The “substance” of God is God, not a bunch of “ingredients” that taken together yield deity. Third, notice that although the three divine Persons are distinct, we are baptized into their name (singular), not names (plural). The distinctions within the Godhead are not distinctions of his essence and neither are they something added onto his essence, but they are the unfolding of God’s one, undivided being into three interpersonal relationships such that there are three real Persons. Another serious error people have made is to think that the Father became the Son, who then became the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity has been a divisive issue throughout the entire history of the Christian church. God the Holy Spirit lives in them; The Trinity as a recipe for life. They then conclude: "This was a long, confused, process whereby different schools of thought in the Church worked out for themselves, and then tried to impose on others, their answer to the question, 'How divine is Jesus Christ?' Thus, as Wayne Grudem writes, “When we speak of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together we are not speaking of any greater being than when we speak of the Father alone, the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone” (Ibid., 252). There would only be a contradiction if we said that God is three in the same way that he is one. And water can have different forms: solid, liquid or gas. This law states that A cannot be both A (what it is) and non-A (what it is not) at the same time and in the same relationship. ). That is the heresy of modalism. How is God one? It is very simple: All three Persons are one God because, as we saw above, they are all the same essence. , “Love of God is immeasurably more important than knowledge of God; but if a man loves God knowing a little about Him, he should love God more for knowing more about him: for every new thing known about God is a new reason for loving him” (p. 29). The doctrine of the Trinity means that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons — the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And God has revealed that the reason he created us is because he desires a relationship with us now and for all eternity. Theologian R.C. The Trinity has a very significant application to prayer. “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” Those words may have become stale or even cliché for some, but they represent the beauty and scandal of our confession. Are these just three different ways of looking at God, or simply ways of referring to three different roles that God plays? Yet with God, if I describe the Holy Spirit, he is fully God. Thus, we are not speaking with a forked tongue — we are not saying that God is one and then denying that he is one by saying that he is three. https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/the-trinity-a-bible-study This one person manifested himself to the world in three different modes. Since God is one in a different way than he is three, the Trinity is not a contradiction. At the risk of sounding too physical, essence can be understood as the “stuff” that you “consist of.” Of course we are speaking by analogy here, for we cannot understand this in a physical way about God. Some unbelievers mistakenly call this a contradiction. They are personal forms of existence other than a difference in being. Each Person is fully God. Person. What does essence mean? In the King James Version, this passage indeed says, “the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit … are one.” But those words were added to the text. The three persons are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence or nature" (homoousios). Trinity Doctrine - No Illustration Is Completely Accurate With respect to the Trinity Doctrine, none of the popular illustrations are completely accurate descriptions. Christianity holds that there is one God, but three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But there are not three persons; there is only one. This is not intended to suggest exclusivity in these actions but rather it is something done for our sake — for catechetical purposes to emphasize that in God there are three persons who are distinct. The doctrine of the Trinity does not divide God into three parts. Sproul cites as an example Dickens’s famous line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Obviously this is a contradiction if Dickens means that it was the best of times in the same way that it was the worst of times. This is beyond our full comprehension, but we should not let this be an obstacle to meditating on this mystery. Everything he does is because of his love for us. God is not one person who took three consecutive roles. But it also raises many difficult questions. It is important for us to meditate on this mystery because, just as in our human friendships, the more we come to know others the more we can love them. And we say the same about God the Father and God the Son. He is one in essence. Rather, “the being of each Person is equal to the whole being of God” (Grudem, Systematic Theology, 1994, page 255). It would be foolish to represent the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as having been achieved by any other way" (1980, p. 172). We exist to worship God. Wayne Grudem explains, But if each person is fully God and has all of God’s being, then we also