The neo-Trinity: This time it's fuzzy

I'm here ta tell ya there's nothing impossible about being born of water and the Spirit! Neither is Trinity a concept of human origin, nor are "the 7 spirits of G-d," which were first revealed in the OT, and shown to still exist in the NT, just to avoid any possible confusion.

The fact that any of us may not be able to comprehend some of this, or any of it, has no bearing on Truth.

Did I say anything about the concepts being impossible? I said they were incoherent and inscrutable in a meaning that could be agreed upon at best.

Comprehension in any sense seems to me to be intrinsic to having a belief in whatever you comprehend. You can't logically say you don't comprehend the Trinity at all and then say you believe in it. At best, you'd have to admit that you have some comprehension of it, but not a full comprehension.

So in short, I contest the thesis that just because we don't comprehend or understand something that Truth still somehow exists objectively, because comprehension, even rooted in commitment by faith, is necessary to have some degree of connection to Truth or truth.

ToHoldNothing said:

Did I say anything about the concepts being impossible?

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Um, yes you did: "There are metaphysical impossibilities still with God possessing two natures at the same time that are descriptively in direct contrast with each other"

You do this on a regular basis you know. Then you complain about the incomprehensibility of theological language.

ToHoldNothing said:

So in short, I contest the thesis that just because we don't comprehend or understand something that Truth still somehow exists objectively, because comprehension, even rooted in commitment by faith, is necessary to have some degree of connection to Truth or truth.

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At least now you're being consistent. You're an atheist; you think any and all Truth is manufactured by mortals. You then go on to conflate Truth w/ comprehension. I counter that the theory of relativity existed long before Einstein ever wrote about it.

Um, yes you did: "There are metaphysical impossibilities still with God possessing two natures at the same time that are descriptively in direct contrast with each other"

You do this on a regular basis you know. Then you complain about the incomprehensibility of theological language.

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Possibility is connected in some significant sense with comprehensibility. Though this is not to say that just because we can conceive of something existing possibly that it must necessarily exist. That's the biggest issue many find with the ontological argument for God's existence.

You seem to assume that metaphysics is relative to one's beliefs when you say that any impossibility is void by your beliefs. It's not as if your beliefs about metaphysics justify your unrealistic standard of possibility. It's purely a matter of faith as opposed to any consideration of philosophical coherence, which isn't something Christianity should eschew given its general history of philosophical scrutiny of itself.

At least now you're being consistent. You're an atheist; you think any and all Truth is manufactured by mortals. You then go on to conflate Truth w/ comprehension. I counter that the theory of relativity existed long before Einstein ever wrote about it.

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Do not conflate my nominal atheism with cultural and epistemological relativism, which is not something that an atheist or even a humanist would subscribe to necessarily. Truth is not absolutely equivalent to comprehension, you're making mistaken inferences about what I argued. I said that comprehension is a part of how we get closer to objective truth. Comprehension is not the only way we get closer to truth, though

You're confusing Einstein's relativity with the philosophical claims of a particular kind of relativism, epistemological, which I do not subscribe to. Einstein's relativity spoke about motion, time and other physical constraints we observe in the universe.

joey_downunder said:

Direct quote from Saint Iraneus (130-200 AD):

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It's actually from the Letter to the Philippians attributed to Ignatius. However, there seems to be some doubt as to its authenticity.

Yab Yum said:

"Trinity" just means: Jesus is uncreated, not created.

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This was the distinction that was being made by Athanasius. But I think it's fair to say that we would probably express the same thing in a very different way today.

In fact, the idea of "Trinity" was first formulated by Tertullian in Adversus Praxean. The idea he was arguing against was not Arianism - the idea of the created Christ - but Patripassianism - that G-d the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ were the same person.

nojnoj said:

If the Bible had just been discovered in this or the last century, would the current doctrine of the Trinity be so firmly held? It was originally synthesized at the ?Council of Nicea, in order to rationalize apparent difficulties and contradictions in the nature of the Godhead.

Perhaps the present-day, postmodern understanding of the relationship between God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit would be much more fuzzy and perhaps more honest - a frank admission that we just don't know exactly how it works/worked.

