Evidence for God from Science

Hey, all.

I've been doing a lot of reading and meditating in the area of Trinitarian Theology. This is not simply looking at the historical doctrine of the Trinity but is instead as defined on Wikipedia,

Trinitarian theology is a way of doing systematic theology that understands the Trinity to be the foundational doctrine that permeates all areas of theology as opposed to one point of doctrine in systematics. Although trinitarian theology as such has been present throughout the history of the church, being represented by such as the Cappadocian Fathers, it has had a renaissance starting in the 20th century. It is also known as affective theology or a theology of the affections in that it concerns itself with one's relationship with God based not on the mind or the will but on the heart.

In particular, Karl Barth and the Torrance Brothers, Thomas, James and David are particularly strong theologians cited in this tradition. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is frequently classed in this are as well.

Trinitarianism is seen as broader than denominations and other considerations such as Calvinism vs. Arminianism or Catholicism vs. Protestantism. So there's broad diversity.

Eastern Orthodoxy has several elements preserved from early church tradition in some areas moreso than Western Christendom. The only denomination I'm aware of that identifies itself explicitly as "Trinitarian" in the sense that the word is used here, is surprisingly enough the remnent of the old Armstrong Worldwide Church of God which is now known as Grace Communiion International. They've repudiated much of Armstrongism publically and are now members of the National Association of Evangelicals, showing how far they've come. Their Website at http://www.gci.org/ has a pretty strong set of resources. Of course, while they are Trinitarian, they don't represent all of Trinitarianism in their beliefs. I'm endorsing them as a good resource with this link, not necessarily endorsing all of their beliefs personally.

Anyway, I've started a page on Facebook called Trinitarianism for any interested and thought I'd start a thread here as well and perhaps put some of the same material up here if any are interested.

blessings,

bart

I've been doing alot of reasearch and reading recently and have been moving away from the trinitarian view. Understanding what God acctually is makes the trinitarian view very cumbersome and pointless for the most part. learning the things that I have about the history of the 1st through the 3rd centuries also causes me to be very suspect of the appearance of this teaching. I haven't completely ruled it out, but lets just say it's taken a really good beating as of now. I'm going to go now to the link you posted and read some before bed.

The issue with the Trinity doctrine has always been "the math", some people have a hard time with the math.
The first step is to realize that there is NO reason for God to NOT be a Triune entity if God is that, there is no "illogical" concept.
God is whatever God is and what God is is GOD, period.
If man can't fathom that, then all that means is that Man is NOT able to fathom God, no big surprise there.
The Trinity is man's attempt to "explain" the Nature of God in Human words, so of course it will be flawed and imperfect.
The Trinity is simply Man's wording of how/why Father, Son and HS share the same nature and are, because they are spirit, the same united being.
The simple fact is that, to say that God CAN'T be a Trinity is to put a limitation on God, which would make him NOT God.

PaulSacramento wrote:The issue with the Trinity doctrine has always been "the math", some people have a hard time with the math.
The first step is to realize that there is NO reason for God to NOT be a Triune entity if God is that, there is no "illogical" concept.
God is whatever God is and what God is is GOD, period.
If man can't fathom that, then all that means is that Man is NOT able to fathom God, no big surprise there.
The Trinity is man's attempt to "explain" the Nature of God in Human words, so of course it will be flawed and imperfect.
The Trinity is simply Man's wording of how/why Father, Son and HS share the same nature and are, because they are spirit, the same united being.
The simple fact is that, to say that God CAN'T be a Trinity is to put a limitation on God, which would make him NOT God.

