Doctrine of the Trinity - Part 1

Ok....so I finally decided that I should do this. I am basically taking this material from a study that I taught at my church from the Westminster Confession of Faith. You can view the material on www.geocities.com/prchdaword/index.html just click under "westminster Confession of Faith Study" and you will find my study on the Trinity.

I'm particularly doing this to explain what Trinitarians, like myself, believe and why we believe it. I have seen some recent videos especially attacking the deity of Jesus Christ and this doctrine that have been quite "disturbing" to say the least....

Hope you enjoy

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[Szygyify]

Is God the Father God all by himself or does he need the Son and the Holy Spirit to be God? Why can we Sin against Jesus but not against The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit superior to Jesus? Since Jesus is God the Son equally God with the Father why couldn't he tell his disciples when he would be returning to judge the world? Did he turn his divine/human nature on and off out of foreknowledge or out of ignorance?

[prchdaword]

@Szygyify As per blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, as I understand it, the work of the Holy Spirit is to apply the work of Christ to a person in order to bring about actual redemption. Jesus secures and is the basis for redemption, but it is not applied to all by the virtue of it being done. Rather, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring this to fruition in a person. Hence, not because the person of the Spirit is greater than JEsus, but because of the role that the spirit has to bring and apply

[prchdaword]

@Szygyify ...redemption to a person, is that a great sin which there is no forgiveness. in other words, since the work of the Spirit is absolutely necessary to salvation (you MUST be born again, Jesus said) to reject the Spirit of God is to reject the only person through whom the benefits of salvation come, including forgiveness. So its not that the Spirit is greater, its just that he brings to life in us the work that Christ did in his life, death and resurrection.

[prchdaword]

@Szygyify I think Jesus did tell his disciples that he would come back to judge the living and the dead....in Matthew 24:25-31 Jesus refers to himself as the "Son of Man' who would come back on the clouds which is an allusion to Daniel 7:13 in which the 'son of man" would come to rule and reign over the whole earth and judge wicked kingdoms against his own. In Acts 2:36 this statement was understood to mean that Jesus was their judge. Other NT writings bear this out as well.

[prchdaword]

@Szygyify as per the last questions, I do not claim to fully know how jesus functioned as fully human and fully divine at the same time but only believe Scripture that he was both. I know as fully human he made himself fully dependent upon God to be for us what we could not. If you want to argue that Jesus was only fully human and not fully God, then we do not have a perfect savior who really stood as one of us in our place and you and I are still in our sins.

[prchdaword]

@Szygyify In hebrews 2:17 argues that he had to be made like us in "every respect" in order to be a perfect high priest for us, so to the degree that you do not allow for the full humanity or the fully divinity of Christ in one and the same person of Jesus Christ, to that degree you do not have a full and perfect savior my friend. That is the significance of the Trinity and the incarnation of Christ.

[prchdaword]

@Szygyify ...but by their roles in redemption that they have freely taken upon themselves. Hence, in regards not to their attributes or dignity, but their roles, the Father is designated as decreeing, the Son as doing (accomplishing) and the Spirit as applying. This is referred to as the economic Trinity (God in his works of creation and redemption), which is distinguished from the Ontological Trinity (God in his Essence).

[prchdaword]

@Szygyify so in a sense, the questions misses the understanding of the doctrine of Trinity, and the simplicity of God in that God is not composed of parts. The Father is not 1/3 God, nor the Son 1/3 God and the Spirit 1/3 God....each person shares fully and completely in the one Being, in the essential nature that is God.

But yet, there is distinction between their persons. We distinguish these persons not by their attributes because they all have the same attributes....

[prchdaword]

@Szygyify That's a really great question. Let me do my best....first, God does not "need" the Son and the Holy Spirit because God lacks nothing, but God is in his essential nature, Trinitarian. That is to say, you wouldn't even have the Father is there were no Son and no Holy Spirit if I understand this correctly. In another way of saying it, God is Trinity in all possible worlds. He cannot not exist as a Trinity. But God is not in "need" or is composed of "parts" that make him God.

[cubed07]

I think it's strange that denial of the trinity is supported by all religions of the world. The muslim, oneness, J.W., mormonism, seven day adeventist, etc all agree that the trinity is false and they substitute their own beliefs into what they think the Bible says. Anything that is so called truth would be hated by all other religions or taught against in some way, not agreed upon. This I believe is a very good reason why the trinity is truth if not because it's so rapidly attacked.