(I'm not a Christian, but I'll throw this question out there nevertheless)

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I've often wondered if a person who just picked up a bible and read everything for the first time, how would they see it? I've actually posted a few questions about this before. The thing is, the trinity is so central to Christianity today that to question it feels more like an attack to others than an open and honest soul seeker just curious.

I'm not quite as dogmatic about the trinity myself... at least not with that term. I guess I still hold to what is considered trinity doctrine in that I believe Father, Son and HS are one and there is only one God. I'm not sure how it works at all and I don't think I'll ever know for sure till I die. I'm not sure if I buy the One person 3 personalities thing like some try to explain it cause that is NOT what I get reading the bible.

The things I do know from the bible because they are specifically stated:
There is only one God.
Jesus is the Son of God.
Jesus and the Father are equal.
Jesus, Father, and Spirit are equals.
Jesus is Lord and God.
Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in him.
Jesus and the Father are One.
Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God.
All things were created through him.

I don't have the exact verses on hand for each of those, I'll have to go through and look up exactly where they are all stated but yeah... I KNOW those are all in the bible.

Now that looks like a mess... but here's the way I see it. When God is mentioned in the NT, they are usually referring to God the Father. So when Jesus prays, he's praying to God the Father. Not to himself. Jesus and the father are one.. but so is husband and wife. Obviously they are not joined together and one person. But they are equals and in a perfect marriage, they should be in unison with each other... what is his is hers and what is hers is his. Jesus also says that his disciples are in him as he is in the father. People point to that and say see Jesus is God cause he is in the father. Well his disciples are not Jesus even though they are in him. So... ?

The Holy Spirit also has his role. They all have their role and together they are God. Inseparable, in complete unity with one another but they are not all the same being. The Father knows things the Son does not for instance (the hour of Jesus' return for example).

ANYWAY... I can't explain how it all works... for me, the best way is it's like a Marriage... one Marriage... two people... One God... three people. Three equals, three all in unison with each other as one. Not three Gods.. when you have a marriage with two people in it, you don't have two marriages... it's one marriage.

That is how I see it because that's how I see it presented in the bible. It's confusing, and I'm not gonna try to sort it all out. People have told me before those that don't believe in the trinity are not saved because you are not accepting Jesus' truth or something like that that he is God incarnate. I'm not sure if what I'm saying lines up with the traditional view of the "Trinity" but I haven't denied anything the bible said... I listed them above and there are more but those were just off the top of my head. I just understand it a little differently cause a lot of what people say just isn't true.

Like... "God loves you... he came to this earth to die for you." That is not what the bible says exactly. The Bible says "God loved the world in this way: He gave His ONE and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him, shall not parish but have eternal life." - John 3:16.. It did not say, "God loved the world in this way: He came to earth and died for you so that whoever believes will have eternal life"

So anyway, three equals... all one... after that yes, it's fuzzy. That's my opinion anyway... So no I think if a bible was picked up today the trinity term wouldn't form right away... The trinity term seems like something used to simplify something we just don't know exactly how it works and it's just gotten interpreted differently over the years.

I think Jesus and Isaiah both spoke of the Trinity:

Mat 28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:"

Isa 33:22 For the LORD [is] our judge, the LORD [is] our lawgiver, the LORD [is] our king; he will save us."

Trinity doesn't have to be necessarily interpreted as some literal metaphysical structure that one explains by unnecessarily complex and human constructions of form, matter, etc, such as hypostasis and dual nature and the like.

Honestly, Modalism seems to have more practical sense since it still posits a single Creator monotheistic God but simplifies the Trinity thing to a still satisfactory explanation without removing the mystery of the modes of God.

Skilletdude said:

I've often wondered if a person who just picked up a bible and read everything for the first time, how would they see it?

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I've done this. I learned how to read by reading the Bible. I try to still approach it the same way, but it's more difficult 42 years later.

nojnoj said:

In gaming terminology: "God with Multiple Skins and Power-ups"

Or in sociology terms: "The Divinely Haunted One-Parent Family"

(No offense intended!)

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didnt know divine and haunted were even terms in sociology

ToHoldNothing said:

This explanation sounds suspiciously like Modalism where God takes on modes of a sort.

