On whether the trinity is illogical

[jonfawkes]

You already mentioned the distinctions here:

God is not just the Father, God is not just the Son, God is not just the Son. So in speaking of the Persons we make distinctions between the Persons. And we make a distinctions between the Persons and their One Divine Nature which is wholly each Person’s. As Frank Sheed writes, "three Whos, one What.

Yes we are making the distinctions for our own edification. There is no divisions in God.

I tried a version of this example - I’ll try again. Manny, Mo and Jack are a council. The three people make up the council. The council is Manny, Mo and Jack. Manny is not Mo, Mo is not Jack, and Jack is not Manny nor Mo.

This is within our logic, this part is approachable.

What transcends our logic is Manny is not the Council, but a council member, same for Mo and Jack.

This is not true of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are not members or parts of God, they are God. The Father is God entire, The Son is God entire, The Holy Spirit is God entire.

So even though the Father is not the Son is not the Holy Spirit. They are all God, collectively and independently. God is the Three persons of God. It isn’t three Gods, or three parts of God. Just God.

You can’t speak of God the Father is this but not that, He is God entire. Jesus is this but not that He is God entire. The Holy Spirit is this but not that, He is God entire.

Yet there is no division of God so we can’t truly speak of parts (collective and independence) so it doesn’t fit our logic. It transcends it. This is the Mystery.

If you could explain it, it wouldn’t be a mystery.

 

[jonfawkes]

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

The Vatican Council has explained the meaning to be attributed to the term mystery in theology. It lays down that a mystery is a truth which we are not merely incapable of discovering apart from Divine Revelation, but which, even when revealed, remains “hidden by the veil of faith and enveloped, so to speak, by a kind of darkness” (Constitution, “De fide. cath.”, iv). In other words, our understanding of it remains only partial, even after we have accepted it as part of the Divine message. Through analogies and types we can form a representative concept expressive of what is revealed, but we cannot attain that fuller knowledge which supposes that the various elements of the concept are clearly grasped and their reciprocal compatibility manifest. As regards the vindication of a mystery, the office of the natural reason is solely to show that it contains no intrinsic impossibility, that any objection urged against it on Reason. "Expressions such as these are undoubtedly the score that it violates the laws of thought is invalid. More than this it cannot do.

The Vatican Council further defined that the Christian Faith contains mysteries strictly so called (can. 4). All theologians admit that the doctrine of the Trinity is of the number of these. Indeed, of all revealed truths this is the most impenetrable to reason. Hence, to declare this to be no mystery would be a virtual denial of the canon in question. Moreover, our Lord’s words, Matthew 11:27, “No one knoweth the Son, but the Father,” seem to declare expressly that the plurality of Persons in the Godhead is a truth entirely beyond the scope of any created intellect. The Fathers supply many passages in which the incomprehensibility of the Divine Nature is affirmed. St. Jerome says, in a well-known phrase: “The true profession of the mystery of the Trinity is to own that we do not comprehend it” (De mysterio Trinitatus recta confessio est ignoratio scientiae — “Proem ad 1. xviii in Isai.”). The controversy with the Eunomians, who declared that the Divine Essence was fully expressed in the absolutely simple notion of “the Innascible” (agennetos), and that this was fully comprehensible by the human mind, led many of the Greek Fathers to insist on the incomprehensibility of the Divine Nature, more especially in regard to the internal processions. St. Basil, Against Eunomius I.14; St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures VI; St. John Damascene, Of the Orthodox Faith I.2, etc.).

 

[zach_dunn]

This is our disconnect. You are dividing God. In your scenario God is one thing here but not one thing here.

As FCEGM pointed out, I make distinctions between the Persons of the Godhead, I don’t divide God. I am the one who has been explaining to you that God is perfectly simple and without parts, that is why I kept saying your fractal analogy didn’t work. I am not dividing God, you have been throughout this whole conversation by saying “God is three and God is one, it transcends logic”.

The Church teaches that there is a real distinction between the Persons of the Godhead. This is not a division of God, but the Truth and Mystery of the Trinitarian Godhead.

We know God is unchanging. You are spitting God when you say He is “only the one being talked about” - He is always the one and He is always the three.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about, care to point to the post where I said this?

So while The Son is God, God is The Son, Father and Holy Spirit. It is happening at the same time. Our logic can’t explain how that is possible. You are creating divisions where there are none.

