Quote:
Originally Posted by Drake
God is Triune. Three One. Really three. Really one. Not three masks. Not three modes.
The three (Father, Son, Spirit) are not three entities nor three beings. Period. They are Three Persons if by Persons you do not mean three beings. Earlier you said they were three beings or entities. They are not.
There is One God. Three Persons but One God.
If you agree with that then you and I agree on the definition of the Trinity. And if you hold that view you also agree with RC Sproul. And as distasteful as you will find this, you also will be in agreement with Witness Lee's view.
And that my colleague is where you will stumble and prefer to drive into the ditch of tritheism in a vain attempt to distance yourself from that "little sect".
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I would say that we mostly agree.
Our disagreement comes at your inability to accept that three persons (beings) can be a single God rather than three gods. And you trot out the "tritheism" charge when I say that.
But the Trinitarian belief is that tritheism is the belief in three separate gods while the Trinitarian belief is that there are Three Persons that constitute one God. And in saying that, it is specific that:
- The Father is not the Son nor the Spirit, but is God.
- The Son is not the Father nor the Spirit, but is God.
- The Spirit is not the Father nor the Son, but is God.
- These three constitute a single God that is joined through the substance of their being, not the uniting into one "person." That substance is referred to as "essence." (this is my paraphrase)
You consistently have stated that believing that there are three distinct persons is tritheism. You may think that this is true, but in doing so, you accept a different definition of tritheism because the Trinitarian doctrine specifically believes in three distinct persons who are One God. Not One God who is three "almost persons."
The problem with your definition is that it is different from what has been provided since at least the 3rd century (roughly the time of the first use of the term "Trinity" to refer to the Three nature of the One God). Therefore you may like your definition better, but just because you like it better and declare it to be correct, you can't just tell everyone else that they are wrong because you don't like their definition. If there is something wrong with the definitions that already exist, you need to provide convincing evidence that our definition is wrong. Otherwise you need to go home and rethink it all.