Studying the Trinity

[disciple Clint]

It is quite easy to understand in Gods understanding my friend. God bless.
Jesus(Gods Word) became sin, so God forsakes sin. God becomes all.

God does not require more, because God isn’t more. God is all!

So I get the impression that you do not understand that Jesus was quoting a Psalm and not expressing an emotion of distress. "My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?”

 

[sparow]

Yeah I studied that issue once but it’s been a long time. I think it’s because the KJV used a different text in translation. I’ve heard that the other texts are corrupted.

edit: Textus Receptus - Wikipedia

I would expect the Textus Receptus to be corrupt as is any translation I expect it would have been used by the KJV, I don't know though; I would expect the Latin translation to support the Trinity Doctrine but in 1 John 5 it is not talking the Trinity, it is talking about the water and the blood witnessed by the spirit and it also says all three witness to the truth.

 

[sparow]

Please don't use this passage. It wasn't in the original text. Nor was it the basis for the discussions when the doctrine was created.

I don't know what you are getting upset about; I do not believe 1John 5 has anything to do with the Trinity Doctrine that came about at the behest of a Roman Governor, (later a not very nice emperor). What do you believe was the original text?

 

[Darren Brown]

This video might help

 

[Follower of Yahshua]

Hello Everyone, it's been a while since I've logged on, but I'm so glad to be back!

Recently I've began to study the Trinity. Just to give some background: I grew up in a movement that did not embrace the doctrine of the Trinity. So recently, I began to explore this doctrine, as what I was taught didn't make a ton of sense to me haha. And I must say, I'm so glad that I decided to look into it for myself.

I've purchased a couple of books on the subject and began reading them. I also started watching some videos and looking at other online resources. It's such an amazing thing to look at, but also difficult to wrap one's head around at the same time.

I completely understand the fact that it's difficult for our finite minds to grasp our infinite God. With that being said, I wanted to reach out and see if any of you have any resources or analogies on this subject that help you?

Thank-you all in advance for your help. This is not meant to stir up any types of arguments, I'm not interested in that at all. Blessings!

One of the first things to understand is that basically all analogies are going to be problematic. It's why trying to say "The Trinity is like..." usually ends up just causing more confusion than bringing clarity.

God as Trinity isn't like anything with which we have in our experience. There's simply nothing like God.

So when we say that there are three Divine Persons, each fully and equally God--the one and same God--it describes something which, on some level, we simply can't relate to on the basis of our own experiences outside of God's own self-revelation of Himself.

Two things are being asserted as fundamentally true:

1. There is only one God.
2. There are three Persons or Hypostases.

That word hypostasis (plural hypostases) is a complicated one. It's a Greek word that can be translated as "subsistence". But what it is really trying to capture is the idea of meaningful existence, something discrete and real. In regard to the Trinity it means that the Father is really the Father, that's Who He is; distinct from the Son and the Holy Spirit. "Father" isn't just a face, or a mask God wears, instead there really is this One who is Father, and He is Father because He is the Father of the Son. It is therefore relational, He is the Father of the Son, that is very real, eternally real. In the same way that the Son, distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit, really exists as the Son of the Father, the only-begotten of the Father, begotten of the Father from all eternity.

So that there is one God, the Father. And the Father eternally begets the Son, and the Son as the eternally-begotten of the Father is God, just as the Father is God. So that the Father and the Son are the same God.

The Son is God because the Father is God. Thus we speak of the Son's eternal generation from the Father, as God of God, and therefore He is homoousios (of-Same-Being) with the Father. The Father's Being, His Essence, His Eternal IS-ness as the one and only God is also the Being, Essence, and Eternal IS-ness of the Son. Thus the Son is God, the one and only God, even as the Father is God, the one and only God.

Likewise, the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father [and the Son], and is therefore God, in just the same way the Father and the Son are God. The one and only God.

So that there is the Father, unbegotten and unproceeding.
The Son, only-begotten of the Father.
The Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father [and the Son].

So that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three Divine Persons and Hypostases, of one undivided Being and Essence. One God, Three Persons.

Helpful resources:

The Nicene Creed
The Nicene Creed

The Athanasian Creed aka The Quicumque Vult
Quicumque

Perhaps somewhat more obscure, but a local synod held in Toledo in the 7th century produced a rather fantastic statement of Trinitarian faith:
COUNCIL OF TOLEDO XI 675 – Creed of Faith

-CryptoLutheran

 

[The Liturgist]

Please don't use this passage. It wasn't in the original text. Nor was it the basis for the discussions when the doctrine was created.