Yes I understand this totally Paul and I realize that most people's attempts to explain or describe the trinity fail miserably, But the reason I have begun to get away from it is that the more I learn of God and genuine scriptures the more I see that God is much more than just a trinity. God is spirit and not only created all things, but exists in all things. I also come to be suspect of Jesus being the one and only Son of God that no one else can hope to attain his likeness, which is what many, many churches seem to want us to believe nowadays. I have no doubt what so ever that Jesus is very special and that he was promised to come from the very beginning and that he attained a high God conciousness and power and sits with the Father at his throne. He sacrificed his life and all that he had gained in it so that we might be saved by believing in what he said and in the Father. I also see where Jesus told us that all who believe will also sit with him at OUR father's throne, right? He is called the first fruits of the sons of God meaning there is more than one expected to make it back to that level. Jesus called the disciples brothers, sisters and friends, not subjects and underlings, not his children.
It all started with finding out how adulterated our scriptures have become. I mean I've known that there have been editings, forgeries and simple translation mistakes made to our bibles over the years, but I've recently been finding out just how bad it all really is. The 3rd century was very, very bad for the holy scriptures in the hands of the Roman church and from then on to the reformation, they have suffered greatly. The few remaining gospels of mark, mathew, luke and john got it the worst. I've read several commentaries from 5th century European theologens who were appauled by how different what they had from the Catholic church is from the truest Greek copies. The original gospel of Luke is about half as long as what we have now. Not because it was missing parts, but because that's how much crap had been added to it over the centuries. Very important key verses were changed as well. When Jesus is baptised and holy spirit falls on him , our Bibles have it written that God told him "you are my son. Today I am very pleased with you". A very trustworthy set of 2nd century gospels records God telling Jesus "you are my son. Today I have begotten you". What has been added to it or changed is not half as bad as what was taken out. The main reason you can't find many good copies of 1st and 2nd century scripture is because Constantine and his bishops, anyone who was for the holy Roman Empire, went on a fiery murderous rampage against anything different than what they said was right. Anyone who took up cause against the new teachings of the Roman church would eventually be labeled a heretic, their writings burned, followers killed or tortured till "conversion". Nearly all traces of reincarnation, the role of women (especially Mary Magdelene), jesus's outcry against organized religion and political power of a church, pre existence of the spirit and details of spirit life have all but been obliterated from Christianity.
Now I'm sure I'm going to get comments about how people like the Essenes, Gnostic and Origen were heretics, but why are they called heretics? because Constantine and his council said so? Why would we trust them? They had an empire and political power to protect as well as quell a war between traditional beliefs and christianity. Their motives were not pure even if many of them were good peace seeking people. I just don't yet see a reason to continue to commit to the trinitarian view. we need something more concrete than the decree of a pope or emperor.

PaulSacramento wrote:The issue with the Trinity doctrine has always been "the math", some people have a hard time with the math.
The first step is to realize that there is NO reason for God to NOT be a Triune entity if God is that, there is no "illogical" concept.
God is whatever God is and what God is is GOD, period.
If man can't fathom that, then all that means is that Man is NOT able to fathom God, no big surprise there.
The Trinity is man's attempt to "explain" the Nature of God in Human words, so of course it will be flawed and imperfect.
The Trinity is simply Man's wording of how/why Father, Son and HS share the same nature and are, because they are spirit, the same united being.
The simple fact is that, to say that God CAN'T be a Trinity is to put a limitation on God, which would make him NOT God.

