Born Again Christian There Is One God and Trinitarian Doctrine.what Did You Say Pastor.?

Introduction to the Trinity

The core conventionalities

The doctrine of the Trinity is the Christian belief that:

There is 1 God, who is Male parent, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Stained glass window with three sections representing the Trinity Trinitarian stained drinking glass window ©

Other means of referring to the Trinity are the Triune God and the 3-in-One.

The Trinity is a controversial doctrine; many Christians admit they don't understand information technology, while many more Christians don't understand it but think they do.

In fact, although they'd be horrified to hear it, many Christians sometimes behave as if they believe in three Gods and at other times every bit if they believe in 1.

Trinity Sunday, which falls on the first Sun after Pentecost, is i of the few feasts in the Christian calendar that celebrate a doctrine rather than an issue.

Find the appointment for Trinity Sunday 2014 in the multifaith calendar

A central doctrine

The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most difficult ideas in Christianity, but it's central to Christians because it:

states what Christians believe God is like and who he is
plays a central part in Christians' worship of an "unobjectifiable and incomprehensible God"
emphasises that God is very dissimilar from homo beings
reflects the ways Christians believe God encounters them
is a central element of Christian identity
teaches Christians vital truths about human relationship and customs
reveals that God can be seen merely every bit a spiritual feel whose mystery inspires awe and cannot be understood logically

Unpacking the doctrine

The idea that there is One God, who is Male parent, Son, and Holy Spirit means:

There is exactly one God
The Father is God
The Son is God
The Holy Spirit is God
The Father is non the Son
The Son is non the Holy Spirit
The Male parent is not the Holy Spirit

An alternate way of explaining information technology is:

There is exactly one God
In that location are three really distinct Persons - Male parent, Son, and Holy Spirit
Each of the Persons is God

Common mistakes

The Trinity is not

Three individuals who together make one God
Iii Gods joined together
3 properties of God

Bible and why Christians believe in the Trinity

The Bible and why Christians believe in the Trinity

Christianity adopted this complicated thought of God because information technology was the only way they could brand sense of One God in the context of the events and teaching of the Bible.

The idea of the Trinity does non supersede monotheism; it interprets it, in the calorie-free of a specific ready of revelatory events and experiences.

Keith Ward, Religion and Creation, 1996

Encounters with God

Humanity met God in iii unlike forms:

God the Father: revealed by the Old Testament to be Creator, Lord, Father and Estimate.
God the Son: who had lived on earth among homo beings
God the Holy Spirit: who filled them with new life and power

What the Bible taught

The Bible taught that Christians were to worship Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Information technology also taught that Christians should only worship God. Finally, it taught that at that place was merely i God:

We must worship only God
We must worship God the Father
Nosotros must worship God the Son
We must worship God the Holy Spirit
There is simply i God

This seemed to put Christians in an impossible position from which they were rescued by the doctrine of the Trinity, which solved the puzzle by stating that God must be simultaneously both Three and One.

Scripture and the Trinity

For obvious reasons the Trinity is not referred to in the Old Testament, although many writers recollect that the Old Testament does driblet heavy hints about it - for example when it uses a plural Hebrew noun to refer to God.

The New Attestation of the Bible never explicitly refers to the Trinity as such, simply it does incorporate a number of references to the Economical Trinity:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 28:19

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you lot all.

2 Corinthians 13:fourteen

One text that is often quoted to provide scriptural authority for the doctrine of the Trinity is now thought to accept been added to the text much later, and with the specific purpose of justifying the doctrine.

For in that location are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one

The mystery of the Trinity: (1+1+1=one) = Nonsense!

This idea that three persons add together upward to one individual seems like nonsense. And logically, information technology is.

And so Christians don't try to understand the doctrine of the Trinity logically or every bit a trouble of arithmetic.

Unfortunately almost other attempts to explicate the Trinity don't actually capture the concept either, or are very difficult to understand.

God is non similar the states

1 way out of the problem is to say that God is non similar human beings and human beings go far a mess when they try to describe God using the same sort of language and understanding that they use to depict other homo beings.

Only man beings don't take any other language bachelor, and so they have to do the best that they tin can with it. That's fine, equally long as they call back that the whole truth of the nature of God is only beyond them.