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It's not. Modalism denied the distinctiveness of the 3 personas and the simultaneity of the personas. Notice I emphasized that the personas we have are often distinct, specifically the persona of lover, where we avoid being lover as parent or co-worker. I specifically used the term "interpenetrate" because that is the language used to describe Trinity.

Now, humans rarely are 2 personas simultaneously. We do tend to do our personas consecutively. It's a limitation of being human. BUT, I was making an analogy. Analogies are not exact, but are there to help people grasp a concept.

All explanations of Trinity are in analogies or negations. Tertullian used the analogies of "as the root puts forth the tree, and the fountain the river, and the sun the ray. For these are probolai/, or emanations, of the substances from which they proceed. I should not hesitate, indeed, to call the tree the son or offspring of the root, and the river of the fountain, and the ray of the sun ... But still the tree is not severed from the root, nor the river from the fountain, nor the ray from the sun; nor, indeed, is the Word separated from God. Following, therefore, the form of these analogies ..." You could make the same argument about Tertullian's analogies is that all these are different consecutively. But Tertullian wasn't a Modalist, instead arguing against Modalism. Again, Tertullian was making an analogies.

ToHoldNothing said:

There are metaphysical impossibilities still with God possessing two natures at the same time that are descriptively in direct contrast with each other, practically like the sun and the moon

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That may have been a problem before the 20th century, but it isn't now. Now we have wave-particle duality. Light and matter "possess 2 natures at the same time that are descriptively in contrast with each other."

The phrase "metaphysical impossiblity" becomes an Argument from Incredulity.

ToHoldNothing said:

I contest the thesis that just because we don't comprehend or understand something that Truth still somehow exists objectively, because comprehension, even rooted in commitment by faith, is necessary to have some degree of connection to Truth or truth.

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That does not follow. You are contesting the independence of comprehension and objective Truth. You are saying that you have to have some comprehension for something to be true.

Think about that for a minute. For centuries humans did not have any comprehension of the origin of disease. They thought diseases were demons, or miasmic vapors, or disruptions of the humors, or whatever. During all that time, the objective truth was the diseases they were talking about were caused by microorganisms.

That is just one observation that refutes the claim you are making.

Now, if you are saying that we need some comprehension of an idea to evaluate whether the idea is objectively true or not, then I agree.

I would qualify that statement within the parameters you just described. To say that just because we don't understand something, we should just go with whatever tradition or majority says is bollocks. The difficulty remains about coherently understanding something like God or Trinity, but evidently, that will never happen.

But then, the whole discussion of God tends to hinge on this, which is why I tend towards theological noncognitivism to begin with. Or ignosticism, which is similar.

And honestly, you can't go from properties of a physical phenomenon like light to arguing that this applies in the same way to God, because with light it's a wave or particule depending on context, but they share those modes in a sense, which only seems to still support Modalism as a probable and rational argument about God's nature, however little a believer may be able to qualify or categorize those modes of God.

With the Trinity, you still have my objection that one could just characterize God as something of possessing a hypersensitive type of dissociative identiy disorder. JEsus and the Holy Spirit and the Father would all be alters of God, the base personality and would behave independently but still be part of God's basic personality and psychology.

One way to explain this theologically would just be that God's ways are mysterious. But this kind of obscurantism and acceptance of mystery for mystery's sake or almost a ignotum per ignotius (the unknown by the more unknown). If God is mysterious, why even try to rationalize or categorize or philosophically analyze the entity at all if the end result is that you're speculating from secondhand and indirect evidence of other people who thought God was inspiring or talking to them?

Honestly, all your explanations are doing is giving me a better idea of how to structure a character I could write based around this Trinitarian notion of God. Heck, even a Modalist God would be a compelling character here, with a similar kind of D.I.D.

And on the light wave particle duality, I've said this before, this doesn't prove Trinitarianism, it proves Binitarianism, which honestly still puts you in a position to explain the Holy Spirit, unless it's an epiphenomenon of Father and Son.

ToHoldNothing said:

The difficulty remains about coherently understanding something like God or Trinity, but evidently, that will never happen.

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Speak for yourself!

ToHoldNothing said:

all your explanations are doing is giving me a better idea of how to structure a character I could write based around this Trinitarian notion of God.

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Guaranteed, anything we might write on our own will not be a Faithful representation of His Fullness.