Posted on 02/05/2016 4:09:36 AM PST by metmom
"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all" (2 Corinthians 13:14).
Though there is only one God, He exists in three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
God is one, but He exists in three distinct Persons. We call this the Trinity, a contraction of "tri-unity," meaning "three in one." The word Trinity doesn't appear in the Bible, but God's existence as three Persons in one God is clear from Scripture.
Old Testament evidence of God's plurality can be found in the very first verse: "In the beginning God . . ." (Gen. 1:1). The Hebrew word used for God is Elohim, which is a plural noun. Isaiah 42:1 speaks of the Messiah: "Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations." The Messiah says in Isaiah 48:16, "The Lord God has sent Me, and His Spirit."
The New Testament is more explicit about God's triune nature. After Jesus' baptism, the Spirit of God descended upon Him as a dove, and the Father said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased" (Matt. 3:17). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are together in the same scene.
Jesus says, "And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16-17). Paul closes 2 Corinthians by saying, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all" (13:14). Peter declares that believers are chosen "according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, that you may obey Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:2).
So God is one, but God is three. This is a profound mystery that no human illustration can adequately describe and no scientific explanation can prove. The Trinity is something we have to take on faith, because God has taught it in Scripture.
Suggestions for Prayer
Praise God that He is so far above our finite understanding, yet has chosen to reveal Himself to us.
For Further Study
Read John 14-16.
What does Jesus teach about His relationship with the Father and the Spirit? What do you learn here about the different functions or ministries of each member of the Trinity?
You express a faulty premise. It is not necessary to understand something in order to believe it. Indeed, one could argue that if we could explain God perfectly He would not be God. CS Lewis said something to the effect that if God conformed perfectly to our understanding, we would have reason to suspect he was our invention, and not reality. The more real a thing is, the greater its capacity to surprise us.
Peace,
SR
It has been said that God created man in His own image and since then we have been returning the favor.
The only response I received was a tangential response about "flat land" and a personal attack saying I should not be asking" where did the son come from?
I amended my query to: So where did the Son come from? What is the origin of the Son If we accept the necessity of a highest power why was/ is there a need for a second equal power and certainly why the need for a third co-equal power? How and why did these second and third powers come to be?
I was told that I had a nasty tone by the original poster of the thread. I was also told by another poster that I had a closed mind.
You express a faulty premise. It is not necessary to understand something in order to believe it.
The problem with that line of reasoning is that people that don't understand economics believe Bernie Sanders and are being led down a false path.
As I have stated from the beginning I am an agnostic seeking answers. Sadly instead of answers I finding personal attacks and insults.
I have replied.
Just because you won’t accept any answer doesn’t mean nobody has tried.
Exactly what are you looking for that would qualify as an answer to your question? What is it that would convince you?
You want scientific proof? Philosophical?
You want God to come down and smack you upside the head? Or drop a billboard down in front of you?
Are you looking for reasons to believe in Him or to reject him?
Let me tell you something, a god that you can understand is no God at all.
The early Christians only knew that they needed Jesus to be saved and a complete understanding of Him and His character, and all the finer points of doctrine that some people claim you need to know and believe in order to be saved, were not hammered out then.
Read the Gospels. People came to Jesus with simple requests. Lord, heal me. Lord, save me. And He did.
Whatever you need to know about God, HE will reveal to you, but without the Spirit of God revealing God to your spirit, it will be foolishness to you. An unsaved person is spiritually dead and CANNOT understand the things of God, anymore than a blind person can understand light or a Deaf person can understand sound.
If you’re going to wait to decide about God until you understand to your satisfaction, you will die in your sin.
No man can really understand the eternal or immortal.
Again, we can’t even understand each other.
For example, (guessing that maybe you’re a man) do you understand women?
Does a man not pursue a relationship with a woman because he can’t understand women? What man DOES understand women?
What woman understands men?
If a man can’t even understand a woman with whom he’s on an equal plain, how can he expect or even feel like he can demand to understand God?
Man is body, soul, and spirit. God is the Father, the Son (Incarnate, having a body here on this earth) and the Holy Spirit.
Any attempt to explain that will fall short but here’s a try.
Some people use that example of the human. Others have used the example of an egg, or water. All are composed of three parts each of which make up the whole.
Some people state that it’s one being manifesting in three persons, but that leads to charges of modalism. My understanding is that modalism in its most extreme form claims that when God is acting as Jesus, He cannot act as the Father or the Holy Spirit, but I don’t see that that concept requires it. So just as I am a wife to my husband, a mother to my children, and a daughter to my parents, it’s all me simply relating to others in three roles. (FWIW)
BTW, science is incapable if even beginning to explain many of the theories its put forth about the beginnings of the universe and physics and stuff like string theory and dark matter. Do you reject any or all science that you can’t understand, too?
