On whether the trinity is illogical

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Ana_v said:
Same here – when I think “God” I think all three divine persons. When I think “Lord” I’m thinking a specific person (usually Christ) of the trinity.

. . .

This may just illustrate the limits of our vocabulary. We simply lack sufficient words to totally describe the trinity and in the maximally accurate way.

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I’d invoke the concept of “mystery” here. The problem is not limited vocabulary; it’s even more the limits of our intellects. We do have limits. We can comprehend a lot–but not everything. A “mystery”, properly understood, is a concept or reality that transcends our ability. We can understand some limited aspects of it–but whatever we understand is more wrong than right, since it’s too “big” for us to properly grasp the whole and get it fully right. And that means that logic is going to be of limited use–since logic rarely tells us where it is going wrong.

The Trinity is a mystery. The best way we have of understanding it is in bits and pieces. So we can say that Jesus is God, and God is a Trinity, but not that Jesus is a Trinity. Nor are we saying that 3 = 1. Logic simply doesn’t apply that directly.

On the other hand, do I want to say that the Trinity is illogical? I hesitate to go that far. We can see analogies in the Trinity: God the eternal and unoriginate, uttering a Word of Love, and the love between the Origin and the Word being so deep and vast that it becomes a Spirit of Love. Their love overflowing in the merest and most limited extent to be the love that creates and redeems the world, including you and me–if God’s love for us is greater than we can comprehend, what does that say about the Love flowing within the Trinity?

Does that help illuminate the mystery?
 
Ana_v said:
Some critics of Christianity think it is…
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Absolutely everything is dependent on G-d for its existence, including logic. He could have arranged creation in anyway He wished. A=A not because there is some cosmic cop enforcing it, but because we cannot imagine how it might be false. It is by G-ds design that creation is the way that it is and He could have arranged it so that A=B is a true statement.
 
jonfawkes said:
Thanks for trying to think for me :rolleyes: but no I don’t.
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How don’t you? You explicitly said that our mind, body, and spirit each constitute a separate nature. Jesus had a mind, body, and spirit, plus a divine nature.
 
Spirithound said:
How don’t you? You explicitly said that our mind, body, and spirit each constitute a separate nature. Jesus had a mind, body, and spirit, plus a divine nature.
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Everything is divine - God is omnipresent - there is nowhere God is not. The material can be broken down a multitude of ways. The mind can be Id, Ego, Super Id, or Logical and emotional etc. The Body can be described in terms of different systems, skeletal, lymphatic, circulatory etc.

Don’t limit yourself to archaic notions of nature.
 
jonfawkes said:
Everything is divine - God is omnipresent - there is nowhere God is not. The material can be broken down a multitude of ways. The mind can be Id, Ego, Super Id, or Logical and emotional etc. The Body can be described in terms of different systems, skeletal, lymphatic, circulatory etc.

Don’t limit yourself to archaic notions of nature.
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So then you hold the heresy of Christ having only one nature?
 
Ana_v said:
Some critics of Christianity think it is. Perhaps, it’s that when they hear the word “trinity”, what comes to mind is " three is one" or “one is three”.

It would indeed be contradictory for one to say 1 being = 3 beings, or 1 person = 3 persons.

However, such is not the trinity.

We say, there is one God (being) who exists as three distinct, co-eternal, persons.

Nevertheless, I was thinking of a syllogism regarding the trinity, that is problematic to me.
Would someone weigh in on this?

The syllogism has a false conclusion, derived from true premises.

Consider: **
P1: God is a trinity (consists of three persons).
P2: Jesus is God.
P3: Therefore, Jesus is a trinity.**

I say the conclusion is false, because Jesus is NOT “three persons”. He is **ONE person **with a complete divine nature, and a complete human nature.
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The false conclusion shows the problem of your second premise, Jesus is specifically “God the Son”. When we speak of Jesus as God we understand that we are referring to His shared nature from which comes the divine attributes, oneness, etc., etc. Your second premise, in this context, is too “encompassing” and should be clarified.
 
zach_dunn said:
The false conclusion shows the problem of your second premise, Jesus is specifically “God the Son”.
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Thank You! Problem solved. (And I’m a bit embarrased now that that point escaped me when I was writing the OP. )
 
jonfawkes said:
No, they are our human nature. They are analogous to God’s Trinitarian nature.
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:ehh:
Ah, I get it now. You’ve just decided to take words that are being used with highly specific definitions and give them new and inventive definitions without telling anyone. Thanks.
 
Spirithound said:
:ehh:
Ah, I get it now. You’ve just decided to take words that are being used with highly specific definitions and give them new and inventive definitions without telling anyone. Thanks.
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What part don’t you understand?

Just as God can be described as Trinitarian so can our Human nature. It is not the only way it can be described as I stated before.
 
Ana_v said:
Thank You! Problem solved. (And I’m a bit embarrased now that that point escaped me when I was writing the OP. )
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Not a problem! It’s a very complex teaching and most people never even try to wrap their heads around the teaching. It’s easy to get confused! 🙂
 
jonfawkes said:
What part don’t you understand?

Just as God can be described as Trinitarian so can our Human nature. It is not the only way it can be described as I stated before.
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I understand what you’re saying, however I disagree with you applying the label “nature” to mind, body, and spirit. Also FWIW, I don’t think that the mind and the spirit are anything different from each other.
 
zach_dunn said:
Not a problem! It’s a very complex teaching and most people never even try to wrap their heads around the teaching. It’s easy to get confused! 🙂
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It’s not really that cut and dry though - from the CCC

253 The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity”.83 The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: "The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God."84 In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), "Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature."85
 
Spirithound said:
I understand what you’re saying, however I disagree with you applying the label “nature” to mind, body, and spirit. Also FWIW, I don’t think that the mind and the spirit are anything different from each other.
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It’s metaphorical language - M,B,S are part of our nature.

You can describe our nature anyway you like, Body and Soul if you like. That is more analogous to Jesus being true God and True Man. We are spirit and we are flesh.

It’s all about what you are trying to get your head around. You divide the whole to help you see the whole.
 
jonfawkes said:
It’s not really that cut and dry though - from the CCC

253 The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity”.83 The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: "The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God."84 In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), "Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature."85
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I don’t see the discrepancy. . . . they are each “God whole and entire” because they share the same substance. One paragraph earlier:
**252 **The Church uses (I) the term “substance” (rendered also at times by “essence” or “nature”) to designate the divine being in its unity, (II) the term “person” or “hypostasis” to designate the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the real distinction among them, and (III) the term “relation” to designate the fact that their distinction lies in the relationship of each to the others.
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