You keep flip-flopping on your stance. First it’s completely impossible to talk about God logically, then you go on to talk about Him very logically for a moment, and now you’re back to saying that we can’t talk about Him logically, so which is it?

As for your quotation from the Catholic Encyclopedia, I have repeatedly said that we cannot grasp the Trinity. How it works, etc. But the fact remains that we can talk about God’s Nature and the Persons that have that Nature. The Church does; so can we.

 

[jonfawkes]

As FCEGM pointed out, I make distinctions between the Persons of the Godhead, I don’t divide God. I am the one who has been explaining to you that God is perfectly simple and without parts, that is why I kept saying your fractal analogy didn’t work. I am not dividing God, you have been throughout this whole conversation by saying “God is three and God is one, it transcends logic”.

The Church teaches that there is a real distinction between the Persons of the Godhead. This is not a division of God, but the Truth and Mystery of the Trinitarian Godhead.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about, care to point to the post where I said this?
zach dunn;8147373:

When you are referring to God through the qualifier of a certain Person (i.e., the Father, Jesus, or the Spirit), then it does not

include all of the Persons, but only the one being talked about.

You keep flip-flopping on your stance. First it’s completely impossible to talk about God logically, then you go on to talk about Him very logically for a moment, and now you’re back to saying that we can’t talk about Him logically, so which is it?

As for your quotation from the Catholic Encyclopedia, I have repeatedly said that we cannot grasp the Trinity. How it works, etc. But the fact remains that we can talk about God’s Nature and the Persons that have that Nature. The Church does; so can we.

Logic only gets us to a point. I’ve hopefully demonstrated that with the council example.

As you acknowledge

“we can not grasp the Trinity. How it works”

This is where it transcends our logic, language and understanding.

 

[Akcipitrokulo]

“On whether the trinity is illogical”

Yes, it is - it’s a mystery, it isn’t meant to be (to human logic, anyway)

 

[zach_dunn]

“On whether the trinity is illogical”

Yes, it is - it’s a mystery, it isn’t meant to be (to human logic, anyway)

We’ve been through this conversation already. It is not illogical. It’s simply not, where these Catholics are getting this idea is the real mystery to me.

Illogical

• Not observing the principles of logic.
• Devoid of logic: senseless

Synonyms: fallacious, invalid, irrational, unreasonable, unsound, weak.
Antonyms: logical, rational, reasonable, sound, valid, well-founded, well-grounded.

I feel sorry for those of you who believe these things about the Holy Trinity.

 

[jonfawkes]

We’ve been through this conversation already. It is not illogical. It’s simply not, where these Catholics are getting this idea is the real mystery to me.

Illogical

• Not observing the principles of logic.
• Devoid of logic: senseless

Synonyms: fallacious, invalid, irrational, unreasonable, unsound, weak.
Antonyms: logical, rational, reasonable, sound, valid, well-founded, well-grounded.

I feel sorry for those of you who believe these things about the Holy Trinity.

This is true of the Trinity

Not observing the principles of logic.

You have said so yourself - we can’t know how it works. How 3 are 1, and 1 is 3. You can speak of essence and personhood… But each person has the essence and the essence is 3 people.

You can’t speak of God without the Trinity being implicit. You can speak of Jesus God the Son, but by making that distinction you are dividing God, which is ok for discussion. We need to do that in order to understand it and talk about it. “We are talking about this person not that one.”

The persons are separate but God is not separate. There aren’t 3 parts to God. There aren’t 3 separate co-equal Gods. There is just God. So when ever you talk about “God” you are talking about all 3, even if you make the distinction of God the Son. God is all 3, always.

It is not logical by our standards that 3=1 and 1=3. God may have some logic to explain it - but we don’t, so we can’t. We can only talk around it.

 

[davidv]

This is true of the Trinity

You have said so yourself - we can’t know how it works. How 3 are 1, and 1 is 3. You can speak of essence and personhood… But each person has the essence and the essence is 3 people.

You can’t speak of God without the Trinity being implicit. You can speak of Jesus God the Son, but by making that distinction you are dividing God, which is ok for discussion. We need to do that in order to understand it and talk about it. “We are talking about this person not that one.”

The persons are separate but God is not separate. There aren’t 3 parts to God. There aren’t 3 separate co-equal Gods. There is just God. So when ever you talk about “God” you are talking about all 3, even if you make the distinction of God the Son. God is all 3, always.

