Correct Trinitarian formula?

[Darryl_B]

Ah! I assumed that your use of ‘u’ was to mean ‘⋁’ (the logician’s “or”), rather than Set Theory’s union ‘⋃’.

My bad!

I think we are on the same page. Including the “not yet Catholic”.

 

[RebeccaJ]

A u B u C = A n B n C.

Better example than water is light.

Red union Yellow union Blue is White.

Risks of modalism in this one

 

[RebeccaJ]

DId you mean B is not equal to C or A is not equal to C? Your equation does not seem to follow your text.

First, you can’t expect to diagram or reduce to finite mathematics an infinite concept. But that aside, the fact that the Father is not the Son does not mean they are not equal. Both are God.

There isn’t a “God formula”. All formulas given here are metaphors. In everyday usage, metaphors can fall short of the truth and communicate error. There is this risk with using metaphors (mathematical or otherwise) to communicate the truth about the Holy Trinity.

 

[SteveVH]

There isn’t a “God formula”. All formulas given here are metaphors. In everyday usage, metaphors can fall short of the truth and communicate error. There is this risk with using metaphors (mathematical or otherwise) to communicate the truth about the Holy Trinity.

Thank you. I tried to say the same thing.

 

[jlhargus]

Theology using Math? Lol - hmm, I think it would be more acurate this way:

A = B&C, B=C&A, C=A&B in that each Person in the Trinity is God, One God
BUT
A is Not B or C, B is Not C or A, C is Not A or B in that no Person of the Trinity is the same Person as another Person in the Trinity, the Father is Not the Son - only the Son is the Son for example

Great. I would add A, B, C=Y Yaweh. The one indivisable God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 

[Pitcharan]

This is my understanding: God’s self-revelation to humans as three distinct persons, is to enable perception and comprehension to the extent required by humans. His infinite being is beyond our comprehension otherwise.

 

[manualman]

I heard a good explanation for why it’s hard to explain the Trinity. Imagine you are a two dimensional entity. Length and width exist, but not thickness. You can move about on your plane of existence, encounter others, move around objects and it NEVER occurs to you that there is a Z axis to the universe. You cannot comprehend it. And then one day you meet a three dimensional entity. You cannot adequately describe it, but it is real. It seems to change constantly and defy explanation, but it is real.

This is roughly like us trying to define the Trinity. We can’t adequately explain it for we lack the frame of reference. And to be honest, isn’t that what you’d expect? If God could be completely defined and explained in human terms of reference, He’d by a pretty unimpressive God, wouldn’t He?

Somehow Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God, but three persons. That’s really as far as we can comprehend it. The rest is beyond our frame of reference. If God were to explain it you, your head would explode!

 

[bzkoss236]

I heard a good explanation for why it’s hard to explain the Trinity. Imagine you are a two dimensional entity. Length and width exist, but not thickness. You can move about on your plane of existence, encounter others, move around objects and it NEVER occurs to you that there is a Z axis to the universe. You cannot comprehend it. And then one day you meet a three dimensional entity. You cannot adequately describe it, but it is real. It seems to change constantly and defy explanation, but it is real.

This is roughly like us trying to define the Trinity. We can’t adequately explain it for we lack the frame of reference. And to be honest, isn’t that what you’d expect? If God could be completely defined and explained in human terms of reference, He’d by a pretty unimpressive God, wouldn’t He?

Somehow Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God, but three persons. That’s really as far as we can comprehend it. The rest is beyond our frame of reference. If God were to explain it you, your head would explode!

An offshoot of this explanation can be used to describe how God interacts with the world without us ‘seeing’ Him and how Jesus could be God.

 

[mek42]

Hence, why it’s not a perfect analogy, but if there were a perfect analogy to the Trinity, it wouldn’t still be a Mystery, would it?

But yeah, it would be as if you could have water existing as all 3 states at once.

I don’t know if this helps or hinders, but all three states of matter do exist at once at the triple point. For most compounds, the pressure required to be at the triple point is not experienced in our normal atmospheric range.

If we started with three hundred molecules of water, one hundred each state, and kept them at the triple point for some time, there would always be one hundred molecules in each state, though they would exchange with each other in equilibrium, so that the molecules that were initially ice might be vapor or liquid after a time, but some of the vapor and liquid initial state molecules would have become ice.

