Just my two-cents on this. We believe in the co-eternal and co-equal one God in three persons precisely because we know there is only one God. There are not three gods but one, only God. He exists in three persons - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. John's gospel makes it clear that Jesus himself claimed to be the I AM which is the personal name Almighty God told to Abraham and Moses. The religious leaders at the time even took up stones to kill him for daring to say so. What you may be missing is that even though they are all equal and one, they have a kind of hierarchy in purpose. Scripture says the Son proceeds from the Father. Jesus said he does nothing but what the Father gives him to do. Jesus said he would send the Spirit to us to indwell us to empower our lives and to illuminate truth.
To view it in this way it looks like: Father to Son to Holy Spirit in an order, not of dominance but in purpose. As an example we are told that the wife submits to the husband who submits to God. But in another place we are told that we are all one in Christ whether male or female, bound or free, Jew or Gentile. The husband is equal to his wife in the view of God, but there is an order.
Like I said, it's my two-cents. It hardly can explain in a few sentences the majesty of God and the full understanding of it all will be, I believe, reserved until we have the "mind of Christ" and will finally be able to understand the magnitude of it.
“The Bible can exist where there is no church building or assembly.... but the church cannot exist where there is no Bible.”
Remembering this from some time ago...someone stated it but I can’t remember who...much to ponder in that sentence.
That makes no sense, boatbums. "Knowing" (or believing) there is one God does not necessarily imply multiple persons. There are other monotheistic religions that claim God is one and yet they don't believe God is more than one hypostasis.
Jesus himself claimed to be the I AM which is the personal name Almighty God told to Abraham and Moses. The religious leaders at the time even took up stones to kill him for daring to say so
Can you blame them?
What you may be missing is that even though they are all equal and one, they have a kind of hierarchy in purpose
Oh?
Scripture says the Son proceeds from the Father.
No, boatbumns, the Bible says that the Logos or (Word) is [the only] begotten of the Father and the Spirit wells forth from the Father [and is sent through the Son].
Christian theologians have a fancy name for this hypostatic "purpose," namely the economy of salvation. It basically "explains" why God revealed himself to man as three distinct realities, each performing a different role.
Outside of this divine economy (Greek: oikonomia, and pronounced ee-koh-noh-mee-ah), which is not what it has come to mean in English, the Christian theologians insist that God is an indivisible monad, a singularity, which of course remains a supreme mystery as to how one reality can be simple and indivisible and yet also three separate, unconfused and distinct "realities (Greek: hypostases).
Of these, the Father is the only one without cause, the Son is [eternally] begotten, and the Spirit [eternally] proceeds (Greek: ekporeuomai, i.e. wells from, or originates from) the Father. Anyone who knows even the basic Greek pagan philosophy realizes how utterly Platonic this is and that this was not any Jew could have ever believed.
St. Gregory the Theologian, a 4th century hesychast (look up Philokalia, volume IV), wrote that to try to comprehend the unbegottenness of the Father, begottenness of the Son, or the procession of the Holy Spirit leads to insanity.
Interestingly, the Mormons (LDS) go the other way: they say there are three Gods, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, but they are one in purpose! I am always amazed how people seem to "know" what God's purpose is!
This just smacks of the Clintonian "logic," i.e. (paraphrasing) "depends what is is." The Bible doesn't just say that there is "order" but that the man is the head of the woman, as Christ is the head of man, and God [sic] is the head of Christ. [according to Paul].
So, there is "order" as in ordination, where it is clear who is subordinated to whom. In other words, who listens to whom, who is to speak and teach, who is to keep quiet, and ask, who obeys whom, who is greater and who is lesser [see John 14:28] That doesn't make the divine Hypostases equal, or husband and wife equal except perhaps, as yo say, in "purpose."
Sure, we are all human; we all share the same nature, or essence (Greek: ousia). That means we are all seen as one and the same bunch before God. But according to the Bible, men are in charge; and the Father is in charge even of divinity! That is not the Orthodox faith. One of the major differences between the Latins and the Greeks is in this perception of God. The Orthodox hardly ever use the word God. They always say Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Orthodox Trinity is a perfect harmonization, a unity of passionate love (Greek: eros), without lording over, or domination, and the Church was built on that equality. No Apostle lorded over other apostles. There was no primate of "jurisdiction" among them. Peter was no "pope" to the eleven others.
If you want to read a truly unbelievable exposition of the orthodox faith and particularly on the Holy Trinity, I suggest St. John of Damascus, the last of the Desert Fathers (8th century). Much of the faith of the first millennium of Christianity is in it. It is truly amazing how different Christianity was before Scholasticism (in the West) irreversably changed it into soemthing very different.