Yes I understand this totally Paul and I realize that most people's attempts to explain or describe the trinity fail miserably, But the reason I have begun to get away from it is that the more I learn of God and genuine scriptures the more I see that God is much more than just a trinity. God is spirit and not only created all things, but exists in all things. I also come to be suspect of Jesus being the one and only Son of God that no one else can hope to attain his likeness, which is what many, many churches seem to want us to believe nowadays. I have no doubt what so ever that Jesus is very special and that he was promised to come from the very beginning and that he attained a high God conciousness and power and sits with the Father at his throne. He sacrificed his life and all that he had gained in it so that we might be saved by believing in what he said and in the Father. I also see where Jesus told us that all who believe will also sit with him at OUR father's throne, right? He is called the first fruits of the sons of God meaning there is more than one expected to make it back to that level. Jesus called the disciples brothers, sisters and friends, not subjects and underlings, not his children.
It all started with finding out how adulterated our scriptures have become. I mean I've known that there have been editings, forgeries and simple translation mistakes made to our bibles over the years, but I've recently been finding out just how bad it all really is. The 3rd century was very, very bad for the holy scriptures in the hands of the Roman church and from then on to the reformation, they have suffered greatly. The few remaining gospels of mark, mathew, luke and john got it the worst. I've read several commentaries from 5th century European theologens who were appauled by how different what they had from the Catholic church is from the truest Greek copies. The original gospel of Luke is about half as long as what we have now. Not because it was missing parts, but because that's how much crap had been added to it over the centuries. Very important key verses were changed as well. When Jesus is baptised and holy spirit falls on him , our Bibles have it written that God told him "you are my son. Today I am very pleased with you". A very trustworthy set of 2nd century gospels records God telling Jesus "you are my son. Today I have begotten you". What has been added to it or changed is not half as bad as what was taken out. The main reason you can't find many good copies of 1st and 2nd century scripture is because Constantine and his bishops, anyone who was for the holy Roman Empire, went on a fiery murderous rampage against anything different than what they said was right. Anyone who took up cause against the new teachings of the Roman church would eventually be labeled a heretic, their writings burned, followers killed or tortured till "conversion". Nearly all traces of reincarnation, the role of women (especially Mary Magdelene), jesus's outcry against organized religion and political power of a church, pre existence of the spirit and details of spirit life have all but been obliterated from Christianity.
Now I'm sure I'm going to get comments about how people like the Essenes, Gnostic and Origen were heretics, but why are they called heretics? because Constantine and his council said so? Why would we trust them? They had an empire and political power to protect as well as quell a war between traditional beliefs and christianity. Their motives were not pure even if many of them were good peace seeking people. I just don't yet see a reason to continue to commit to the trinitarian view. we need something more concrete than the decree of a pope or emperor.

God is incomprehensible and there is none like him therefore his Oneness is likewise incomprehensible because there is none like God exept God.

Trinitarianism was revealed within the OT and is in the Torah. Moses wrote of it. OT people were confronted with it and it is in the NT as well. Trinitarianism is an easy way to begin to barely grasp the self existance nature of God and his Spirit essense as He is just as the OT saints encountered God - how they saw Him. God's oneness is an Echaud - a plural unity and not a singular make up say like a chair, table, a false god like Zeus.

Elohim is a plural noun that helps capture the concept of the Trinity. God is one being but his oneness cannot be compared to any state of oneness man can think of without making God comprehensible and like other things. God says there is none like Himself... for a reason. Trinitarianism retains what God says about himself...
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B. W. wrote:God is incomprehensible and there is none like him therefore his Oneness is likewise incomprehensible because there is none like God exept God.

Trinitarianism was revealed within the OT and is in the Torah. Moses wrote of it. OT people were confronted with it and it is in the NT as well. Trinitarianism is an easy way to begin to barely grasp the self existance nature of God and his Spirit essense as He is just as the OT saints encountered God - how they saw Him. God's oneness is an Echaud - a plural unity and not a singular make up say like a chair, table, a false god like Zeus.

Elohim is a plural noun that helps capture the concept of the Trinity. God is one being but his oneness cannot be compared to any state of oneness man can think of without making God comprehensible and like other things. God says there is none like Himself... for a reason. Trinitarianism retains what God says about himself...
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-
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hmm ok cool. could you point me to those OT scriptures that reveal the trinity back then? Sorry my post showed up twice..didnt mean to do that. See I'm begining to understand God as more of everything..infinity. The Father, Son, Holy spirit, Mother, Doctor, Teacher, Painter, Gardener, Architect, etc.. That's why I'm resisting God just being the Father, Son and Holy spirit. I was born into the Jehova's witnesses, which teaches that there is just God the Father, that the Holy spirit is God's active force among the physical world and Jesus is an Archangel. The last church I actively attended was AOG and they pretty much just worship Jesus with some side notes of Holy spirit and spiritual gifts. I'm thinking the truth is somewhere in between....
I thought Elohim meant "the lord God" and was plural in titles, but still represented the one true God. So is it safe to say that God is one thing, but is also all things? Could this be how Jesus could perform acts of God by the power of the holy spirit (forgiving of sins, promising everlasting life) and at the same time state he isn't God, that he too serves and obeys the Father and still be correct? Wow now my mental juices are really flowing

secretfire6 wrote:

B. W. wrote:God is incomprehensible and there is none like him therefore his Oneness is likewise incomprehensible because there is none like God exept God.