 

[bzkoss236]

I don’t know if this helps or hinders, but all three states of matter do exist at once at the triple point. For most compounds, the pressure required to be at the triple point is not experienced in our normal atmospheric range.

If we started with three hundred molecules of water, one hundred each state, and kept them at the triple point for some time, there would always be one hundred molecules in each state, though they would exchange with each other in equilibrium, so that the molecules that were initially ice might be vapor or liquid after a time, but some of the vapor and liquid initial state molecules would have become ice.

I didn’t mean one container with water in 3 different states. I mean the same water, same molecules, existing in all 3 states at once.

 

[mek42]

I didn’t mean one container with water in 3 different states. I mean the same water, same molecules, existing in all 3 states at once.

If you dissolve sodium in liquid ammonia, the electrons solvate and behave like a super conductive electron gas, even though the electrons are in solution. This probably isn’t exactly what you mean either, though.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I didn’t mean one container with water in 3 different states. I mean the same water, same molecules, existing in all 3 states at once.

Which, of course, is impossible in the finite world bringing us back again to the complete mystery of the Trinity, the Infinite God. But all such analogies are somewhat helpful so long as we keep in mind that there can be no explanation in finite terms of what exists only in infinity. Only a handful of persons understand the Trinity-- in fact, only three that I know of.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Can the greatest commandments possibly describe how Christ is one with the Father? When Jesus spent his time on Earth he would have lived by these commandments,

Jesus loves God the Father with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.
Jesus loves each and every one of us as he loves himself.

Does God the Father respond to this love?

God the Father loves God the Son, with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.
God the Father loves each and everyone of us as he loves himself.

Can the spirit be the power of God’s love working through the greatest commandments?

This passage links the spirit and the greatest commandments…
1 Samuel 18 ( New International Bible )

1 Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself

Can the trinity possibly hang and depend on the greatest commandments?

 

[Eric_Hyom]

A husband and wife are described as one flesh, is the relationship in a marriage a clue to the oneness of God

Genesis 2

****24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Could the oneness be through the greatest commandments?

The husband loves God with all his heart, soul mind and strength and he loves his wife as he loves himself.

The wife returns perfect love by

Loving God with all her heart, soul, mind and strength, and she loves her husband as she loves herself.

Two people as one through the greatest commandments.

 

[nafrez]

A question: God is father, Son is Christ but who is Holy Spirit?

İ just want to learn. Of course it is so difficult to understand Trinitarian formulas because my mind and hearth can not be persuaded and satisfied. And it would be a good turn for me explaining Trinity in/with Bible but not by individual inventions.

 

[ronyodish]

A question: God is father, Son is Christ but who is Holy Spirit?

nafrez,

The Father is God.
The Son is God and Man (Christ)
The Holy Spirit is God.

All three (Trinity) are one God (monotheism). The Son, in addition to being God, is also Man (Incarnation).

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19).

God bless,

Rony

 

[JamesCaruso]

A question: God is father, Son is Christ but who is Holy Spirit?

İ just want to learn. Of course it is so difficult to understand Trinitarian formulas because my mind and hearth can not be persuaded and satisfied. And it would be a good turn for me explaining Trinity in/with Bible but not by individual inventions.

I’ve heard it said that the Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son. While not a theologian, this does not seem too much a stretch to me, since God is love. The Holy Spirit is also called the Holy Spirit of love. And the concept of the Holy Spirit “proceeding” from both the Father and the Son seems consistent with the notion of love proceeding from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the Father. How it is that love itself is a Person is beyond my comprehension, but it is consistent with the notion that God Himself is love. Love loving love. I =L3 or the Infinite God equals Love cubed… haha… as if the Incomprehensible God could be reduced to a formula.

 

[Servant19]

A question: God is father, Son is Christ but who is Holy Spirit?

İ just want to learn. Of course it is so difficult to understand Trinitarian formulas because my mind and hearth can not be persuaded and satisfied. And it would be a good turn for me explaining Trinity in/with Bible but not by individual inventions.

nafrez, you may find it easier to understand by applying the word “Allah” to the Christian “Father”

Coming from an Islamic background myself, I struggled with the Trinitarian terms, but have realised that Allah and the Father are interchangeable terms.

