Is worshipping Jesus idolatry?

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spiritflower9

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In the Bible it says that there is only one god, not to worship false gods, and not to make graven images.

I have a lot of trouble understanding the trinity. It seems like polytheism. There is only one God, but there is more than one person who are individuals, which people worship as different people with different roles. Jesus talks a lot about giving worship to the Father and that he is given everything by the Father as though he were not actually equal to Him or the same thing. I know that the book of John has a lot if material equaling the two, but the other gospels don’t. I also can’t find where it says the Holy Spirit is God or is equal to God.

Edit: Trying to become Christian, however this confuses me.
 
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If you don’t believe in the Trinity, and you do believe that the God Jesus referred to as “Father” IS God, then who do you think Jesus was? A prophet who had delusions of being a deity?

But Jesus worked miracles. He founded the Church which has lasted more than 2000 years. He gave Himself up to the cross, (at which time earthquakes and a blood moon occurred “coincidentally”) and then resurrected from the tomb three days later. He was seen by hundreds who witnessed to His being alive only a short time after His very obvious death.

How do you account for all of this? Perhaps if you can conclude that Jesus MUST have been God, then you can determine whether you believe Him or not when He says that He and the Father are one.
 
There were a lot of miracles in the Old Testament that prophets did. They weren’t God.

I just want to understand where this comes from and how it works. I’m trying to become a Christian, but this confuses me.
 
I have a lot of trouble understanding the trinity.
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Ah, this makes it clear. One God in three divine Persons. Saint Patrick used a three leaf clover to demonstrate the concept. Each leaf slightly different, but all share the same substance. Google up a pic of a clover and contemplate it.
 
The Holy Trinity is a mystery that can’t be fully understood by man so we will never be able to completely understand it, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely beyond us otherwise God wouldn’t have revealed it to us. Here’s something the Roman Catechism says about the Doctrine of the Trinity that might help you out:
In the one Substance of the Divinity the Father is the First Person, who with His Only begotten Son, and the Holy Ghost, is one God and one Lord, not in the singularity of one Person, but in the trinity of one Substance. These Three Persons, since it would be impiety to assert that they are unlike or unequal in any thing, are understood to be distinct only in their respective properties. For the Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from both. Thus we acknowledge the Essence and the Substance of the Three Persons to be the same in such wise that we believe that in confessing the true and eternal God we are piously and religiously to adore distinction in the Persons, unity in the Essence, and equality in the Trinity.
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As for the divinity of the Holy Ghost in the Bible, you can look at the method Christ instructs the Apostles to baptize in St. Matthew 28:19 “Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Notice it says “Name” instead of names, indicating They are one (same divine substance, one God) yet distinct from one another. There’s other examples but that’s all I can remember off the top of my head.
 
Your explanation is very helpful. I’m still confused, but less so.

I’m confused by the “begotten” part of Jesus though. God the Father was first and then He created Jesus to be a part of Him? And then later on the Holy Spirit appeared?

My mother is also trying to understand this. This is one of her big stumbling blocks to Christianity also. We are trying so hard to understand the trinity.
 
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Glad my explanation helped a bit. 🙂
All three Persons of the Trinity are both eternal and uncreated, so the Father isn’t older than the Son or the Holy Ghost and the Father didn’t create the other Persons of the Trinity since God is uncreated. I’ll leave the explanation of the specifics of the Son proceeding from the Father and the Holy Ghost proceeding from both since I myself struggle to understand it at times.
 
spiritflower9 said:
There were a lot of miracles in the Old Testament that prophets did. They weren’t God.

I just want to understand where this comes from and how it works. I’m trying to become a Christian, but this confuses me.
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You can start with the Old Testament, also called the Old Covenant. God made covenant with our ancestors but was broken by them, He then made a New Covenant. If you seek out this context, it would be easier for you to understand Jesus.

Jesus is the fulfillment of all the OT. In the OT, God spoke through the prophets, patriarchs, judges and kings, the latter he anointed to take care of His people, like a Shepherd taking care of his sheep.

But they were not successful, so to speak, that now in the New Covenant, God has to do it Himself.

He became man and that is Jesus.

Actually if you read carefully, Jesus was different from the prophets, the context of his miracles and his teachings were pointing to himself rather than as if speaking on behalf of God.

He made the teachings and changed them as if he had the authority to do so.

