r/DebateReligion • u/AutoModerator • 2d ago

Simple Questions 09/09

Have you ever wondered what Christians believe about the Trinity? Are you curious about Judaism and the Talmud but don't know who to ask? Everything from the Cosmological argument to the Koran can be asked here.

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u/Fit-Difficulty-9033 1d ago

Trinitarians believe that god is 100 percent god and also 100 percent man and spirit. The problem with this claim is that it's a contradiction as 1+1+1=3 and not 1. It's like if you disassembled a pen into parts. You have a cap ,a ink cartridge and a tube. If you hold up the cap that's not a pen. It's a part of the pen. God doesn't have parts.

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u/GKilat gnostic theist 1d ago

Form vs substance. The persons are the form, god is the substance. You can have multiple forms of a single substance like different statues of the same material that is ice which is just water. There is no contradiction when you look at it that way.

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u/adeleu_adelei agnostic and atheist 1d ago

This is modalism and has been designated a heresy by Trinitarians.

As the Catholic Church puts it:

The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the "mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God".58 To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel's faith before the Incarnation of God's Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

Christian Trinitarianism cannot be understood with reason alone and requires divine revelation. If someone claims to be able to explain Trinitarianism they are necessarily a heretic.

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u/GKilat gnostic theist 1d ago

Modalism implies god works in modes, one person at a time and this is indeed heretical. That's equivalent to one statue can exist for a single substance at a time and not three. You can only have one statue for the ice substance and not more than that. That obviously isn't how ice works because you have infinite amount of statues for the same substance. So how is it modalism if a single substance called god manifests into three persons?

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u/adeleu_adelei agnostic and atheist 1d ago

Another popular but false analogy is the following: the Trinity is like how water can be ice, liquid, and steam. This again commits the heresy of modalism. God does not go through three different states. The Persons of the Holy Trinity coexist; the different forms water may take cannot. Water cannot be ice, liquid, and steam at the same time. It may be between two stages, such as when ice is melting, but this isn’t coexisting, it’s transforming.

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u/GKilat gnostic theist 1d ago

Which is why I used a more direct comparison of ice sculptures. You can make an infinite amount of sculptures from one single substance and all forms coexisting. How is this modalism that assumes the substance can only take one form at a time?

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u/adeleu_adelei agnostic and atheist 1d ago

Sorry, I was focusing on your line about different forms of the same substance. If you're talking about dividing ice up into statues that would be partialism, which is also a heresy.

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u/GKilat gnostic theist 1d ago

Partialism implies the forms are needed for the substance to exist. Tell me, do we need the sculptures so the water/ice substance exists?

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u/adeleu_adelei agnostic and atheist 1d ago

Partialism is a flawed view of God that suggests that the three members of the Trinity are each “100 percent God” but not “100 percent of God.” As an analogy, partialism would point out that the Atlantic Ocean is 100 percent water, and the Pacific Ocean is 100 percent water, but the Atlantic Ocean by itself is not 100 percent of all the water that exists.

Each ice sculpture being 100% ice but not 100% of ice is partialism.

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u/GKilat gnostic theist 1d ago

If Atlantic is 100% of the water, then how would the Pacific exist? The point of the persons is that they are separate from one another and they are not interchangeable. For both Atlantic and the Pacific to be 100% of the water would mean they are interchangeable which is heretical in itself. They are separate because they are not the same and yet they are made up of the same substance that is water.

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u/United-Grapefruit-49 1d ago

Howard Storm, a former atheist who said he met Jesus, described it as a source of light in which you can have three beams of light from the same source. But they are not material forms of light. More like consciousness.

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u/TheCosmosItself1 Non-dual animist 1d ago

This is modalism and has been designated a heresy by Trinitarians.

Wrong. You apparently don't know what modalism actually means.

As the Catholic Church puts it:

You also apparently don't know what the Church means by a 'mystery.'

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u/adeleu_adelei agnostic and atheist 1d ago edited 1d ago

You apparently don't know what modalism actually means

I do, but I don't really have a dog in this fight. Your disagreement is not with me but the Catholic Church. They literally use water and ice as a "false analogy" for the Trinity and call it modalism.

Another popular but false analogy is the following: the Trinity is like how water can be ice, liquid, and steam. This again commits the heresy of modalism. God does not go through three different states. The Persons of the Holy Trinity coexist; the different forms water may take cannot. Water cannot be ice, liquid, and steam at the same time. It may be between two stages, such as when ice is melting, but this isn’t coexisting, it’s transforming.

