When was the Trinity revealed

MooseJam

I have a question if you please - non loaded

When was the Trinity revealed ? it's just that Christians and Jews share much of the old testament but their respective understanding of God is very different , Christians believing in the Trinity and Jews in one God, so it seems odd that they can share books, was God not revealed as a Trinity in the old testament and if not why not, also is the Holy Spirit mentioned in the old testament ?

thx

Fanny Cradock

MooseJam wrote: »

I have a question if you please - non loaded

When was the Trinity revealed ? it's just that Christians and Jews share much of the old testament but their respective understanding of God is very different , Christians believing in the Trinity and Jews in one God, so it seems odd that they can share books, was God not revealed as a Trinity in the old testament and if not why not, also is the Holy Spirit mentioned in the old testament ?

thx

Christians also believe in one God.

MooseJam

Yes but it's one God made up of three people, whereas the jews believe in one God one person, so it's strange that you share books, was the concept of the Father Son and Holy Spirit only mentioned in the new testament and if so why wasn't is mentioned in the old testament as it's a very important facet of belief I would have thought.

santing

MooseJam wrote: »

Yes but it's one God made up of three people, whereas the jews believe in one God one person, so it's strange that you share books, was the concept of the Father Son and Holy Spirit only mentioned in the new testament and if so why wasn't is mentioned in the old testament as it's a very important facet of belief I would have thought.

The Bible indicates that the revelation of God is gradually, and God is fully revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament there is no definitve indication of the Trinity or Triune God, but if you know the full revelation of God you can see the Trinity revealed in many OT passages, beginning with Gods name "Elohim" - which is plural, so more than 2 - and the usage of plural for God (Gen 1: "Let us"), in many other places such as Psalm 102:

Jesus:
He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days. "O my God," I say, "take me not away in the midst of my days"
(Psa 102:23-24a ESV)
God:-- "you whose years endure throughout all generations! Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall dwell secure; their offspring shall be established before you.
(Psa 102:24b-28 ESV)

Pompey Magnus

santing wrote: »

In the Old Testament there is no definitve indication of the Trinity or Triune God,

Also there is no definite indication of the concept of one God made up of three equal persons in the New Testament (apart from 1 John 5:7-8 which is a Christian forgery not found in any Greek manuscript of the New Testament prior to the 16th Century).

PDN

Charco wrote: »

Also there is no definite indication of the concept of one God made up of three equal persons in the New Testament (apart from 1 John 5:7-8 which is a Christian forgery not found in any Greek manuscript of the New Testament prior to the 16th Century).

Bit of a red herring there, since modern translations and printings of the Bible do not include any reference to the Father, Son and Spirit in 1 John 5:7-8.

There is no one place in the New Testament where the doctrine of the Trinity is summed up in one verse, but it is quite wrong to say that there is no definite indication of the doctrine in the NT. The Trinity, like many other Christian beliefs, is indicated in that the various parts of the doctrine are clearly stated in the NT. Biblical theology is not a childish collecting of proof texts, but rather an examination of truth as it is expressed and revealed througout the entire 66 books of the Bible.

The NT reveals the following:
1. That the Father is God, the Son is God and the Spirit is God.
2. That these three Persons are distinct (ie the Son is not the Holy Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father etc.)
3. That there is only one God.
4. That God is infinite and all-powerful (therefore there can be no grading the Persons of the Trinity where one is lesser than another).

The Trinity is the only doctrine that remains faithful to all of the above 4 revealed truths. The first Christians were Jews who, because of their mindset, were not given to the kind of metaphysical speculation that would try to figure out how all 4 things could be true at once. Hebraic thought can tolerate a fair degree of ambiguity and mystery. However, once the Gospel began to spread among Greeks, then people began to try to describe the relationship between the Father and the Son in more detail. These attempts at Christology were usually defective because they violated one of the above 4 revealed truths. So, at first, the Church was more occupied with refuting false speculations than anything else. Eventually they got sick of people asking, "Well, if what Sabellius teaches is heresy, then what exactly is the relationship between the Son and the Father?" Therefore the finest minds in Christianity put their heads together and formulated the doctrine of the Trinity as it is still held by churches today - and, IMHO, it is the only explanation that remains faithful to the 4 revealed propositions about God.

JimiTime

Charco wrote: »

Also there is no definite indication of the concept of one God made up of three equal persons in the New Testament (apart from 1 John 5:7-8 which is a Christian forgery not found in any Greek manuscript of the New Testament prior to the 16th Century).

There is definately indications of a special relationship. I do hate the phrase 'trinity' when referring to God though. It's such an inappropriate term when referring to God IMO.

Pompey Magnus

PDN wrote: »

That God is infinite and all-powerful (therefore there can be no grading the Persons of the Trinity where one is lesser than another).

Jesus did say though that "The Father is greater than I" and he also claimed that the Father had access to knowledge that he did not have "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father".

These were arguments used by early non-Trinitarian Christians against the concept of the Trinity in which three equal beings made up the one God and the arguments are based on revealed truths found in Scripture, just like those arguments used in favour of the Trinity.

