I have a question about the "Trinity"

I don't understand this concept. I know it's meant to essentially mean God, Jesus and 'the holy spirit', but what I don't get is how this works/what it means. Let me describe this as I *do* understand it and tell me what I'm missing.

Ok, there's God. He sends Jesus in human form to earth. But he's still like part of God or something. Then Jesus (the human) dies, and is resurrected as 'the holy spirit'. And after Jesus ascends into Heaven, they all become like 3 parts of the same thing. Is that even close? And if so, why do people still speak of Jesus as a separate entity?

I don't at all mean anything disrespectful, this is just a part of Christian theology I've never been able to get my head around. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks! :hi:

Jesus doesn't get resurrected as the Holy Spirit.

One God, Three Persons. Think of three islands in an ocean. You see the islands, they look like different things, and they are, but also they is this huge OTHER thing they are part of, that you know exists but cant' perceive, namely, the land that is submerged.

Also wrong: Jesus is not God in human form. Jesus is both entirely God and entirely human. That got sorted out in the first few centuries of debate.

One in three.
Don't forget the magic dove.

Here's the authoritative explanation of the Trinity from the movie "Nuns on the Run".

Charlie McManus: You've got the Father, the Son and the holy ghost. But the three are one - like a shamrock, my old priest used to say. "Three leaves, but one leaf." Now, the father sent down the son, who was love, and then when he went away, he sent down the holy spirit, who came down in the form of a...

Brian Hope: You told me already - a ghost.

Charlie McManus: No, a dove.

Brian Hope: The dove was a ghost?

Charlie McManus: No, the ghost was a dove.

Brian Hope: Let me try and summarize this: God is his son. And his son is God. But his son moonlights as a holy ghost, a holy spirit, and a dove. And they all send each other, even though they're all one and the same thing.

Charlie McManus: You've got it. You really could be a nun!

They just come up with theological terms that are supposed to explain it.

Part of the reason it's hard to grasp is that people back then had a different view of a person. Your "spirit" was a separate, real substance independent of your personality or your physical body. The result is that three "persons" could share the same spiritual substance.

There's a whole branch of theology dedicated to who Jesus was and how he related to God. Supporters of the Trinity won out politically over other schools like the Arians who thought Jesus was a being in between God and man or the Docetists who thought he was a pure spirit and had no earthly body.

I believe that when Jesus was alive, he was regarded as a human being chosen by God. After his death, his stature started to grow and he became an object of worship. Paul seems to have thought of Jesus largely as a spiritual messiah in heaven.

That raised the question of whether Jesus was a separate being like an angel or whether he was God. And if he was God, how could there be two Gods? (Or three, if you throw in the Holy Spirit?) The idea of the Trinity was a way of finessing this problem. It was controversial and never completely satisfactory.

Here's one historical link:

http://www.religious-studies.info/Jesus_Declared_God.htm

that God is the creator and resides in heaven, Jesus was (created by God) made in the flesh to walk among us and teach us. I look at the Holy Spirit as that energy that God uses to breathes life into us and all living things. It's also the energy that our spirit goes back to at death. Essentially, the "White Light" that people talk about seeing with NDEs', etc. It's part of God, but it also can stand alone as a separate entity.

Hope this is helping rather than confusing. It's hard. Ask 50 people, you'll get 50 answers.

To put it really simple, liken it to the movie "Cocoon" where the glowy white aliens put on flesh-like suits to "walk among us" and then, when done, go back to their home planet.

No one gets it, and that's how theologians determine they figured out some mystical "truth."

Three Persons in one God is polytheism.

Consider, by comparison, Hinduism, which all understand to be polytheistic. Yet Hindus believe that all of their billions of Gods are aspects (or personae) of a single, all-encompassing God, Brahm. And the sub-personalities have their sub-sub- personalities, as Vishnu, one of the main personalities of the Hindu trinitiy (Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, Shiva the Destroyer) has his own aspects, having been incarnated at different times as Krishna, Rama (which just means God in some languages!) and Ramakrishna, sort of the John Paul squared of Hinduism.

Greek polytheists had a similar concept that their Gods were aspects or creatures of a single ultimate God, too, or anyway you see such concepts in the philosophers. Roman polytheists, too, seem to have been working in that direction.

So Christianity is no more monotheistic than Hinduism -- the difference being only that Christians cannot count as high.

to learn that they aren't a monotheistic religion. If you had just been around to sum it up for them, then they wouldn't have two thousand years' worth of meditation on the subject, and could have been able to put all their energies into impressing people with their cipherin' ability.

By the way, there are plenty of Hindus, and others, that would describe Hinduism--or at least one of the traditions in the conglomeration that is generally called Hindusm-- as monotheistic, for the very reasons you state.

