One of the strangest doctrines in all of Christianity is the doctrine of the Trinity. This doctrine holds that there are three divine persons — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost — yet only one deity. Each of the three persons is fully God, and not just a part of God. A famous diagram known as the “Shield of the Trinity” compactly summarizes the idea:
The Trinity doesn’t make much sense, and many Christians recognize this. What most of us would call absurd they call a mystery, meaning something that is known to be true through revelation but cannot be demonstrated by mere human reason.
Some questions for the Christians out there:
1. Do you accept the doctrine of the Trinity?
2. Do you recognize the absurdity of it?
3. Do you deal with the absurdity by declaring it a “mystery”?
Dear Priests: The Top 5 Heresies to Avoid This Trinity Sunday
I thought most Christians here no longer believe in the Trinity, other than our homegrown holy-darwinian-trinity of the admins, no? Lol
I’ve always had a hardtime wrapping my head around the Trinity…
The Catholic Church should set an example and abandon this confusing teaching, just like they did with the limbo, the eternal torment etc….
1. Do you accept the doctrine of the Trinity?
Yes
2. Do you recognize the absurdity of it?
No
3. Do you deal with the absurdity by declaring it a “mystery”?
No
J-Mac,
The vast majority of Christian churches still preach the doctrine of the Trinity. The only major churches I know of that reject it are Christian Science, the LDS church, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Trinitarianism is built into the creeds of the Catholic church, so they aren’t going to get rid of it any time soon.
Mung,
What does the Holy Spirit look like?
It remains to be seen…
There are more than some high-ranked skeptics within Christian Churches…
There’s gotta be more..out of 10,000 denominations…
The world of faith is full of absurdity. Look at the origins of life…lol
J-Mac,
I was talking about major churches. I’m sure there are plenty of minor denominations that reject the Trinity.
The origins of life is a matter of faith? And that’s laughable? Besides being incoherent, you’re an expert at shooting yourself in the foot.
Just like any other Spirit. But Holy.
You mean cults. 😉
So, you are an idiot and with a bullet in your foot…😅
BTW: I’ve read that a surprisingly large number of atheists pray…
Whom would you pray to, if you were one of those?
Don’t tell me! Not the green men from Alpha Centourie? 😉
I have always wondered about the nature of the Holy Spirit… I’m surprised you haven’t looked it up…
Keiths wants to get back at Christians with this OP, but a quick search reveals that even hardcore Catholics have doubts…
Keiths,
The large portion of the world religious who believe in the actual One God, believe in the same God, the God of the Jews. This includes Christians, Muslims and obviously the Jews.
Just because some religions misrepresent the One God, it doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist and the bolt of lightning should be worshipped…
J-Mac,
If you were trying to persuade a fellow Christian that the doctrine of the Trinity is false, what would your argument be?
heh
Yes.
I recognise its profundity.
Everything is a mystery to us before we apply our thinking process to it. Declaring something a mystery should lead to seeing it as a challenge to be solved whereas in declaring something an absurdity is prejudice which blocks further thought.
We can look back on many areas of scientific research in which progress was delayed because some theory was at first considered too absurd to pursue.
My understanding is that the Trinity concept came about when the early church fathers decided that there could not be any contradictions in the Bible, and that therefore things that appear contradictory are not, actually, contradictory. The way out of that was to call such things a ‘mystery’.
More sensible people might assume that there can in fact be contradictions in the Bible, and so the conundrum wouldn’t even arise. Why couldn’t there be contradictions anyway? It is a book written by many different human authors who mostly didn’t, and in most cases couldn’t consult with each other.
The Trinity is a self-inflicted problem by the Church. The real mystery is why so many people buy into this nonsense.
From a book by Mario Betti that I have previously linked to
(I had typed ‘tree-leafed clover’ by mistake and I thought about leaving it as it was because it sounded better when I read it back to myself 🙂 ) I am making a light hearted comment here, but in my opinion the concept of the trinity is far from trivial and so thank you keiths for bringing it up for discussion.
As I understand it he ‘Father’ is the source from whence we come, portrayed through the eyes of the Jews in the Torah, the Son is the crative ‘Word’ who brings us into the future as portrayed in the New Testament. And the ‘Holy Spirit’ is that into which we are born again as taught by St Paul.
Steiner puts it thus:
Ex Deo Nascimur — Out of God we are born
In Christo Morimur — In Christ we die
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus — Through the Holy Spirit we live again
These are the three aspects of the “I AM”, who was and is and is to come.