Well, I don’t know how to answer you completely. I will try with my very limited understanding of an incomprehensible God, but I warn you that it will not be scholarly ‘cause scholarly is not what I is. ;-)
God is Almighty. The Son is the exact representation of God in body/person and did whatever the Father (God) showed Him. All power (of God) has been given to the Son who led a perfectly sinless life. The Holy Spirit is the spirit issuing forth from God. His active agent in this world granted to those who believe in the Son. The Son’s death on the cross being the means of reconciliation between man and God, as we have no way to pay for our own sins to God who is completely holy. It took the perfect (sinless) blood of Jesus, which was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. God cannot reside with sin; the blood of Jesus covers our sin and puts us in a right relationship with the Father for now and eternity.
That perhaps is too simple an explanation and I’m sure I badly mangled it, but there you go. I did the best with my limited understanding (and having a 5-year old near). I can’t fully comprehend God, as I am His creation and not His equal.
This I do know, however, that when I cried out to Him in my darkest hour He came and saved me and changed me completely.
His word tells me all I can comprehend of Him, and I’m barely able to grasp some of it. So, anything beyond what’s in the word would only be lost on those who have no way to understand another realm (such as myself).
I hope this helps.
Best regards,
SC
Thank you for your explanation. This is a concept I always struggle to understand.
You are welcome, GreenHornet. It’s not perfect by any means, but nowhere does Scripture state that we must perfectly understand God. We can’t, and that’s not the gospel message. Believing in who Jesus was on earth and His death, burial and resurrection are essential. It’s not necessary to our salvation to perfectly understand God’s nature. If someone is ever able to do that, I’d love to know. I’m sure my understanding differs from others’ but one is no more nor less saved by the difference so long as that person believes the gospel message and follows after Christ.
Blessings to you.
SC
If we knew all the answers to what might be questioned no faith would be required. ‘Faith activates’ what we believe it’s not just a word.
Some things we believe because it’s pretty apparent we need and there’s sufficient evidence pointing to such. We “believe’ Jesus rose from the dead and sits at the right hand of the father...but we can’t see him there...yet the evidence points to that truth.
One issue I see in your setup of the problem is that by definition, the persons of the Trinity are co-eternal. There is no “origin” in the temporal sense.
Structurally, the presence of three persons in one being is not a byproduct of reasoning that said structure is necessary, but is a response to divine revelation. We do not understand the mechanism of gravity, for example, but we have a body of evidence that such a force exists, though in full understanding of it we would describe it differently than we do now.
As for the analogy to blind acceptance of political theories, I think it is a defective analogy. By definition, purveyors of socialism and other political junk science are accountable to the scrutiny of their peers, us. By contrast, God, being infinitely above us and not accountable to us, has no obligation to conform to the limits of our rational capacity.
Nevertheless, the posit sometimes offered is this, that in God we have much more than mere power. God is love. God is therefore, inherent to His nature, about relationships, and that interior relational model in the three persons sets up God as the ultimate archetype of love.
I don’t have time for more right now. Just some thoughts.
Peace,
SR
Excellent reply!
While we waited for that sinless blood to appear; we used the sinless blood of animals.
Hebrews 10:4
For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
Right you are, Elsie, and I should’ve included that. Thank you.
Blessings to you!
Oh, I see it was an appeal and not a command.
Lol, so Paul would have been fine if someone withdrew fellowship from the Corinthian Church and started a new denomination.
Got it.
Damn Rome for inserting Roman 16:17 into the Epistle to the Romans, Paul would never have written such a statement.
Keep preaching that 'gospel of Mariology the mediatrix'. See where it gets you catholics ...
I am changing my screen name, you have convinced me:
From now on, I will be
One Lord, 30,000 faiths and two baptisms.
Jesus explained to Philip that in fact he could only see the Father Almighty where He intersected Philip's sensing ability, as Jesus, God with us, for He, The Father was in Jesus and Jesus was/is in The Father.
The poster to whom I was trying to relate the limits to wanted a different answer, one which would put the God that poster prefers to question into a rut of necessity to come from some greater source. Perhaps you noticed that the poster began the derisions when the answer was not following the poster's set up.
The essence of what I was seeking to convey was that God is so much more than our dimensional limits can sense or even imagine, that we can no more answer why God expresses in three persons than we can see the being to whom the hand was attached, seen in Daniel Chapter Five.
God, in Whom is no shadow of turning, does not come 'from', He is. His name is I AM. As Jesus He passed through our set of dimensional limits, but no one saw The Father Almighty, only where He passed through our limits.
Let's try the classical Christian answer: Given the proviso that you accept that a universal highest power exists according to the Thomist view God is the un-created, first moving necessary being. He lives outside of time and space. So technically the terms before and after having no bearing on the origin of the Son.
Gods first thought was of Himself and that thought was so powerful and perfect that it resulted in the Son. Not as a created being, but rather as a reflection of the Father with all of His divinity. Since the Father already existed the Son's first thought was of Him This first thought was of the perfect love He had for the Father. The Father also immediately had a perfect love for the Son. This love resulted in the third person was the Holy Spirit.
I hope this answers your question.
How many times have you been born from above?
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