The Trinity???

Might be easier if you tell us what about it you don't understand....

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jenni B:
Hello,

The Trinity really confuses me, could someone please explain it to me. I know it is very complicated.

I look forward to your responces!!!!!


Jenni<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Explain It? No. Confess It, yes.

********************
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the Prophets. And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church; I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

-- The Nicene Creed

 

Jenni: A lot of people stumble on this teaching, not realizing that God WANTS us to know him, that it is not some deep, mysterious thought that we are incapable of grasping. He gave us the whole Bible so that we WOULD be able to know Him.
He even created us in his image! We are also created in three parts.... body, soul, and spirit. We rarely think about this, and have a hard time distinguishing the three as such because of I think most of us just don't tend to think that way, but it's scriptural.
Genesis 1:27(KJV) "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them."
I Thess. 5:23(KJV) "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
If you think about how you work you can see the three different parts of you...the physical, the spirit, the soul. It should make it easier to understand the trinity.
Gina
(I copied and pasted that from a reply I made to someone on a different board, but it fits so.....)

 

Jennie B,

The doctrine of the Trinity is only more or less a crude human attempt to come to terms with a divine reality that is beyond us. The doctrine points to a transcendent God who could yet simultaneously become a human being and then after the resurrection also indwell other human beings (that is, the Holy Spirit). He is a God great enough to rule the universe, caring enough to live a fully human life and intimate enough to live in each believer. This is the reality that the doctrine points to. This is the truth that John teaches. Try as we like, we will never understand this divine depth, yet we can still enjoy the reality of God being with us that the doctrine points to.

 

I am glad to have found this subject, because I have also been struggling with this concept.

I thought I understood the concept until a week ago. Another forum I post on had a thread started by a Jewish person who kept saying Christians were polytheistic because we worship three entities. Any advice on how to explain this?

 

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost.

1 entity in 3 persons.

 

Amazing,

Here is a good article:
http://www.jewsforjesus.org/library/issues/10-08/trinity.htm

You should find other great witnessing info on this excellent sight: www.jewsforjesus.org

[ November 19, 2001: Message edited by: John Wells ]

 

Here is my over simplistic explanation of the Trinity. Keep in mind I said OVER SIMPLISTIC. It is not intended to fully explain the doctrine of the trinity. However, I think it helps the human mind understand just a smidgen of, a smidgen mind you.

Time. Yes, time. We all know that there are three basic units time. Past, present and future. (Let's not quibble about seconds, minutes, hours. ) There is no question that time is constant. But if you look at it, there's the past, present and future. But it is all time none the less. There is only one God. But, He is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. As Hank Hanegraaff said, "One What and three who's". (At least I think that's how he put it.)

Suffice it to say, we has humans will never truly understand the trinity until we are face to face with God.

Dave

 

Response to Explain the Trinity:

This is a real simple way to explain and hopefully understand the Trinity.

If you take one egg and break it you have a (1)shell, (2)yolk, and the (3)white.
Three parts but still one egg.

Thus God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost make up one God.

Hope this helps,
Hoss

 

Yes, but a little too simple. The three parts of an egg are separable, whereas the three parts of the Godhead are not!

 

I suppose any analogy we come up with will probably be simplistic - but sometimes that helps us in our finite minds.

I have often thought of water - H2O.
When cold, it becomes ICE.
When room temperature, it becomes LIQUID.
When heated, it becomes STEAM.

Three manifestations of the same substance.

 

I wrote a response to a young lady who had started studying with the Jehovah's Witnesses a couple of years ago. She was wondering about the Trinity. So first, here is a website several of us contributed to on this subject, and then, here is a copy of the letter I wrote to her:
http://www.ldolphin.org/Names.html


The concept of the Trinity is present from the opening verse of the Bible,
actually. The word "God" in Genesis 1:1 is "elohim." This is not a simple
plural of the word 'god.' The plural of that word, which means 'two,' is
"eloh." "Elohim" means "three or more."

