Triune God, modalism, or are you heretic?

[Cal]

Originally Posted by Ohio

I like expressions like this -- "the Son is the Spirit, yet He is not" -- simply because the Bible basically says both of these. Expressions like this one acknowledges that we understand our God is three-one, yet He is inexhaustible, beyond our ability to understand.

The Son is the Spirit in the sense that both are God and there is one God. He is not the Spirit in the sense of obliterating any personal distinction between the two.

The Spirit didn't die on the cross for our sins. The Son did. When God stepped into time as a human being only the Son was incarnated.

Imagine it like a three-dimensional being stepping into a two-dimensional world. He cannot exist in the two-dimensional world as a three-dimensional being. Yet he can adapt to it because his three-dimensional world is built upon two-dimensional principles. God is like a cube made of of six sides (only he has three). When the cube steps into the two-dimensional world, it appears as one square, yet is still connected to the rest of the cube. Likewise when God stepped into our world, he appeared as one Person--the Son--yet still part of the Trinity.

The beings in the two-dimensional world can understand the cube as a square, but they can never quite fathom it as a cube, because that plane is totally beyond their experience and points of reference.

I think the Trinity works something like that, only on a personal scale. God is one being that is three persons, like the cube is one figure while being six squares. Two-dimensional beings cannot understand a cube, and won't be able to until they are somehow elevated to the three-dimensional world. Likewise we really can't imagine the Trinity from our frame of reference either.

Any attempt to explain it creates paradoxes. Like when viewing a cube from two-dimensions, some of the angles appear as if they are not 90 degrees when they are 90 degrees. Yet when you adjust the angles to all be 90 degrees, then the figure is no longer a cube. So one says things like "that angle is not 90 degrees, but it is 90 degrees." Likewise with the Trinity we say equally strange-sounding things like "the Son is the Spirit, yet He is not."

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Igzy

The Son is the Spirit in the sense that both are God and there is one God. He is not the Spirit in the sense of obliterating any personal distinction between the two.

The Spirit didn't die on the cross for our sins. The Son did. When God stepped into time as a human being only the Son was incarnated.

My understanding goes only as far as indicated in 2 Cor 3.17 and other scripture. It should in no way imply that Jesus did not die on the cross, nor that the Spirit did.

It seems Trinity theology always includes excessive inference. I have always wondered why "all in Asia turned away from Paul." Could it be something so ridiculous as this verse? Could his detractors have branded him a cult heretic for saying "Now the Lord is the Spirit?"

[Cal]

Originally Posted by Ohio

My understanding goes only as far as indicated in 2 Cor 3.17 and other scripture. It should in no way imply that Jesus did not die on the cross, nor that the Spirit did.

It seems Trinity theology always includes excessive inference. I have always wondered why "all in Asia turned away from Paul." Could it be something so ridiculous as this verse? Could his detractors have branded him a cult heretic for saying "Now the Lord is the Spirit?"

zeek said something interesting. He said that conceptualizing (by that I take him to mean "verbalizing") the Trinity always leads to implying some kind of heresy. Maybe that's why the NT never doctrinalizes the Trinity.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Igzy

zeek said something interesting. He said that conceptualizing (by that I take him to mean "verbalizing") the Trinity always leads to implying some kind of heresy. Maybe that's why the NT never doctrinalizes the Trinity.

My personal feeling is that God allows a wide latitude of beliefs in His children concerning how they understand Him. Whether we visualize a distinct and separate Father, Son, and "Uncle Ghost" or lean in the direction of nothing but "Jesus only," has little bearing on His love towards us.

It is those who embrace false gods and reject the sacrifice of His own Beloved Son on the cross, who are the unbelieving ones who must pay the price for their own sins.

zeek has a point. Any attempt to doctrinally systematize who God is will always be labeled as errant.

[UntoHim]

http://rzim.vo.llnwd.net/o43/MP3/LMPT/LMP20111022.mp3

Very good message. I would encourage anybody to listen to whole message (it's only 26 minutes), then go back and listen to this part about the Trinity again, maybe two or three times. Zacharias does a very unique and interesting treatment of the Trinity within this message. I have transcribed the applicable part below. This part starts about half way through the message. If you can run it through Real Audio it starts at about the 12:00 minute mark.

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You know, people often say to us, how does one defend the Trinity? Well, how does one defend life? You think we understand life? Yeah, yeah a man and woman come together and the sperm and the egg get together, and then nine months later you’ve got a little life. Oh yeah, we have understood it. Sure. As Francis Collins said, when you look at 3.1 billion bits of information you find out how much there is really we don’t know.

So what I want to say to you is this: Why is it – think with me now – why is it that you and I always lunge towards the relational. Lee Iacocca said in his book straight talk, “here I am in the twilight years of my life still wondering what it’s all about. This much I know, fame and fortune are for the birds!” He said that. He said “but then I look at my children, and I see them, and I know I love them. And I say to myself if you haven’t love your own family what have you really accomplished in life. If you’ve been the head of an automotive empire, and your name is a household name, and your bank account is multiplied millions of times, and you say I look at my children and I say to myself I love them, and if you haven’t loved them what have you really accomplished in life.” You know what he is telling me? The longing in your heart and mine is for a relationship.

And only in the Trinity do you see the reality of God Who is a being in relationship, and we are made after His own image. And until we are related to Him and related to one another, we will never find the fulfillment in the isolated ego of the “I”. God has made us in His own image. You know, when you think of it for just a moment, when a woman is impregnated and at that given moment there are really three DNAs in her body - Husbands, hers and the child’s…and we think we understand it. If there is the possibility with each added dimension, from the first to the second to the third, ultimately from the infinitude to infinitude, is it really that difficult for God to be one in one sense and three in another sense?

Think of it in another way. Suppose God was not a trinity. Suppose God is a monad, say in as in other concepts. Let me ask you this: Can you really say God is love? Who is He loving? Can you really say God spoke. Who is He speaking to? You end up with an entity who needs other entities in order to fulfill his own proclivities! And that’s why the greatest search of philosophy has always been to find unity in diversity. How do you find unity in diversity? That’s why, by the way, the Greeks came up with universities, to find unity in diversity.

The only way you can find unity and diversity is in the community of the Trinity, where God is a being in relationship, and you and I hunger after relationships. As Augustine(?) said “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee” This concept of the Trinity is very unique in the Christian faith.(Poster takes full responsibility for the accuracy of this transcription)

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Igzy

Your example is good. I believe the universe is filled with other examples to also help us understand God. We may one day discover an infinite number of applicable analogies concerning the Trinity.

I do believe I am a little different from most believers, however, especially the forum apologetics, concerning the future and the New Jerusalem. I believe that we all will be as men in the resurrection, and God Himself will look like all the rest of us, and His physical appearance will be as He appeared to the disciples, with 5 wounds still evident for eternity, but without a halo or shining lights radiating out. Neither will there be a throne with the Father sitting on it for us to see.

[Cal]

Originally Posted by Ohio

Your example is good. I believe the universe is filled with other examples to also help us understand God. We may one day discover an infinite number of applicable analogies concerning the Trinity.

Like the wave-particle duality of light.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc