Talk:Trinity

Simplicity

Not sure what is going on here. For some reason this has remained unclear. God the son refers to Christ. God the Father refers to God himself. God the holy ghost refers to the devil, Satan. If you become unclear about the bible I recommend reading more articles on Wikipedia for it can be informative and the information is clearly stated. I could tell from the talk sections that comprehension seems to be of little importance. It shouldn't be. So from here, don't expect anything else considering what is already in the articles is safe for public reading. Please don't get me wrong and include Lucifer a part Trinity (3 as 1). Lucifer is 'sembiant' and it would be a harmful clad of information regarding some unknown duality to to the existence of the theological God. -- 04:43, 2 February 2019‎ 2605:a000:dfc0:6:6dbe:23df:7751:5af1

Unfortunately, your ideas about the Trinity seem to come from an offshoot of the 1970s "Jesus freak" movement (not covered on Wikipedia, as far as I can tell), rather than what has traditionally been considered mainstream orthodox Christian theology. If you can come up with a reliable source, then that definition of the Trinity could be included on the article -- but it would not result in any major rewriting of the article... AnonMoos (talk) 17:48, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

In the 1970s I read an article in TIME magazine (possibly this one, but it's behind a paywall) that mentioned a leader in the "Jesus freaks" or "Jesus movement" of the day who taught what you mentioned (a "trinity" of Jesus, God, and Satan); otherwise I'm having great difficulty turning up anything in Google. If someone can access the TIME article and confirm, or you can tell us from what source you got it, then we can begin to evaluate the notability of this idea... AnonMoos (talk) 02:26, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

2022

Sorry for the very belated reply, but I just recently found out that the Church of the Process had a pseudo-Trinity of Lucifer, "Jehovah", and Satan, which is related to what you mentioned (though not exactly the same)... AnonMoos (talk) 22:29, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Political background missing: Why became trinity an issue, why is it still, for some? Starting point missing?

As a political scientist form a Christian background I am ciurious as to why trinity became a big issue in the fourth century AD, and why it still is. Why did church leaders then, see a need to upgrade (or, some will feel, argue against a downgrading of) Jesus' status? Had it something to do with inventing roots for a desired or slowly happening change in church leadership form egalitarian elder's councils per church (as I thought, was the Jewish tradition), into a Holy See assuming sort of royal prerogatives and leading powers? And why the need for the holy spirit also to be upgraded and integrated into the 'one'? And why did separate church organizations choose positions around opposing opinions on this issue?

Next issue: I would assume that in the current century many Christians would feel less need to recycle a pre-mediaval debate that has little roots in the bible itself, without explaining what it meant for religious development then, and what it means for religion today. Why is it felt as highly relevant concept by some groups of Christians today?

In the current version there is a problem with the "Befor the Council of Nicaea- paragraph ". It proposes that the trinity formula came up in the first century, but all the examples seem to miss the central point of trinity that the three constitutent parts (father, son holy spirit) not only all three exist side by side, but that they ARE THE SAME. Which, if I read further, was first (nearly?) postulated in 381. Why is this year not mentioned as founding moment of trinity as we know it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pieter Felix Smit (talk • contribs) 12:53, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Most of the theological disputes in early Christianity were Christological disputes which partially spilled over onto the Trinity, rather than Trinitarian disputes as such. AnonMoos (talk) 22:22, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Orthodox theology was always formed as a response to attacks from other beliefs - Judaism and Islam looked upon the polytheism of the early Christians as abominable and Roman pagans looked at it as the ultimate in hypocrisy - these people would rather die than sacrifice to the Roman state gods but had no problem worshipping an executed rabble-rouser alongside their main deity? Unfortunately since this article has been permanently captured by apologetics who insist on foregoing any kind of historical perspective in favor of "the Trinity is actually in the Old Testament" style sophistry, we can't talk about that. Predestiprestidigitation (talk) 21:08, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I did not read the whole article, but just by going by the WP:LEDE, it does not say that the Trinity is THE biblical view. tgeorgescu (talk) 21:24, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

The name should refer to the christian concept bing descrbied

The article right now is too vague, the title is misleading. 109.245.35.25 (talk) 17:45, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

What change are you proposing? The article title might be moved to "Holy Trinity", but that was considered unnecessary in the past. Religions uninfluenced by Christianity do not really have "trinities" in any specific sense. They often have triads and trios and triple deities... AnonMoos (talk) 20:39, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Why does this article not follow the normal practice of religious scholars?