We straddle two worlds, In our bodily nature we are a quaternity consisting of the four classical elemets and in our spiritual nature we partake of and aspire to the trinity in our thinking, feeling and will.
When, at the age of 13, I was switched from the Apostles’ Creed to the Nicene, the thing that surprised me was the “one holy catholic and apostolic Church” bit.
“That’s catholic with a small c” I was assured.
Looking back though, that whole filoque thing causes problems: if the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son [Nicene], then how could the Son be conceived by the Holy Spirit [Apostles’].
The Eastern Churches are right: Charlemagne has written the Western Churches into a corner…
The question I had asked Mung reg. the Holy Spirit is probably a valid one: i.e. what’s the nature of the Holy Spirit?
I don’t recall the Holy Spirit ever been referred to as He/She/Person… John Harshman might know actually 😉
If Jesus were a part of the Trinity, why would he pray to himself?
Why did Jesus pray to his Father and not the Holy Spirit?
It’s like you said in the OP: a mystery doesn’t answer anything…
Then, I’d look at the origins of the doctrine, like I had done with the doctrine of the immortality of the soul…
DNA_Jock:
That problem goes away if you keep in mind that “conceived” just means physically conceived. The Son exists from eternity and therefore can’t be conceived in a spiritual sense.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1
Here is an excerpt of an article from a pastor of an Apostolic Church, who opposes the doctrine of the trinity:
He has obviously done some digging and finds evidence of trinitarian-like thinking from outside the Christian Church.
The quantum transfer of consciousness from spirit to physical body makes sense to me…😉
What do yah think?🤗
I think you’re drunk on the quantum Kool-Aid.
J-Mac,
The Holy Spirit says things, gets angry, teaches, and so forth. That sounds like a person to me.
Both good questions, and the answers I’ve gotten from Christians have been ad hoc and unconvincing.
CharlieM, quoting Steiner:
Steiner uses the word “aspects” there and not “persons”, leading me to think he’s actually a modalist, not a true trinitarian.
Yeah, I know. But are those statements referring to real person? Or, are they so called personifications, like this?
“…the sea was angry today..”
Therefore mystery…😊
However, the great majority of the religions that actually believe in God, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, refer to the same God-the God of Abraham. They often misrepresent Him…
Sorry, that was my poor editing. The only part that was Steiner is:
Everything else is from me.
Then it may be you, not Steiner, who is the modalist.
keiths:
J-Mac:
They seem to refer to a person. Examples:
The Holy Spirit teaches and reminds:
He chooses:
He speaks:
The OP poster seems both 1) insincere in asking, and 2) angry in his apostasy. If he were to display sincerity, the reactions might be different. Mung is bang on to answer as he did.
This is one of the last places on the internet I would wish to discuss theology, since it is full of anti-religious, anti-theistic “skeptics”. That the OP poster imagines this venue could be a level playing field is absurd.
Does the OP poster believe in a “spiritual” dimension? That might be a better place to start. If he’s a materialist, who denies immaterial realities, then that reveals a bias against trinitarian theology from the start. It would mean he has ideologically barred himself from even the potential to understand his own questions.
Within the Christian tradition, the Trinity is obviously not “absurd”. At least, not as much as someone who thinks they can possibly “inspire” someone while denying the “spiritual” realm. The Abrahamic monotheists I’ve met are all prepared to genuinely discuss the Trinity, even those who don’t accept the Trinity in their religious worldview.
Not only this, but the OP poster mistakes his dialogue partners, apparently collapsing religious believers all under one label; the one he most personally opposes after once believing in it (kinda on the surface anyway, it seems) himself. He wrote:
Yet, J-Mac surely is not a follower of Jesus Christ, not a Christian. He has said this here several times, rather posing as some kind of “religion of one”; a “generic theist” apparently.
Please, OP Author, be more careful who you are addressing & why, if you expect coherent answers. People posing “religiously” as something they are not can cause social damage, mostly to themselves.
To me it was a mystery until I applied some thinking to it, it was then when I realized it was pure absurdity.
Gregory,
I am neither insincere nor angry. I genuinely want to understand how Christians deal with the concept of the Trinity, which seems absurd to me (though I accepted it back when I was a believer). My own strategy back then was to call it a mystery and avoid thinking about it.
Would you prefer a theistic echo chamber? Far better to let your beliefs be challenged by those who disagree with them.
No.
That’s silly. You don’t have to believe in the immaterial in order to understand trinitarian theology.
It makes so little sense that the Catholic church declares it a “mystery”, where “it’s a mystery” is equivalent to “we can’t make sense of this, but we want it to be true, so let’s just assume that it is”.
