OK - so I'll have a go at explaining the Trinity
Submitted by Forgiven on August 02 2000 18:46:01
In reply to OK some Christian questions for ya submitted by Jake on August 02 2000 17:13:32
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Someone else can try the other bits. Though I suspect I wander into technical heresy along the way - it is possible to fall over either side and get it wrong. The best description of the Trinity is a diagram - a triangle with God written at the centre, the three persons of the Trinity at each corner, an equals sign to each of the 3 corners and a not equals sign forming each of the sides of the triangle. (Note that this does not make mathematical sense!) What it is saying is that The Father is God, The Son is God, The Holy Spirit is God but The Father is not The Son and The Son is not The Holy Spirit. It's a very hard doctrine - only being formulated with a great deal of difficulty in the 4th Century because it is not a simple derivation from the New Testament but only emerges slowly. Part of the problem is that we are dealing with God - and we don't have any other models to compare him with; if you are comparing people, you know what certain feature mean - but with God it is all ultimately beyond our experience. So the church worked hard to provide a coherent picture of what God is from the material in the Bible. If it doesn't make sense, that is probably because our understanding is at fault; but it is pointing to certain underlying truths, and certain important statements fall out of the story: 1) Jesus IS God - but is also fully man. 2) Jesus had the choice to obey or disobey God 3) Jesus chose to obey - and by his death on the cross made the way back to God open for us sinners 4) The Holy Spirit is God - and is a person in his own right - not just an impersonal force (c.f. the Force of Star Wars) 5) There is only one God - not three 6) At the heart of God there is a relationship of love, between the three persons, not just an isolated, solitary God like that of Islam. As such the Trinity models the ideal that we ought to be part of. Hope some of this helps; on the whole I tend to leave well alone as most of the time it has no practical significance, though occaisionally it pops into the open as a 'Real' issue. Used to keep theologians occupied - these days they've been let loose and seem to run around causing mayhem and Bishop Spong..... |
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