It is not logical by our standards that 3=1 and 1=3. God may have some logic to explain it - but we don’t, so we can’t. We can only talk around it.

This is illogical.

Your last sentence is the logical fallacy of a strawmen. God as a Trinity is not 3=1 and 1=3.

Trying to use illogic to show the Trinity is illogical is highly irrational and not believable.

 

[jonfawkes]

This is illogical.

Your last sentence is the logical fallacy of a strawmen. God as a Trinity is not 3=1 and 1=3.

Trying to use illogic to show the Trinity is illogical is highly irrational and not believable.

That is the Trinity - one essence is three persons. Three persons is one essence. The three persons are separate but can’t be separated. Each one is God entire. It isn’t three co-equal Gods that make up God. 3=1, 1=3.

 

[davidv]

That is the Trinity - one essence is three persons. Three persons is one essence. The three persons are separate but can’t be separated. Each one is God entire. It isn’t three co-equal Gods that make up God. 3=1, 1=3.

False. What you have just claimed is the equivalent to saying 3 apples = 1 orange (3 persons, 1 God). Illogical to the extreme and a strawman representation of the Trinity.

The Trinity is not an equation, it is a relationship of persons.

 

[jeffrey_erwin]

In the Book of Kings it is recorded that the Prohet Micaiah related to King Ahab how the Holy Spirit came forward in the Court of Yahweh to present His plan to trick King Ahab. Thus the Holy Spirit is presented in the Torah as being an aspect of God that can have a distinct personality. Nontheless neither Jews nor Muslims worship the Holy Spirit. They worship the One God (Allah, The God) alone as commanded by Moses. They do not have a “duality.”
The Gentiles that St. Paul evangelized were used to worshipping gods in human forms. To facilitate their conversions, St Paul instructed them to worship Rabbi Yehoshua as God. But this left the problem of what to do with the Judaic god Yahweh. Throwing in the Holy Spirit for good measure, St Paul solved that problem by inventing the Trinity. Was Rabbi Yehoshua God incarnated as man? Personally, I think so. Should that Great and Holy Rabbi be worshipped? He quite clearly said not to do that, but to follow His teachings instead. So is the Trinity a valid concept? Depends on who you are. Christians must follow the teachings of the Church fathers. But for Muslims and Jews the Trinity concept is not understandable, and it is regretable that this teaching tends to create a division between Christians and their brothers of different religions.

 

[jonfawkes]

False. What you have just claimed is the equivalent to saying 3 apples = 1 orange (3 persons, 1 God). Illogical to the extreme and a strawman representation of the Trinity.

The Trinity is not an equation, it is a relationship of persons.

Yes it is a relationship. Three separate persons that can’t be separated. How can something be separate if you can’t separate them? Logic doesn’t give us the answer. God might have the answer but we can’t get it through logic.

 

[davidv]

Yes it is a relationship. Three separate persons that can’t be separated. How can something be separate if you can’t separate them? Logic doesn’t give us the answer. God might have the answer but we can’t get it through logic.

Why does the fact that logic can’t explain it make it illogical?

Also, why do you use the word “separate” when the Church uses “distinct”?

254 The divine persons are really distinct from one another. "God is one but not solitary."86 “Father”, “Son”, “Holy Spirit” are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another: "He is not the Father who is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who is the Father or the Son."87 They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: "It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds."88 The divine Unity is Triune.

Using “separate” is misleading and part of your strawman description of the Trinity.

 

[ivebeenshown]

It is truly a mystery. The toughest statement to get around:

“God in his entire” is the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each “God in his entire.”

Therefore, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit would each be “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

Even further complicating things is when Thomas Aquinas says that in God, person is the same as essence, due to God’s simplicity (person, essence, and existence all the same.)

 

[jonfawkes]

Why does the fact that logic can’t explain it make it illogical?

!!!???!!!

