Jesus: Truly God in the Gospels

[Paidion]

This definition does not introduce any “parts” into God, nor does it make God a “compound”.

That's why it makes no sense.

Can you find a single place in the Bible where the word "God" refers to a Trinity?
If "God" became man, did the Trinity become man?
If "God" is undivided, did Jesus talk to Himself, when He prayed to the Father?

Here is the Trinitarianism you seem to espouse:

Jesus is God, the Father is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, but God is one? Yet God is not a person, but 3 persons. Then in what sense is He one? In fact since God is not a person, how can you refer to God as "He"? Three persons are not called "He" but "They".

People who profess to be Trinitarians are confused. Some who think they are Trinitarians are actually Modalists. I have met several of these. Others who think they are Trinitarians are actually Tri-theists. I have studied early Trinitarianism. They believe there is one "substance". I can makes sense of that, that the three are "God" in a generic sense. But in that sense "God" is not personal at all but a "substance" — just as you and I and everyone else comprise "humanity". But "humanity" is not an individual. Also each of us is "part" of humanity. How can 3 individuals be one in any sense if they are not "part" of that one. In my understanding, what you are trying to say about God is self-contradictory. By way of contrast, the early Christian view made perfect sense. God Himself makes perfect sense. He is not a contradiction. And, in my opinion, to say that our "human minds" are incapable of understanding who He is, is a copout. It was mere "human minds" that dreamed up the self-contradictory concept, and propogated it in the fourth century.

[Homer]

Hi Paidion,

You charge trinitarians with modalism, but you wrote:

I have studied early Trinitarianism. They believe there is one "substance". I can makes sense of that, that the three are "God" in a generic sense.

By way of contrast, the early Christian view made perfect sense.

But you could be charged with being a polytheist. If Jesus is a God in the "generic" sense, how is it He is not an additional God? Saying He is a lesser god than the Father does not make him not a god. Saying he is "divine" but not God is making a distinction without a difference. Or is Jesus a semi-god of some sort? I fail to see how your view makes any more sense than the trinitarians.

You have said I am a modalist, that I just think I am a trinitarian. Would you consider the following view modalism?

"This God is never called a person. The word person was never applied to God in the Middle ages. The reason for this is that the three members of the trinity were called personae (faces or countenances): The Father is persona, the Son is persona, and the Spirit is persona. Persona here means a special characteristic of the divine ground, expressing itself in an independent hypostasis.

"Thus, we can say that it was the nineteenth century which made God into a person, with the result that the greatness of the classical idea of God was destroyed by this way of speaking... but to speak of God as a person would have been heretical for the Middle Ages; it would have been to them a Unitarian heresy, because it would have conflicted with the statement that God has three personae, three expressions of his being. (Tillich, Paul, A History of Christian Thought, p. 190)