Explaining the Trinity

[azure eyes]

NOTE: This is just an in depth thought about explaining the trinity. If you think there is something wrong with my explanation or have something to make it more detailed please let me know that I can review it and fix it if necessary.





Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in OUR image, according to OUR likeness...

When God said this, he did not mean just man's physical appearance, but that he shall have three parts. The body, soul and spirit just as God is made of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Son (Jesus) was his physical being just as we have a physical body. A physical human body Is basically useless without a means to communicate which requires a soul.
John 7:16 Jesus responded to them, “What I teach doesn't come from me but from the one who sent me. This would imply his father.

The Father represents his soul, the mind, emotion, and will of God. The Father guided Jesus during his time on earth as Jesus mentioned multiple times.

The Holy Spirit is his divinity and Holiness, It also is how our spirits are able to come into contact with God in a spiritual level.

[Aaron Massey]

How does one make a distinction between spirit and soul though?

[Jem]

What do the original languages of the Bible have to say about the "soul" and "spirit"? Some assume they mean the same thing.  Do they?

Before assuming that the Bible teaches a trinity, perhaps we should understand who the Father was to the Jews.
How many "parts" to God were there in the Jewish understanding? (Deut 6:4) What the Jewish scriptures taught, is what Jesus taught.

The "us" in Gen 1:27 is the Father and his Master Workman. (Prov 8:22, 30)

God's spirit is nowhere spoken about as a third part of God. The son is nowhere spoken of as a second part of God. Nowhere is God himself spoken of as divided into three entities in one Godhead. The Jews did not know such a God.

Since there is "God the Father" spoken of many times in the Christian scriptures, don't you find it strange that "God the Son" and "God the Holy Spirit" are never mentioned?....not even once. 

In prayer Jesus said "Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

So Jesus said that knowing the Father and the son was the way to eternal life, but no holy spirit is mentioned here. If 'he' is co-equal with the Father and the son, why do we not need to know 'him'?

Jesus is often spoken of as being 'at God's right hand', but nowhere is the holy spirit spoken of as being at his left. There are so many occasions where the Father and son are together without the presence of the holy spirit.

What do you make of that? 

[Irrational]

Guys, the Trinity is meant to be a mystery. It's not meant to make sense.

The main reason why Bible-believing Christians are compelled to believe in it is because it's the best concept that a universal interpretation of the Bible as God's inerrant and infallible word could come up with concerning the confusion arising from all the allusions to Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit being God.

[Maxximiliann]

Except that only The Father, Jehovah, is ontically God -
 

• "There is actually to us one God the Father." - 1 Corinthians 8:6
• "And now, O Jehovah, you are our Father." - Isaiah 64:8
• "You, O Jehovah, are our Father." - Isaiah 63:16
• "Is it to Jehovah that YOU keep doing this way, O people stupid and not wise? Is he not your Father[?]" - Deuteronomy 32:6 (Bracket mine.)
• "You are worthy, Jehovah, even our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power because you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created.”" - Revelation 4:11
• "Do not call anyone YOUR father on earth, for one is YOUR Father, the heavenly One." - Matthew 23:9
• "“Is it not one father that all of us have? Is it not one God that has created us?" - Malachi 2:10
• "Know that Jehovah is God." - Psalm 100:3
• "Jehovah is in truth God.” - Jeremiah 10:10

[swiatlo]

My favourite explanation I use (when talking to JWs) is a geometrical. A picture talks very well.

If a human person is represented by a line, then God (YHWH) is represented as a triangle where each side (line) of a triangle is a person of the Trinity.

 

[Maxximiliann]

My favourite explanation I use (when talking to JWs) is a geometrical. A picture talks very well.

If a human person is represented by a line, then God (YHWH) is represented as a triangle where each side (line) of a triangle is a person of the Trinity.

 

Before we get rolling I need to ask, which style of the Athanasian Creed do you subscribe to and why? Is it:
 
1. Modalism
 
2. Latin Trinitarianism
2.1 Divine Life Stream Theories
2.2 Relative Identity Theories
 
3. Social Trinitarianism
3.1 Functional Monotheist Social Trinitarianism
3.2 Trinity Monotheist Social Trinitarianism
3.3 Perichoretic Monotheist Social Trinitarianism
3.4 Group Mind Monotheist Social Trinitarianism
 
4. Mysterianism
4.1 Negative Mysterianism
4.2 Positive Mysterianism
 

[swiatlo]

I don't subscribe to Athanasian Creed. This creed represents "the catholic faith which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved". Seems too complicated and long to be taken as a condition for salvation. One of criminals who hung with Jesus only had faith in Him which he confessed. I doubt he was familiar with the Trinity concept or belonged to the organisation that saves.
Out of the options you give I don't know all of them well enough to pick one. Maybe you point out which one I am... (Three-self Theories I guess)?

[Aaron Massey]

This really does nothing in describing the trinty.  It just shows what the critics are allready explaing, God is Monotheistic, he is not 3 humans represented by straight lines, after which we need to stretch out imagination to fathom 3 persons as one person all talking to each other in the same way we allready do.

1: i ask question to myself.
2: i answer question to myself in my head.
3: i speak Answer as word.

Three actions all with in myself, i could be a trinity, i would not even know it.