should not think that the personal distinctions are any kind of additional attributes added on to the being of God. This is sometimes ignored or not known when people (Muslims) criticize the Trinity by asserting that the … God the Holy Spirit is eternal, unchanging, all-powerful, all-knowing and perfect. He lacks nothing that the others possess except the relationships with the other persons. . The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons. 13:14, Heb. I mentioned the analogy of a woman who had three different roles earlier: she is a wife, mother and teacher. The doctrine of the Trinity means that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons — the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. is a practical doctrine. . But the doctrine of the Trinity is a statement about God’s interior life, requiring statements relation-wise, internal to the divine being, describing the Father and the Son and the Spirit as they stand toward each other. This Supreme Being has one divine nature and this nature is fully possessed by three Divine Persons. But he avoids contradiction with this statement because he means that in one sense it was the best of times, but in another sense it was the worst of times. As I said earlier, it means the same thing as being. Materials & Resources News Contact Us Store Donate, Copyright St. Philip Institute | Website by GroupM7.com, Friday, Wellsprings Fransalian Center for Spirituality, Saturday, Wellsprings Fransalian Center for Spirituality, we are taught that the central mystery of the faith, the fundamental and essential teaching of Christianity, is the doctrine of the Trinity (. This analogy can be used to show how one can also be three. Other divine attributes include being infinite, being everywhere (omnipresent), being Love itself, being Truth itself and being perfect in goodness, justice and mercy. We can still use them in teaching at times, but these do become erroneous if we fail to recognize their limitations. And three, there is one God. . How is God three? Each of the persons is distinct from the other yet identical in essence. The Bible speaks of the Father as God (Philippians 1:2), Jesus as God (Titus 2:13), and the Holy Spirit as God (Acts 5:3–4). Therefore each of the Persons into whose name we are to be baptized must be deity. Each has a will, loves, and says “I” and “You” when speaking. God has one divine nature and there are three divine persons in the one Godhead: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. If we use the analogy of a woman who is a wife, a mother and a teacher to help us understand God, this is Modalism: God is one person but he puts on different masks as he accomplishes different tasks in the world. As an example, God the Father is often referred to as the Creator, God the Son is called Wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is called Love. The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the most fundamental of our faith. (The Jehovah Witness group today are not Arians but they hold some similar views.). The parallelism of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is not unique to Matthew’s Gospel, but appears elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g., 2 Cor. Contemplating the Trinity: It’s About Love, The doctrine of the Trinity is difficult and beyond our full comprehension, but it is a beautiful and intimate truth about the infinite God. The three Persons are distinct, yet only constitute one name. We can look at a living being like a dog: it has a dog nature so it is natural for a dog to walk on four extremities, to bark and to run. He is three in Person. In addition to these texts, the others we mentioned above make clear that the Personhood of the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Personhood of the Son and the Father. The fact that the Holy Spirit is a Person, not an impersonal force (like gravity), is also shown by the fact that he speaks (Hebrews 3:7), reasons (Acts 15:28), thinks and understands (1 Corinthians 2:10–11), wills (1 Corinthians 12:11), feels (Ephesians 4:30), and gives personal fellowship (2 Corinthians 13:14). In the baptism of Jesus, we see the Father speaking from heaven and the Spirit descending from heaven in the form of a dove as Jesus comes out of the water (Mark 1:10–11). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each fully God. What is the Doctrine of the Trinity? They taught he was merely a human person and, at Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River, God adopted him and gave him extraordinary powers. How do they relate? 1015 ESE Loop 323 Tyler, Texas 75701-9663, Diocese of Tyler Bishop Strickland Departments Book a Speaker! We do not hold that God the Father is more powerful than the other Divine Persons. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! Likewise, after the Son returned to the Father (John 16:10), the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit into the world (John 14:26; Acts 2:33). There is nothing one divine person has that the others lack. But how does it show us why there is only one God instead of three? The Trinity is first of all important because God is important. For I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:21–22; see also Isaiah 44:6–8; Exodus 15:11; Deuteronomy 4:35; 6:4–5; 32:39; 1 Samuel 2:2; 1 Kings 8:60). (Biblical Unitarians today have a similar view. Thus, they relate to each other personally — the Father regards himself as “I” while he regards the Son and Holy Spirit as “you.” Likewise, the Son regards himself as “I,” but the Father and the Holy Spirit as “you.”