That’s exactly what this OP invites them to do.
Not sure where you got that idea.
keiths,
From this:
Should one not assume by “fellow Christian” you meant that you thought/think J-mac is himself a “Christian”?
Then no answer involving the Holy Spirit will appear anything but “absurd” or impossible to you.
Would you like a book recommendation about the Trinity that you’d actually read & try thinking about for yourself?
Otherwise, try going to a site without so many atheists, anti-religious & anti-theists, quasi-theists & a Steinerist, even better, go to a Christian forum, and ask your sincere, non-condescending questions there.
keiths,
Thanks for reminding about those!
Gen 1:2
“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
Acts 2:3-4
“And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.”
What are your thoughts on these?
Really?!
Make sure you provide the links to those several comments I made…
But, I already know there will be no such links simply because it is a well known fact, not only at TSZ, of you having a reputation of being delusional and that with a capital letter “D”…
There is only one way out of this…
Let’s watch the show by Gregory the Delusional Liar 🤣
Yeah. They wanted Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be God, but the obvious implication of that was that there were three Gods, not one. That wouldn’t do since it clashed with the monotheism of the Jewish tradition.
There were multiple ways of resolving this, but each had issues too. The trinitarian solution won the debate despite its absurdities and weakness.
J-Mac,
Those two passages seem compatible both with the Holy Spirit as a force and with the Holy Spirit as a person.
Gregory,
Yes, I think J-Mac is a Christian. You obviously don’t, but why?
Sure, but I’d prefer that you condense the arguments and post them here so that everyone could partake.
It’s funny that you’re recommending a book on the Trinity to me, when you just got through explaining that (and why) I’ll supposedly never understand it.
Allah, the Islamic version of God, makes much more sense in my opinion. He is just the one and only Boss. A concept that is clear and unambiguous in its simplicity.
Odd you believe in something you admit is not sensible Then why do you believe it in? It makes, literally, no sense.
I think it is very hard to help Christians understand that the trinity is absurd, mainly because they’re convinced that it is not. Not by reason, but by indoctrination.
When I was little, I was told about this, and found it weird. The “explanation” came back as a metaphor (or is it analogy?), where god was a piece of rope. The three persons each a knot in the rope. Each knot being a different knot, yet part of the same piece of rope. That was enough for me for a good while. But, really, we’re not talking about ropes and knots, we’re talking about a single god being three distinct persons, and that’s still absurd.
So, after a while I was again unsatisfied by the “answer.” I started reading books about the “mystery” of “The Trinity.” There’s lots and lots of books and theses written by theologians about this “mystery.” Trying to “solve it.” Still, I could never feel satisfied, and all the books seemed to be convolutions that never solved the problem. More for the next generation of theologians I’d guess.
Having other things to do, I stopped trying. Anyway, time passed. I learned better. I questioned the existence of gods. it’s an enormous relief once we realize it’s all attempts at trying to make sense of a fantasy.
Relief, but also sadness that so much effort has been put into trying to make sense of a fantasy, with the hopeful “explainers” failing to go many steps back: what if this is all wrong? What if there’s no trinity at all? What if this doctrine is all wrong? What if Christ was not divine? What if the holy spirit is but a way to describe the power of God descending upon us, but not a person? What if the whole thing is a fiasco? What if there’s no gods at all? (Though some did ask some of these questions, they seemed to ask rhetorically, rather than seriously.)
I think that talking with Christians about it is an exercise in futility. They might be at some stage where ropes and knots convince them that they do have an answer, and, perhaps, that there’s no “mystery” (how would they explain that theologians continue writing about such “mystery” then?). Maybe something else stopped them from continued questioning, or, maybe, they never questioned it at all. After all, most accept the absurdity without further question. They might even feel that the credo (it’s one god in three persons) is what it is. No explanations necessary.
So, I doubt that keiths is going to have a lively discussion.
What background do you have in Christian theology?
It can’t both, can it?
J-Mac,
Gregory is not lying. I remember you declaring not having a particular affiliation. Questions “when did I say I’m a Christian?”, etc. I knew better because you had posted about the “awesome science in the Bible” and such bullshit. But you have denied, at the very least, any denominations. Instead of insulting Gregory, you could have answered what you believe. I’d say that you’re an ass-hole, but that would not be appropriate. I’ll leave it to the audience to judge.
Lol
This is it? 😅
Have you taken your meds? Please do asap…
You too? I think the “corolla wiherus” histeria is taking its toll…😉
Social isolating is not a good thing…
Let us pay! 😭