But you DO believe that God is three "persons".
As the song goes,
God in "three persons"...blessed Trinity.
CORMAN767
AGAIN, the English word "person" here does NOT (at all) mean what you are imposing. Trinitarians are not Mormons (hint: Mormons aren't Trinitarian). "Persona" is from the Greek ("Person" is simply an English translation, or perhaps tranlituration). It's the word Christians chose to use.... because there is not a word for exactly what is here. The term (admittedly) comes from a heresy, one that argued that God is one but has 3 offices, vocations, jobs.... that He wears 3 "hats." Kind of like Joe Biden. He is a husband, a father, the president - 3 very different roles but one reality. This heresy (called model monarchianism, I'm probably spelling that wrong) was condemned as heresy BUT ironically the term "persona" (which refers to the masks that Greek actors wore) "stuck." It probably isn't the best word....
but then there is no word for this, The term "person" (persona) is SIMPLY an ATTEMPT to convey a threeness about God, the reality of Father and Son and Holy Spirit while still embracing the ONENESS of God.
MATTHEW TEN VERSEIGHT
Matthew ten Verseight said:
Exactly. Which is why rebuking the Trinity as incomprehensible is silly. It is called the
MYSTERY of the Trinity because. well, it is mystery.... simply beyond our ability to comprehend (which is EXACTLY as I'd expect; we can only understand the world we live in - ie physics - and that we "understand" only in tiny part (I have a Ph.D. in physics),. God is not a part of creation and thus is not a part of anything we
CAN understand (we simply have no point of reference, no common denominator so to speak).
Scripture states that God is ONE (and so the Trinity affirms that as true).... and Scripture speaks of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, each as God, each acting individually as God, each with the attributes of God... there is a certain "three-ness" about this (and so the Trinity affirms that). What we have is one but three or one yet three. Does that "fit" our current human concept of physics? Well... as one with a doctorate in physics, it's not at all incredible AND YET we avoid all attempts to subject the Creator to the creation, to subject what is SUPER-natural to the natural.... it is MYSTERY simply because here we have a reality that is above and beyond Creation, physics, science.... and thus beyond our ability to understand.
FOR THOSE WITH AN INTEREST IN SCIENCE....
As one of my physics profs once said, "What we've learned in the past century or so is that we know very little." Indeed, maybe 150 years ago, we THOUGHT we knew a lot.... now we realize we know precious little. I'd GUESS modern science has a handle on maybe 1% (max) of reality. And indeed, with every new bit of knowledge comes a host of questions. Every year, we learn that we know less than we thought we did.
AND what we largely affirm is that "reality" is simply what is "real" to US, right now, right here. "Reality" is kind of a bubble we live in as we experience it; it's FAR from everything. There may well be several universes even
within this "bubble" - all unknowable to us because it's not OUR reality. In a sense, "out of synch" with each other even sharing the SAME reality (but PERHAPS "touching" each other.... a thought that intrigues me as a theist... this very point is what separates Deists from Theists. God MAY "interact" or "enter" or "touch" THIS reality (the Incarnation, miracles, etc). but He is not a part of or subject to this reality.
For laity, the best example perhaps is "the Big Bang" You are all familiar with this. Ask yourself: But WHAT reality was BEFORE that? And does such STILL exist beyond the result of "the Big Bang?" Well, as Christians, you are likely to say "GOD" (and theoretical physicists may be okay with that!) BUT there IS an affirmation that SOMETHING "was/is" outside, beyond the reality that came to be in that moment. Consider that...... It means that REALITY (as it applies to us.... to the 1% we understand such) is not the only REALITY. And everything that belongs to this (mass/energy/time... math) likely don't exist at all in some OTHER reality; "physics" applies to ONLY this one and is a product of an event (the Big Bang). It has nothing to do with other Realities and probably doesn't apply AT ALL. Which is why if you ask a physicist "what existed before the Big Bang?" or "What caused the Big Bang?" he/she will tell you, "that's unknowable."
Or consider this.... THIS reality has a starting point (and MAYBE an ending one) ... and it seems to be contained within a certain space (the entire universe has actually been mapped). What is outside that? There's ZERO reason to theorize that "nothing" does... but reason to conclude "OUR reality doesn't."
SOOOOOOOOO.....
God is not a part of the Creation. GOD is not a product of "the Big Bang." The Bible says that God CAUSED this reality to come into existence, NOT that this reality CAUSED God to come into existence.
What does this mean? What "is" in one reality is not going to "explain" or even necessarily apply to another. Our reality is not likely going to explain the reality of God for the very simple reason that He is not of this reality. There aren't going to be words or science or philosophy or mathematics to do so.... we have no common reference. As the physicist says about BEFORE "the Big Bang" (we cannot know) so we must say about God. Now, something of God's heart and will for us
may be known.... (indeed, the purpose of Scripture is to reveal this!) but that has nothing to do with physics, with issues of time/space/mathematics. His heart and will are knowable.... His "essence" is not (here too, language lets us down). We can "know" God in the sense of relationship, love, will.... without necessarily understanding understanding the physics of His reality; not necessarily a scientific understanding (oh how language lets us down!).
So, how does puny, limited man (with our IQ's so low as to be funny)... how do we grasp this? Well..... all we have is human language, all we have is OUR reality. God is one. God is Father and also Son and also Holy Spirit. How do we hold those together, without denying both? We don't. We
can't.
IMO, the beauty of the doctrine of the Trinity is that it does not attempt to. It rejects the plethora of human attempts to put this all into OUR understanding (however laughably tiny) of OUR reality (however limited and irrelevant). It simply affirms BOTH. Three yet one. One yet three. BOTH real. Not unlike accepting that Jesus is BOTH divine and human. (There's a reason why theology was called "the holy mysteries" until the 1600's). I will admit, the WORDS of the Athanasian Creed struggle (inadequately) with this.... probably too much of an attempt there.... but what I take out of this is that BALANCE, that full acceptance of BOTH, that admission of mystery.
- Josiah
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