How are there no parts to God?

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Mikaele

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How are there no parts to the Holy Trinity if there are 3 distinct Persons?
 
I don’t know how it happens but it is known by cause from effect and how we learn and reason. When we grow in knowledge of a subject, we ascertain higher truths that require less complicated reasoning. We come to the highest level of knowledge of a subject that requires only a few essential principle truths. Whether God is altogether simple?: Augustine says (De Trin. iv, 6,7): “God is truly and absolutely simple.”
 
We know from our own experience even on earth that a person cannot be divided into parts. Either you’re a person or you’re not. The whole point about the three Persons in the Blessed Trinity is that they are perfectly united by love so that they are One Being and distinguishable only by different activities. We cannot hope to explain this mystery fully because it concerns the nature of our Creator, the Supreme Being without Whom nothing would exist. But we do know that the greater the love we have the more we identify ourselves with the persons we love. And conversely it is lack of love which leads to conflict and the greatest atrocities against others…
 
God is not material. His nature is spirit, not matter and energy. Spiritual beings cannot be divided into parts. Person is an expression of nature, not a distinct part. (In the same way your own person is not distinct from your nature–you are one human being, not two.)
 
Mikaele has a point, at least when it comes to the Second Person of the Trinity, who (it is taught) currently has a body.
 
Mikaele said:
How are there no parts to the Holy Trinity if there are 3 distinct Persons?
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The God of Judaism is defined as a pure spirit, which I’d guess is kind of an analog entity, existing as a continuum of spirit-stuff. That God has no parts.

The God of Christianity is defined as three distinct entities, and therefore has at least three distinct parts. Despite its protestations, Christianity is not a monotheistic belief system.

There is supposedly some particular value in being able to call your religion, “monotheistic,” but I do not see it. I’d appreciate Christianity the more if its practitioners knew how to count better, e.g. 1+1+1=3.

Personally I see no particular value in monotheism, and prefer the notion that the immense labor of universe building and critter design was a group effort. So the evidence implies.
 
tonyrey said:
We know from our own experience even on earth that a person cannot be divided into parts. Either you’re a person or you’re not. The whole point about the three Persons in the Blessed Trinity is that they are perfectly united by love so that they are One Being and distinguishable only by different activities. We cannot hope to explain this mystery fully because it concerns the nature of our Creator, the Supreme Being without Whom nothing would exist. But we do know that the greater the love we have the more we identify ourselves with the persons we love. And conversely it is lack of love which leads to conflict and the greatest atrocities against others…
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Tony,
Did you honestly think that you’d get away with such a statement as, “We know from our own experience even on earth that a person cannot be divided into parts?”

I have several jars of various sizes and ages in storage at home. Some were filled so long ago that the formaldehyde has long since evaporated through the sealed metal cap. One contains an inch of my left ulna tip. Another contains the top two inches of my left femur. Some other parts were lost along a highway, presumably fertilizing weeds. And I’m still full of parts!

I even have some aftermarket parts— a plastic wrist, titanium and teflon hip joint, and a couple of high-tech screws that Dr. Frankenstein would have appreciated.

My surgeon would like to remove my gallbladder, part of an adrenal gland, and a few other unmentionables. I’m having none of it for the time being, but not because I fear that I won’t be a person without them.

There are documented instances of people running around without tonsils, appendices, spleens, half their intestines, various reproductive organs, a lung, eyes, ears, feet, legs, hands, and arms. Many people have had significant sections of their brains removed, and no one can really tell the difference. A fascinating old movie, Freaks shows a guy without arms or legs rolling and lighting a cigarette. 👍

Ever heard of transplants? A dead person’s heart is a “part” exactly like a junkyard carburetor is a part.

Hollywood has always been predictive, and ahead of its time. You may want to watch Steve Martin’s, “The Man With Two Brains” and consider the possibilities. 🙂

IMO a statement which consists of a reiteration of religious dogma is not made more credible when prefaced by an obvious falsehood.

Now, go ahead and tell us what you really meant to say.
 
greylorn said:
The God of Judaism is defined as a pure spirit, which I’d guess is kind of an analog entity, existing as a continuum of spirit-stuff. That God has no parts.

The God of Christianity is defined as three distinct entities, and therefore has at least three distinct parts. Despite its protestations, Christianity is not a monotheistic belief system.

There is supposedly some particular value in being able to call your religion, “monotheistic,” but I do not see it. I’d appreciate Christianity the more if its practitioners knew how to count better, e.g. 1+1+1=3.

Personally I see no particular value in monotheism, and prefer the notion that the immense labor of universe building and critter design was a group effort. So the evidence implies.
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I have to disagree that Christianity defines God as three distinct entities. It defines God as only one entity, i.e. one being. Person is an expression of nature (the entity or being), not a distinct part.

For humans, each distinct entity, each human being, is expressed as one person–again, not a distinct entity from our nature but an expression of our nature. With God, one entity is expressed as three persons.

(If we were counting person and nature as ‘parts’, that would be 4 parts, not 3, but person is not a part.) See F.J. Sheed’s Theology for Beginners, for a more complete discussion of the Trinity.
 
JimG said:
God is not material. His nature is spirit, not matter and energy. Spiritual beings cannot be divided into parts. Person is an expression of nature, not a distinct part. (In the same way your own person is not distinct from your nature–you are one human being, not two.)
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I’d not bother to discuss this, except that you claim to be a Catholic. The Church teaches that there are three Gods, two of them spirits, plus another who took the form of a regular matter/energy based human being who ate material food and presumably disposed of it like other humans, who enjoyed wine, appreciated having his feet washed, bled, suffered physical pain, and died a victim of excruciating torture.

