Once, there were words saying “If you try to explain the Trinity, you will lose your mind, but if you deny it, you will lose your soul”. (Pritchard) The knowledge of God the Trinity is the center of the Christian faith. Yet many believers have got confused in understanding the true natures of the personalities and relationships of each person in God the Trinity. Endless questions continuously appear, again and again, giving Christians a sense of extremely misty confusion towards the magnificent attributes of every person in the Trinity. Who has an answer to these questions? None, none but God Himself who has given us guidance through a lot of ways, as He is the supreme creator and ruler of knowledge. The Bible itself is the strongest, richest, and most dependable source of …show more content…
Early saints—or early Christian teachers, have been discussing the Trinity deeply and deliberately for decades, as it is one of the most complex teachings written in the Bible. One of the most reliable doctrines of the Trinity is The Holy Trinity Doctrine. The Holy Trinity Doctrine was one of the doctrines created during the first few ages where Christianity just started developing. This doctrine was created in the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. During this discussion, diverse points were given by theologists. Thoughts named as Tritheism, Unitarism, and Arianism are present. Tritheism focuses that there are three separate Gods, promoting polytheism, Unitarism focuses on God the Father most, and separates Christ and the Holy Spirit into a different category of deity, thus changing their divinity, and Arianism promotes Jesus Christ as a creation of God during the Creation. Other than these three, there are also other strong doctrines about the Trinity from the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed--which came from the Council of Nicea, and the Athanasian
Hey Mary. You did an excellent laying out the foundation of the Trinity within your post. During my childhood, my church also taught the analogy of the three-leaf clover. I enthusiastically agree that although such an illustration is aimed at helping, a human analogy cannot or will never accurately define the Trinity. As I read your post, I thoroughly enjoyed the way in which you informed your reader of basics interworking’s of the Trinity. However, reading on, I felt as though you did not delve into why the Trinity is truth. The book, Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity: English Translation and Commentary, provides an excellent starting position for one’s explanation of the Trinity of being truth. Richard of Saint Victor argues that in
As a result, fellowship, prayer, Bible study, worship, and most importantly salvation in its purest form can be discerned and acted upon correctly. In addition, a further understanding can be thus gained regarding the person of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Finally, heresies and heretical groups or beliefs can lead God’s followers astray from the truth and create an improper understanding, and thus relationship with God. Positions past and present have, and are, attempting to mislead Christians about the Trinity. A skewed view of the Trinity can result in a view of God as either divinely apart from creation or simply a better version of all the best attributes of humans. Some positions even take away from the Divinity of Jesus Christ. All of these views severely diminish who God is and alters a proper and true relationship and worship. It is a necessity that these errant views be exposed as a hindrance to God in order not to mislead God’s followers. Likewise a Biblically sound explanation of the Trinity is needed. As a result, a true and pure knowledge of the concept of the Trinity is crucially needed to understand God and be obedient to the Bible.
At the center of the Christian faith is a mystery. This mystery has everything to do with the identity of God, the nature of Christian community, the salvation history and our understanding of Christology. This is the mystery of the Trinity – how is the Godhead fully three persons, and yet one nature? Theophilus was the first to name the ‘triad’ nature of God in his letter To Autolycus in 170 A.D. Tertullian was the first to offer terminology to describe this mystery in Against Praxeas claiming “the Trinity” involved three ‘persons’ of one substance. This theology emerged from the Biblical witness, even though scripture offers no doctrine of the Trinity itself. Even more so, the development of the doctrine of the Trinity grew from the early church’s worship, witness and corporate experience. When faced with a mystery, heresies can’t help but emerge. Docetism and Arianism, Adoptionism and Monarchianism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism are just a few of the heresies that emerged in attempts to explain away the mystery. And yet, theologians from the second century to the twenty-first century are faced with the challenge of witnessing to this mystery in both the theologia and the oikonomia of the Trinity. The church experiences the economic Trinity as new believers are drawn into Trinitarian community through an ongoing
The Doctrine of the Trinity was the one core belief that the group expounded on the most. As a question arose on how should one explain the Trinity
The Nicene Creed appointed the roles of trinity by using the familiar triad set forth by Plato. God maintains His position as the Father and most important; Jesus becomes a divine human - born of the Father and the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit brings knowledge and truths which are set forth by both the Father and Son. “The true foundation upon which the doctrine rests is God himself… it is God as he acted in history, entering our world as a Jewish carpenter named Jesus, dying and rising again to save. It is God as he acted in history at Pentecost, descending as the Spirit to share life with the Christian church.” Thus the Trinity Doctrine was born out of Plato’s triad. The Goodness is God; the ideas are Jesus; and the World-Spirit is
After all, it is this redemption accomplished by Christ on the cross that gives us hope and meaning in the life after death. In order to sufficiently grasp the link between the Trinity and the doctrine of salvation, it is imperative that we start by expounding some trinitarian concepts. The first such concepts are the “Immanent Trinity” which championed the unity of the Triune Godhead as eternally self-sufficient in loving relationships between the distinct persons. A paternal relationship between the Father and Son; a filial relationship between the Son and Father; and the relationships between
It is important to note the defined goals of the Trinity. One being that God sent His Son, Jesus did not send God. Jesus tells us in John 6, that He came to do the will of His Father. Jesus was not doing His own selfish will but everything He did was for His Father. Jesus and God sent the Holy Spirit according to Jesus’ words in John 14:26, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you”. It is necessary to recognize the distinctions of the roles of the Trinity as if the roles were not distinctive there would be no Trinity.