So the doctrine of the Trinity only attempts to provide a rudimentary sketch of the mystery of God's nature, rather than a full clarification of what God is like. God is a mystery, before which humanity should stand up in awe.

Why the Trinity is of import

Before trying to understand the doctrine of the Trinity, it'southward vital to realise why it'south important.

Its purpose is non to provide factual noesis of God'southward subconscious nature of the sort that describes a dog every bit "having 4 legs, fur, barks, bites, domesticated past humankind etc".

The doctrine of the Trinity has other functions:

it brings humanity face up to face with the mystery of God
it helps humanity recognise the God they meet in the Bible, in history and in their ain lives
it helps humanity empathize God's complexity, otherness and mystery
information technology helps humanity worship God
it steers humanity away from wrong ideas of God, such equally:
- a patriarchal/hierarchical God
- a God who can be logically understood
it is the foundation of much Christian worship and liturgy
it helps humanity empathize its own nature equally made in the image of God
it provides a model for man relationships, both every bit individuals and in customs

So, for instance, i might be inspired past the doctrine of the Trinity to come upwards with an understanding of human being relationships that was something similar this...

Human beings are made in the image of God
God is a community of persons in a mutual loving human relationship
Therefore the essence of humanity is to be found in human relationships with others, with God, and with God's cosmos
These relationships are filled with transforming power
For human being beings to alive truly in the image of God, these relationships must be common, generous and just
These relationships must admit and value difference also as sameness
These relationships must accept too every bit requite

That'south 1 way in which contemplating the Trinity might provide useful information for a Christian every bit to how they should try to alive their life.

Social implications

The Trinity as a power structure

The relationships inside God as a Trinity discredit any hierarchical power structure in which those lower down are dominated and oppressed past those above them.

Instead, using the example of the Trinity leads to an ideal structure of mutual interdependence and support in pursuit of a mutual aim.

Thus the Trinity shows the way God wants the world to be run and the power structures that he recommends to human social club.

This seems to contradict the traditional idea of God as ane Supreme Being, Lord of all, just should be seen as demonstrating the non-hierarchical nature of God in himself, without diminishing God's condition in relationship to others.

This idea tin exist adult in Church life:

in the hierarchical model power and authority in the church menstruation in one direction from God, through senior and junior clergy, down to the lay people
in the Trinitarian model in that location is a church of mutual self-giving and equality that emulates the community of the Trinity.
In this the members communicate with each other in a spirit of dearest that accepts responsibleness for the well-beingness of each private and that of the whole customs.
In this manner the Church, and each church building and customs get a unity in which diversity flourishes and in which differences are seen every bit valuable and essential elements in the substance of these institutions.

The Trinity and Liberation Theology

The liberation theologians thought information technology was essential to showtime thinking about the Trinity past focusing on its three-ness starting time, then its oneness.

They saw the Trinity as first and foremost a community of divine persons whose essence was in their shared existence, their shared relationship and their surrender to each other.

They objected to the hierarchical model of Ane God, because they thought that it justified political ability structures that oppressed the poor and allowed the Church building to continue with a patriarchal model that was out of date and unhelpful to the poor.

So the liberation theologians took the Trinitarian theology of relationships to a one thousand scale. They used information technology to promote the ideal man gild every bit a closely related and unified group of equal people living and so as to promote the skillful of gild as a whole.

The leading liberation theologian Leonardo Boff said the Trinity was a "model for whatsoever, just, egalitarian (while respecting differences), social organisation." It provided a "prototype of human community dreamed of by those who wish to improve society".

Essential and Economical Trinity

Essential and Economic Trinity

Some of the problems of the Trinity arise from defoliation between the internal life and nature of the Trinity itself and the external life or "self-revelation" of God. The but thing humankind tin straight know of God is his external life.

There are two ways of looking at God in Trinitarian terms:

The Essential (also called Immanent or Ontological) Trinity looks at the essence or substance of God; at what God is actually like in himself every bit he stands exterior the created universe. It's how God appears to God.
- Warning: This is an unusual utilise of the word immanent, which Christians oft use to refer to God'southward actions in the world.
The Economic Trinity is concerned with humanity'southward experience of God; in human lives, in creation, in salvation; and derives the nature of God from that experience. This is how God appears to humanity.
- Some theologians bespeak out that simply the Son and the Spirit are straight met in the Economic Trinity.