Carrying a censer for the Stations of the Cross was an emotionally painful experience, because I believed exactly what the Church had taught about the physicality of Christ and his pain, as real as that of the ordinary humans who preceded and followed him on torture racks of human design. Evidently you believe otherwise.

As for the “one human being” malarkey, you might want to study the psychology literature on schizophrenia and multiple personalities, and the Church literature on exorcisms.
 
JimG said:
I have to disagree that Christianity defines God as three distinct entities. It defines God as only one entity, i.e. one being. Person is an expression of nature (the entity or being), not a distinct part.

For humans, each distinct entity, each human being, is expressed as one person–again, not a distinct entity from our nature but an expression of our nature. With God, one entity is expressed as three persons.

(If we were counting person and nature as ‘parts’, that would be 4 parts, not 3, but person is not a part.) See F.J. Sheed’s Theology for Beginners, for a more complete discussion of the Trinity.
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All you are doing here is dragging words around and placing them wherever they are convenient to your beliefs. You seem to believe that 1+1+1=1. That’s not my fault, and I can’t fix your strange programming with a million logical arguments, because your beliefs are not based upon logic. You should be arguing your beliefs with another religionist, playing the “my prophets are older than yours,” or “my God is better than yours” game.

I only argue from fact and common logic.
 
greylorn said:
I’d not bother to discuss this, except that you claim to be a Catholic. The Church teaches that there are three Gods, two of them spirits, plus another who took the form of a regular matter/energy based human being who ate material food and presumably disposed of it like other humans, who enjoyed wine, appreciated having his feet washed, bled, suffered physical pain, and died a victim of excruciating torture.

Carrying a censer for the Stations of the Cross was an emotionally painful experience, because I believed exactly what the Church had taught about the physicality of Christ and his pain, as real as that of the ordinary humans who preceded and followed him on torture racks of human design. Evidently you believe otherwise.

As for the “one human being” malarkey, you might want to study the psychology literature on schizophrenia and multiple personalities, and the Church literature on exorcisms.
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That characterization of Catholic belief is not correct. Catholics believe the God is one. One non-material (spirit) entity. We don’t claim that in God there are three natures, but that the one nature of God is expressed in three Persons.

We don’t say that one nature equals three natures. We don’t even say that one nature is shared by three persons.

The Incarnation is a separate issue. One person of the Trinity (who is not a distinct entity but a distinct person, takes on a human nature.) Jesus is a human being, but not a human person.

Any Catholic who proposed that there are three distinct Gods would not be in accord with Catholic teaching.
 
John 1:1-2, 14 : In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.; And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.

Doesn’t get anymore plain than that that the Father and Son are both God. If the Father and Son are both God, but separate persons, why is it a stretch that the Holy Spirit is another person but in unity with God?

It would be easier to explain to a blind man what the sunrise looks like than to explain God in the Holy Trinity. God is infinite and, by definition, cannot be contained in words or our mind.
 
Don’t you know that the trinity is a mystery?Man cannot get a true picture of the Trinity.Man tries to understand it it human terms.
 
djwright4341 said:
John 1:1-2, 14 : In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.; And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.

Doesn’t get anymore plain than that that the Father and Son are both God. If the Father and Son are both God, but separate persons, why is it a stretch that the Holy Spirit is another person but in unity with God?

It would be easier to explain to a blind man what the sunrise looks like than to explain God in the Holy Trinity. God is infinite and, by definition, cannot be contained in words or our mind.
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Yeah, exactly. I might also add: each Person of God shares the nature of Godhood, of being God. Monotheism. All three Persons in unity with the oneness of …God.

It’s probably an imperfect, human way to grasp the infinity of God, but it’s the best we got.

Glennonite
 
Mikaele said:
How are there no parts to the Holy Trinity if there are 3 distinct Persons?
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Its an impossible hypothesis since the Father is NOT the Son and the Son is NOT the Holy Spirit, etc. These three hypostases are distinct from one another make them three parts. The fact that Trinitarian doctrine states that these three persons are also one being does not change the fact that these three are necessarily three parts of one whole.
 
Foreigner said:
Its an impossible hypothesis since the Father is NOT the Son and the Son is NOT the Holy Spirit, etc. These three hypostases are distinct from one another make them three parts. The fact that Trinitarian doctrine states that these three persons are also one being does not change the fact that these three are necessarily three parts of one whole.
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They are distinct persons, not distinct entities. “Person” in the philosophical sense, is an expression of one’s nature, not a distinct nature in itself.

This applies even to human beings. Each human person is an expression of his or her own individual human nature. But the ‘person’ is not a distinct human entity apart from the nature. If it were, I would be two human entities, not one: one human nature, and one human person. But I am not. I am one human entity, having a human nature which expresses itself as a person.

God’s one nature is expressed as three person. The persons do not “share” the one divine nature. Rather, each person–Father, Son, Holy Spirit, possesses the divine nature in its totality.

Once again, I recommend F. J. Sheed’s book, “Theology for Beginners.”

Just because, as humans, we typically associate one individual human nature with its being expressed in one person, does not mean that the divine nature is the same.

God is pure spirit, and does not–cannot–have parts.

Actually, no spiritual entity can have parts, including the human soul. That is the only reason it is able to survive after death. No parts means it cannot come apart.
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The message of Fatima, besides being a warning and prediction, started with an angel giving the important information that, as where one member of the Trinity is the others are there too, the Eucharist is not only Christ but God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three children prayed “Most Holy Trinity, I adore you! My God, My God, I love you in the most Blessed Sacrament”.
 
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