please clear up my confusion on the trinity..

K

Knife

Familyman G
Registered Senior Member
Mark 12:29, ""...The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord
our God is one Lord.".

my understanding of the trinity is that god is the union of divine three, the father, the son and the holy spirit (or ghost). that in itself is confusing enough. yet the Bible says in I Corinthians 14:33 that "... God is not the author of confusion...". fair enough.

parts of the Athanasian Creed do not really help: "...we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity... for there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Ghost is all one... they are not three gods,but one God... the whole three persons are co-eternal and co-equal...he therefore that will be save must thus think of the Trinity...".

now Athanasius was a bishop who supposedly formulated this doctrine. i am not claiming this as fact, but i am asking for clarifications.

baptism in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy ghost was never seen in Pauls letters in the early church. in fact Paul only baptized in the name of Jesus.

"the great commission" in the first written gospel, bears no mention of father/son/spirit , ref. Mark 16:15.

reference in the bible to a trinity can be found in the Epistle of I John 5:7, biblical scholars of today, however, have admitted that the phrase "...there are three that bear record in heaven, the father, the word, and the holy ghost: and these three are one" is definitely not found in any of today's
versions of the bible despite being in very older versions.

now as far as i read, Paul of Tarsus, the originator of christianity as we know it today formulated many doctrines but surprisingly the trinity was not one of them. Tertullian, a lawyer and presbyter of the third century Church in Carthage, was the first to use the word "Trinity".

in 325AD a council of about 300 bishops gathered for about 6 weeks in Nicea and formualted the doctrine of the trinity in todays understanding; father/son/spirit.

this happened after controversy on Pauls definition in 318 AD between arius the deacon and his bishop alexander. for political reasons (having a unified church), constantine, the emperor, ordered the council of 325AD.

and after much debate (to cut a long story short), in 451 AD, the council of chalcedon, with the blessing of the pope set the creed (trinity) as christian law. debate on the issue was no longer tolerated and was considered blasphemous and punishable by death (which by the way is still in the churchs rule books). this resulted in the deaths of thousands of christians due to a difference in opinion.

funnily enough, there is a christian denomination that still believes in the pre-trinity idealogy; the unitarian denomination. but of course they are denounced by the national council of churches. if the above is not true, then where do the unitarians get their belief? the basis of their supports stems from Luke 4:8, "...Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." furthermore, many middleeastern christians have very different views on the trinity than the western world. and as one christian pointed out to me a long time ago in arizona, some of the lesser known gospels make no mention of the trinity.

now, my questions: 1) please correct my history. 2) please explain the trinity in terms that i can understand.

thanks.
 
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The sripture at Mark 12:29 is unambiguous. God is not a trinity. He is one single being. There are many other scriptures which say the same thing. (Malachi 2:10; Mark 10:18)

In this way you can discern between true Christianity and false religion. Since the Bible states clearly in many scriptures that God is one you know that any church which teaches that God is three persons in one must be part of the empire of false religion.
 
Knife said:
now, my questions: 1) please correct my history. 2) please explain the trinity in terms that i can understand.

thanks.
Click to expand...

To give an answer to your questions without a serious study of the subject would be irresponsible on my part and a great deal of second-guessing. My advice to you is to find some scholar, or published paper on the subject, and do the research.
Others may give a simplistic view of the trinity, as illustrated from this story found on the web.

"I am sure you are asked this question," she continued, "but here it comes. Explain the Trinity. Is there one God, or are there three?"

Aaron answered, "That is a very good question. Many educated and gifted scholars have better explanations of the Trinity than I do. My first reaction is to hesitate and ask you to locate their published papers. But let me say this, it is a mystery, yet the Trinity is something we can understand. I will use an example to illustrate how I perceive it. If I say, 'H-two-O', you would reply to me by saying, 'Water,' because that is what water is made of. And if I ask, 'What about steam and ice?' You would say, 'Yes, H-two-O is also steam and ice.' Now if we use this example to speak about the Trinity, the concept is not hard to imagine. God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To explain any further would be like grasping the infinite and squeezing it into the finite mind, or like understanding the ocean by looking at a bucket of water. It will not fit. Miss Croft, if you and I stood at the shoreline, we could see how vast and immense the ocean is by viewing its surface and the pounding waves. But from the shoreline we cannot imagine how deep it is or the forces and secrets it holds within. It is the same when we view the Trinity. We cannot imagine the depth behind it, but God manifested Himself to us through the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1798692/1/


Knife, my advice is to due the research and find the scholars that will provide a definition, like the person at the following website.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15047a.htm


Hope your search is successful.

Mt 28:19 - "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,"
 
The Lord our God is one Lord refers to the fact that the Jesus is the God of the Old Testament. The Jesus that walked with his apostles on earth was the same God who appeared to Abraham. He is the same God who spoke with Moses face to face. Christ is the God of this world.
At the baptism of Jesus three beings are present. The voice of the Father, the person of the Son and the Holy ghost in the form of a dove were present and very much seperate. If they were all part of the same big squishy in the sky, Luke 3:22 would read - Hey that's me down there! Better watch out now I just got baptized. Hey! I'm a dove too. (He would have sounded like the scarecrow on wizard of oz when he summed it up with) That's me all over the place.
 
The answer to your queston is John 1, Whether or not we understand it is not important. Many different "interpritations" have been produced because people have a desire for an answer, so there is always someone who is willing to think up one. In the end we shall be made to understand it.

All Praise The Ancient Of Days
 
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