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As an infrequent visitor to the religion section on FR, your discussion of the trinity is interesting to me, at least in its familiarity. I've had this debate countless times with other people, in other words.

I thought you might find this verse of interest:

Isa 43:11 - I, [even] I, [am] the LORD; and beside me [there is] no saviour.

Clearly this states that God is the only Savior, yet we also know Jesus as our Savior. To me, if anything "proves" the Trinity, this is it.

Comments welcome but I rarely debate my faith anymore. I like to read and learn others', but ultimately my faith is between me and God. I thought you might find this interesting though.

Thanks,

The issue is not proving Trinity. The issue is that, while biblical text suggests and even explicitly states the three Persons of the Trinity, their relative existance with respect to each other (Divine Economy) is not made manifest. Early theologians realized that the Father (Wisdom) has monarchy in the Trinity since everything comes from Him (First Cause), and that the Wisdom is expressed by the Word (generate, not created, Son), whose Sonship is established by this one-way relationship. The Spirit of the Widsom, which proceeds from the Father as well, and from the Father only, becomes manifest through the Word, just as your mind generates your words and through them your character becomes manifest.

Later addition of precedence of the Holy Ghost in the words "and through the Son" (Filioque), which was almost exclusively done by Western (Latin) Christians suggests two causes and two sources, which is contrary to Cghristian belief in the monarchichal relationship of the Father.

Faced with early heresies related to the natures of the Son, the Church clarified theological concepts of Trinity in the first two Ecumenical Councils (Nicene and Constantinople) and formalized the Faith by the now famous complete Nicene Creed. Unfortunately, the Latin side of the Church continued to use the confusing and potentially miselading Filoque to this day.

None of this will be found in the Bible, but is a product of the early Fathers' knowledge of Faith through written documents and Tradition that contains the written and unwritten truths and mysteries of our Lord (for not everything the Lord taught the Apostles was written down, but passed to the succeding bishops in the form of Tradition).

Although the Portestants claim that all their knowledge of God comes from the Scriptures, they also know that profane sources are used to clarify the Bible and that to a large extent the Protestants also rely on a sort of their own tradition rather than a completely individual interpretation of the Bible.

If sola scriptura were even a possiblity for the first 1800 years of Christianity (when the Bible was largely unavailable to most people, and when the vast majority of believers couldn't even read) then there would be no need for Protestant churches -- since everyone could satisfy his or her religious needs and find all the answers simply by reading the Book. The truth is that the very people who propose the idea that all you need is the Bible seem to preach more and write more about the faith for the faithful than the pre-Protestant Chrisitan churches.