Rationality in the Trinity

Israfil wrote: Seeing how the 'trinity' as a concept was introduced later and formalized by the Orthodox Church, can any of my co-religionist prove, without using their doctrine how the Trinity is logical. I will not use my doctrine (Qur'an) as this would make the discussion rhetorical so I'd like for those who you, who have mastered the philosophy of the trinity, prove logically that the Trinity is true. Think hard because I will critique it! Remember you are our brothers and sisters under ONE GOD therefore this is not a critique on your religion but a friendly and healthy debate, and let any Muslim coming into this discussion respect that and not disrespect anyone here.

It is true that Christians believe in ONE GOD.

You can get views about the logic of the trinity on the Internet.  And some have presented the logical view and some analogies to get the point across in response to your request.

I believe that intelligent Jews understand the logic of the trinity (I have spoken to many) but they reject it.  Rejecting it is different than saying it isn't logical.  We humans are sometimes at a loss to understand the things that God can do and has done.  The virgin birth of Jesus is not logical, but God managed to do it because nothing is too hard for him to do.  We can say that the virgin birth is not logical, but true at the same time.

It is a useless exercise to find fault with trinity analogies.  None of them are perfect, because we cannot explain God by using analogies.  He is beyond that.

Analogies are meant as illustrations of specific points, not complete one-to-one mirrors of an entire reality.

A Christian does not have to be able to explain the trinity.  I look only to Jesus.   What did Jesus say?  Jesus spoke of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

In the Gospel of John Jesus said that the Holy Spirit of God was in the world and he goes on to say that this same Holy Spirit indwells Christian believers.  Can I explain how God's spirit indwells believers?  No. Did Jesus explain how it happens?  No, but Jesus believed it.

All a Christian needs to know is that there is one God and that this God is one Being and that this one God was incarnate in Jesus Christ and that this one God is working today inside or indwelling Christians all over the world.

Angel wrote: George wrote: All a Christian needs to know is that there is one God and that this God is one Being and that this one God was incarnate in Jesus Christ and that this one God is working today inside or indwelling Christians all over the world. Ok, but you might like to explain what you mean by incarnate.  Where does it say in scriptures that God was incarnate in Jesus ? (or that God is in us today)? To say that God was incarnate in Jesus is to say that Jesus became God, and its in correct, I have already meantioned that Jesus never said he was God according to scriptures, he never stated he was. I agreed to your point until I got to that point of incarnation.

You can find articles on the Internet that will help you with the incarnation.

Read the first Chapter of John.  The Word became flesh for starters.

Jesus did not become God. God incarnated Jesus.

I have already meantioned that Jesus never said he was God according to scriptures, he never stated he was.

I disagree with you.  He did not use those exact words, but Jesus made claims that only God can claim.  You can find them on the Internet too.

What faith are you Angel?

OK here is some background on the Trintarianism. I would say it is moronic debating H2O nonsense. A dead human soul can rationalize anything when it comes to justification of his actions stemming from the evil of his soul.  The trinity concept has been the main stay of the socities of of old and new and it is not going away any time soon till Jesus reappears and clears thsi gods combo cz it fits so well in the materialistic and debauched socities. You can see the socities with trinitarian cultic background do have more affinity than with others.

There are souls available to be swayed by greed, and vile is the price for which they sell and debase their souls.

Read on>>>>>>>>>>>

                  The Trinity-Theological Thoughts

         From the earliest ages, the concept of the Great Goddess was a trinity and the model for all subsequent trinities, female, male or mixed.  Anatolian villages in the 7th millennium B.C. worshipped a Goddess in three aspects � as a young woman, a birth-giving matron, and an old woman.  (See, Merlin Stone, When God Was A Woman at 17).  This typical Virgin-Mother-Crone combination was Parvati-Durga-Uma (Kali) in India, Ana-Babd-Macha (the Morrigan) in Iceland, or in Greece Hebe-Hera-Hecate, the three Moerae, the three Gorgons, the three Graeae, the three Horae, etc.  Among the Vikins, the threefold Goddess appeared as the Norns; among the Romans, as the Fates or Fortunae; among the Druids, as Diana Triformis.  The Triple Goddess had more than three: she had hundreds of forms.

Pre-Roman Latium worshipped her as the Capitoline Triad under the collective name of Uni, �The One,� a cognate of yoni.  Her three personae were Juventas the Virgin, Juno the Mother, and Menarva or Minerva the wise Crone.  Under the empire, Juventas was ousted to make room for a masculine member of the trinity, Jupiter.  (See, Georges Dumezil, Archaic Roman Religion at 116).  Some modern scholars refer to the two-female, one-male Capitoline Triad of the later period as �three gods� � as if they might describe a group of two women and one man as �three men.�  (See, J.B. Carter, The Religious Life of Ancient Rome at 26).