Trinitarianism was revealed within the OT and is in the Torah. Moses wrote of it. OT people were confronted with it and it is in the NT as well. Trinitarianism is an easy way to begin to barely grasp the self existance nature of God and his Spirit essense as He is just as the OT saints encountered God - how they saw Him. God's oneness is an Echaud - a plural unity and not a singular make up say like a chair, table, a false god like Zeus.

Elohim is a plural noun that helps capture the concept of the Trinity. God is one being but his oneness cannot be compared to any state of oneness man can think of without making God comprehensible and like other things. God says there is none like Himself... for a reason. Trinitarianism retains what God says about himself...
-
-
-

hmm ok cool. could you point me to those OT scriptures that reveal the trinity back then? Sorry my post showed up twice..didnt mean to do that. See I'm begining to understand God as more of everything..infinity. The Father, Son, Holy spirit, Mother, Doctor, Teacher, Painter, Gardener, Architect, etc.. That's why I'm resisting God just being the Father, Son and Holy spirit. I was born into the Jehova's witnesses, which teaches that there is just God the Father, that the Holy spirit is God's active force among the physical world and Jesus is an Archangel. The last church I actively attended was AOG and they pretty much just worship Jesus with some side notes of Holy spirit and spiritual gifts. I'm thinking the truth is somewhere in between....
I thought Elohim meant "the lord God" and was plural in titles, but still represented the one true God. So is it safe to say that God is one thing, but is also all things? Could this be how Jesus could perform acts of God by the power of the holy spirit (forgiving of sins, promising everlasting life) and at the same time state he isn't God, that he too serves and obeys the Father and still be correct? Wow now my mental juices are really flowing

Sure = see this link:

http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... 22&t=33317

secretfire6 wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:The issue with the Trinity doctrine has always been "the math", some people have a hard time with the math.
The first step is to realize that there is NO reason for God to NOT be a Triune entity if God is that, there is no "illogical" concept.
God is whatever God is and what God is is GOD, period.
If man can't fathom that, then all that means is that Man is NOT able to fathom God, no big surprise there.
The Trinity is man's attempt to "explain" the Nature of God in Human words, so of course it will be flawed and imperfect.
The Trinity is simply Man's wording of how/why Father, Son and HS share the same nature and are, because they are spirit, the same united being.
The simple fact is that, to say that God CAN'T be a Trinity is to put a limitation on God, which would make him NOT God.

