Subject: explain God father son is one |
Bible Note: Jimtheseeker - Respectfully but firmly must I take issue with your analogy, Jim. because it is descriptive not of Trinitarianism but Modalism, which is one of the basic errors into which men have frequently fallen with reference to the doctrine of God. Modalism maintains that there is one God who manifests Himself successively as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but who is not contemporaneously all three. ..... The orthodox doctrine, distinctively and essentially Christian, is called Trinitarianism (Trinity, Triunity) and affirms that there is one God in three Persons. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. There is a distinction between the Persons so that the Father is not the Son, the Father is not the Spirit, and the Son is not the Spirit. Each is a Person. Moreover, the Holy Spirit is never to be envisioned as a mere force or influence, never as an impersonal "It" but always as a personal "He." ...... There are no satisfactory analogies to be made as efforts to explain the Trinity. In trying to make such analogies, man is limited to created things, but there is in all creation nothing comparable with the transcendent God who created all things. ..... Scripture reference: Matthew 3:16,17, in which the Triunity of God is manifest simultaneously in the presence of the Father in the audible blessing and assurance; in the Son in His submission to baptism; and in the Holy Spirit in His anointing of the Son for His role as Messiah. --Hank |