (having become a man) only now can we truly say "God is love."

Dude with all due respect ,
"God understands/empathizes with man (having become a man)",

So to take your comment as a example, if I'm a expert mechanic on microwaves! and a microwave breaks down, in order to understand whats wrong with it(to fix it) I would than need to turn into a microwave!

Now thats just silly as I know you would agree (hope so), so why would God, the very being who created us, the being that knows more about ourselfs than we do, need to turn in to a human to be able to "understand" or "empathize" with us

As Hegel said, God brings pure negativity into his own nature (death) while remaining God.

If god brings negativity in to his nature than god ceases to be God.
if your going to use the old argument of god can do anything, my answer is no god can't!

God cannot lie, god cannot throw me out of his kingdom(for everywhere belongs to God), God cannot create another God for God is uncreated(so you can't have a created God), so on and so forth, so god cannot die for that goes agaisnt God's nature.

Only the CHRISTIAN idea of God brings him most intimately with man in all our human experience and need. Most importantly, this characteristic that is essential to God's nature is one of LOVE.

That is only your opinion (being a Christian), not fact in anyway.

Peace (to my Christian brother)


@ Ummon

Ok dude tueshay, Jesus was partly sinless I guess, but you still didn't answer my main question how can Jesus be a powerful all controlling God and at the same time be a Human being (considering the fact that God & humans have almost totally opposite qualities to each other)?:hmmm:

[Ummon]

@ Ummon

Ok dude tueshay, Jesus was partly sinless I guess, but you still didn't answer my main question how can Jesus be a powerful all controlling God and at the same time be a Human being (considering the fact that God & humans have almost totally opposite qualities to each other)?:hmmm:

Because God is omnipotent, and He can do as He pleases, even assuming Human form and becoming a man for a while.

Besides, when Satan tempts Jesus in the desert, the answer reported is quite clear:

You will not tempt God thy Lord.

[The Good]

I would say yes, I do believe the doctrine of the Trinity.

[pericles_plato]

I believe in the trinity. I was raised Baptist. Plus my Great Uncle is preacher in WV.

[AngryTitusPullo]

"And they say: ''God has taken to Himself a son." Glory be to Him; rather, whatever is in the heavens and the earth is His; all are obedient to Him. The Originator of the heavens and the earth; and when He decrees an affair, He only says to it, "Be", and it is." (2:116-117)

"and say not, "Three". Desist, it is better for you; God is only one God; far be it from His glory that He should have a son; whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth is His; and God is sufficient for a Protector." (4:171)

"Certainly they disbelieve who say: "Surely God is the third (Person) of the three"; and there is no god but One God,…. The Messiah, son of Mary is but an apostle; apostles before him have indeed passed away; and his mother was a truthful woman, they both used to eat food. See how We make the signs clear to them, then behold how they are turned away." (5:73 – 75)

"Certainly they disbelieve who say: "Surely God – He is the Messiah, son of Mary". Say: "Who then could control any thing as against God when He wished to destroy the Messiah, son of Mary and his mother and all those on the earth?" And God’s is the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and what is between them; He creates what He pleases; and God has power over all things." (5:17)

"The Messiah by no means disdain that he should be a servant of God, nor do the angels who are near to Him, and whoever disdains His worship and is proud, He will gather them all together to Himself." (4:172)


"And they say: "The Beneficent God has taken to Himself a son." Glory be to Him. Nay! They are honored servants; they do not precede Him in speech and (only) according to His commandment do they act. He knows what is before them and what is behind them, and they do not intercede except for him whom He approves, and for fear of Him they tremble." (21:26 – 28)

"Certainly they disbelieve who say: "Surely God, He is the Messiah, son of Mary". And the Messiah said: "O Children of Israel! Worship God, my Lord and your Lord, surely whoever associates (others) with God, then God has forbidden to him the garden, and his abode is the fire; and there shall be no helpers for the unjust." (5:72)

[MaximiIian]

Do you believe in it?

Being a polytheist, no.
But I comprehend the concept.

I am irritated by some people who claim such retarded things as "The trinity is polytheistic" or something similar.
No it's not, people. I am a polytheist; I know what polytheism is. And Nicene theology is not polytheistic.

[tco]

Well to believe the trinity I would have to believe that Jesus is the son of God, so no.

[Legio XII]

I believe in God the Father and Jesus the Son. However, I do not see the "Holy Spirit" to be a separate entity. If it exists at all, it is merely an extension of the previous two.

[dwringer]

I believe it in a purely abstract sort of metaphysical way, so I believe they are all aspects of the same God. I mean, if Jesus is God AND a Man, because he is free of sin, and he is filled with the Holy Spirit (or results in it, or becomes it, or whatever it's supposed to be), that means to me that the spirit in all of us is basically supposed to be a corrupted version of God itself, and Jesus was supposed to be a mortal embodiment of what it was to be pure and fully in communion with God by actually BEING God.

Thus to me, the "Father" is the will of all nature and basically the whole universe that we must at times submit to, the "Son" is a physical example of man in a pure, divinely connected state, and the "Holy Spirit" is the reason we have life and what our entire being would be were we not somehow supposedly corrupted by mortality and free will. [The God in all of us, as it were]

In other words I guess I have kind of a pagan interpretation of catholicism or something. But in reality I think this is all metaphor, and I certainly am not religious. I think these statements are empirically meaningless.

[MaximiIian]

To the best of my understanding, Nicene Trinitarian Christianity sees the Trinity as sort of like three manifestations of God unified under a single divine consciousness, or Logos. They are not separate beings, or even "aspects" of a monadic entity. They are seen as three faces of one head, so to speak. Three tightly linked expressions of the same mind, if that makes any sense.

Now, just because I understand it doesn't mean I agree with it or believe in it, obviously. But it is kind of a tough concept to grasp fully.
I mean, even professional theologians argued for, what, like 400 years before they decided what they agreed on about it.

[dwringer]

Hmm, good point... ;p

But I'm not sure what we really mean by "aspects", because of course there is only one God, I guess the blasphemy in my view of it is that we are all that God, merely lesser incarnations compared to the mythical Jesus.

[MaximiIian]

I guess the blasphemy in my view of it is that we are all that God, merely lesser incarnations compared to the mythical Jesus.

Well, the Holy Spirit concept, which covers that idea, is basically the thought that since God is supreme and perfect, God is all and is in all, so God is within each and every one of us, expressing himself and his attributes- love, honour, justice, righteousness, though everyone. The point of that concept is through this expression of God in all of us, we are capable of being good and making the right decisions.

I might be a tad off, though, since I'm not Christian and have only learned this from reading stuff and talking to some of my Catholic friends. :hmmm:
The whole concept doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I have a different world-view, a different way of thinking and perceiving things, and obviously not everyone thinks the same way.

[Thanatos]

Yes, I believe in the trinity.

[dwringer]

Are there any catholics out there that could tell me in what way the Trinity is supposedly different from my above stated interpretation? I actually don't know very much about what the real doctrines are supposed to mean in a practical sense.

[jankren]

Any logical person who does not come from Christian background will realize that the trinity belief just doesnt make any sense.

[hellheaven1987]

Any logical person who does not come from Christian background will realize that the trinity belief just doesnt make any sense.

Ya, I never really understand the similarity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holyspirit.

Does that mean Jesus try to role-play as the son of God and then again try to role-play God??? How can a guy say he is the son of God becomes God itself??