OK, a slightly odd take on the trinity! 🙂 (with a Star Wars tip)
“I am my father”
However, it is a serious point. The majority of Christians say that God is three persons in one, according to the standard doctrine of the trinity which was formed in the early centuries AD.
By the way, I would define a person as being a individual with which one can have a relationship that is distinct to other individuals that one can have a relationship with (but perhaps in the same group).
However, I can’t see where we get it that God is three persons.
I can see that God presents himself as three persons (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit), but I’m not quite sure that I can make the leap to say that he actually is three persons, especially when you get phrases like ‘I and the father are one’ (John 10:30) (or in the context of a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ‘I am my father’).
I think that I prefer the less well defined understanding of God, that he presents himself as three persons – as opposed to the definition that he is three persons. I’m not sure that we are supposed to understand the mystery of God quite that well.
If we really thought that God was three persons then we wouldn’t say things like ‘God is my friend’, which is a phrase that is grammatically incorrect if he is three persons – because ‘a friend’ (singular) implies one person with the emphasis on both the word ‘one’ and the word ‘person’. Only persons (or should I say people, which is the plural of person) can be friends – organisations or other units cannot be friends, as friendship always entails a relationship with a person (or relationships with people) – so either ‘God is my friend’ (one person) or ‘God is my friends’ (three persons) would be correct depending on your concept of God.
If we look at history we see God presenting himself as one person and then presenting himself as three persons. God is the same throughout eternity, so we cannot assume that he changed, but rather it is merely the way he presents himself (for our understanding) that changed – he used to present himself one way and now he presents himself another way – neither way being incorrect.
What is perhaps unfortunate is that perhaps the ‘three persons’ doctrine was rather pushed by various people through history to the extent that any other interpretation has been pushed to the margins. This has perhaps even lead to certain groups coming up with wildly different understandings of God, that they think avoid the contradictions of the ‘three persons’ idea – groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses who don’t believe that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God.
Anyone got any firmer pointers as to why we should believe that God is actually three persons?
Mark, fair point, how can we say he, if we believe that god is three diffeent people, Thank you for that, makes total sense to me.
I have to say that I have never seen the HOly Spirit as an actual person, in the same way that we as people have spirit, and our spirit is not an actual person. We relate to god I see our spiritconnecting to gods spirit, hope that makes sense.
I am interested in peoples views on Jesus, I certainly see him as god, by what he said, b his activities, and the reality of him as a person.
cold God the father be in reference to a particular demonstratin of love, in the same way that I show fatherly love to my two daughters. Yes i as a person am a father, but i also show fatherly love, and I just throw this out as a suggestion.
If Jesus as god came as a person, could he have been talking about the father as a particular kind of love, as well as the spirit, being what we conect to when relating to god.
Just osme thoghts.
Interesting point about the Holy Spirit. The word ‘spirit’ is different to the word ‘soul’. A ‘soul’ is a person whereas a ‘spirit’ is often used to mean the motivation or drive of a person (of a soul). So the use of the word ‘spirit’ in the name ‘Holy Spirit’ does tend to support your point. However, I wonder about the use of the word spirit to mean a non-physical entity (perhaps a person)?
I can imagine that outside of creation (before it, dare I say? if that makes any sense) God is a spirit being. For the sake of the physical creation God also needed to be a physical being (Jesus) and with what Jesus did we no longer have the divide between spiritual and physical – Jesus was both God as spirit and God as physical being.
I guess ‘Holy Spirit’ sheds light on God being a spirit person who is omnipresent and can be with us in spirit. The ‘Spirit OF God’ which can also be considered to be God???
I guess we just can’t box God into our physically limited definitions! At least we can begin to understand something about him.
However, I do believe that he is one person with whom we can have a relationship. That seems to me to be the basic fundamental.
Pingback: SUNDAY PAPERS
Just to air my ‘Theological Anorak’ for a moment – this may or may not be stating the obvious but that’s never stopped me before…
The concept of ‘persons’ in Trinitarian Theology comes from the Latin ‘Persona’ which is taken from the Greek ‘prosopon’. This refers to a theatrical term used to describe Greek Drama, which is masked ie Actors will play many parts, each one of which is identified by the mask s/he wears. The role that the actor takes is known as her/his ‘persona’ – they were a different person, yet the same substance behind the person. Despite it’s limitations this image formed the basis of Trinitarian thought in the early Church.