By beginning with alleged Biblical support for the trinitarian doctrine the article falls into two fallacies:

• The idea that trinitarianism is uncontroversially found in the Bible (including the Old Testament - now we're embracing prefiguration and supersessionism too!)
• The idea that the New Testament predates and defines Christianity, as opposed to being a product of the late 1st century whose contents and canonical versions only were selected after theological debates within Christianity already existed, by people with stakes in those debates

The "history" section should come first with the Bible passages integrated later into an overview of the various positions. This is how Christianity is taught by any serious religious scholar who is not doing apologetics. Predestiprestidigitation (talk) 03:13, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

First off, Jews did not traditionally have a habit of coining abstract terms of philosophical analysis (that was much more of a Greek thing) -- in the Hebrew Bible there are no words with the specific meanings "religion", "Judaism", or "monotheism" (as discussed in the most recent talk page archive linked above). Therefore the absence of a word meaning "Trinity" in the text of the New Testament is not decisive in itself. Second, most of the theological debates in early Christianity were Christological, and not really directly about the Trinity. In any case, the beginning of article should be a concise summary of what traditionally "mainstream" accepted Christian theology says about the Trinity, because almost everything else in the article (including possible historical problems) will take that as a point of departure... AnonMoos (talk) 05:24, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that's the point. The naive churchgoer's understanding of Christianity is "the Bible, then the fundamental doctrines like the Trinity, then the patristic fathers debating other stuff." But in fact it was totally different: The NT was produced *by* the second generation of disciples, and reflects controversies that already had arisen in a church that was at least 40 years old by the time that the oldest material in the NT was written, then only centuries later did trinitarianism become a significant issue. There isn't really anyone who disputes this other than a small fringe of non-academic Protestants who will tell you that God prefigured later debates by divinely inspiring resolutions to them in material written centuries earlier. The article leads people to the wrong idea about the historical development of the doctrine and presents the false apologetic notion that trinitarianism was a commonly understood belief in the early church.

If you took a course in which the professor started with everything that's known about what people thought about the Trinity soon after Jesus' death, and then slowly proceeded forward in time, then the professor may have had sound pedagogical reasons for adopting that particular approach in that particular class. However, for the purposes of this article, almost everything which is not directly explaining traditional "mainstream" accepted Christian theology will be criticisms of traditional "mainstream" accepted Christian theology, alternative doctrines which are contrasted with traditional "mainstream" accepted Christian theology, etc. etc., so therefore the only reasonable procedure is to start the article with a concise description of traditional "mainstream" accepted Christian theology, so that people reading the article from the top down will know what it's talking about. That does not mean that Wikipedia should endorse traditional "mainstream" accepted Christian theology, of course (it shouldn't). AnonMoos (talk) 14:02, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

The beliefs of traditionalist Christians should be accurately included in the article, but its structure should not depend on them. Predestiprestidigitation (talk) 11:13, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Why do you assert that "Trinitarianism was [not] a commonly understood belief in the early church"? It was; in fact it was so commonly understood that there were no prominent controversies about it until after the Christological questions had been addressed. The heresies and denials came after the common doctrines and beliefs were established by early believers. The Church only moves to define doctrines after they are significantly challenged. Elizium23 (talk) 11:23, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

That's the retroactive, apologetic explanation for why no one ever mentioned it - the real reason is that of course the first centuries of Christians thought that God, Christ, and the Spirit were three distinct beings, Christ was literally "God's son," etc. Only later on did the obvious polytheism of this approach become a problem and result in the trinitarian ideas that try to explain how one God is "three persons" and such. Predestiprestidigitation (talk) 11:41, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

No one thinks that all the refinements of the Athanasian Creed etc are present in the New Testament (obviously, they aren't). Jews in Judea/Galilee at that time simply did not have the analytical dialectic terminology-coining habits of mind that the Greeks did (which resulted from the Greeks comparing and contrasting abstract philosophical systems). Jews were traditionally more interested in the concrete details of their traditional way of life or religion (not usually clearly distinguished) and in legal interpretations within the system of Jewish Law. Some Jews in Alexandria had acquired some Greek skills of abstract analysis, but the New Testament was not written by Alexandrian Jews. Therefore, no informed person would expect a fully-refined theological system which could stand up to all the possible objections and questions of Greek philosophers to be present in the text of the New Testament. If the essence of the doctrine is present in the New Testament, with the elaborations of dialectics worked out later, then that's enough for many Christians... AnonMoos (talk) 14:18, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Right, so once again, you've done a good job of summarizing the Christian believers' apologetics talking points about why no one in the first 150 years of Christianity seems to have ever heard of trinitarianism. Wikipedia is supposed to be a secular scholarly source, not a manual that presents Christian doctrine as true, and the current structure of this article is entirely rooted in the latter. Predestiprestidigitation (talk) 23:57, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Are you assuming that the goal of contributors to this article should be to determine whether or not the doctrine is correct? Are you saying we should adopt modern secular standards of scholarship in order to make this goal achievable?

If I'm accurately summarizing your criticism, I disagree with you.That cannot be the goal. We are not doing research, here. Whether the doctrine is correct or true is not going to be decided, and shouldn't be debated in the article. The only goal is to describe what the doctrine is, accurately and with supporting documentation. — Mark (Mkmcconn) ** 06:45, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: what are your thoughts on this? Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:09, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

In fact, it's a pretty standard approach in theology to start with the biblical basis of a doctrine and then move onto historical development. I note that this is also what the Encyclopedia Britannica does here. StAnselm (talk) 00:26, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I have entered the following text:

Odd as it might seem, trinitarianism was not taught by the historical Jesus and his apostles. Trinitarinism was a response to various creeds which have been labeled as heresies; it was a result of theological disputes that took centuries. Post-Bauer historians give the lie to Eusebius's Historia Ecclesiastica with its claim that true faith precedes heresy, and heresy being a wilful, devilish choice to disbelieve the theological truth.