The question should be asked though, if the New Testament does indeed contain adequate evidence to support the concept of the Trinity ahead of alternative explanations, then why did early Trinitarian Christians need to corrupt part of their own Scripture by adding a faked explicit explanation of the doctrine in 1 John 5:7-8?

PDN

Charco wrote: »

Jesus did say though that "The Father is greater than I" and he also claimed that the Father had access to knowledge that he did not have "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father".

Indeed, and that is best explained by not violating the 4 revealed propositions about God that I referred to above. This brings us to 2 theological terms:
a) The Economic Trinity refers to the fact that the three Persons within the Trinity freely chose to play particular roles in order to implement God's plan for mankind's redemption and salvation. So the Son willingly subordinated Himself to the Father in order to be the Suffering Servant who would die for the sins of the people.
b) Kenosis refers to the fact that God the Son emptied Himself of many of His divine attributes during His Incarnation (Philippians 2:5-8). When He became a human baby He was not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent.

The question should be asked though, if the New Testament does indeed contain adequate evidence to support the concept of the Trinity ahead of alternative explanations, then why did early Trinitarian Christians need to corrupt part of their own Scripture by adding a faked explicit explanation of the doctrine in 1 John 5:7-8?

There's no need to jump to conclusions of fakery or forgery. Christians have always scribbled explanatory notes in the margins of their Bibles. In the days before the printing press a scribe could easily have copied such a note by mistake, thinking it was part of the actual text. Or it may have been intended as an explanatory note (like the footnotes that we add to modern reprints of old books today).

We do know that most scriptoria had quality control systems to stop such things happening (Robin loves to refer to one old manuscript that shows evidence of the quality control in action) but in 1 John 5 it would appear that this one slipped through the net, only to be identified and excised much later in history (which is precisely why Christians practice textual criticism).

Zombrex

PDN wrote: »

Indeed, and that is best explained by not violating the 4 revealed propositions about God that I referred to above.

Why?

What New Testament verse supports the assert that "therefore there can be no grading the Persons of the Trinity where one is lesser than another" that over rules Jesus saying the Father is greater than the Son (he is refering to the Son rather than his current state, correct?)

Genuine question, not following this at all.

Pompey Magnus

PDN wrote: »

b) Kenosis refers to the fact that God the Son emptied Himself of many of His divine attributes during His Incarnation (Philippians 2:5-8). When He became a human baby He was not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent.

If this were the explanation then would Jesus not have said ""No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father and the Holy Spirit".

There's no need to jump to conclusions of fakery or forgery. Christians have always scribbled explanatory notes in the margins of their Bibles.

I don't think it is an unfair conclusion to reach, we know that the question of the true nature of the relationship between Jesus and God was hotly contested in early Christianity and we also know from both Christian sources and non-Christian sources that there were frequent alterations made to scripture in order to suit particular theological arguments.

So knowing that Christians did add passages to scripture in order to give themselves ammunition in hotly contested theological arguments, and knowing that the nature of God was one such hotly contested argument, when we find a passage in Latin manuscripts which was not present in any of the older Greek manuscripts and this extra passage explicitly supports one side of the argument it is logical to conclude that the passage was a forgery specifically intended to be taken as being original to the Gospel.

We do know that most scriptoria had quality control systems to stop such things happening (Robin loves to refer to one old manuscript that shows evidence of the quality control in action) but in 1 John 5 it would appear that this one slipped through the net, only to be identified and excised much later in history (which is precisely why Christians practice textual criticism).

We only find the scriptoria arising in the early Forth Century, for the previous roughly 250 years the Christian writings were produced by individual members of communities with varying degrees of education and without any kind of quality control systems in place.

As a result, even though the later professional Christian scribes who worked in the scriptoria may have produced accurate copies of the New Testament, their manuscripts were less reliable than the earlier amateur copies which we know were frequently corrupted. This is because the professional scribes were only faithfully copying what the amateur scribes had written before them, not what the original authors had written, thereby reproducing the unoriginal errors to the text.

That is why I take with a grain of salt the Christian claims of high quality control systems being in place to prevent forgery.

JimiTime

I used to be anti-trinity, but I realised after discussing it here and elsewhere, that the reality is, even pro-trinity folk seem to be a tad confused about what they're talking about. IMO, we don't fully understand the nature of this relationship. I'm not pro or anti trinity now. I believe in God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and The Holy Spirit. Calling God 'the holy trinity' though, just sounds....wrong. Its like its an object. It just sounds so disrespectful IMO. There is most definately a oneness between the 3 beings, but just deciding that you know what it is is unwise IMO. Telling people that they are not real Christians unless they accept this doctrine, is an awful thing IMO and something I experienced when I was anti-trinity. One can still accept Jesus as The Son of God, our King and Lord etc, without having to talk about trinities.

Jesus: Who do you say I am?
Me: You are the prophesised Christ, who died and was raised up in 3 days. Son of the Most High God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

If someone holds Christ in such a view, IMO, all the rest is just theological dots and crosses.