The Trinity

[nomad]

[postodave]

[nomad]

[warren_piece]

the concept that man is triune in nature is relatively new.
many (if not most) of the most famous (and well respected) theologians of the early church claimed that man was dual in nature...not triune.
the holy spirit is the hardest to 'define' because it is so ambiguous in the bible. spirit of god, holy spirit, spirit of christ are all used interchangeably. that leads us into a whole host of problems resulting in my thinking that, either God is more likely two or four in one rather than three in one.
but, on the whole, i shelf this one right alongside the name of God.
the bible tells us that the name of God is important. history tells us that the name of God is important. and yet, somehow, we have gotten to a point where we say - 'hmph. we dont even know what the name of God really is.' is that because we really dont know or because we cant use the jewish name?
i guess its like with kids. you have to ask yourself whether or not you want to battle your children on issue 'X' and sometimes its not worth the battle.
does it change how you relate to God? if you call God 'God' that should be peachy. If i call God 'Y-W-', that should be okeydokey as well. if you can relate better to a triune God, then that should be just dandy. and if i can relate better to a God who is dual in nature, than that might be fine as well.
i still struggle with the notion of the nature (and the name) of God, but have found myself settling away from a triune nature.

[postodave]

[warren_piece]

[Kolbitar]

::we flushed 1000 years of christian tradition down the pan when we decided that man is triune in nature.
we flushed well over 3000 years down the pan when we decided that we didnt know God's name.
we flushed a few thousand years down the pan when we decided that man was inherently wicked.
the sewer is full of good ideas that were, at one point or another, acceptable church doctrine - but have since been flushed.

Hi warren.

I'm not writing to criticize you, so please don't feel immediately threatened. In fact, what you say, to me, is the ultimate logic of rejecting the Church as the instrument of God's guidance. I just wish everyone realized that.

Actually my real point in posting was that I was curious about a number of things.

First, were you aware that the standard of faith from the earliest dawning of Christianity dealt with doctrine, and that it wasn't long after the apostles left this world that the standard of faith, accepted by the unified early Church, involved the inclusion of the Trinity? I guess I ask because that level of importance -- of the Creeds -- to the unified Church is quite unrivaled by anything else you mentioned. The difference isn't even one of degree, but of kind. I think that's what drew (and will draw) the reaction of dave (and others) -- just don't be surprised :-) .

Second, was it ever really affirmed that man was inherently good? That is, that he of his own natural bent tended toward goodness? I don't see that in the Old Testament, nor in the Greek philosophers. The perfectibility of man may be an assumption of the ancient Greeks, but it was hardly a realization, and it's only found after the admission of the need for an incredible routine of discipline for our disordered inclinations. Anyway, I'm not sure why you say that's all flushed? Something has to be sitting in the bowl before it can be flushed, and what was sitting there was actually taken up by Christianity -- such as the definition of man as a rational animal, and natural virtues and such.

Third, I don't understand the point about not knowing God's name. Christianity doesn't say God has three natures, it says one nature in three persons.

And last, I'm very curious about the triune nature of man comment. People often mistake the meaning of soul (our being) as if it meant psyche -- that is, the emotions, passions, memory and imagination -- as distinguished from spirit (rationality) and body. This can be a perfectly valid distinction within the seperate distinction between, say, the old man and the new man of the New Testament. Our being now has the "Christ Life", if we are Christians, added to it. That is, spirit, if defined as the new life of Christ, is added to our being (soul) which is tripart. Then there's also the distinction between different types of souls -- rational, animal, and vegetative. All this is to say that one understanding doesn't necessarily negate the other. But I'll wait for your definitions to be more specific, and to attempt to find their compatibility -- as I say, I'm not exactly sure what you mean...

Jesse

[postodave]

Kolbitar that's so much to the point that you saved me from saying it (and I could not have said it so clearly anyway).

On this tripartite view of man. It is not accepted by the whole Church. The only people who have actually made it part of their dogma as far as I'm aware are the Jehovah's witnesses. Watchman Nee used it as part of his mildly heretical system which taught that the soul had to be broken to release the spirit this idea was picked up by some early charismatic writers like Colin Urquhart who seemed to think of the spirit as something like a radio set that came alive wheen a person was born again and tunred in to Godand . Not sure where things went from their. Long long ago the idea of a tripartite view of man was used as part of the Christological heresy Apolinairianism which claimed that Christ had a human body and soul but the second person of the trinity in place of a soul; by spirit Apolinarius meant something like the rational will, what we might call the agent. This heresy was countered by the saying whatever is not assumed is not saved. That is if there is any part of human nature, however we divide or classify that that was not assumed by the divine logos in the incarnation then that part was nort redeamed by Christ's death on the cross. So this tripartite division can cause no end of trouble.

