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Cyc brought up a good topic for a serious debate. Please let's focus on this topic alone.

CYC: I believe what the Scriptures teach and I do not believe the Scriptures support the trinity doctrine.

Thank you boatbums for the suggestion to have a separate thread.

It is manifest that a dogma so mysterious presupposes a Divine revelation. When the fact of revelation, understood in its full sense as the speech of God to man, is no longer admitted, the rejection of the doctrine follows as a necessary consequence. For this reason it has no place in the Liberal Protestantism of today.

Any group that denies the Trinity cannot be considered Christian, let alone Protestant. As your article points out, the scriptures are filled with evidence. To deny the Trinity is to not understand the Word of God.

Other threads bearing on the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit:

The Blessed Trinity {Ecumenical}
A Mystery for Eternity (Reflection on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity)
On the Trinity (Angelus Address from 5/30/2010)
Mystery of the Trinity
The Trinity: More Than Just Doctrine
Origen on the Trinity: A Man Ahead of His Time
Why Mormon Baptism Is Invalid: Sect´s Concept of the Trinity Differs from Christian Notion
Radio Replies First Volume - The Holy Trinity
‘We live to love and be loved,’ teaches Pope while reflecting on Trinity (absolutely beautiful!)

Deathbed Request: 'Tell me About the Trinity’
Catholic Doctrine on the Holy Trinity
The Most Holy Trinity
What You [Catholics] Need to Know: Trinity [Catholic/Orthodox Caucus]
The Holy Trinity (excerpt from the Light of Faith by St. Thomas Aquinas)
The Concept of the Most Holy Trinity - The Relationship between the Three Persons in One God
A Brief Catechism for Adults - Lesson 3: God and the Holy Trinity
Sheed on the Trinity (Catholic Caucus)
The Father as the Source of the Whole Trinity - Greek and Latin Traditions About the Filioque
Trinity Facts

The Real Trinity
We believe in one only God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Brief Reflections on the Trinity, the Canon of Scripture, and the Protestant idea of Sola Scriptura
Why Do We Believe in the Trinity?
The Holy Trinity
Trinity Sunday (and the Trinity season)
Trinitarian Mystery
HaSheeloosh HaKadosh: The Holy Trinity
MARY’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE TRINITY
The Divine Trinity

Yes as a Christian I believe in the Trinity...

“God in Three Persons Holy Trinity”

From the Hymn Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty...

God the Father, God the Son (the Word, Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit...

Everyone go dust off your copy of "Theology and Sanity".

You do have a copy of "Theology and Sanity" don't you?

Well, no worries, it's all over the internet. The first few paragraphs from Chapter six:

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THE notion is unfortunately widespread that the mystery of the Blessed Trinity is a mystery of mathematics, that is to say, of how one can equal three. The plain Christian accepts the doctrine of the Trinity; the "advanced" Christian rejects it; but too often what is being accepted by the one and rejected by the other is that one equals three.

The believer argues that God has said it, therefore it must be true; the rejecter argues that it cannot be true, therefore God has not said it. A learned non-Catholic divine, being asked if he believed in the Trinity, answered: "I must confess that the arithmetical aspect of the Deity does not greatly interest me"; and if the learned can think that there is some question of arithmetic involved, the ordinary man can hardly be expected to know any better.

Consider what happens when a believer in the doctrine is suddenly called upon to explain it - and note that unless he is forced to, he will not talk about it at all: there is no likelihood of his being so much in love with the principal doctrine of his Faith that he will WANT to tell people about it. Anyhow, here he is: he has been challenged, and must say something. The dialogue runs something like this:
BELIEVER: "Well, you see, there are three persons in one nature."
QUESTIONER: "Tell me more."
BELIEVER: "Well, there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost."
QUESTIONER: "Ah, I see, three Gods."
BELIEVER (shocked): "Oh no. Only one God."
QUESTIONER: "But you said three:

you called the Father God. That makes 1;
and you called the Son God - 2;
and you called the Holy Ghost God - 3."

Here the dialogue form breaks down. From the believer's mouth there emerges what can only be called a soup of words, sentences that begin and do not end, words that change into something else halfway. This goes on for a longer or shorter time. But finally there comes something like: "Thus, you see, three is one and one is three." The questioner not unnaturally retorts that three is not one, nor one three. Then comes the believer's great moment. With his eyes fairly gleaming he cries: "Ah, that is the mystery. You have to have faith."

