What is the Mystery of the Trinity…?

a reply to: Joecroft

It could also be that the mystery being revealed is experiential, and as such, it's like when someone tells you an anecdote that clearly evoked strong emotion for them (usually hilarity) but you are puzzled as to why. And they look at you most of the way through unable to understand why you don't get it, and finally say, "I guess you had to be there."

Some of us have had our experiences, and anything we try to do tell others about them, generally called witnessing, will pale in comparison to the sheer power and awe of the experience itself.

a reply to: Isurrender73

Originally posted by Isurrender73
The mystery is the church can't fully explain it but they invested heavily into the ideology that stands in direct contradiction to what Jesus said about himself so they call it a mystery rather than try to explain it rationally.

My thinking is along the same lines as you, although maybe I have different reasons and interpretations than yourself.

Which parts are in contradiction with what Jesus said…can you expand further on what you mean by that.

- JC

a reply to: Joecroft

The mystery is why do you believe this stuff?

originally posted by: Woodcarver
a reply to: Joecroft

The mystery is why do you believe this stuff?

Believe what...?


- JC

originally posted by: Woodcarver
a reply to: Joecroft

The mystery is why do you believe this stuff?

Who said he did? He reads like a skeptic to me.

a reply to: ketsuko

Originally posted by ketsuko
It could also be that the mystery being revealed is experiential, and as such, it's like when someone tells you an anecdote that clearly evoked strong emotion for them (usually hilarity) but you are puzzled as to why. And they look at you most of the way through unable to understand why you don't get it, and finally say, "I guess you had to be there."

Some of us have had our experiences, and anything we try to do tell others about them, generally called witnessing, will pale in comparison to the sheer power and awe of the experience itself.

The experiences I think your alluding too, are the ones in which God impacts our lives in some meaningful way, whereby we see and sense God working in our lives etc…which granted can be difficult to articulate to others.

But the mystery of how accurately we define the Father, Son and Holy spirit relationship, is not wrapped up in an experience IMO…it’s a truth that should be findable today… When we want to know something about God we go to the scriptures or pray to have it revealed to us.

Finding out that Jesus taught as one with authority in the temple, for example, is not something that is revealed experientially…we can read it first hand and we can also reason out through other scriptures, that Jesus spoke with great knowledge elsewhere in other scriptures, which backs up said truth. I believe the same applies to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit relationship.

Why would the nature of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit be something that is revealed experientially…?

Is it being revealed experientially to you…because if it is, you should have parts of the mystery already revealed to you…what are those parts…?

- JC

a reply to: Joecroft

The first sort of experience you are referring to is the sort where God directly has an impact on your life. Sort of like I left college never, ever intending to work with kids in any real way and then ended up winding through an inner city classroom and then a private clinic that specialized in working with kids who had specific learning disabilities for another four years unexpectedly before moving into publishing.

And, now, who would have thought I'd have a child of my own with a specific learning disability, and those years I moved through jobs I never, ever thought I'd ever in a million years have any connection to have prepared not only to be able to recognize right away the signs of trouble in my son but also to know how to best help him? Seems like I was being prepared to be the mother he would need if not always the one he wants.

That seems like your first type of experience.

As for the second where you have that direct experience? I've had that sort too, and it's the type I was actually speaking of.

a reply to: Joecroft

Must be a comprehension issue
I never said you had faith in God, I said you had faith in the catechism

That John verse does not say the Spirit can lead anyone into any truth anywhere, you are so wrong, but what ever, don't believe, that's fine

Think of it like light, it is both particle and wave, a duality yet within that duality is the unity of the light itself. You have 3 aspects, one of which (visible light) is the combination/correlation of the wave/particle duality.

In the same way that light is made up of a dual nature, so are we. We are both body (particle) and Spirit (wave) coming together in order to create the light that we see in the form of an image that constitutes our perspective of the world.

Your body is the feminine (particle) side of your dual nature, the Spirit is the masculine (wave) side of your dual nature and in the middle of the two where the duality become unity there is the light. You see it now and it is the combination/correlation of a visible body being imbued with the invisible Spirit at conception/birth.

Father, Mother and Child (Son).

a reply to: Joecroft

I think the trinity represents a unity of opposites:

en.wikipedia.org...

