There has been a lot of confusion and tension in another thread or two recently because of our arguments about the Trinity. I would like to clear them up. I propose that all talk about the Trinity is to be confined to this thread for as long as the thread lasts. Keep it here. This thing has a way of spilling out all over every other thread or subject around here.
Grace Seeker wanted to know what my own “understanding” of the Trinity is. I thought I had made it plain to him before that my understanding is that I understand that there is nothing to understand, even if he insistently will not. The Trinity doctrine is so utterly without definite, fully formed ideas, objectively agreed upon and laid out in language that isn’t blatantly only trying to sound like it really means anything, that there really isn’t much to say. You can say till you’re blue in the face that the “Holy Spirit” “proceeds betwixt the Father and the Son” but that won’t make the words mean anything, however hard you may try to get them to, and you can force as many interpretations of your own onto them as you like but they’re still going to be different from those of a jillion other people’s who have set themselves to the same desperate task.
They never have answers, these Trinitarian evangelists, only analogies. Analogies which if you examine them carefully you’ll find are all depicting the Trinity differently. It’s high time you Christians woke up to the fact that we don’t need some metaphor to understand the idea that one thing can consists of various other things. Believe me, we get it. Every child who’s ever seen the rainbow or played with Lego blocks already gets it. The actual problem is whether we have any reason to believe that God Himself could or would exist in such a way. Funny how we never seem get any analogies about that.
Ice, water, mist; fruit tree, fruit, fruit juice; past, present, future. Petals of a shamrock, three-in-one-oil, fingers on a hand, six squares forming one cube, enough! What reason have we to think that God is like any of these things? And granting that, which one of them? How does it work Is He a single entity taking different forms (ice, water, mist)? A compartmentalized deity with each (still undefined) part performing different tasks (fruit tree, fruit, fruit juice)? A single being who somehow consists of two intersecting parts meeting at a nexus (past, present, future)? Three extensions of some core root (petals of a shamrock)? An amalgam of three otherwise different things into a compound with new properties of its own (three-in-one oil)? Different implements being controlled by another, higher god He’s part of (fingers on a hand)? Three identical and inseparable parts redundantly constituting a single identical and inseparable whole (six squares forming one cube)? Or could it be that you’re really the ones who don’t know what you’re talking about, not us, and this is why all you have is analogies? If you’re going to form an analogy about something then that should mean that you know the subject you’re talking about so well already that you shouldn’t find it at all incomprehensible yourself.
Why should we believe God is three in any capacity? Because there are exactly two (2) verses in the Bible which happen to mention the very names “father”, “son” and “holy spirit” in the same sentence? Awful long way from that to any of the creeds, even the Apostle’s. And as for what Answering Islam says on the matter about other verses, I’ve already taken them to the moon and back on that here. You need to read that, God willing.
Polytheism doesn’t have to be overt or even untempered in order to be what it is. Do you believe the Hindus when they tell you that their pantheon is really just one god? Do you care? Are they not still pagans?
The evidence of our world suggests a single cause. Something outside of spacetime which encompasses all. A single, neat infinity beyond infinities. The one point of origin. What about all this suggests to you that the number “three” even has anything to do with the subject at all? How many ways can and should an all-compassing First Cause be divided up? Why should such a perfect thing need multiple persons to it?
You’re denying the singleness. Just because you deny it by saying it’s a singleness that’s also a not-singleness does not change anything except to add self-deception or self-obfuscation to the mix. For the ninth time, saying “plural singularity” does not change the fact that there is plurality involved. It just piles semantics on top of the problem instead.
I’ve laid out my syllogism before, and it stands:
1. Monotheism is simple and comprehensible.
2. The Trinity is complex and incomprehensible.
3. Therefore, the Trinity is not monotheistic.
It’s as simple as that!
Why, if God was one but also three, didn’t the Old Testament mention it when it said that the great command was, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one.” Kind of an important fact to omit. Why didn’t it mention the fact anywhere? For that matter, why did the Bible not do so? You’d think that Paul would be interested that people know that and will have written about it in his letters at some point along with every other little detail. Did the ancient Jews know their Messiah would be part of a Trinity? Shouldn’t they, if they were supposed to be worshiping the same god?
And what exactly is “the Holy Spirit”? Nobody has any idea beyond the usual semantic pretenses which never hold water when actually challenged to be defined. Can’t you see that in the Bible the phrase means different things in different contexts? Sometimes it meant “angel”; sometimes it meant “prophet”; sometimes it seems meant in the ordinary English figurative sense that any of us might mean “the spirit” in. Sometimes it meant “presence”. And so on. Is it not plain that what the Trinitarians have done is lump all these different meanings together into one, big amalgam, and in the process make the whole thing totally incoherent?