By the way, there have been unitarian Christians -- people who regarded themselves as Christians but did not regard Jesus as God -- from the start, although they have often had to hide their opinions because they would otherwise be executed for heresy. And this has been precisely the Muslim response to the Trinity for 1400 years. So, no, it doesn't come as a surprise to Christians -- otherwise why would Orthodox Christians have spent so much resources attempting to suppress it?

But -- since you feel free to adopt a demeaning tone toward me -- tell me what you suppose is the distinction between Hinduism or Greek paganism that allows one to say that Christians are not polytheists. Bear in mind that I have heard the fable St. Basil the Great invented about how it is possible to be three and one at the same time. But why is that different from being ten billion and one at the same time?

Or is referred to in a feminine sense? :shrug:

n/t

united with all the illuminated souls-so there is a Multiplicity, not just a Trinity.....:) But this is Sufi philosophy.....

The mind of God is an eternal spiritual substance (= the Father) which eternally generates knowledge (= the Son/Logos/Word), and from this knowledge-generating eternal substance and the knowledge which it eternally generates there eternally proceeds love (= the Holy Spirit), which eternally unites the conscious knowledge (the Son) with that which is consciously known, namely its own generator (the Father).

God started off the big bang and created humans. He got mad at them, killed them, then sent Jesus the God aspect which is divine/human to teach us humans a lesson we didn't learn. Jesus died, came back, and the Holy Spirit hangs around to inform us that god cares and not to act like idiots.

All three are God but only in our perceptions of God. Total divine, divine/human at once, and divine ghost of a bird.

I think I was about ten years old when I realized that christian theology made little sense. The base concepts were not altogether bad, "thou shall not kill, or steal, or cheat" etc But, the violations of my experience with the natural world made it impossible to believe. The trinity, talking burning bushes, resurrection, walking on the water etc etc.

You either believe the stories or you don't, it all comes down to faith in the supernatural versus acknowledgment and understanding of the natural world.

As a lot of religious tenets get built over time they become a little convoluted. Given a slightly different set of circumstances,
Christianity could easily have been built around a different dogma. Heck, in a hundred years, the concept of the Trinity may fade into obscurity.

It all made sense to me when I was about 9 years old. Now....not so much. As far as I'm concerned, that question is in the same category as, "Why does the Pope wear that pointy hat?" Or "does God really like the smell of burnt flesh?" As stated above; if you want to believe it you will, if not, it will seem a bit goofy.

Different aspects of the same entity. A human analogy would be that I am a woman, a translator, and a singer, and different people see different aspects of me, but they're all part of me. God the Father is the creative aspect of God, Jesus is the redemptive and comforting aspect of God, and the Holy Spirit is the inspirational and enlightening aspect of God.

The trinity is the foundation for all "that is." Philosophically there's the thesis, the anti-thesis, and then synthesis.

Likewise, we have three centers within us as humans. The emotional center, the rational center, and the feeling-instinctual center. These three have to be properly balanced. One not over-developed at the expense of the other. You will find that different religious or philosophical systems will cause people to develop lopsided personalities because of a belief that one of these centers have to be expanded at the expense of another. For example, religious people and monks put their energy in overdeveloping their emotional centers (often at the expense of ration). Scholars and scientists, etc., put their energy into developing their rational centers, (often at the expense of emotion). Both types are want to totally overlook the significance of the feeling-instinctual center within us, and to understand how it operates. Each one of these ways, emotional overdevelopment, or rational overdevelopment calls for a renunciation or withdrawal from the real world in some way.

Fortunately there is what is called a "Fourth Way." A system designed to allow an individual to develop his/her "three brains" equally and without withdrawal from living in the real world.

In a nutshell, the creative principle cannot operate without a destructive principle and things are created as a result of the interaction of these two principles. Thoughts, ideas, matter, everything created is the result of this kind of trinity in operation.

The ancients knew this. They never denied the negative principle and knew that it was a necessary part of the formula. Modern day people try to deny and suppress the negative principle. A good example is christianity. In the christian system, the negative principle is to be totally suppressed if possible, rather than acknowledged and dealt with. Quite frankly, this causes a severe imbalance in the personality. If we would only stop and think for a moment, we would realize the significance of "Lucifer" in the whole story. To this very day, religious people have a hard time trying to put "Lucifer" in his proper place.

The trinity also represents the progression of life. Father, Mother, then child. Everything that's created is a sort of a triangle.

Hope this helps. I realize it's a rambling answer, but I don't have the time right now to really lay it out.

And your computer monitor has three colors.
And a triangle has three sides.
And time has past, present and future.
And a three legged stool has stability.
And Freud's theory has id, ego, and superego.
And all Gaul was divided into three parts.

See?

--IMM

I think you got it.