Nicene Trinitarian Doctrine, Bishops from all over came to talk about and challenge the Arian view that Jesus and God are alike but not of the same essence or one. “Nicaea proclaimed with boldness that Jesus shares the divinity of the Father. God the Son is homoousios with God the Father, the same in essence or substance” (Jones, Beth Felker. Practicing Christian Doctrine: An Introduction to Thinking and Living Theologically pg. 64). The Nicene Trinitarian Doctrine is the one that the Church actually adopted because it meant that The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit are one. Then in 381 the Council of Constantinople affirmed the oneness of God, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. There was no trace of ideology in this doctrine and it went along with the Christian Tradition. (John 14:11- 14) “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or believe because of the miracles I have done. (v.13) and if you ask for anything in my name, I will do it for you. Then the Father’s glory will be shown through the Son. (v.14) if you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it. The Promise of the Holy Spirit (The Holy Bible). The Bible has always lead us to believe that all three persons are in the oneness of God, but it is harder to make sense of it, or try to understand the Trinity. The Church began to understand the doctrine of the Trinity by analyzing all
Athanasius refers to the Son as the Word and states that in the life of grace, the Word gives the Spirit, who is the “living energy of creation” (Edwards 2014, p.60), to live on earth with God’s people and the Father is in the Word (Edwards 2014, p.61). This shows how each part of the Trinity has their own separate role but they are all one and work in accordance with each other. Athanasius, just like Christians today, is faced with opposition on the idea of the Trinity and just like him, Christians today should remain strong in the faith and solidify their
Migliore defines the Christian confession of God as triune as a “summary description of the witness of Scripture to God’s unfathomable love incarnate in Jesus Christ and experienced and celebrated in the community of faith” (Migliore 67). He is quick to explain that “the doctrine of the Trinity is not a revealed doctrine…[because it] did not descend miraculously from heaven, nor was it written by God on tablets of stone”’; rather it is “the product of the meditation and reflection of the church on the gospel message over many centuries” (67). That said, Migliore believes that a confession of the triune God has both a biblical and experiential basis. He states “if talk of the triune God is not to be wild speculation, it will always find its basis and its limit both in the biblical narrative of God that comes to the world through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the actual
“The Trinity is the basis of the gospel, and the gospel is the declaration of the Trinity in action.” (J I Packer, likesuccess.com) The Trinity consists of God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit, yet they make up one God. It is the simple philosophy of the 3-in-1 or three persons, one essence first brought up by Tertullian. It is this philosophy that allows Christianity to be a monotheism.
The Bible is not perfect. (There are parts we now consider obsolete; e.g. Levitical codes.)
I will like to crave your indulgence to the fact that "Nicene concept of Trinity" is never stated in the Bible, and it is that early Christians as well as the scriptures clearly points out the fact that Jesus was fully divine and pre-existent. For the fact that, none of the early Christian theologians fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity, not even a speculation about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. According to the father of the paganism description of Trinity "God can in no way be described." (Schindler 148).
The Nicene Creed is the creed or profession of faith that was adopted in the city of Nicaea by the first ecumenical council, which met there in the year 325. At that time, the text ended after the words "We believe in the Holy Spirit", after which an anathema was added. The doctrine of the Trinity is commonly expressed as: "One God, three Persons”, but this word "Trinity" does not appear in the Bible. So the doctrine is formally defined in the Nicene Creed, which declares Jesus to be: "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father." in 325, the Council of Nicea set out to officially define the relationship of the Son to the Father, in response to the controversial teachings of
The Trinity is a doctrine that has and will continue to bring much controversy to the Christian faith. Yet it is important to understand that a practical approach to this topic can be very important. Having a full understanding of the Trinity is vital to the life of a Christian. The distinct, yet interwoven aspects of God’s character will affect every aspect of a believer’s life.