RE: The Trinity
January 15, 2021 at 5:06 pm
(This post was last modified: January 15, 2021 at 5:09 pm by GrandizerII.)
The official doctrine of the Trinity goes like this:
God is one in being (so monotheism, not tritheism or a family of Gods, such as in Mormonism).
Nevertheless, God is three Persons in one Being. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Each Person is like a "full entity" (so not components or parts of God but each is fully God).
The Persons are distinct from one another but not separate.
The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet the Father is neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit, the Son neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit neither the Father nor the Son.
The Persons are not aspects or modes of God (this is called modalism and is a heresy according to the mainstream Church[es]). And they are each fully God.
That's the ontological Trinity. Each equal in divine essence.
It gets even trickier when you start talking about the role of each of the Persons. The Father is greater than the Son in what sense? Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son, or the Father through the Son (filioque)? And other such questions.
Don't forget the bit about Jesus (the Son in flesh) being both fully God and fully human (hypostatic union). Amusing debates ensue from this. Is Mary the mother of God, or the Lord?
And no, I don't understand any of this and think the Trinity is incoherent. No matter how I look at it, it does seem like that there isn't any meaningful distinction between Person and Being in the context of the Trinity.
God is one in being (so monotheism, not tritheism or a family of Gods, such as in Mormonism).
Nevertheless, God is three Persons in one Being. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Each Person is like a "full entity" (so not components or parts of God but each is fully God).
The Persons are distinct from one another but not separate.
The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet the Father is neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit, the Son neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit neither the Father nor the Son.
The Persons are not aspects or modes of God (this is called modalism and is a heresy according to the mainstream Church[es]). And they are each fully God.
That's the ontological Trinity. Each equal in divine essence.
It gets even trickier when you start talking about the role of each of the Persons. The Father is greater than the Son in what sense? Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son, or the Father through the Son (filioque)? And other such questions.
Don't forget the bit about Jesus (the Son in flesh) being both fully God and fully human (hypostatic union). Amusing debates ensue from this. Is Mary the mother of God, or the Lord?
And no, I don't understand any of this and think the Trinity is incoherent. No matter how I look at it, it does seem like that there isn't any meaningful distinction between Person and Being in the context of the Trinity.