Where the father and son are like opposites but the same life force flows through generations is the holy ghost.

When you experience God for the first time ~ it's like ~ Oh, wow!! God really is real. God really is here with us. There is nothing like an epiphany, nothing like an 'OMG' moment. You simply realize that God is real, that God is here with us, and that God is Here with us.

The Bible was written by man. I doubt that God had very much to do with it. However, some of the things you read in the Bible (hint: Matthew 18:20) are not possible to discount afterwards.

I really wish there was a written source, somewhere, which more accurately described the Divine Presence and His plan for Us. The Bible is too much of a puzzle for modern-day man.

originally posted by: Joecroft
You didn’t answer the second question…

If it’s a mystery and not easy to understand as you say, then why do you accept a Trinitarian belief…?

I did really. I've read through the contentions in the early church, and that's how I came to understand that it follows on from the doctrine of the Incarnation. It was all about rejecting expressions of the relationship which undermined the Incarnation, and finding some way of putting it which did not. The result was the carefully belanced formula which became the official teaching. I accept that formula because I believe in the Incarnation.

Trinity is unity, when we think trinity we tend to think each separately when we should think as one. Tho our brains are built that way. It is also said if we think trinity separately we miss the deepest essence of God and it could be even heresy.

Mystery is yet hidden as you stated only God can reveal it.

a reply to: Joecroft

In Catholism not in christianity,2 different things,Catholic church is left over remnant of roman empire,similarities but different thought process,they worship a elected official called a pope

originally posted by: DISRAELI

originally posted by: Joecroft
You didn’t answer the second question…

If it’s a mystery and not easy to understand as you say, then why do you accept a Trinitarian belief…?

I did really. I've read through the contentions in the early church, and that's how I came to understand that it follows on from the doctrine of the Incarnation. It was all about rejecting expressions of the relationship which undermined the Incarnation, and finding some way of putting it which did not. The result was the carefully belanced formula which became the official teaching. I accept that formula because I believe in the Incarnation.

If you believe in the incarnation you cannot be anointed. And now it is clear why you don't see the truth.

No one can see God and yet live. God never became flesh. His son did. The fact that you believe God did, means you have no idea who he is.

And all your understanding is mush. And no wonder any statement of truth to you is met with contempt and disrespect. You're a charlatan soon ready to pass on without even knowing who God really is.

a reply to: redletter
My belief in the Incarnation is scripture-based.
I'm not going to discuss it here, but I have threads on the subject;
The Word became flesh

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: redletter
My belief in the Incarnation is scripture-based.
I'm not going to discuss it here, but I have threads on the subject;
The Word became flesh

The Word, or God's son, became flesh by being born a human. He was God's son transferred to the womb of a woman.

To be God incarnate means to be God in the flesh. God could never have been, firstly because God cannot become human. Secondly, Jesus was born as a human, he did not become incarnate. He was a real human. He was not faking being a human.

originally posted by: redletter
Jesus was born as a human... He was a real human. He was not faking being a human.

Yes, I agree. That is part of what "incarnation" means.
The point is covered in another of my threads;
Jesus is a man
I will not discuss these matters here, but there are other Incarnation threads available.
God and man; The meaning of Incarnation

a reply to: Joecroft

Yes I will, sorry been pretty busy, Ill expand later when I get to my hotel.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: Joecroft
The mystery is the fact that it's not easy to understand, and indeed not fully within human comprehension.
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P.S. I'm not going to be drawn by anyone into arguing to justify the doctrine. In the arguments of the early church, it follows on from the doctrine of the Incarnation, and that doctrine has to be accepted before there is any point in trying to talk about the Trinity.

Apparently, that church you are speaking about teaches (or taught) that the doctrine of the Incarnation is a mystery as well.

John 4:22

You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because salvation begins with the Jews.

Is God a Mystery?

