An Analysis of the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity

Outline the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity from the New Testament Church to the Nicene Creed.

At the center of the Christian faith is a mystery. This mystery has everything to do with the identity of God, the nature of Christian community, the salvation history and our understanding of Christology. This is the mystery of the Trinity – how is the Godhead fully three persons, and yet one nature? Theophilus was the first to name the ‘triad’ nature of God in his letter To Autolycus in 170 A.D. Tertullian was the first to offer terminology to describe this mystery in Against Praxeas claiming “the Trinity” involved three ‘persons’ of one substance. This theology emerged from the Biblical witness, even though scripture offers no doctrine of the Trinity itself. Even more so, the development of the doctrine of the Trinity grew from the early church’s worship, witness and corporate experience. When faced with a mystery, heresies can’t help but emerge. Docetism and Arianism, Adoptionism and Monarchianism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism are just a few of the heresies that emerged in attempts to explain away the mystery. And yet, theologians from the second century to the twenty-first century are faced with the challenge of witnessing to this mystery in both the theologia and the oikonomia of the Trinity. The church experiences the economic Trinity as new believers are drawn into Trinitarian community through an ongoing

Bonhoeffer, Dietrick. The Cost of Discipleship, New York,NY 10022: The Macmillan Company, Published 1959. 344 pp. $1.95

The Trinity in Christian culture is a belief that God is represented in three major forms. In various works of art to include more plainly; The Trinity by Agnolo Gaddi. God is shown in his three most popular forms. God the Father, God the Son known to be Jesus Christ, and God the Holy spirit in the form of a white dove. This painting was done between ca. 1390-1396 by has mentioned before Agnolo Gaddi. Gaddi is from Florence, Italy and is the son of Taddeo Gaddi and the grandson of Gaddo Gaddi whom are all famous painters. Agnolo Gaddi died in 1396. Before his death he is said to have done a few popular pieces to include: Virgin Mary in the Prato Cathedral, Madonna Enthroned with Saint and Angels, and Coronation of the Virgin. His final

To articulate my theological view of scripture, I will address Scripture as broken yet beautiful, then express how I read and interpret sacred texts, given the need to understand the author’s intent, the historical context, and a Christocentric hermeneutic. This will be followed by the aim of reading scripture, which is not simply for orthodox doctrine, but for right living. Although Scripture is primary, it is not the only way God speaks to humanity, thus I will address the Spirit, tradition, creation, and experience as other sources of insight. Despite this integrated approach to scripture and theology, it is not foolproof or necessarily correct. Therefore, I will end this section with a discussion of knowledge and how we understand truth, grounded in the epistemological paradigm of practical

Saint Augustine, one of the best scholars of the early church, portrayed the Trinity as practically identical to the three sections of an individual: personality, soul, and will. They are three unmistakable viewpoints, yet they are conjoined and together constitute one bound together individual. The purpose of this research paper is to further emphasize, highlight, and defend St. Augustine’s conclusion that the Holy Trinity is one God existing in three persons according to the meeting at the Council of Nicea 325.

The first topic that hit me in Michael Reeves book Delighting in the trinity was when he said, “the trinity is seen not as a solution and a delight, but as an oddity and a problem.”(8) Too many times people discuss the problems of the trinity, for instance the fact that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one but the same. I think too often people over think the trinity and cause this spur, the trinity should cause us to delight in Christ and we should consider the trinity a solution. Reeves is correct when pointing out Paul’s writing about the mystery and how God is mysterious. He continues to say that God is not like a “who cares” kind of mystery but that our God is a mystery that reveals itself. God is the kind of god that reveals himself to us. The trinity is our personal representation of a God that we can know and understand, one bit at a time. Throughout the book Reeves shows the audience exactly what the trinity is and how a Christian can use the trinity and worship to rejoice in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Migliore defines the Christian confession of God as triune as a “summary description of the witness of Scripture to God’s unfathomable love incarnate in Jesus Christ and experienced and celebrated in the community of faith” (Migliore 67). He is quick to explain that “the doctrine of the Trinity is not a revealed doctrine…[because it] did not descend miraculously from heaven, nor was it written by God on tablets of stone”’; rather it is “the product of the meditation and reflection of the church on the gospel message over many centuries” (67). That said, Migliore believes that a confession of the triune God has both a biblical and experiential basis. He states “if talk of the triune God is not to be wild speculation, it will always find its basis and its limit both in the biblical narrative of God that comes to the world through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the actual

After all, it is this redemption accomplished by Christ on the cross that gives us hope and meaning in the life after death. In order to sufficiently grasp the link between the Trinity and the doctrine of salvation, it is imperative that we start by expounding some trinitarian concepts. The first such concepts are the “Immanent Trinity” which championed the unity of the Triune Godhead as eternally self-sufficient in loving relationships between the distinct persons. A paternal relationship between the Father and Son; a filial relationship between the Son and Father; and the relationships between

The Trinity consists of God, the Father, Jesus, the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. The Christian faith recognizes there is one God and He is one with His Son, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The purpose of this essay is to describe the interrelationship of the three persons of the Trinity. This will include the concepts of the economic trinity, the essential trinity and the social trinity.

As a result, fellowship, prayer, Bible study, worship, and most importantly salvation in its purest form can be discerned and acted upon correctly. In addition, a further understanding can be thus gained regarding the person of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Finally, heresies and heretical groups or beliefs can lead God’s followers astray from the truth and create an improper understanding, and thus relationship with God. Positions past and present have, and are, attempting to mislead Christians about the Trinity. A skewed view of the Trinity can result in a view of God as either divinely apart from creation or simply a better version of all the best attributes of humans. Some positions even take away from the Divinity of Jesus Christ. All of these views severely diminish who God is and alters a proper and true relationship and worship. It is a necessity that these errant views be exposed as a hindrance to God in order not to mislead God’s followers. Likewise a Biblically sound explanation of the Trinity is needed. As a result, a true and pure knowledge of the concept of the Trinity is crucially needed to understand God and be obedient to the Bible.

I attended the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios’ lecture on “St. Basil's Nine Homilies on the Creation of the Universe” on Thursday, April 20th. When I researched the Archbishop, I saw that he has been integral throughout the past couple of decades in scholarly efforts to unify different sects of Christianity through Scripture. His topic, St. Basil of Caesarea was a Greek bishop whose works and ideas on Biblical doctrine are highly respected by Catholics, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians alike.

“Christians, for all their orthodox profession of faith in the Trinity, are almost just monotheist in their actual religious experience. One might almost dare to affirm that if the doctrine of the Trinity were to be erased as false, most religious literature could be preserved almost unchanged throughout the process.”

The early Christians agree that it was essential to explain the relationship between Jesus and God. Yet their assertions about Christ raised questions about the unity of God. Trinitarian theology provided an important solution; it kept Christians from backsliding into superstitious polytheism, but it also prevented Jewish monotheism from undermining the significance of Christ

Mary Ann Fatula’s The Triune God of Christian Faith provides for the reader the inner life of God as well as insight into the human reality. Fatula’s writing draws the devotional discussion of the Trinity as the present-day effect of the Trinitarian faith is called to support attempts to articulate and live the Trinitarian mystery. The Trinity in a human’s life is the content of our definition of our human meaning and for an infinite gift: love. Each of us has a desire for achieving meaning, for love, and for wholeness. Fatula in her book develops the study of the divine ‘persons’ and states the importance of understanding what it is to be truly a ‘person’ of both human and divine potential.