Subject: Is Belief in the Trinity Required? |
Bible Note: A word about understanding the trinity, We need to realise when we expect people to receive the notion of the trinity, we don't expect very much understanding at all. I would never expect a new believer to use terms like co-equal, begotten not born, same substance, or any such thing. At the end of the day the witness of scripture just hits us with two things that baffle us. 1. The scripture speaks so strongly about the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that you would be absolutely ready to say that they are just the exact same person...yet you just can't because scripture speaks of them being truely distinct. 2. Scripture speaks so clearly of them being distinct people with their own distinct roles and actions that you are about ready to confess that they are three Gods...yet you can't, because so much scripture teaches that they are one. Our words, are an attempt to explain this baffling puzzle. We can NEVER expect a person to understand how this can be in order to be saved. We accept it only because we can't get away from it. It is like the two walls of the red sea that forces us to walk the dry path. Should we turn to the right and try to say that God is a single person, we are faced with the dialogues between the Father and the Son driving us to utter nonsense. We loose all ability to explain passages such as "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Eph 1:3) Should we turn to the left hand and say that they are absolutely distinct persons and say they are not one, we are confronted with passages saying: 2Co 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Joh 14:9 Jesus *said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Joh 14:7 "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him." Scripture walls us in to speaking the way we do. God is one and God is three, I do not understand what I say but I violate scripture the moment I deny it. This then is what we look for in a Christian, not understanding, but an unwillingness to deny what scripture teaches. In Christ, Beja |