Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!hedrick From: hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) Newsgroups: net.religion.christian Subject: Re: Trinity: the fine line Message-ID: <3015@topaz.ARPA> Date: Wed, 31-Jul-85 21:52:52 EDT Article-I.D.: topaz.3015 Posted: Wed Jul 31 21:52:52 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 00:49:34 EDT References: <603@usl.UUCP> Reply-To: hedrick@topaz.UUCP (Hedrick) Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 74 In article <603@usl.UUCP> dkl@usl.UUCP (Dwayne K. Lanclos) writes: >Of course the Holy Spirit is the same thing as God! That's what the >concept of the Trinity means: one God demonstrating three different aspects. >Down through history, the experience of God has been that which gives life >and meaning to our existence (the Father), as realized in human history >(the Son), and as the spirit dwelling within each of us (the Holy Spirit). >The Trinity is the formulation used to express this experience in language: >three persons in one God. I agree with the main point of your response. The idea of the Trinity does not threaten the unity of God, as "Lady Godiva" seemed to feel it did. However your particular wording suggests the classical heresy of Modalism. Modalists believed (or are represented to have believed -- it's sometimes hard to tell what those on the losing side actually believed) that Father, Son, and Spirit represent the ways God shows himself to us, but do not represent any actual distinction within God himself. Classical Trinitarian thought believes that Father, Son, and Spirit represent different modes of being* within God himself. There is not enough distinction to give us three Gods. But there is enough to allow for personal relationship to exist within God before he ever created any human beings to love. The Trinity is a difficult doctrine, because it requires us to walk a very fine line. On the one side, it is easy to talk as if we believed in three separate Gods. The examples often given in Sunday School don't help this. It is very typical to talk about three waterglasses and then talk about how it is all one water even though it is three glasses. Or about three people and how they share one humanity. I have never figured out how one can possibly get orthodox doctrine out of these illustrations. The mere fact that there are three things sitting there is enough to defeat the purpose of the illustration, at least for us in the West. As soon as we count them: one, two, three, we are out of the realm of orthodox Trinitarian thought. For the Trinity has nothing to do with the number three. There is nothing in God that you can count. It is fairly clear that if theological tradition had gone differently we could have a duinity or quadrinity, and the same basic understanding would be expressed. (The illustrations that I criticize originated among people with somewhat different philosophical assumptions from ours. As far as I can tell, they must have meant something very different to them than they mean to us.) On the other side, we want to make sure that we are saying something about God himself, and not just about the way he interacts with us. As I see it, the primary purpose of the doctrine is to emphasize the fact that Love is part of God's nature. When he asks us to love him and each other, he is letting us into something that he has had all along. This means that for us God is no longer a mathematical point, with no observable properties other than the demands he makes on us. We actually know something about God in himself: that he has within himself that which loves, that which accepts love in obedience, and all of the interplay between these two. Differing understandings of the Trinity have traditionally had effects on what one believes about Jesus. Normally heretical understandings of the Trinity (or lack of the doctine entirely) has been combined with what I would consider substandard understandings about Christ. Typically God is made too abstract to really involve himself in human history, so Jesus comes out as something less than a real incarnation of God. By the way, I do not mean to accuse anyone of being heretical. I realize that brief statements in the middle of a discussion are not always intended to be balanced presentations of your complete views. ---------------- * I use the term "mode of being" instead of "person" because I believe it more clearly expresses the original intent. The words that are translated "person" were not so clearly associated with the idea of individual people or with personalities as is the English word "person". "Mode of being" has its own dangers, however, since it sounds very close to modalism.