“What is a mystery? Generally speaking, a mystery is a truth that is naturally impossible to understand or prove. . . . What is a religious mystery? It is one of God’s truths that we are obliged to believe, although we can neither understand it nor prove it. What are the main religious mysteries? These are the mysteries of the most Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Redemption.”​—Abrégé de l’exposition de la doctrine chrétienne, 1901 (Abridged Explanation of Christian Doctrine)

THE above is how a book written at the beginning of the 20th century summarized the view of the Roman Catholic Church regarding mysteries. Furthermore, the recently published Guide des difficultés de la foi catholique (Guide to Difficulties of the Catholic Faith, 1989) shows that such doctrinal points still are of interest by stating: “It is not just through a personal attraction for obscure realities that a Christian admits the existence of a certain number of mysteries in his religious Creed. If he believes in them, it is purely on the basis of God’s Word.” But what does “God’s Word” say? Is God a mystery?

Can We Know Everything About God?

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Christendom’s God-Man

IN Christendom the bridge between God and man is called “Incarnation.” The sense of the word “incarnation” is that God took upon himself the nature of man in the person of Jesus Christ. He thereby became a God-man.

Although the idea of a God-man is not foreign to paganism, yet that the Logos should become flesh belongs to Christendom alone, say these religionists. They maintain that pagan religions teach an apotheosis or glorification of man, that they do not teach an incarnation of the true God. According to the English church historian Charles Hardwick, if we purge pagan incarnations from all the lewd and Bacchanalian adjuncts that disfigure and debase them, still they come definitely short of the doctrine of incarnation as taught in Christendom, despite the striking similarities.

But merely to deny the doctrine’s paganity does not establish the teaching of incarnation as being of Christianity. In his book The Creative Christ, E. Drown associates Christendom’s concept of incarnation with pagan Greek mythology. He says: “This idea of substance . . . found its way into Christian theology from Greek sources. The result was that the Incarnation was too often interpreted in physical instead of in moral terms.”
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That there should be conflicting opinions on this doctrine is not at all surprising, since the doctrine of incarnation finds no basis in the Bible, the only reliable authority for truth. (John 17:17) ... Neither the Bible nor faithful first-century Christians maintained the pagan concept that Jesus was a God-man. Therefore, when renegade Christians tried to sell the pagan God-man concept as Christian, they found the going rough. The doctrine itself was not crystalized until some three hundred years after Jesus’ day and not defined until A.D. 451 at the Council of Chalcedon. The noted American theologian, Henry P. Van Dusen, whose Presbyterian religion teaches that Jesus was a God-man, in his book World Christianity, page 75, calls Chalcedon’s definition of Christ’s nature “distilled nonsense.”

During the first two centuries there was considerable opposition to the doctrine of incarnation. The Ebionites, a Jewish Christian sect that began in the first century, maintained that Jesus had a natural birth, that he was not God incarnate. Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, who lived toward the beginning of the fourth century, taught that Jesus was neither coeternal nor coequal with God, that he was the head of all creation, but not “of one substance with the Father.” Docetists, a sect of Jewish Christians that flourished in the second century, believed that Jesus’ body was merely apparent, a vision, a delusion, not material. Gnosticism was a fusion of independent “Christian” beliefs. Its contention was that evil is inherent in matter and that for that reason Jesus’ body could not have been material. Valentinus, the most prominent leader of the Gnostic movement, taught that Jesus’ ethereal body passed through Mary but was not born of her. Others said Jesus had two wills, one human, the other divine, and so forth.

It was from this hodgepodge of conflicting opinions that Christendom has received her incarnation doctrine. Since some thought Jesus was man and others maintained he was God, the council at Nicaea A.D. 325 headed by a pagan political emperor, namely, Constantine, decided on a God-man to please both sides. This doctrine, though unfounded in Scripture, is generally believed by Protestants and Catholics to this day. The Catholic Encyclopedia states bluntly: “Christ is God.” A Presbyterian Church publication speaks of Jesus as “God and man.”

WAS JESUS A GOD-MAN?

Regardless of what any council or man has said about Jesus’ nature, the only reliable source of religious truth is the Bible. This Word reveals that Jesus is God’s Son and as such he was not and is not God. Jesus himself said: “I am God’s Son.” To Mary the angel Gabriel said: “What is born will be called holy, God’s Son.” Nothing is said of a God-man or a man-God. Nowhere in the Bible is Jesus called a “God-man” or “God incarnate.” Such assumptions are strictly human illusions tainted with paganism.—John 10:36; Luke 1:34, 35; 2:21.
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