The Comma Johanneum is a doctrinally correct gloss over original text which obviously refers to the Trinity, and is a normal feature or the Byzantine text type. I mean, the same argument you use could be used for Mark 16:9-16, or the Woman Caught In Adultery pericope from The Gospel of John, both of which are additions or imterpolations respectively, but of key doctrinal importance. This is why the NIV and other Minority Text Bibles are of limited value: because the Church has the power to make canonical glosses such as the Comma Johanneum, interpolations and additions in John and Mark, and entire books omitted from the pre-Athanasian canon, including Revelations, James, Jude, Hebrews, 2 Peter, Timothy, Titus and Philemon, and to remove other books later deemed spurious, like 1 Barnabas, and the Byzantine Majority Text, which is reflected in the Vulgate and the Peshitta, represents the Bible as optimized for liturgical use.

That said, the old NIV was stylistically elegant, but the new one is a bit rubbish due to artificial gender neutrality. The only nice thing about it is hearing David Suchet, who plays Poirot and converted to the Church of England from a Jewish background, and who integrated his faith into many later episodes of Poirot.

 

[The Liturgist]

I've never been one that found the doctrine of the Trinity to be odd or difficult to grasp.
Perhaps it's due to my Greek ancestral roots where philosophy and metaphysical concepts were refined and debated in the public squares for centuries.

When I listen to Muslims who are perplexed at this idea I realize that high brow philosophical ideas were void in the middle east thus they can't grasp it. Same with anti-trinitarians, I don't mean to sound condescending but they are pretty much simpletons. You can't discuss geometry with someone who has yet to figure out simple addition and subtraction.

Middle Eastern Christians grasp the Trinity pretty well, including your Antiochian Orthodox brethren, so this kind of Hellenistic argument doesn’t hold water, and also, there is the issue of resentment by the Arabic speaking majority of the laity in the Eastern Orthodox Church of Jerusalem regarding the Bishops, who always seem to be Greek, and the uncanonical opening of Arabic speaking parishes by Jerusalem in Qatar and other places in the canonical jurisdiction of Antioch, which led His Beatitude John X Yazigi of Antioch to break communion with His Beatitude the Patriarch of Jerusalem and His All Holiness Bartholomew I. Its ironic that the Antiochian Church has better relations and is prayed for in the diptychs of the Syriac Orthodox Church, and vice versa, than with two of its Orthodox neighbors.

You should read the blog Notes on Arab Orthodoxy, which is an insightful look into the struggles of Arabic speaking Middle Eastern Christians, who like their Syriac, Armenian and Ge’ez speaking brethren (there are Syriac speakers in the Church of Antioch), who still suffer under the yoke of Turkocratia and Islamocratia, from which the Greeks were delivered in part 1821 and in part in the later 19th century, but then the Pontic Greeks were the victims of genocide along with Armenians and Syriac and Assyrian Christians in 1915, with 33% killed, and the remainder were ethnically cleansed in the compulsory population exchange with Turkey, leaving the Phanariots and a handful of other Greeks in Asia Minor.

 

[buzuxi02]

Middle Eastern Christians grasp the Trinity pretty well, including your Antiochian Orthodox brethren, so

I'm not sure what kind of response this is to what I've said as it goes off on tangents. First off the Antiochan liturgical language was officially Greek up till last century. Just like Arabic eclipsed the Copt language (virtually a Greek dialect itself) arabic eclipsed the Greek used in Damascus (read about the decapolis in the NT) and the other major cities all which used Greek. Cyprus is the only middle eastern peoples to successfully resist arabization and is the reason it considers itself European even though geographically its in Asian waters. But even the former archbishop of the Antiochan Church that headed the churches in Kuwait was a native of Damascus who had a quintessential Greek name and considered himself Greek and not arabic. So why shouldn't christians from the Levant not have a better time understanding the trinity than the rest??? Antioch is Greek by their own admittance being officially called so.
As far as the Anatolian Greek christians one of which was my grandfather and when it comes to Pontic christians whom I have close friendships with, not sure what this has with the subject matter.

Another truth is the Pontic Greek christians had a hand in the re-hellenization of the city of Thessaloniki after the great fire of that city and after the population exchange the Romeyka of Pontos reestablished again that city as a purely Greek christian center.