The relationship between the Father and Son (or Allah and Muhammad) is where you may differ in your understanding of the Quran with Catholics.

Muhammads emphasis was so strong to eliminate the idolatry of His time that He STRONGLY de-emphasized ANYdirect relationship with Allah/the Father, however, this may have been to serve a solitary purpose, namely elimination of idol-worship.

 

[Servant19]

This may help some

Since then, as says the Lord in the Gospels, John 14:9 he that has seen the Son sees the Father also; on this account he says that the Only-begotten is the express image of His Father’s person. That this may be made still plainer I will quote also other passages of the apostle in which he calls the Son the image of the invisible God, Colossians 1:15 and again image of His goodness; not because the image differs from the Archetype according to the definition of indivisibility and goodness, but that it may be shown that it is the same as the prototype, even though it be different. For the idea of the image would be lost were it not to preserve throughout the plain and invariable likeness. He therefore that has perception of the beauty of the image is made perceptive of the Archetype. So he, who has, as it were mental apprehension of the form of the Son, prints the express image of the Father’s hypostasis, beholding the latter in the former, not beholding in the reflection the unbegotten being of the Father (for thus there would be complete identity and no distinction), but gazing at the unbegotten beauty in the Begotten. Just as he who in a polished mirror beholds the reflection of the form as plain knowledge of the represented face, so he, who has knowledge of the Son, through his knowledge of the Son receives in his heart the express image of the Father’s Person. For all things that are the Father’s are beheld in the Son, and all things that are the Son’s are the Father’s; because the whole Son is in the Father and has all the Father in Himself. Thus the hypostasis of the Son becomes as it were form and face of the knowledge of the Father, and the hypostasis of the Father is known in the form of the Son, while the proper quality which is contemplated therein remains for the plain distinction of the hypostases.

(St.Basil of Caesarea)

…and similarly from the Baha’i Writings:

"God is pure perfection, and creatures are but imperfections. For God to descend into the conditions of existence would be the greatest of imperfections; on the contrary, His manifestation, His appearance, His rising are like the reflection of the sun in a clear, pure, polished mirror. All the creatures are evident signs of God, like the earthly beings upon all of which the rays of the sun shine. But upon the plains, the mountains, the trees and fruits, only a portion of the light shines, through which they become visible, and are reared, and attain to the object of their existence, while the Perfect Man is in the condition of a clear mirror in which the Sun of Reality becomes visible and manifest with all its qualities and perfections. So the Reality of Christ was a clear and polished mirror of the greatest purity and fineness. The Sun of Reality, the Essence of Divinity, reflected itself in this mirror and manifested its light and heat in it; but from the exaltation of its holiness, and the heaven of its sanctity, the Sun did not descend to dwell and abide in the mirror. No, it continues to subsist in its exaltation and sublimity, while appearing and becoming manifest in the mirror in beauty and perfection.

Now if we say that we have seen the Sun in two mirrors—one the Christ and one the Holy Spirit—that is to say, that we have seen three Suns, one in heaven and the two others on the earth, we speak truly. And if we say that there is one Sun, and it is pure singleness, and has no partner and equal, we again speak truly.

The epitome of the discourse is that the Reality of Christ was a clear mirror, and the Sun of Reality—that is to say, the Essence of Oneness, with its infinite perfections and attributes—became visible in the mirror. The meaning is not that the Sun, which is the Essence of the Divinity, became divided and multiplied—for the Sun is one—but it appeared in the mirror. This is why Christ said, “The Father is in the Son,” meaning that the Sun is visible and manifest in this mirror.

The Holy Spirit is the Bounty of God which becomes visible and evident in the Reality of Christ. The Sonship station is the heart of Christ, and the Holy Spirit is the station of the spirit of Christ. Hence it has become certain and proved that the Essence of Divinity is absolutely unique and has no equal, no likeness, no equivalent.

This is the signification of the Three Persons of the Trinity. If it were otherwise, the foundations of the Religion of God would rest upon an illogical proposition which the mind could never conceive, and how can the mind be forced to believe a thing which it cannot conceive? A thing cannot be grasped by the intelligence except when it is clothed in an intelligible form; otherwise, it is but an effort of the imagination."

(Abdu’l-Baha)

 

[John_Lazarus]

:whacky:

Too late, my head already asplode.