Comments on: The Trinity: 3-D Divine Mystery

By: Carole

Carole — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:52:25 +0000

How do you reconcile the Trinity with OT monotheism?

Check out Genesis 3:26–Let us make man in our own image, in the image and likeness of ourselves… (Stated by the same God who pronounced the shema: hear o Israel, the Lord your God is one God, there is no other…)

The early Church, comprised of Jews who believed Jesus was the promised Messiah, had to wrestle this question out too. The New Testament asserts that Jesus was God (John’s gospel prologue: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God…and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.) Jesus asserts his divinity when he asserts his authority over the law, over nature, claims pre-existence, claims the authority to judge the nations, and to forgive sins. (Who but God can forgive sins, asked the Jews?)

You cannot seriously meditate on Jesus for very long without bumping into the Trinity. But this is what Jesus came to reveal: the intimate inner life of God, which could not have been deduced by reason alone.

By: Norwegian Shooter

Norwegian Shooter — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:22:43 +0000

I would guess that your explanations to your friend didn’t help her at all. You can cite Councils, heresies, Lewis, scriptures, and mind-numbing analogies, but in the end it all comes back to the 3-year old’s level of understanding. “When I was a child I did childish things, but when I became an adult…”

There are some worthwhile heresies out there: Unitarian Christians for one.

By: Peter West

Peter West — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:09:30 +0000

Gen 18 makes fascinating reading, especially 1-15. By Gen 19, we have the return of two angels, but there is no trace of that in the earlier passage.

I think this passage is represented in Orthodox iconography.

By: Greg Gentry

Greg Gentry — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:08:26 +0000

When considering the Trinity in the OT, I like to go to Joshua 5:14, where Joshua clearly worships a being who is not ‘Yahweh,’ and is not castigated for doing so, as in other places where worshiping an angel gets you rebuked. This tells me it is a theophany, like other ‘angel of the Lord’ appearances where the ‘person’ is not Yahweh (as in the Father) and yet is worshiped as He is.

But that is just one of many places in the OT where the shadow of the trinity is clearly(?) seen.

nice post!

By: Peter Boston

Peter Boston — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:25:26 +0000

I cringe whenever I see an article titled with the Trinity because I know that my brain is about to be twisted into painful, little knots.

I do not have any problem with the concept that a Being who exists outside of space and time, and that created heaven and worth with a word, can manifest itself anyway that it wants, regardless of the merits of my own explanation. I do not understand gravity either.

If I have learned anything at all it is that I neither have to, nor do I want to, start my understanding of Christianity from point zero every day.