Reddit mentions of The Trinity Untangled: Making Sense Of A Sensible Doctrine

Like you're five? OK, the Holy Spirit isn't a what, but a who. The Holy Spirit is God - the one true God. The Holy Spirit is the "third person of the Trinity," but more to the point, he is the life, the love, the energy between the Father and the Son. Any time the Father does something (from our perspective, I'm speaking epistemologically here), it is the power of the Holy Spirit accomplishing it (such as creation, or the Incarnation of the Word, or anything else where we can say, "God did that"). So, God isn't "three individuals," where you have the Father doing this one thing, or the Son doing that other thing, or the Spirit doing something else. God is one. Whenever you see God at work, it is the Father acting through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, and what we "see" is the Son. So any time God is at work it is absolutely proper to say, "The Spirit did that" (like creation, for example), or, "The Son did that" (like creation, for example), or, "The Father did that" (like creation, for example). Any work of the one true God is a work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

If this muddies the water, and if you are seriously interested, I have coincidentally just published a book called, The Trinity Untangled, and I'd be happy to send you a digital copy.

May I suggest:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Trinity-Untangled-Sensible-Doctrine/dp/1502771047

I haven't read it personally, but have heard great things about it. Also its written by /u/im_just_saying

We typically recommend this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Trinity-Untangled-Sensible-Doctrine/dp/1502771047/ because it was written by our very own /u/im_just_saying. He's generally happy to answer any questions you have and will likely find this pretty soon.

> How could God grow in wisdom and stature?

Are you familiar with the concept of kenosis? [Philippians 2:6-7] tells us that Jesus, who was God, emptied himself and took the form of a servant. In Christian theology, this passage is taken to mean that he had the nature of God but not the "abilities" unless they were granted to him by the Father. A terrible mistake made by many Christians is that Jesus carried with him on earth omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence when he did not.

With regards to baptism, Christians should do what Christ said in [Matthew 28:16-20] and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

"Son of God" is a reference to his nature. A son is the same nature as his father. Human fathers have human sons; the divine Father has a divine Son. This is not a reference to his birth at any point.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit aren't embodied in Christ. He is fully God human flesh, but to say that all three persons of the Godhead inhabited his body would be out of line with one most Christians believe. You can see this separation at the baptism of Christ, when the Father speaks about the Son, on whom the Holy Spirit descends.

I would recommend /u/im_just_saying's book, and possibly that you read the Athanasian Creed.

/u/im_just_saying has written a book about it, and he often offers a free PDF of it to people. I've read it myself, and it was the first time the Trinity ever made sense to me.

Here's an Amazon link.

But to summarize: God the Father is God's invisible essence. We could not experience God at all if he did not show himself to us, because we are created and he is uncreated. He transcends time and matter, and all of our experience takes place within time and matter. So: God is entirely inscrutable to humanity, except when and insofar as he reveals himself to us.

That Revelation is God the Son. Every one of God's actions that we see, every word God speaks, is the "begetting" of the Son. We believe that the Son became embodied as a human in Jesus, but that "all things that were made were made through [the Son]". In other words, the Son was present for the first act of Creation. And in a sense, the act of Creation is the Son. But because God is eternal (outside of time), the Son did not come into being at the time of Creation. He is eternally begotten, without beginning or end.

The Holy Spirit is harder to articulate, but we believe the Spirit to be the "energy" by and in which the Father begets the Son. All things that the Father does through the Son, he does by the Holy Spirit. We believe that God "poured out [his] Spirit on all flesh" on the Day of Pentecost, after Jesus ascended to Heaven. So now, the same Spirit by which the Father begets the Son is present in humanity.

We call these three "Persons", because the Greek word personæ was used to indicate the relational and conscious nature of the Three. But I think that term is actually misleading in English, where a "person" is a separate being, and can suggest that the Persons of the Trinity are separate beings (and hence, separate deities, which would be polytheism).

I prefer the term "relational realities", because it is closer to the meaning of the Greek personæ than the English "persons", expressing the idea that God is a relational being, eternally in relationship to and within God's self, without suggesting that the Trinity is three separate beings.

The Father is in relationship to the Son and the Spirit, the Son to the Spirit and the Father, and the Spirit to the Father and Son. This is similar to how humans are in relationship to ourselves (think about what happens when you are in thought: "someone" is doing the talking, and "someone else" is doing the listening). But with an important difference: God is perfectly in relationship to God's self. Human beings are not. We are created to be perfect in relationship not within ourselves, but to others: to other humans of course, but chiefly to God. Because of sin, we are not perfect in relationship to anyone—God, others, or ourselves. And this is one reason why the Trinity, the only instance of relational perfection, is a mystery to us.

Go read The Holy Trinity.

Then, go read The Trinity Untangled.

Then, go read On the Incarnation and The Trinity. The can also be found on CCEL fairly easily, and for free.

If you're interested, one of the redditors here wrote a book on the Trinity that I think could be really useful in Muslim/Christian dialog on monotheism. I don't expect it to cause Muslims to do cartwheels or anything, but it might make us look a bit less like total polytheists.

This book by redditor /u/im_just_saying is probably the most helpful introduction to the Trinity in layman's terms. He might even be willing to answer your questions himself!

I'll just add that no monotheistic argument is completely satisfying, whether you're a Christian, Unitarian, Jew, Muslim, whatever. Trinitarianism tries to work out some of the inherent paradoxes with the whole concept, but no formula is perfect because God is by nature outside of our understanding (if he could fit in our head, he wouldn't be God). The most significant paradox Trinitarianism attempts to resolve is the interaction between an infinite God and finite creation. Happy to go into this more if you're interested, but the book and the link from /u/mistiklest will probably be more helpful.

WLC's Defenders class has a section on the Trinity. Talks about the development of the doctrine, objections, and he takes questions from the class during each session.

One of our regulars around here, /u/Im_just_saying, has written a book in the Trinity.