Now it is true that the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity is a mystery, and that we can know it only by faith. But what we have just been hearing is not the mystery of the Trinity, it is not the mystery of anything, it is wretched nonsense. It may be heroic faith to believe it, like the man who

Wished there were four of 'em
That he might believe more of 'em;

or it may be total intellectual unconcern? God has revealed certain things about Himself, we accept the fact that He has done so, but find in ourselves no particular inclination to follow it up. God has told us that He is three persons in one Divine nature, and we say "quite so," and proceed to think of other matters - last week's Retreat or next week's Confession or Lent or Lourdes or the Church's social teaching or foreign missions. All these are vital things, but compared with God Himself, they are as nothing: and the Trinity is God Himself. These other things must be thought about, but to think about them exclusively and about the Trinity not at all is plain folly. And not only folly, but a kind of insensitiveness, almost a callousness, to the love of God. For the doctrine of the Trinity is the inner, the innermost, life of God, His profoundest secret. He did not have to reveal it to us. We could have been saved without knowing that ultimate truth. In the strictest sense it is His business, not ours. He revealed it to us because He loves men and so wants not only to be served by them, but truly known by them. It is the surest mark of love to want to be known. The revelation of the Trinity was in one sense a more certain proof even than Calvary that God loves men. To accept it politely and think no more of it is an insensitiveness beyond comprehension in men who quite certainly love God: as many certainly do who could give no better statement of the doctrine than the believer in the model dialogue we have just been considering.

How did we reach this curious travesty of the supreme truth about God? The short statement of the doctrine is, as we have all heard all our lives, that there are three PERSONS in one NATURE. But if we attach no meaning to the word PERSON, and no meaning to the word NATURE, then both the nouns have dropped out of our definition, and we are left only with the numbers three and one, and get along as best we can with these. Let us agree that there may be more in the mind of the believer than he manages to get said: but the things that do get said give a pretty strong impression that his notion of the Trinity is simply a travesty. It does him no positive harm provided he does not look at it too closely; but it sheds no light in his own soul: and his statement of it, when he is driven to make a statement, might very well extinguish such flickering as there may be in others. The Catholic whose faith is wavering might well have it blown out altogether by such an explanation of the Trinity as some fellow Catholic of stronger faith might feel moved to give: and no one coming fresh to the study of God would be much encouraged.

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It may be a wall of text, but it's a great wall of text.

To me, these verses from the Gospel of Matthew signify and validify the Trinity in the Words of Jesus Christ himself!

Matthew
Chapter 28

16: ⁸ The eleven ⁹ disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.
17: ¹⁰ When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.
18: ¹¹ Then Jesus approached and said to them, "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
19: Go, therefore, ¹² and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit,
20: teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. ¹³ And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age."

and the pertinent footnotes:

⁸ [16-20] This climactic scene has been called a "proleptic parousia," for it gives a foretaste of the final glorious coming of the Son of Man (Matthew 26:64). Then his triumph will be manifest to all; now it is revealed only to the disciples, who are commissioned to announce it to all nations and bring them to belief in Jesus and obedience to his commandments.

⁹ [16] The eleven: the number recalls the tragic defection of Judas Iscariot. To the mountain . . . ordered them: since the message to the disciples was simply that they were to go to Galilee (Matthew 28:10), some think that the mountain comes from a tradition of the message known to Matthew and alluded to here. For the significance of the mountain, see the note on Matthew 17:1.

¹⁰ [17] But they doubted: the Greek can also be translated, "but some doubted." The verb occurs elsewhere in the New Testament only in Matthew 14:31 where it is associated with Peter's being of "little faith." For the meaning of that designation, see the note on Matthew 6:30.

¹¹ [18] All power . . . me: the Greek word here translated power is the same as that found in the LXX translation of Daniel 7:13-14 where one "like a son of man" is given power and an everlasting kingdom by God. The risen Jesus here claims universal power, i.e., in heaven and on earth.

¹² [19] Therefore: since universal power belongs to the risen Jesus (Matthew 28:18), he gives the eleven a mission that is universal. They are to make disciples of all nations. While all nations is understood by some scholars as referring only to all Gentiles, it is probable that it included the Jews as well. Baptizing them: baptism is the means of entrance into the community of the risen one, the Church. In the name of the Father . . . holy Spirit: this is perhaps the clearest expression in the New Testament of trinitarian belief. It may have been the baptismal formula of Matthew's church, but primarily it designates the effect of baptism, the union of the one baptized with the Father, Son, and holy Spirit.

¹³ [20] All that I have commanded you: the moral teaching found in this gospel, preeminently that of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). The commandments of Jesus are the standard of Christian conduct, not the Mosaic law as such, even though some of the Mosaic commandments have now been invested with the authority of Jesus. Behold, I am with you always: the promise of Jesus' real though invisible presence echoes the name Emmanuel given to him in the infancy narrative; see the note on Matthew 1:23. End of the age: see the notes on Matthew 13:39 and Matthew 24:3.

Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed: "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God."

Some disagree...

Jesus Christ is God’s Son, spiritually and physically.

He calls Him Father, He prays to Him.
We are to pray to Him, God the Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, His Son.
God’s voice was heard at Christ’s baptism, coming from Heaven while He was in the water. The Holy Sirit also descended. Three seperate entities/Gods.

Santorum endorses one-time rival Romney

Thursday, May 10, 2012 12:32:46 AM · 416 of 492
Jeff Head to stpio