Once again I return to the bottom line: bearing in mind what I said in the article linked above, what reason have we to believe that God would be in three persons?
Grace Seeker wanted to know what my own “understanding” of the Trinity is. I thought I had made it plain to him before that my understanding is that I understand that there is nothing to understand, even if he insistently will not. The Trinity doctrine is so utterly without definite, fully formed ideas, objectively agreed upon and laid out in language that isn’t blatantly only trying to sound like it really means anything, that there really isn’t much to say. You can say till you’re blue in the face that the “Holy Spirit” “proceeds betwixt the Father and the Son” but that won’t make the words mean anything, however hard you may try to get them to, and you can force as many interpretations of your own onto them as you like but they’re still going to be different from those of a jillion other people’s who have set themselves to the same desperate task.
They never have answers, these Trinitarian evangelists, only analogies. Analogies which if you examine them carefully you’ll find are all depicting the Trinity differently. It’s high time you Christians woke up to the fact that we don’t need some metaphor to understand the idea that one thing can consists of various other things. Believe me, we get it. Every child who’s ever seen the rainbow or played with Lego blocks already gets it. The actual problem is whether we have any reason to believe that God Himself could or would exist in such a way. Funny how we never seem get any analogies about that.
Ice, water, mist; fruit tree, fruit, fruit juice; past, present, future. Petals of a shamrock, three-in-one-oil, fingers on a hand, six squares forming one cube, enough! What reason have we to think that God is like any of these things? And granting that, which one of them? How does it work Is He a single entity taking different forms (ice, water, mist)? A compartmentalized deity with each (still undefined) part performing different tasks (fruit tree, fruit, fruit juice)? A single being who somehow consists of two intersecting parts meeting at a nexus (past, present, future)? Three extensions of some core root (petals of a shamrock)? An amalgam of three otherwise different things into a compound with new properties of its own (three-in-one oil)? Different implements being controlled by another, higher god He’s part of (fingers on a hand)? Three identical and inseparable parts redundantly constituting a single identical and inseparable whole (six squares forming one cube)? Or could it be that you’re really the ones who don’t know what you’re talking about, not us, and this is why all you have is analogies? If you’re going to form an analogy about something then that should mean that you know the subject you’re talking about so well already that you shouldn’t find it at all incomprehensible yourself.
Why should we believe God is three in any capacity? Because there are exactly two (2) verses in the Bible which happen to mention the very names “father”, “son” and “holy spirit” in the same sentence? Awful long way from that to any of the creeds, even the Apostle’s. And as for what Answering Islam says on the matter about other verses, I’ve already taken them to the moon and back on that here. You need to read that, God willing.
Polytheism doesn’t have to be overt or even untempered in order to be what it is. Do you believe the Hindus when they tell you that their pantheon is really just one god? Do you care? Are they not still pagans?
The evidence of our world suggests a single cause. Something outside of spacetime which encompasses all. A single, neat infinity beyond infinities. The one point of origin. What about all this suggests to you that the number “three” even has anything to do with the subject at all? How many ways can and should an all-compassing First Cause be divided up? Why should such a perfect thing need multiple persons to it?
You’re denying the singleness. Just because you deny it by saying it’s a singleness that’s also a not-singleness does not change anything except to add self-deception or self-obfuscation to the mix. For the ninth time, saying “plural singularity” does not change the fact that there is plurality involved. It just piles semantics on top of the problem instead.
I’ve laid out my syllogism before, and it stands:
1. Monotheism is simple and comprehensible.
2. The Trinity is complex and incomprehensible.
3. Therefore, the Trinity is not monotheistic.
It’s as simple as that!
Why, if God was one but also three, didn’t the Old Testament mention it when it said that the great command was, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one.” Kind of an important fact to omit. Why didn’t it mention the fact anywhere? For that matter, why did the Bible not do so? You’d think that Paul would be interested that people know that and will have written about it in his letters at some point along with every other little detail. Did the ancient Jews know their Messiah would be part of a Trinity? Shouldn’t they, if they were supposed to be worshiping the same god?
And what exactly is “the Holy Spirit”? Nobody has any idea beyond the usual semantic pretenses which never hold water when actually challenged to be defined. Can’t you see that in the Bible the phrase means different things in different contexts? Sometimes it meant “angel”; sometimes it meant “prophet”; sometimes it seems meant in the ordinary English figurative sense that any of us might mean “the spirit” in. Sometimes it meant “presence”. And so on. Is it not plain that what the Trinitarians have done is lump all these different meanings together into one, big amalgam, and in the process make the whole thing totally incoherent?
Once again I return to the bottom line: bearing in mind what I said in the article linked above, what reason have we to believe that God would be in three persons?
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