The Economical and Essential Trinities are not two separate entities - just two means of looking at God.

Are these 2 the same? Victor Shepherd (Professor of Systematic Theology at Tyndale University College, Toronto) put the question like this:

Is God's revelation merely the "face" God wears equally he turns to us, or is it who God is in himself?

Is his face something he only displays, or does his face unambiguously disclose his center?

Victor Shepherd

The Western Churches believe that they are pretty much the aforementioned and that human beings come across God fully and completely as he is through his actions.

The 'economic' Trinity is the 'immanent' Trinity and the 'immanent' Trinity is the 'economical' Trinity.

Karl Rahner, The Trinity, 1970

To put it another mode: God's actions reveal who God is. And since God acts as a threefold God, God himself must be threefold.

Some Western writers hint at the thought that there is no more to God than his actions in the earth.

The Eastern Churches disagree, and teach there is much more to God than human feel can reveal.

Trinitarian heresies

Some theories of the Trinity are and so wrong that they accept been declared heretical.

Modalism

The proponents of Modalism were Noetus and Praxeas (late 2nd century CE) and Sabellius (tertiary century CE).

Modalism teaches that Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not singled-out personalities, only different modes of God's self-revelation.

The thought is that there is simply one God, but that this one God reveals himself in unlike ways and different forms - sometimes as Begetter, sometimes as Son, sometimes as Holy Spirit.

Male parent: The creator and the police force giver
Son: The revealer, the Messiah and the redeemer
Holy Spirit: The sanctifier and giver of eternal life

One of the standard analogies for the Trinity is a expert example of modalism: The Trinity is like water because water comes in three forms - ice, water, steam. This is Modalism because these are three states or modes of the substance water.

Some modalists believe that God revealed himself differently at different times in history, others believe that during whatever item period of history God can reveal himself in unlike ways; and so when God is acting every bit redeemer, that'southward God the Son, and so on.

Warning: Some modernistic writers refer to the different persons of the Trinity equally different "modes of being", but they aren't guilty of Modalism considering they are not referring to unlike modes in which God appears to humanity, simply unlike internal ways in which God is to him/herself.

Tritheism

Tritheism portrays Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three contained divine beings; three split gods who are linked together in some special way - most commonly by sharing the "aforementioned substance" or being the same sort of thing.

People often make this mistake because they misunderstand the utilise of the discussion "persons" in defining the Trinity; it does non mean that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three separate personalities.

Partialism

This is the thought that Begetter, Son and Holy Spirit together make upwardly God. This would advise that each of the persons of the Trinity is only part God, simply becoming fully God when they are together.

Monarchianism

Monarchianism stresses God as Ane and downgrades the thought of the Trinity; information technology comes in various versions:

Adoptionism

Christ was born man and adopted by God at his resurrection (or baptism).

Arianism

This isn't a strictly Trinitarian heresy merely it'due south relevant considering information technology'due south the thought that the Son is in some fashion less fully God than the Father.

The Filioque fracas

Can you believe that the Christian Church savage apart over a single word?

Well it's true: The greatest row in the history of Christianity centred on a single give-and-take filioque and on the doctrine of the Trinity.

The row split the Eastern Church, which mostly became the Orthodox Church building, and the Western Church, which became the Roman Catholic Church and its afterwards Protestant offshoots. There were other matters at issue every bit well, merely the row over "the filioque clause" led to the Great Schism of 1054.

What the row was nearly

The Churches were arguing about whether the Son played whatever part in the origin of the Spirit equally one of the persons of the Trinity from the Father, who is the just ultimate source.

The Latin discussion filioque, which means "and from the son", was gradually inserted by Western churches into the Nicene Creed so that it stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds not from the God the Father alone, equally the early Church building Fathers believed, merely from both God the Begetter and God the Son.

The Eastern wing of the Church believed and believes that the Begetter alone had given ascent to the Holy Spirit, and the idea that both Father and Son had washed so was condemned as heretical.