 

[PioYapJr]

Here is my two-cent worth:
Because of our very limited faculty we cannot be expected to understand a mystery. In my opinion, a religion that has no mystery cannot be a revealed religion. That is why science cannot be a religion.
For a stupendous mystery, revealed to us by the Second Person of the Trinity, all that we can hope is to show that it is not illogical through some kind of an analogy. I have been making efforts for such analogy and here are what I have come up with:

1. Science has always recognized that space is three dimensional. Loosely these dimensions are called Length, Width and Depth. These dimensions are distinct from one another but they are not separable. (Please do not complicate this analogy by throwing in Einstein’s fourth dimension which is Time.)
2. In fact, the other analogy that I like best is time. Time has three components Past, Present and Future. No, no, do not think of it as the long past, the instantaneous present and the long future. Rather think of it as the Instantaneous Present. Slice it as one microsecond, say, then intuitively, we find that this slice of time is three-ply. It has a past, a present and a future. No matter how thinly we slice this, it will always consist of three plies. Like the Trinity, we can say that the Past is not the Present, the Present is not the Future etc. And we can extend the analogy further by saying that the Past is like the Father, the Present is like the Son and the Future is like the Holy Spirit. And we can also say that Time exist whole and entire in the wide open space of the universe as well as in the smallest space within the atom. Does that not correspond with our standard description of the nature of God?
   This is just my humble proposal of an analogy.

 

[zach_dunn]

In the Book of Kings it is recorded that the Prohet Micaiah related to King Ahab how the Holy Spirit came forward in the Court of Yahweh to present His plan to trick King Ahab. Thus the Holy Spirit is presented in the Torah as being an aspect of God that can have a distinct personality. Nontheless neither Jews nor Muslims worship the Holy Spirit. They worship the One God (Allah, The God) alone as commanded by Moses. They do not have a “duality.”

Christians worship the One God alone, too . . . there aren’t three gods in Christianity.

The Gentiles that St. Paul evangelized were used to worshipping gods in human forms. To facilitate their conversions, St Paul instructed them to worship Rabbi Yehoshua as God.

He didn’t instruct them this to “facilitate conversion”, it was because it is right to because Jesus is God. Paul was a Pharisee, he was an educated Jew. He didn’t tell a little white lie to the Gentiles to get them to convert, he was teaching them what he himself was taught by Jesus’ Apostles who were in turn taught this by Jesus Himself.

But this left the problem of what to do with the Judaic god Yahweh. Throwing in the Holy Spirit for good measure, St Paul solved that problem by inventing the Trinity.

To me, this sounds like a mockery of the Trinity. So he “[threw] in the Holy Spirit for good measure”? For no reason? Because he thought it sounded cool? There was no problem created by worshipping Jesus, there was nothing “to do” with Yahweh. Yahweh was just as much a Trinity in the Old Testament as He was in the New and is now, it just hadn’t been revealed yet.

Was Rabbi Yehoshua God incarnated as man? Personally, I think so.

And you’re not a Christian . . . why?

Should that Great and Holy Rabbi be worshipped? He quite clearly said not to do that, but to follow His teachings instead.

When did He clearly say not to? It seems that in this passage, He is actually telling His followers to worship Him:

Matthew 28:9
And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Hail!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him.

To me, this is “quite clear” in the other direction. Not to mention the many other instances of people worshipping Him without correction [Mt 2:11; Mk 5:6; Lk 24:52; Jn 9:38]. It is also apparent that worship to men or angels which really points to the fact that Jesus is God (see Acts 10:25-26 and Rev 19:10).

So is the Trinity a valid concept? Depends on who you are. Christians must follow the teachings of the Church fathers. But for Muslims and Jews the Trinity concept is not understandable, and it is regretable that this teaching tends to create a division between Christians and their brothers of different religions.

I wish it wouldn’t divide either, I think everyone should have faith in the Trinity!

 

[PioYapJr]

In my post, I wrote that "In my opinion, a religion that has no mystery cannot be a revealed religion".
Allow me to modify my statement by saying that in my opinion a revealed religion is expected to include some Mysteries in its belief system.

 

[Waiting]

We know that the three Persons of the Trinity are never really separated, although they are three distinct Persons. They act as one. Jesus said, Who sees the Father, sees Me." Each Person is wholly God, not a third of God. It’s futile to try to explain further. I’m satisfied in knowing that the Trinity is a true mystery, not to be fully understood by those on earth.

 

[davidv]

!!!???!!!

Apparently you didn’t understand my question and its point.

The equation you presented (3=1) is a strawman of the Trinity. First you didn’t put the units of measure on either the 3 or the 1 (apparantly presuming that there are the same). The correct description of the Trinity is 3 person in 1 God (the units of measure for the 1 and the 3 are different).