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How do you understand the Trinity? (cc)


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I don't understand it. If I did it wouldn't be God.

I'm quoting you ktgrok because you're the latest person to express this opinion, but I'm not singling you out to provide an answer. Anyone else who feels this way is free to answer my question. :)

 

WHY would understanding God make Him no longer God? That's a belief I've never really understood. I mean, I love my husband with all my heart, and feel I know him pretty well, but in no way do I feel I know him 100%, nor do I feel I have to in order to love him. However, if I were to be granted a view of all the ins and outs of what my husband thinks and does and feels, he wouldn't cease being my husband, or being the man I love, or cease being the man who does what he does for his family day in and day out. I'd just have a better understanding of him. Why is it different with God?

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I'm quoting you ktgrok because you're the latest person to express this opinion, but I'm not singling you out to provide an answer. Anyone else who feels this way is free to answer my question. :)

 

WHY would understanding God make Him no longer God? That's a belief I've never really understood. I mean, I love my husband with all my heart, and feel I know him pretty well, but in no way do I feel I know him 100%, nor do I feel I have to in order to love him. However, if I were to be granted a view of all the ins and outs of what my husband thinks and does and feels, he wouldn't cease being my husband, or being the man I love, or cease being the man who does what he does for his family day in and day out. I'd just have a better understanding of him. Why is it different with God?

 

I agree. I think that there are things that we can't fully comprehend about God, but the Trinity is, I think, not one of these. To say that we can't understand something about God is too often a cop-out. I see this excuse used in all facets of Christianity and it very much frustrates me because there are definitely answers for so many questions that Christians are often simply too intellectually lazy to figure out. I hope that does not sound too harsh. I'm not trying to point fingers, but I want to point out that Christians have a responsibility to use the intellect and reason that God has so graciously granted us. One of my favorite quotes is from Galileo, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

 

The Trinity is more like the ice/water/steam comparison. One God, three forms. However, the same God can exist in those three forms simultaneously. There is nothing that we truly can compare the Trinity to because it is entirely unique.

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I'm quoting you ktgrok because you're the latest person to express this opinion, but I'm not singling you out to provide an answer. Anyone else who feels this way is free to answer my question. :)

 

WHY would understanding God make Him no longer God? That's a belief I've never really understood. I mean, I love my husband with all my heart, and feel I know him pretty well, but in no way do I feel I know him 100%, nor do I feel I have to in order to love him. However, if I were to be granted a view of all the ins and outs of what my husband thinks and does and feels, he wouldn't cease being my husband, or being the man I love, or cease being the man who does what he does for his family day in and day out. I'd just have a better understanding of him. Why is it different with God?

 

 

Well, my answer would be that, fundamentally, my dh and I are the same kind of being. We're created, human, fallible, finite beings. And even though we are finite, we still don't know everything about each other, for good or bad. God is uncreated, other-than-human, infallible, infinite. He is so utterly of a different order than we are that to draw a comparison between our relationships with our husbands and our relationships with the divine is futile. If God is infinite, then our finite minds, definitionally, can not grasp Him. I do not take this to mean that we should not stretch to the very limits of our understanding to try understand Him in the best way and to the greatest extent that we can; I mean only that there will be aspects of Him that are and will always be beyond us. If we can't individually know and understand all of the entirety of the myriad areas of finite human knowledge, how can we possibly expect to understand the entire infinity that is God? As I see it, the Mystery of the Trinity is one of the areas we can fully neither apprehend nor comprehend.

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I agree that we do not know all there is to know about God, and that we can not NOW understand all there is to know about God due to the limitations of our mortal state, but I believe that we can know God, and know about God completely at some point in the future beyond this life. Jesus taught that eternal life IS to know God, and Paul wrote that we will see face to face, and know as we are known. Since God knows us completely, I believe this means we can know God as completely as God knows us.

 

John 17: 3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

 

1 Cor. 13: 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

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This is how the Orthodox Church has shown the Trinity for most of its history. Three candles one flame. But this is not a perfect Icon of the Trinity either.

 

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR0smxhI4OS1aNZ1twTqHIHoYKoaVZxZWYp6mI0Zh6mkrm4pRc&t=1&usg=__KQx__nmg3khAcp5c2Pckn-Vb9vA=

 

We can know a lot about the Trinity or more accurately we can know a lot about what the Trinity is not. God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is uncreated, unchanging, undivided, ineffable, without beginning, without end etc. The more we know about the Trinity the easier it is to have a true relationship with God. Just like it would be easier to have a relationship with anyone you know well. But even in those relationships it is only possible to know what they reveal to you.

 

It is easy to give up and not try to understand but it is also tempting to go over board on trying to understand and start making stuff up.

Edited by Father of Pearl
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