There are many who insist that the doctrine of the Triune God is absent from the scriptures. This claim often suggests that Trinitarian doctrine is a mere innovation by the Church in later times rather than a real and solid foundation for Christianity. In the Orthodox Church, the scripture plays an extremely important role. While it is not the only tool that the Church uses, it is a vital part of the Church’s Tradition. In the Johannine and Pauline writings, we see a Trinitarian theology that is very similar to the doctrine held by the Church today. While there is a clear distinction and uniqueness to each of the persons of the Trinity, it also clear that the authors’ intentions are to show their equality.
One can argue that the primary
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This indicates that the Word being eternal chose by His own will to become like his creation. His initial nature wasn’t human like us, but rather He chose to dwell among us and to become a light for a humanity that was blinded by darkness. Therefore, this theme of eternity directly equates Him with the God.
In the second verse of the prologue, the author points out that the Word was essential in the story of creation. This idea of active participation by the Son with the Father is later reiterated, “But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God (John 5:17-18). Not only does he call God his Father which confuses those present around him, he also equates His work with that of the Father’s. In doing so he proves that His work is as significant to the Father’s and that it is done with the same intention. This statement comes in the context of healing a man on the Sabbath. In doing so Jesus is making it perfectly clear that his mission is to heal. He is not bound by what people may incorrectly perceive as the breaking of God’s commandment. He then continues to explain to them that the Father and the Son work together in a synergy that is founded on love (John 5:19-2). Again, the point is made perfectly clear that the Son is to be held in the same honor as the
Fee completes his writings with his own conclusion: “The Spirit must be reinstated into the Trinity, where he has never been excluded in our creeds and liturgies, but has been practically excluded from the experienced life of the church.” Moreover, he argues that the very nature of the Triune God, as being three yet one, must become the character of the church both in its oneness and in its function, by the very application of the Spirit’s threefold work of the Trinity. Without this experience, the witness of the churches to the Resurrection today will remain generally ineffective in comparison with the witness of the early Christians, though they lived in a culture very similar to ours. As the title of Fee’s book emphasizes, we are meant to find God’s Spirit empowering for us in the present era while at the same time awaiting the consummation of Christ’s final return.
Over the centuries, Christianity has organised its beliefs into a systematic theology that draws from its sacred writing and tradition. While the main beliefs of Christianity are shared by all Christian variants, there are degrees of different in the interpretation of these beliefs and how they are lived out in everyday life. This can be seen in the important of sacred text, principle belief of the concept of salvation in John 3:16, principle belief of divine and humanity in ‘John 1:14’, principle belief of resurrection in ‘Mark 16:1-8’, principle belief of revelation in ‘1 corinthians14:6’, and beliefs through the Trinity in ‘2 Corinthians 13:14’. This essay will explain the important of the sacred text and the principal beliefs of Christianity.
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
God the Son is revealed in the Christian Scriptures. God the Spirit is revealed in the Church. The Trinitarian doctrine states that there are three co-eternal, equal persons in God, which is the notion of unity within community. The Trinitarian doctrine was further developed and defined at the councils of Nicaea in 325 CE and Constantinople in 381 CE. God was always trinity, however gradually this reality became known through revelation. Jesus calls God and speaks of the spirit which indicates a plurality in God. The difficulty is reconciling the concept of monotheism with the notion of God existing as three persons. The divine essence is common to all three, however the three persons have attributes or properties which distinguished them eg Fatherhood, sonship and sanctifying power. Once essence means that the actions (creation, redemption, sanctification) are attributable to all. Mutual relations is the concept that the terms Father and Son are not titles but expressions of a relationship and thus all three persons are co-equal
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 image of God which is the mind is the last and highest thing among creatures in seeking God. The previously chapters have already tried to investigate the trinity of God both by faith in the scripture and by understanding some evidence of reason.
In Judeo-Christian tradition God created the cosmos and he said it was good. God created everything. “Yahweh” is a form of God’s name in Hebrew which is best translated to “I am who I am”. God is this mysterious divine spirit that was created before time and lives forever. God is the “tremendom”, the holy, fearful and overwhelming mystery that people can only wonder about and try to wrap their heads around. Jews and Christians believe that human beings are created in the image of God. Everyone is created perfect and equal despite physical appearances. Humans have free will like God. In a way we are god over ourselves in the way that we govern and make decisions for ourselves. God also dwells in us and around us. God created human beings good.
In conversation with Daniel Migliore give an account of what it means to confess that God is triune. Give care to an explication of “economic and immanent trinity,” and perichoresis.
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.
“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
The Trinity is a doctrine that has and will continue to bring much controversy to the Christian faith. Yet it is important to understand that a practical approach to this topic can be very important. Having a full understanding of the Trinity is vital to the life of a Christian. The distinct, yet interwoven aspects of God’s character will affect every aspect of a believer’s life.
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.
One of the main hermeneutical strategies used by Basil in his work is confirm the oneness of the triune God. While some of his heretical opponents insist that the triune Godhead is not fully unified, Basil set the record straight by saying that “according to the distinction of Persons, both are one and one, and according to the community of Nature, one.” Basil is not talking about two or three different Gods, but of one single God, one that “is not cloven in two, nor the glory divided,” but instead of a God that is triune in essence. The eternal generation of the Son, along with the eternal precession of the Holy Spirit is essential to the doctrine of the triune God, and Basil asserts that taking any part of this away from God is heresy. The Godhead can only rightly be described in its triune form, as Holy Spirit is conjoined “to the one Father through the one Son, and through Himself completing the adorable and blessed Trinity.”