Also see:

The claimed institutional unity of the Christian Church was propaganda constantly repeated by orthodox Christian writers, rather than a genuine historical reality.

Which I had entered as:

The claimed theological unity of the Christian Church was propaganda retrospectively projected by the clergy, rather than a genuine historical reality.

Quoting myself from Diversity in early Christian theology. tgeorgescu (talk) 09:49, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

References

Fourth Lateran quotation

@TastyBreadToast, I could not find any mention of the Fourth Council of the Lateran in the cited source. Moreover, while I have not checked the full text, I did not find that that council made a declaration on the Trinity in their canons. Elizium23 (talk) 22:07, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

@Elizium23, the reason you couldn't find the quote in the cited source is because the source for this quote wasn't simply cited there. I am the one who added that piece but silly me forgot to cite the source. If you scrolled down all the way here then you'd find the citation for the source I didn't cite.

The full quote goes like this:

"Therefore in God there is only a Trinity, not a quaternity, since each of the three persons is that reality — that is to say substance, essence or divine nature-which alone is the principle of all things, besides which no other principle can be found. This reality neither begets nor is begotten nor proceeds; the Father begets, the Son is begotten and the holy Spirit proceeds. Thus there is a distinction of persons but a unity of nature. Although therefore the Father is one person, the Son another person and the holy Spirit another person, they are not different realities, but rather that which is the Father is the Son and the holy Spirit, altogether the same; thus according to the orthodox and catholic faith they are believed to be consubstantial."

Here are the sources: TastyBreadToast (talk) 23:48, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

References

Logical criticisms of the Trinity

The main Article 'Trinity' has no mention of the very substantial literature from numerous sources critical of the Trinitarian concept based on its logical incoherence. This is a major omission from the history of the concept: the early church struggled greatly with this concept (as well as that of homoiousos vs homoousios) because of both faith-based but also logical contradictions in the idea, and although faith-based criticism is covered in the article, nowhere in the main article does it discuss the logical contradictions in the Athanasian formula, and nowhere else in Wikipedia is this covered.

These criticisms are and important part of the ancient and modern history of the concept and so deserve to be covered, either in the main article itself or in a linked article. Ajosephg (talk) 20:09, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

It depends -- it obviously can't fit into simple first-order predicate logic, but there are a lot of things in ordinary language that can't fit into simple first-order predicate logic. (The statements "John thinks that Bill doesn't smoke", "The person John saw at a distance yesterday was smoking", and "The person John saw at a distance yesterday was Bill" are basically contradictory in simple first-order predicate logic, and from a contradiction anything follows.) AnonMoos (talk) 20:47, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

P.S. Most of the important disputes in Christianity during the early centuries were mainly Christological in nature, not directly about the Trinity. AnonMoos (talk) 10:37, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

This is true, however the article is about the concept of the Trinity, the ancient and the current concept, and is therefore ahistorical in nature. Again, this means that either this article deserves a treatment of this aspect of the concept 'Trinity', or it should at least link to an as-yet-unwritten article describing the logic/illogic of the concept. Ajosephg (talk) 23:44, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Many Christian theologians (Trinitarians) will admit that the Trinty cannot be comprehended by the human mind, an euphemism for being absurd. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:58, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Wrong definition about the Trinity

From the beginning, the introduction gives explanation about the Trinity in a one-sided way. However, if we find definition about the Trinity in Britannica, it explains in a different way. The introduction should give a clear and neutral explanation. Otherwise, it should be explained correctly. Trinity means, according to Britannica and many Bible verses, three in one (triune God). 175.136.227.74 (talk) 08:12, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

The definition is correct. It's just a bit more detailed than the definition in Britannica. Darlig 🎸 ^{Talk to me} 23:27, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Jewish trinities - off topic

Judaism doesn't have the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. In fact, the section about the trinity in Judaism shows that there is no such doctrine in Judaism. Therefore that material covers a different topic and should be removed from this topic. — Mark (Mkmcconn) ** 06:55, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

However, passages in the Hebrew Bible which Christians have interpreted as pre-figuring the Trinity could be relevant... AnonMoos (talk) 22:09, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Trinity in kabbalah

The article claims:

Though the Trinity is mainly a Christian concept, Judaism has had parallel views, especially among writings from the kabbalah tradition.

This is not supported by the linked references. The relationship between the described ideas and trinitarianism is superficial and not relevant.They are not parallel, but directly contradictory concepts. The claim is synthetic, and should be removed. — Mark (Mkmcconn) ** 07:05, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Islam is not trinitarian

The discussion of Islam is important to the topic of Islam and unitarianism, but unless the section is re-written to further explain the doctrine of the Trinity, it is off topic. We don't need to try to prove the doctrine true or false. We only need to describe it. By including off-topic debates, this article is made less readable and more confusing than it could be. — Mark (Mkmcconn) ** 07:17, 26 July 2023 (UTC)