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What do you mean by "Trinity"?

How do you define Trinity?

  • One God in three Persons - all of the persons, infinite, no beginning, eternal ...

    Votes: 17 85.0%
  • One God in threee persons - and not all the same attributes listed in option 1

    Votes: 1 5.0%
  • The definition does not include "one God in three persons" - so something else

    Votes: 2 10.0%

  • Total voters
    20

Hoghead1

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As I said before and will say again, analogize we must. Our knowledge of reality is always analogous knowledge. Also, some analogies fro the trinity do not work but some do.

Also, I don't think teh PCUSA is particularly worried about modalism. Almost every ministerial candidate I went to seminary with and ev ery Presbyterian pastor I have ever knows would fit the description of modalism.
 
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Hoghead1

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Why? What is your objection to modalism? The only objection I can see that you can raise is that it challenges the notion that there are three subjectivities, three minds, within the Godhead. Well, that's what modalism is supposed to do: grant you one mind, one God, not a cosmic committee of three. You and other here seem to forget that the original Trinitarian concept of a "person" was not at all like the modern one, which you keep unduly reading into the equation.
 
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Hoghead1

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I don't think that is a very solid POV at all. God is neither a solitary individual or a committee? That what is God? If there is only one God, then, yes, God is a solitary individual? If God is not a cosmic committee, then no, there are not three subjectivities in the Godhead and tritheism is avoided.
As to being "solitary," no, I don't think of God as solitary. I think of God as a social-relational being, who, to be compete, needs others. However, there is but one mind here, one God.
 
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Hoghead1

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I don't think so. They believed in one only God. They may have recognized gods or godly persons that were in tune with the attributes of their God.
No, no. As t3eh Bible makes plain, the ancient Israelites were subject to falling into polytheism.
 
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Hoghead1

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Yes, from what I know about the Apocrypha , they are ignorant assumptions. Also, arguing that such-and-such is the cases , because you think you read something about it in some source you can't remember is a not a solid way to make a point. It's like arguing "they say." "Who are the they?" I ask.
 
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Hoghead1

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Look, I don't think you understanding the church's understanding, either. I never said that person and being are the same. I said that persons are in fact beings. You claimed that persons are not beings and that makes absolutely no sense. The church never claimed that.
 
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ScottA

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hedrick

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They never said there's more than one mind in God.
To my knowledge, classical Trinitarian thought does not claim that there are three minds. The Catholic Encyclopedia, which represents traditional Catholic view in the early 20th Cent, says there's one mind. "Granted that in the infinite mind, in which the categories are transcended, there are three relations which are subsistent realities, distinguished one from another in virtue of their relative opposition then it will follow that the same mind will have a three-fold consciousness, knowing itself in three ways in accordance with its three modes of existence." (article on the Trinity, Catholic Encyclopedia, newadvent.org)

The things that we normally think of as constituting a person actually go with the nature, not the Person. The only thing that isn't one is the relations. That's one reason we've all agreed that "Person" in Trinitarian theology is not the same as the common-language use of "person."
Also, I don't think teh PCUSA is particularly worried about modalism. Almost every ministerial candidate I went to seminary with and ev ery Presbyterian pastor I have ever knows would fit the description of modalism.
I don't think I trust your evaluation of whether a theology is modalist.
I'm with Erose on this one. I agree that persons in the common-language sense are beings, but God is one being. (Except of course when we get to the Incarnation, when the Logos is one being, but that's a different problem.)
 
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Colter

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Jesus speaks clearly as having personality, mind and will subject to the Fathers will. In that regard he is a revelation of the Father. A Trinity would be indistinguishable, however we could perceive something of the Trinity through the Son of a Trinity.

John 1 makes a philosophical concession for purposes of illustration of the ancestral relatedness of Jesus and his Paradise parents.
 
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ScottA

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I still don't follow you here. Maybe we should come back to this later on. I sensed we are getting off track.
No need. I see from another thread that you do not believe that the scriptures are the word of God. So, then, if it is all men's nonsense to you - there is nothing to discuss: your word against mine in a godless exchange. No thank you.
 
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hedrick

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This isn't a problem. Standard theology says there's a separate human will. Personality in the modern sense wasn't a category in their metaphysics, but I think it's clear that in classic theology there's a separate human personality.

I'm not sure you should understand John 1 as a philosophical statement. Logos was an equivalent of Wisdom and in some cases even Torah. It was God's way of being present with us. If you look at the structure of John, you'll see that Jesus replaces the Temple, and all the other major symbols used in 1st Cent Judaism for God's presence, so John 1 is an introduction, summarizing what the rest of the Gospel is going to show.
 
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Citizen of the Kingdom

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Jeremiah 25:6 links other gods with works of mankind kindling anger in God. That seems to be the basic analogy of the Bible. Probably the best diagram of that is in 1 Samuel where the Philistines captured the ark to place it before their god Dagon.
He said "in the evolution of Judaism." The OT certainly makes it appear that during the earliest periods many accepted the existence of more than one God but worshipped only the Lord. That's not true of Judaism by NT times, of course.



That depends on what you mean by false gods. The Ten Commandments do not deny the existence of other gods, just that the Israelites should not worship them.
So let me clear this up somewhat as to your beliefs on this particular topic. You'all are saying that other Gods existed according to what the one true God expresses in the OT writings? I beg to differ that is not His meaning at all. And to say that the language did not extend to the NT seems bizzarre too since that is the one place where emphasis is placed on gods of this word, where gods are not meant at all but are actually fallen angels.
 
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Colter

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I say philosophical concession because John uses the term "in the beginning" but there was no beginning of God, howerver there would be a beginning of the creator Son.
 
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Job8

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How about your belief in the Trinity? How do you define what Trinity is?
Rather than "define Trinity" we can go directly to Scripture and confirm that:

THE FATHER IS GOD
THE SON IS GOD
THE HOLY SPIRIT (HOLY GHOST) IS GOD

THE FATHER IS GOD
Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor 1:3).

THE SON IS GOD
But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: (Heb 1:8-10).

THE HOLY SPIRIT IS GOD
But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. (Acts 5:3-4).

So, because all three Divine Persons are God, we have the triune Godhead (or Trinity). WE could list numerous other passages to establish this doctrine.
 
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