This is how Christianity looks at Jesus, from the context of the beginning of time. That is also the reason why the Bible begins with the creation of the world until the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the acts and teaching of his apostles.
 
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Jesus is Eternally Begotten of the Father before all ages.
Imagine a light bulb. You see how the light bulb gives off light?
Except now imagine that the light has always been showing from the bulb, and didn’t start any point in time.
It’s a similar relationship to the Word and the Father.
 
Try and see it literally.

God is simply presenting himself (The Father) in whatever forms are necessary to carry out his divine purpose.

Building from the light example above, you can’t have much of an impact knocking a door - if it doesn’t make a sound.

They are the same event. The physical strike and the sound that shows you made it. Are all part of your ‘knocking’. Conveyed in different forms at the same time.

God formed his Triune to communicate with us on a level we can understand. It’s not a confusion - but a necessity of who he is.
 
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That is not trinitarian. The name slips my mind, but it’s totally different. God is a Trinity, he is not one god putting on 3 faces.
 
CapitalistCatholic is correct. If God were just putting on three faces or filling three roles, that would be “modalism.”

spiritflower9 – The Holy Trinity is a complicated topic. It’s a mystery. We know it’s true and we contemplate it, but no human being can fully comprehend it. So we tend to use partially true pictures and examples, like the clover or the lightbulb. None of these pictures will fit exactly; they are just supposed to give you something like the idea.

God always existed. God created time and space; they didn’t exist until He created them. He dwells in eternity, outside of space and time, although He is present everywhere within space and time.

God is love. Love doesn’t exist unless there is someone to love and someone to be loved. And so, God was always three “Persons” - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three Persons are one God.

The “Persons” are not… quite… the same thing as we normally mean, when we say “person.” It’s the translation of a Greek theology term, “hypostasis.” But they are distinct from each other, as well as being perfectly in union with each other. Nope, humans don’t really work that way. Even angels don’t work that way. Only God does.

It really is hard to know what to say, so as not to mislead you. Probably the best thing to do is to look at the different Bible verses that are related to the Trinity, and then see how the teaching arose from Jesus’ teaching and from apostolic teaching, as well as by studying the implications of all the verses.

Here’s the late Fr. Hardon’s short definition of the Holy Trinity:
God, who is one and unique in his infinite substance or nature, is three really distinct persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The one and only God Is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Yet God the Father is not God the Son, but generates the Son eternally, as the Son is eternally begotten. The Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but a distinct person having his divine nature from the Father and the Son by eternal procession. The three divine persons are co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial and deserve co-equal glory and adoration.
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That sounds a bit like modialism or sabelism. That God puts on different forms or modes.

Think of God as a flame on a candle. You can take two more candles and get two more flames from that first flame. Three different flames but one in the same because they are the same substance.
 
ErraticFaith - “God is simply presenting himself (The Father) in whatever forms are necessary to carry out his divine purpose”.

-No, that’s modalism and is not compatible with Christianity. God is 3 Divine Persons, not just 1 who presents Himself in different modes. I used to struggle with this tremendously, and still do to a point. But there is a book that really helped me understand better. “Theology for Beginners” by Frank Sheed.
Don’t let the title fool you. Be prepared for some serious reading. I read his chapter on the Trinity a couple times over and still feel like I could read it again and learn more. 🙂

Theology for Beginners
 
You assume I care about your catholic creed. I don’t. There’s also in turn a lot I don’t agree with in generalised doctrines concocted by men. Your definition is correct as far as distinguishing it from your own is concerned.

Like a common agreement that Salt is Salt and Vinegar, the same.

I’m not catholic. I seldom share your beliefs. And it would be nice on occasion (considering I’m constantly warned about the issue myself from moderators) if people didn’t assume that all Christians are of your thought chain. Thanks though.
 
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Spiritflower9, you might check out that book recommendation I gave to ErraticFaith above. His chapter on the Trinity is very helpful, and he continues to make reference to it throughout, making the picture all the clearer as you go.
 
It’s not that your description isn’t in line with Catholic doctrine…it’s not compatible with Christianity. And the original poster is asking for clarification and help on the Christian view of the Trinity. So it’s not helpful to propose a modalist view to her/him. That’s why people are clarifying.
 
Did not know you are not Catholic. I guess I assumed you were but I certainly don’t assume all Christians believe like we do. In fact, I am a protestant convert and use to believe in modalism at one point.
 
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