In Deuteronomy 6:4, we have the resounding, "Hear O Israel, the LORD our
God, the LORD is one!"

"God" is, there again, "Elohim." What is also interesting is that the last
word of that, the word "one" is the word "echad." "Echad" means unity in
plurality. It is the same word used regarding marriage in Genesis. 2:24,
when a man is to leave his mother and father and become one with his wife.
The word which is NOT used there to mean "one" is "yachid." "Yachid" means a
unique singularity.

Now go to Isaiah 9 -- the famous Christmas verse:

"For unto us a child is born
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace."

Now go to Isaiah 44:6 --

"This is what the LORD says -- Israel's King and Redeemer, the LORD
Almighty:
I am the first and I am the last;
Apart from me there is no God."

Please cross reference this with Jesus' words to John in Revelation
1:17-18 -- "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living
One. I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever."

Check the Gospel of John, opening sentences, opening chapter:

"In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God and the Word was
God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made;
without him nothing was made that has been made. [Remember Genesis 1:1 --
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.:] .... The Word
became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the
glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and
truth."

Please note also that the absolutely correct translation of the Hebrew is
"...and God was the Word," - I urge you to look it up.

John 1 is one of the rather famous areas the JW's have mistranslated,
against all established Greek grammar...

And remember Jesus words' at the end of Matthew: "...baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...." and, again,
Jesus' words defining eternal life in John 17:3 clearly equate Him with the
Father.

And so, although we may not understand the Trinity with our human minds very
well, the doctrine of the Trinity is present in the Bible from the first.
Jesus is God Himself in the flesh, and it was because this was His very
claim that the Pharisees were so outraged and attempted several times to
stone Him. There are two Greek words which mean "I am." The first is "ego"
which means "I" or "I am " with the emphasis on the "I". The second is "eimi",
which also means "I am" with the emphasis on the "am." John records three
times when Jesus used the double phrase "Ego eimi", meaning "I am I AM", or "I, I AM,"
or "I am [the] I AM:" when He identified Himself to the woman at the well
in John 4:26, in John 8:24, when responding to the Pharisaical challenge,
and when He identified Himself to the Pharisees in John 8:58 (at which time
the Pharisees picked up rocks to stone Him for the blasphemy of using God's
name -- they thought in vain). In John 10:31-33, we see the incident where
the Pharisees again want to stone him and Jesus asks them why:

"I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these
do you stone me?"
"We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for
blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."

So what the Jehovah's Witnesses and the encyclopedias do not understand
today, the Pharisees understood quite clearly: Jesus claimed to be God.

In John 14-17 we have the famous last discourse of our Lord. In John 14:16,
Jesus promises "another" counselor to be with the disciples forever. He
identifies this Counselor as the Holy Spirit. The interesting thing here is
the word He chose for "another." Again, there are two Greek words for Him
to choose from. One is "allos", meaning "exactly alike in every detail."
The other is "heteros" meaning "a different other". The first -- allos --
would be used if you broke a vase at someone's house and you promised to buy
the owner another vase exactly like the first as a replacement. The
second -- heteros -- would be used if you had a wonderful vacation with your
family and you promised yourselves another vacation together next year.
When Jesus referred to "another" Counselor, the word He used was "allos."
He was one Counselor, but He would send "another" -- allos -- one just like
Him, for the disciples. This is re-affirmed when Jesus refers to the Holy
Spirit as "the Spirit of Truth" in John 16:13. Jesus had identified Himself
as "the truth" in John 14:6. The Spirit is also identified as being present
in Genesis 1:2 -- right there in the beginning.

We may have invented the word "Trinity" somewhere along the line to try to
put a name to this concept, but the reality of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit all being the One God (which is exactly what the Shema says), is
present from the beginning to the end of the Bible. One way in which you
can check this for yourself is by using a good Concordance.