Yes I understand this totally Paul and I realize that most people's attempts to explain or describe the trinity fail miserably, But the reason I have begun to get away from it is that the more I learn of God and genuine scriptures the more I see that God is much more than just a trinity. God is spirit and not only created all things, but exists in all things. I also come to be suspect of Jesus being the one and only Son of God that no one else can hope to attain his likeness, which is what many, many churches seem to want us to believe nowadays. I have no doubt what so ever that Jesus is very special and that he was promised to come from the very beginning and that he attained a high God conciousness and power and sits with the Father at his throne. He sacrificed his life and all that he had gained in it so that we might be saved by believing in what he said and in the Father. I also see where Jesus told us that all who believe will also sit with him at OUR father's throne, right? He is called the first fruits of the sons of God meaning there is more than one expected to make it back to that level. Jesus called the disciples brothers, sisters and friends, not subjects and underlings, not his children.
It all started with finding out how adulterated our scriptures have become. I mean I've known that there have been editings, forgeries and simple translation mistakes made to our bibles over the years, but I've recently been finding out just how bad it all really is. The 3rd century was very, very bad for the holy scriptures in the hands of the Roman church and from then on to the reformation, they have suffered greatly. The few remaining gospels of mark, mathew, luke and john got it the worst. I've read several commentaries from 5th century European theologens who were appauled by how different what they had from the Catholic church is from the truest Greek copies. The original gospel of Luke is about half as long as what we have now. Not because it was missing parts, but because that's how much crap had been added to it over the centuries. Very important key verses were changed as well. When Jesus is baptised and holy spirit falls on him , our Bibles have it written that God told him "you are my son. Today I am very pleased with you". A very trustworthy set of 2nd century gospels records God telling Jesus "you are my son. Today I have begotten you". What has been added to it or changed is not half as bad as what was taken out. The main reason you can't find many good copies of 1st and 2nd century scripture is because Constantine and his bishops, anyone who was for the holy Roman Empire, went on a fiery murderous rampage against anything different than what they said was right. Anyone who took up cause against the new teachings of the Roman church would eventually be labeled a heretic, their writings burned, followers killed or tortured till "conversion". Nearly all traces of reincarnation, the role of women (especially Mary Magdelene), jesus's outcry against organized religion and political power of a church, pre existence of the spirit and details of spirit life have all but been obliterated from Christianity.
Now I'm sure I'm going to get comments about how people like the Essenes, Gnostic and Origen were heretics, but why are they called heretics? because Constantine and his council said so? Why would we trust them? They had an empire and political power to protect as well as quell a war between traditional beliefs and christianity. Their motives were not pure even if many of them were good peace seeking people. I just don't yet see a reason to continue to commit to the trinitarian view. we need something more concrete than the decree of a pope or emperor.

Some one has been reading Ehrman, LOL !

May suggest a book or two that were not written for the sake of controversy?
RE: the NT documents -
Anything by Bruce Metzger ( Bart Ehrman's teacher).
RE: Hereseys:
Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth by Alister E. McGrath

A quick FYI, the gnostic heresies were considered as such LONG BEFORE Constantine and when the Church had no real centralized power at all and was too busy trying to survive persecutions to bother to "exert political power" that it didn't have.

Alister Mcgrath has two very good book son Christian Theology by the way, one a basic and one more comprehensive.

cool started reading the link BW sent, but I have to run. I'm with you guys so far as I'm not at all a oneness thinker nor do I deny the power, pre existance and importance of Y'shua. I'm just wondering why it's just 3. is there such thing as an "infinitarian"? haha

Paul, i'm not sure what the gnostics said or did to be set apart as heretics. I haven't studied them yet. They were just in a long list of original (by original i mean pre Rome) christian ways of thinking that were stomped out by the infant Roman church. Knowing what I know about the Roman church, it's hard to think they did all of this silencing of others for holy reasons.

secretfire6 wrote: Paul, i'm not sure what the gnostics said or did to be set apart as heretics. I haven't studied them yet. They were just in a long list of original (by original i mean pre Rome) christian ways of thinking that were stomped out by the infant Roman church. Knowing what I know about the Roman church, it's hard to think they did all of this silencing of others for holy reasons.

There was NO Roman Church when the gnostic writings were being "labled" as Heretical.

The Gospel of John is pretty much universally accepted to have been the last Gospel written and there's strong evidence that the opening prologue to John (Jesus as the "Word") is in direct response to gnostic teaching that that which is physical being "evil" as opposed to that which is "spiritual" being good.

Again, too, just to be clear, the sense in which I'm using the term "Trinitarian" is not simply in contrast to Unitarian or "oneness" theology. Trinitarian in the sense I am using it encompasses the Trinity as being the core doctrine or understanding of God as the foundation to all other elements of theology. There are many branches of theology that acknowledge the Trinity as a doctrine formally but which don't necessarily build on that understanding in terms of other elements of their theology.

The tradition that I'm examining on my FB site ties back to pre-nicene Church Fathers (meaning before the Nicene Council) and the formal merging of the Christian Church as the state religion of Rome. It includes such Church Fathers as Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, the Cappodocean fathers, Athanasius (who was key of course to Nicene but established his theology prior to the council and in the end influenced it profoundly) and then in more modern times it's been elevated through Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the Torrance Brothers.