Please explain the trinity

[Silvertusk]

Where did Paul offer an analogy? I just saw him say that all three persons are the same God and make an argument from the nature of love that there must be a plurality of persons within the Godhead. I'm failing to see the problem.

I don't think he explained it quite that way and I don't think he used the term "Godhead". He said, just like you cannot put a number on human, you can't put a number on God. He said God consists of 3 persons, and I pointed out that human consists of 4 billion persons.

BTW I've always considered the term "Godhead" as a title when refering to the 3 members of the trinity. Is it more than that? Or is it just a another term for Father Son and Holy Ghost.

Ken

Well a few things . . .

1. I don't know if he used the word "consist" or you did, but it would be inappropriate to apply it to God, and I don't think it fits the point you are making about "human" either. "Human" does not consist of billions of people. There are billions of human beings, but the concept of "human" is what it is whether there is one or one million or one trillion humans. It is what it is even if there are no humans at all, for that matter. What you are dealing with is what philosophers refer to as the "universal," and the question is, how does a universal relate to real objects?

2. Following the discussion about universals, I would not talk about it in the way Paul did. God is not a "species." Now, I fully expect that Paul isn't trying to use that in a technical sense. He's probably trying to make an analogy, but I don't happen to find it particularly helpful, since the analogy would suggest that the "species" of God would fall under the category of a larger genera, which is not true. The proper language is to say that God is an essence, and universals are properly understood to refer to essences. So the word "God" refers to the essence of God. And the word "human" refers to the essence of humans. Now, because of the human nature, it is such that every human being is one person. I want to emphasize: that is necessarily true due to human nature. We cannot speak of a human as more than one person anymore than we can speak of a triangle with five sides (and yes, that applies to people with multiple personalities). It is a mistake, then, to take this aspect of human nature--its numerical identity of the person with the being--as if in God where there are three persons there must be three beings. God's nature has no such limitation. On the contrary, because of His nature, God is such that God is three Persons; all three persons are identical in every respect except for their relations to one another. You cannot distinguish between them in terms of their wills or intellects, as if the Father has a will and the Son has a will and the Spirit has a will but all three simply line up in perfect harmony. No. In fact, there is numerically one will in God, and the Father, Son, and Spirit all have that same will. The same is true of all the other attributes.

Lastly, back to your OP, the three persons are not three parts of God, as if the Father is 1/3 God and the Son 1/3 God and the Spirit 1/3 God so that when the three are added up they "make up" God. One of the most basic tenants of classical Trinitarian theology is divine simplicity, which says that God is not composed of any kind of parts whatsoever. So there is not a part of God called the Father and another part called the Son. There is simply the essence that is God, and that essence is hypostatized in one instance as the Father, in another as the Son, and in another as the Spirit. All three Persons are absolutely identical in the simple, and thus indivisible, substance.

So if I understand you correctly, Christians worship 3 persons who are identical in nature, will, thought, etc. All attributes are identical; unlike the polytheist who worships multiple persons whose attributes differ. Because all 3 persons are identical in perfection, nature attributes, etc. That makes them one God. Is that correct?

Ken

Not quite - correct me if I am wrong here Jac - but I would say that there are different in authority. For instant the Father is above the Son and the Holy Spirit - However - all other attributes are equal.

[PaulSacramento]

The most important thing to understand about the nature of God is that He is GOD.
While we can try to fully comprehend Him and one day we WILL, at our stage all we can do is to try and conceive a notion of God.
Like an ant trying to understand a computer, except because we are made in HIS image we have "access" to Him via Our Lord.
To fully understand God, we have to only look to Christ.
In that, we are truly blessed.

[Jac3510]

Not quite - correct me if I am wrong here Jac - but I would say that there are different in authority. For instant the Father is above the Son and the Holy Spirit - However - all other attributes are equal.

The classical doctrine of the Trinity does not allow for a heirarchy of authority, nor could it in principle. If there is such a heirarchy, then the Son and Spirit would have to have a faculty (i.e., the intellect and will) by which they perceive the Father's authority as distinct from their own and thereby submit to it. But on that view, God is now composed of parts and the Persons are not, in fact, co-equal. You have a very real sense in which you have three distinct beings and you are looking more at a social Trinity.

What we can say, and what I think you are really getting at, is that the man Jesus was submissive to the Father's will. We have to note, though, that He did so in virtue of His human nature, i.e., His human will and human intellect. The Spirit, in turn, testifies to the Son's ministry, which is by extension a testimony to the Father's testimony, but that is not a matter of authority.

All that is to say, there is no heirarchy in the Trinity as the Trinity; there is a heirarchy of sorts when we consider the Son with respect to His incarnation.

The most important thing to understand about the nature of God is that He is GOD.
While we can try to fully comprehend Him and one day we WILL, at our stage all we can do is to try and conceive a notion of God.
Like an ant trying to understand a computer, except because we are made in HIS image we have "access" to Him via Our Lord.
To fully understand God, we have to only look to Christ.
In that, we are truly blessed.

This is absolutely correct. We can have a metaphysical, which is to say, a philosophical, understanding of the Trinity in terms of its inner logic. We can "explain" it and it gives us terms to talk about it and to "visualize" it. But in order to understand God in a relational sense, to "get" Him, all we need, and in fact all we have available to us, is Jesus (Jn. 1:18).