Cumont says, �Oriental theologians developed the idea that the world forms a trinity; it is three in one and one in three.�  (See, Franz Cumont, Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans at 69).  The masculine scholar substitutes the neuter �world� for �Goddess,� though they were in a sense synonymous.  It was she who established the Trinitarian form of Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer.  Even though Brahmans evolved a male trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva to play these parts, Tantric scriptures insisted that the Triple Goddess had created these three gods in the first place.  (See, Amaury de Riencourt, Sex and Power in History at 167).

 
Mother of the Greek gods was a trinity composed of Virgin Hebe, Mother Hera, and Crone Hecate; at Stymphalus she was worshipped as Child, Bride, and Widow.  (See, Robert Graves, The Greek Myths at 1, 52).  Each of her personae could be a trinity again, so she could be the Muses or the Ninefold Goddess.  Hecate was called Triformis and shown with three faces, each a lunar phase.  Among the Irish she was the Triple Morrigan, or Morgan, sometimes multiplied into �nine sisters� who kept the Cauldron of Regeneration and ruled the western isle of the dead.  (See, Robert Graves, The White Goddess at 406; Alwyn & Brinely Rees, Celtic Heritage at 193).

 

The Goddess Triformis ruled heaven as Virgin, earth as Mother, and the underworld as Crone, or Hel, or Queen of the Shades.  This was remembered even in Chaucer�s time, for his Palamon invoked her �Three Forms,� Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, Proserpine in hell.  (See, Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales at 81, 511).  The old name of Sicily, Trinacria, invoked her as a �center of the earth� with three realms.

 

Bardic romances abounded in manifestations of the Triple Goddess.  Wayland the Smith married her, after she first appeared to him as three magic doves.  (See, Thomas Keightley, The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and Other Little People at 215)  King Arthur went to Avalon with her.  The triadic Guinevere was another version of her.  Sir Marhaus (Mars) encountered her as the Three Damosels at their magic fountain: the eldest �threesome winters of age, wearing a garland of gold; the second thirty winters of age, wearing a circlet of gold; the youngest fifteen winters of age, wearing a wreath of flowers.�  (See, Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d�Arthur at 1, 115).  Fifteen was the number of the pagan Virgin Kore, the pentacle in the apple.  Mythic virgin mothers, like that of Zoroaster, typically gave birth at the age of fifteen.  Double that was the Mother�s age, double again the age of the Crone.

 

The notion of a trinity appeared during the 14th century B.C., a popular Babylonian trinity was composed of Shamash, Sin, and Ishtar � Sun, Moon, and Star.  In Greece this was repeated as Helios the sun, Selene the Moon, and Aphrodite the star.  A Father-Mother-Son trinity was worshipped at Costopitum as Jupiter Dolichenus, Celestial Brigantia and Salus.  (See, Jack Lindsay, The Origins of Astrology at 112, 328, 375; Dorothy Norman, The Hero at 71).

 

Gnostic versions of the trinity followed the Father-Mother-Son patterns of the contemporary east, with the Holy Ghost recognized as a female Sophia, the Dove, worshipped as the Great Goddess in Constantinople, and viewed by most Gnostics as the Shakti of God.  The Christian God was originally modeled on Far-Eastern heaven-fathers such as Brahma and Dyaus Pitar, all of whom needed their female sources of �Power,� or else they could not act.  (See, Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization at 25)  Therefore, a female member of the triad was essential even to God.  Among Arabian Christians there was apparently a holy trinity of God, Mary, and Jesus, worshipped as an interchangeable replacement for the Egyptian trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Horus.  (See, Geoffrey Ashe, The Virgin at 206).

 

During the Christian era, all-male trinities became popular among Germanic tribes.  Woden, Thor, and Saxnot were worshipped together by the Saxons of the 8th and 9th centuries.  Norsemen called them Odin, Tyr, and Frey.  According to a certain fragmentary myth, the Triple Goddess seems to have burned as a witch.  She had to be burned to ashes three times.  Afterward, youth, beauty, and love in the person of Freya departed from Asgard; and there was war in heaven.  (See, Brian Branston, Gods of the North at 112, 213-14).

 

no it is certainly not new.  it has existed from eternity, in fact.  infidels like to claim that the holy faith of Christ has borrowed from paganism, failing to understand that God came first, before any paganism.  pagan notions are corruptions of the truth, not the inspiration for the truth