It might be clearer to say that God doesn’t present him/herself as three persons, but that God is apprehended as three persons yet one substance…
Or perhaps that’s not clearer at all…
Faith and Theology blog has been doing some good stuff about Christian Thought, ie the summary of Doctrine, lately. Well worth reading.
Thanks Mark for the excellent posts, by the way, i tend to go into theological mode and forget to be polite! Luvvies to you and Annie!
Ah, interesting anorak moment there Alistair!
That makes some sense. However, I still have concerns saying that God is a substance and not a person. Just like that whilst the actors had multiple characters (personae) there was in fact one person behind it.
Perhaps “God is apprehended (fair cop guv!) as three persons, yet is one person”.
I wonder why we started using the term substance? Is it because we couldn’t imagine that he could appear to be three persons whilst actually being one person? I’m not sure that God, as he presented himself in the Old Testament, would have wanted to be considered a substance and not a person. Or was that a matter of “one person, yet one substance”?
You were very polite – I hope that I can be equally, sometimes the discussion can seem more important than the relationships!
Wow, speedy response! I agree completely with the idea that we can tie ourselves up in knots with our theology and forget the revelation of a ‘personal God’ (no pun intented) who has revealed himself as more than an amorphous substance.
The difficulty with any theological language is that we are straining human expression to try and say what can’t be said, to put into a human frame of reference something that is beyond the human capacity to fully grasp. The concept of substance seems to have come from the struggle to say who and what Jesus was – somehow the early Christians needed to put into words that Jesus was fully human and fully divine without the two getting all mixed up and creating some kind of hybrid who didn’t really engage with being human and wasn’t really the one who revealed the divine. Different ‘heretics’ stressed one over the other, such as one writer who said that Jesus seemed to be human but didn’t eat, sleep (or poo) but just seemed to for the sake of appearance! At the risk of being incredibly self promoting i did a summary of this in a sermon in Emmanuel College Cambridge which is available as an MP3 at http://www.emma.cam.ac.uk/collegelife/chapel/sermons/Alistair%20McCollum.mp3
Anyway, the term substance came about because using finite human language the Church Fathers (sorry, they were all men, so no records of early Church Mothers) had to say something about how Jesus remained God and Human in perfect harmony – so they came up with the ‘hypostatic union’ where Jesus retained his two natures perfectly balanced and perfectly united. This went on to be applied to the Trinity, again attempting to put into words that which is beyond.
And two thousand years later it still makes for a great discussion and a chance to consider the miracle of God with us…
Thanks Alastair – great talk (the mp3). I recommend it to anyone reading this thread.
I’m feeling quite excited today! True it is an interminable discussion, but we will still never be able to box God in.
The important thing is the faith that we can gain through the words, through the discussion. Faith being truthes beyond the words, that can only be truly appreciated in one’s spirit.
Amen
I did a talk on what faith and belief really mean at Greenbelt a few years back, which i don’t think is available any more – either binned or sold out, i like to think that latter. Not that i am the end word on this or anything! Would be happy to send you a copy either on paper or cd if i can find it if you want. My email will be with the adminstrator’s list of comments, or Annie has it!
V exciting start to the day, nothing like a bit of theology to get the synapses sparking… Thank you.
Me again, between visits I looked up the faith and Theology blog entry on Trinity here:
http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2006/08/theology-for-beginners-8-triunity.html
Like the concept of God as ‘living event’ but kind of lost things in the comments section when someone says ‘Ben is (rightly) following Barth, McCormack, and Jüngel in affirming an actualistic ontology over a substance ontology’
Don’t let that put you off! Will shut up now (for a little while)
Interesting link. It reminds me of the time when I somehow realised what ‘God is love’ meant. Being an apparently ungrammatical statement it took a bit of struggle and again it isn’t something that can be easily put into words – partly because it is always bigger than what you think it is anyway.
I have to say I don’t go with the God as ‘living event’ thing – perhaps it is just way beyond where I’m at? It’s a shame he doesn’t use the word ‘person’ anywhere in the post. That God is a person seems to me on of the most ultimately fundamental aspects of faith. If we can’t have a relationship with God the person then surely there is no meaning to life?
I’m not saying that the author of that post doesn’t think that God is a person, just that he doesn’t mention it, although I think that he maybe implies it. The key is that we don’t end up thinking that God isn’t a centrally a person. We mustn’t end up being part of the divide that used to be between us and God.