. “Essence” means the same thing as “being.” Thus, since God is only one essence; he is only one being, not three. This leads us to investigate more closely a very helpful definition of the Trinity which I mentioned earlier: God is one in essence, but three in Person. The three Persons are not each part of God, but are each fully God and equally God. To be even more precise, essence is what you are. Nevertheless, for Christians such as us, we make a unique claim – we boldly … For one, they held that all matter is evil while spiritual things are good. What we do mean by Person is something that regards himself as “I” and others as “You.” So the Father, for example, is a different Person from the Son because he regards the Son as a “You,” even though he regards himself as “I.” Thus, in regards to the Trinity, we can say that “Person” means a distinct subject which regards himself as an “I” and the other two as a “You.” These distinct subjects are not a division within the being of God, but “a form of personal existence other than a difference in being” (Grudem, 255; I believe that this is a helpful definition, but it should be recognized that Grudem himself is offering this as more of an explanation than definition of Person). And with our human nature, we have an intellect but our human mind is finite (limited) so, unlike God, we cannot know all things. The doctrine of the Trinity is encapsulated in Matthew 28:19, where Jesus instructs the apostles: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”. The doctrine of the Trinity then is a summary statement of Christian faith and experience. If Jesus is God, why do the Gospels record instances where he prayed to God? Awareness of the distinct role that each Person of the Trinity has in our salvation can especially serve to give us greater comfort and appreciation for God in our prayers, as well as helping us to be specific in directing our prayers. Each of the divine persons fully possesses the divine nature and these attributes. In fact in Christian Tradition there are three primary sources of our Trinitarian faith: The historical experience of salvation recording in sacred scripture and re-interpreted down through the ages. There was never a time when one of the Persons of the Godhead did not exist. The divine essence is thus not something that exists “above” or “separate from” the three Persons, but the divine essence is the being of the three Persons. For example, as a human person, our human nature tells us what operations are possible. God could be seen as the Father in creation, as the Son in redemption, and as the Holy Spirit in sanctification. The Trinity expresses the belief that God is one being made up of three distinct persons who exist in co-equal essence and co-eternal communion as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit . Therefore it is often difficult to have a concrete definition of Person as we use it in regards to the Trinity. They believed the human soul is in bondage and the goal of life was for the spirit to escape the material prison of the body. Christianity - Christianity - The Holy Trinity: The central Christian affirmations about God are condensed and focused in the classic doctrine of the Trinity, which has its ultimate foundation in the special religious experience of the Christians in the first communities. However, this analogy falls far short when used as a description of the Trinity. Further, we clearly should not think of God as “consisting of” anything other than divinity. . As theologian and apologist Norman Geisler has explained it, while essence is what you are, person is who you are. For if we deny this, we have denied God’s unity and affirmed that there is more than one being of God (i.e., that there is more than one God). They believed the human soul is in bondage and the goal of life was for the spirit to escape the material prison of the body. On the other hand, we must say that the Persons are real, that they are not just different ways of looking at the one being of God . . “God is spirit” (John 4:24). Catechism of the Catholic Church, 234, 237, 253-256. The doctrine of the Trinity is difficult and beyond our full comprehension, but it is a beautiful and intimate truth about the infinite God. Thus, the Son is not one-third of the being of God; he is all of the being of God. In other words, there is one God who exists as three distinct Persons. This explains how God can be both one and three.” The problem with this is that it reflects a heresy called modalism. How do we understand this teaching that God is one yet three? . . The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not parts of God, each of them is God. The doctrine of the Trinity . What distinguishes them is their relationship with each other. As I said in the beginning, the doctrine of the Holy trinity is plain in Scripture, as it shows that Father, Son, & Holy Spirit are Members of the one Godhead, each being a different personage while still being one. The Father is not … If we use the analogy of a woman who is a wife, a mother and a teacher to help us understand God, this is Modalism: God is one person but he puts on different masks as he accomplishes