Even today, the creed used by the Eastern Churches professes religion "in the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father," without mentioning the Filioque. The Western Churches (i.due east. the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches) expressly say that the Holy Spirit "gain from the Father and the Son."

In that location were central problems of authority besides as of doctrine. The Eastern wing of the Church building was angry that the Western wing of the Church had altered a fundamental role of the creed without their agreement - indeed without even consulting them. This didn't seem to them like the behaviour of a united church, and so the two wings somewhen went their separate ways.

Many church historians call back that the Western wing of the Church did behave very badly by trying to introduce such a major change to Christian conventionalities in such a cavalier way.

The doctrine of 'dual procession'

This is the name that theologians give to the idea that the Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son.

Gain?

When Christians say that the Holy Spirit gain from the Father (and the Son), what do they mean, and why do they use such an odd word?

The word comes from the Greek text of John 15.26, which speaks of the one "who proceeds (ekporeuetai) from the Begetter". The Greek discussion has the sense of motion out of, and early theologians used it to show that the Spirit'south origin was inside the person of the Father.

Greek theologians restricted this Greek discussion to this particular technical use - the coming along of the Spirit from the Father - and so that information technology has a unique reference to the relationship of the Father and the Spirit.

The Greek theologians also idea that the way in which the Spirit comes from the Male parent is similar to, but significantly dissimilar from, the way the Son comes from the Father.

The equivalent Latin word is "procedure", but unlike the Greek give-and-take it doesn't include the notion of a starting point within something; information technology's a more than general word for motion. This different meaning may have contributed in a small way to the dispute.

Latin theologians taught that the Spirit comes from both the Father and the Son, simply comes from each of them in significantly unlike ways. These differences do non diminish the Father's role as the simply cause of everything that exists.

The arguments

The arguments in the dispute are highly technical, and seem pretty dull to anyone except a theologian - only they stirred hugely passionate debates in the church because they were well-nigh something that mattered terribly: the nature of God.

To go a flavour of the passion the debate aroused, look at this annotate from a 9th century Patriarch:

...dishonourable men emerged out of the darkness (that is, the West), and poured down similar hail or, ameliorate, charged like wild boars upon the newly-planted vineyard of the Lord, destroying information technology with hoof and tusk, which is to say, by their shameful lives and corrupted dogmas.

Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs

Hither are some of the arguments that were used past each side.

Against the filioque clause

The nature of God the Father is to exist the sole cause of everything
God the Father is the "First Person of the Trinity" because he gives existence to everything else
Giving life to others is what it means to be a father, it is not what information technology means to exist a son
Jesus said only that the Spirit proceeds from the Begetter

Just when the Counsellor comes, whom I shall send to you lot from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who gain from the Father, he volition bear witness to me.

John xv:26

The idea that the Spirit proceeds from Father and Son detracts from the separate graphic symbol of each person of the Trinity, and confuses their relationships
The idea that the Spirit proceeds from the Son as well equally the Father diminishes the status of God the Begetter

In favour of the filioque clause:

Jesus did non say that the Spirit merely proceeds from the Father
The Creed and the Bible say that the Son does give life to others:

All things were made through him, and without him was not annihilation fabricated that was made.

John one:3

Jesus said that the Spirit gain from both the Father and the Son:

Jesus said to them again, "Peace exist unto you lot. As the Father has sent me, even so send I you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit"

John 20:21-iii

If the Spirit and the Son both proceed only from the Father, then there is no internal distinction between them in the Godhead (every bit opposed to their action on Earth).
The Spirit is the bond of love that unites Father and Son - this bond must go on from both Father and Son
The Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and Son as from a unmarried principle

Moving closer

In modern times the Eastern and Western churches have moved closer together.

In Dec 1965 Pope Paul Six and Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople revoked the excommunications of 1054 and chosen for an agile pursuit of mutual understanding.

Glossary of the Trinity

Cribbing and Perichoresis are two ideas that are important in reconciling God's one-ness with the iii-ness of God in homo experience.

Appropriation

Appropriation teaches that all three persons of the Trinity practise everything God does, just that it is appropriate to see some deportment every bit being specially associated with i specific person of the Trinity.