My own understanding which is that the terms used in scripture like soul, spirit, heart or mind are not used in a technical sense. Different New Testament writers use the words in different ways. For example Peter talks about souls being saved whereas Paul with his pharisaic training behind him talks about a soul becoming a spirit. Overall the focus is on a dualism within an essential unity, though it is possible to divide the soul part into other divisions sometimes with a quasi-technical intent (as when the writer of Hebrews talks of the division of soul and spirit) sometimes just for emphasis as when Jesus talks of loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength.

[Adam]

::On this tripartite view of man. It is not accepted by the whole Church. The only people who have actually made it part of their dogma as far as I'm aware are the Jehovah's witnesses.

And, um, the entire eastern Orthodox Church through all time. The Greek Fathers believed in a tripart nature of man; I'm not sure how it could be said to necessarily lead to Christological heresy.

[WolfVanZandt]

Man has a multipartite nature. He has a spirit if the Bible is to be believed, he has a mind (well, sometime, that can be debated but, seriously.....), and he obviously has a body. But of the mind, how may of us are not divided in mind often. The miraculous thing about God is that He's never divided in mind - He's only Three. And what of our bodies - do ou think a body is a completely integrated unity - that the nervous system doesn't sometime counterpoint tha harmonal system or that the central nervous system doesn't sometime have to discipline an unruly peripheral nervous system.

As to whether Trinity is Biblical or not - there's not really any question there - at least as far a Jesus and Jehovah are concerned. John clearly state that the Word was God (despite the JW's Bible's interpretation "a God, the extant manuscripts have simply "God".) and the Word was made flesh as Jesus. The logical structure is quite simple and unmistakeable. A = B: B = C; therefore A = C.

The case of whether the Holy Spirit is God or not is not as explicitly developed in the scriptures but the implications are strong enough for me. If others have a problem with it, then maybe a bipartite God......as you wish.

[WolfVanZandt]

Oh, yeah, what do I think?

I think that Jesus is God incarnate and that the Holy Spirit is God's indwelling presence in believers (or, more broadly, His localize spirit).

I know that Jesus was separated from the Father on Calvary and that would be a problem if God was limited to a linear time and space but He isn't so it's not a problem. The same is true of the issue of Jesus praying to God the Father. What Jesus did was done before the "foundations of the world". He did it before the world even got started. Who he was praying to was a Himself that had already gone through the whole thing but was not letting Him know (for His own reasons) how it turned out.

[Karen]

[WolfVanZandt]

I think (emphasze that I think) that we have problems thinking about Trinity because we're not used to thinking nonlinearly. If we expect God's reality to be like our day to day reality, then we really can't expect ourselves to have very accurate concepts about him. But it's really not beyond us. Lewis wrote a lot about what reality would be like if you removed the temporal limitations. The issues that would be hard to deal with would be:

God made the universe complete on the day of creation - everything - the dinosaurs, Rome, us was there in His creation.

He is outside the timeline.

He entered creation, at the event of creation a little past the time we consider 0 AD. His entry and sacrifice was as much a part of creation as the creating.

He exited creation on ascension and, thereby, exited our timeline which placed Him right back where He was before He entered - where He's always been.

While He was in our timeline, He moved with it but when He is outside, He is timeless, which means that He existed both inside our timeline and outside at the same "time" during the first century.

And since the Holy Spirit is also within our timeline, God is still both within and outside at the same time.

Regardless of whether I'm right or not, it would be very strange indeed if thinking about God doesn't require thinking radically outside the box.

[postodave]

No Adam I don't thin this tripartite view leads neccessarily to heresy just that it has been the jumping off point for a lot of odd stuff. I didn't realise that the Greek Fathers held to this tripartite view; could you give me some references? I can see a kind of tripartite view in later orthodox thinking especially with the idea of the heart that was so impoertant in the hesychast controversy. But I had always understood the heart in this instance (perhaps mistakenly) in the way it is understood in Calvinist philosophy as the integration point of the whole person not as a third substance distinct from body and soul (if body and soul can be seen as distinct substances). Perhaps you can clarify all this for me. BTW what do you make of this:

[warren_piece]