Understanding the Trinity

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randyk

Well-known member
Jan 14, 2021
902
268
63
Pacific NW USA
#1
Does the Trinity express God as a Split Personality?

I don't rest my argument for the Trinity on "mystery," although it's certainly a matter transcending the capacity of finite minds to understand fully the Infinite.

Most Christians don't spend 2 hours thinking about the Trinity--not their thing. Some think it's wiser to go on a missionary trip, or pray. Some are thinkers, and recognize the importance of the Trinity to Christianity. Without it, Jesus can't be God, and as such, he can't then redeem us from sin.

Is the description of God as "undecided" in the OT express a less than Infinite God?

The language ascribed to Deity recognizes that God is speaking thru anthropomorphisms. God, in other words, acts like a human so that humans can understand Him. Some of Greek philosophy saw Deity as impassible, but the Scriptures portray God as a God of revelation, a God expressing Himself to man through His Word.

I speak of God revealing Himself as other Persons of the Trinity as a step through "gradations." It's "for lack of an easier way to describe it." I hope you understand I'm not expressing Gnosticism, but rather, the matter of transcendence. This is the "gradation" I'm speaking of, going from the Infinite to the finite, and the reverse. An interesting possible portrayal of this is "Jacob's Ladder," in which angels are seen descending and ascending between heaven and earth.

Jesus used similar terminology here:
John 1.51 He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”

God's Word created a human body and a human soul to express His infinite Divine Personality.

Nestorianism was like that "Split Personality" conception of Christ that I referred to. He tried to put a divine person and a human person together without properly explaining their unity. The heretic Cerinthus, early on, apparently claimed that the "Christ" descended into the man Jesus. This separates the man from his office. The Deity and humanity of Jesus cannot be divided, in orthodoxy.

So what I'm saying is that God has a transcendent omnipotent Personality, and can thus express Himself lower down the chain, in a lower "gradation," in the finite world. To do that His Word must form into the shape of something material and something finite. The human personality of Jesus assumes a finite form, and yet the *idea* expressed is an Infinite one. Jesus, as finite man, is the infinite God. That's what God's Word is expressing here.
 

wattie

Senior Member
Feb 24, 2009
3,236
1,130
113
New Zealand
#3
I've always had an issue in my own mind of calling the trinity distinct 'persons'

It makes me think of seperate beings. Like 3 gods. When it's actually the one being, God, expressed in three substances.

In the end though, there is no real difference. Substances can be the same as persons.. as long as we are talking about the diety of each of the 3.

If any of 3 aren't fully God.. then it's no trinity .. no one triune being, God. So full deity is all important