Then the Father is associated with creation and the Son with redemption, but all iii persons are really involved with these actions.

Perichoresis

Perichoresis is a Greek discussion that means permeation without confusion.

This is the idea that each of the persons of the Trinity shares completely in the life of the other two.

Theologians say that each of the persons of the Trinity "interpenetrates" the others, so that the distinctions betwixt the persons are preserved and the substance of God is not divided into 3.

The theologian Leonardo Boff described perichoresis as "the intimate and perfect inhabitation of one Person in the other," significant that the iii persons of the Trinity live in and relate to each other perfectly.

Many modern writers prefer to utilize the give-and-take indwelling to limited the idea of perichoresis. They say there is a common indwelling of the persons of the Trinity.

Other words for the aforementioned thing are coinherence and circuminsessio.

All facets of divine action are reflected in all three persons of the Trinity. They are dynamically intermingled. They may not exist separated.

Richard B. Hays

Persons

Persons is a theological word that answers the question "3 what?"

The traditional statement of the doctrine of the Trinity is this: In that location are three persons within the Godhead; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These 3 persons accept equal status and are as divine.

Just the discussion person in this definition doesn't mean person in any sense that modernistic people understand it - it's an ancient technical philosophical term, which originally meant the mask worn by actors playing parts in an ancient Greek play.

The Greek give-and-take was hypostases (the singular term is hypostasis). The aboriginal writers said that there were three distinct hypostases in 1 ousia (ousia is the word at present translated as substance - encounter below.)

At that place's a hint here of a very of import concept in the idea of the Trinity. Actors playing a function in a play practice so in relationship to other members of the cast, and a primal element of the doctrine of the Trinity is that the iii persons of the Trinity are in relationship with one another.

But "person" to modern people means, at the very least, a separate centre of consciousness, and more usually, an individual homo. That is not what it ways in the definition of the Trinity.

The idea that the three persons of the Trinity are separate individuals is the heresy of tritheism.

Unfortunately, modern theological translations of the give-and-take "persons" into phrases such as "distinct manners of subsisting" don't make things much clearer (and that particular phrase, as it happens, sounds very similar the heresy of modalism).

Procession

This give-and-take is used to describe the coming along of one of the persons of the Trinity from another (or from both the others).

The use of this word in statements of the Trinity is a reminder that there is movement and dynamic energy in the Christian concept of God.

Substance

Substance is the theological word that answers the question "One what?"

It comes from the Greek word ousia, which means "beingness", just information technology has a more restricted meaning in this context than it had had to the aboriginal Greek philosophers who coined the word.

A substance is a thing which fully exists; a presence in the universe - so for example, a dog is a substance. Although in the case of God this is not a substance made of thing.

The key concept of substance is that of unity - it's not dissever from the three persons of the Trinity, it's what makes them 1.

hinkleforgerbours.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/beliefs/trinity_1.shtml

Born Again Christian There Is One God and Trinitarian Doctrine.what Did You Say Pastor.?

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Born Again Christian There Is One God and Trinitarian Doctrine.what Did You Say Pastor.?

Introduction to the Trinity

The core conventionalities

A central doctrine

Unpacking the doctrine

Common mistakes

Bible and why Christians believe in the Trinity

The Bible and why Christians believe in the Trinity

Encounters with God

What the Bible taught

Scripture and the Trinity

The mystery of the Trinity: (1+1+1=one) = Nonsense!

God is non similar the states

Why the Trinity is of import

Making use of the Trinity

Is the Trinity a useful idea?

The Trinity and worship

The Trinity as a lesson to Christians

The Trinity every bit a recipe for life

Social implications

The Trinity as a power structure

The Trinity and Liberation Theology

Essential and Economical Trinity

Essential and Economic Trinity

Trinitarian heresies

Trinitarian heresies

Modalism

Tritheism

Partialism

Monarchianism

Adoptionism

Arianism

The Filioque fracas

The Filioque fracas

What the row was nearly

The doctrine of 'dual procession'

Gain?

The arguments

Against the filioque clause

In favour of the filioque clause:

Moving closer

Glossary of the Trinity

Glossary of the Trinity

Appropriation

Perichoresis

Persons

Procession

Substance

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