different tasks in the world. This is not intended to suggest exclusivity in these actions but rather it is something done for our sake — for catechetical purposes to emphasize that in God there are three persons who are distinct. Matt Perman is the director of career navigation at. Another common analogy is using the idea of H. O: these molecules form one substance, water. These truths should inspire us to never stop studying and growing in our understanding of all God has revealed. This basis of experience is older than the doctrine of the Trinity. The paragraphs which follow are intended to show something of what God has revealed of Himself to the saints of the Church. I mentioned the analogy of a woman who had three different roles earlier: she is a wife, mother and teacher. Obviously we cannot, for Scripture is clear that there is only one God: “There is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me. If God is three Persons, does this mean that each Person is “one third” of God? However, Jesus was not equal to God the Father in this heresy. So how does all this pan out in real life? One illustration to beware of is the one which says, “I am one person, but I am a student, son, and brother. The into consideration the doc- doctrine of the Trinity has be- trine of the Trinity. If the doctrine of the Trinity is not true, it would seem to be blasphemy to speak so freely of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in one and the same breath. This is a mystery inaccessible to our finite human reason alone, but God has lovingly unveiled this truth about his inner life to us. Rather, each person of the Trinity has all of the attributes of God, and no one Person has any attributes that are not possessed by the others. They include the following: 1. They are different Persons, not three different ways of looking at God. He is three in a different way than he is one. This analogy can be used to show how one can also be three. The dog does not deliberate on the actions it could take but acts on instinct. So a closer look at the fact that God is one in essence but three in person has helped to show why the Trinity is not a contradiction. But there are not three persons; there is only one. One Divine Nature and Three Divine Persons, At times in Scripture and in Church teaching we may see that certain actions are assigned to one of the Divine Persons. The doctrine or concept of the Trinity is central to most Christian denominations and … These truths should inspire us to never stop studying and growing in our understanding of all God has revealed. Because each of these “forms of existence” are relational (and thus are Persons), they are each a distinct center of consciousness, with each center of consciousness regarding himself as “I” and the others as “you.” Nonetheless, these three Persons all “consist of” the same “stuff” (that is, the same “what” or essence). "With GOD, ALL things are possible." While Jesus and the Father are both God, they are different Persons. What we have seen so far provides a good basic understanding of the Trinity. (around AD 200): This group held there was one God who was one divine person. It is very challenging and often overwhelming to try to contemplate what has been revealed about God. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God—but there is only one God. These definitions express three crucial truths: (1) the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons, (2) each Person is fully God, (3) there is only one God. (AD 200-400): These were two different groups in the early Church but both denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. (If you feel this way, you are not alone!) For one, they held that all matter is evil while spiritual things are good. One, God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The E note lacks the sound the D note has. And God seeks people to worship him “in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). Here are a few heresies whose beliefs were rejected in the early Church: Gnosticism (existed during the first few centuries of Christianity): This was a religious movement whose beliefs varied widely among the different sects but there were some common errors. The reason why neither the word “trinity” nor the doctrine are in the Bible is that God is not a trinity. You take the chords C, E and D: each is a distinct note but when you hit them all at the same time you have one chord whose sound is far richer than each note alone. Roman Catholic Trinity. The word “Trinity” is a combination of “tri” and “unity” and is used in theology because we know through revelation that God is one yet three. As an example, God the Father is often referred to as the Creator, God the Son is called Wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is called Love. In other words, you have contradicted yourself if you affirm and deny the same statement. We are also rational beings so we think and make free choices about how we act. It comes from the genuine living knowledge of those who have come to know God in faith. Stated differently, God is one in essence and three in person. It is important for us to meditate on this mystery because, just as in our human friendships, the more we come to know others the more we can love them. Thus, Jesus prayed to God the Father without praying to himself. 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