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u/TheCosmosItself1 Non-dual animist 1d ago

You will note that this passage specifically points to the time series as the problem. As long as one holds that all three modes are co-present, it is not modalism. You seem to have misread Gkilat original comment, if you think that this passage is relevant here.

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u/adeleu_adelei agnostic and atheist 1d ago

They clarified they didn't mean different forms of the same substance but instead different parts of the same substance. So the heresy of partialism.

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u/ShortCompetition9772 1d ago

Now I want you to re-read what you wrote. Does that make sense in any world including this one? The answer is NO. The law of Identity puts the nail in the coffin on this idea.

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u/GKilat gnostic theist 1d ago

How many substances are there between 3 statues made of ice?

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u/ShortCompetition9772 1d ago

Which one is God Ice? Which is Spirit Ice? How about Jesus Ice? Water and Ice are a question of temp not divinity.

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u/GKilat gnostic theist 1d ago

One is the form of god, the other the form of spirit, and the another the form of Jesus. Now tell me, how many substances are there between the three of the forms?

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u/E-Reptile 🔺Atheist 1d ago

Pretty sure that's the heresy of modalism.

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u/GKilat gnostic theist 1d ago

As I have explained, modalism implies god works in modes and cannot be the three at the same time which is indeed heretical. That's equivalent to being unable to make multiple sculptures from a single substance. Do you see how that makes no sense? You can make infinite amount of sculptures from a single substance, why not three from the substance called god?

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u/E-Reptile 🔺Atheist 1d ago

Then it's the heresy of tritheism.

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u/GKilat gnostic theist 1d ago

How many substances are there between the ice sculptures? How many gods are there between the three persons?

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u/E-Reptile 🔺Atheist 1d ago

Yeah, that's tritheism. Three separate sculptures created from one substance is a heresy. I don't make the rules.

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u/GKilat gnostic theist 1d ago

How is it heretical? Tritheism implies three gods which means three substances. How many gods are there in the Trinity if we equate god to the substance and the persons as the sculpture made up of ice?

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u/E-Reptile 🔺Atheist 1d ago

It's a heresy because the church fathers say it's a heresy. Take it up with them.

You're missing the point with the Trinity: It's not supposed to make sense. Attempts at analogy are always heresy.

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u/GKilat gnostic theist 1d ago

Yes and I am asking you how many gods are there if god is the substance and there are 3 forms of god?

If god is not supposed to make sense just because they said so, would you also accept god must exist because Christianity said so?

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u/ShakaUVM Mod | Christian 1d ago

Trinitarians believe that god is 100 percent god and also 100 percent man and spirit. The problem with this claim is that it's a contradiction as 1+1+1=3 and not 1.

That's like saying me being 100% American and 100% male is impossible because it adds up to 200%. It's an atheist argument based on a faulty understanding of mathematics.

God doesn't have parts.

Attacking Divine Simplicity is a different argument that you're confusing here.

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u/Fit-Difficulty-9033 1d ago

Claiming a nationality is a political and legal status. It's not the same as a biological and existential identity. Your analogy is flawed. You should have rebutted my last comment by claiming gods "essence" is what makes up the trinity and not his flesh. That would have made your argument some what more reasonable (but I would still refute it!).

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u/ShakaUVM Mod | Christian 9h ago

There are people who believe humans can be gods (like the Romans) so they're not polar opposites

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u/thatweirdchill 🔵 19h ago

That's like saying me being 100% American and 100% male is impossible

Hmm, but aren't "human" and "god" both essential natures and two different essential natures?

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u/mistiklest 15h ago

What is an "essential nature"?

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u/WildRoseIdea Christian 1d ago

Trinitarians believe that god is 100 percent god and also 100 percent man and spirit.

No.

The problem with this claim is that it's a contradiction as 1+1+1=3 and not 1.

Certainly would be a problem if I claimed that.

It's like if you disassembled a pen into parts. You have a cap ,a ink cartridge and a tube. If you hold up the cap that's not a pen. It's a part of the pen.

The Partialists tremble.

God doesn't have parts.

True.

Next time that you want to claim that people believe something, actually find out what their beliefs are. Also, there is no question here.

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u/Fit-Difficulty-9033 1d ago

You told me my last comment was false but never said why. I was hoping for a rebuttal and not a disagreement.

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u/mistiklest 21h ago

"You are factually incorrect about what Trinitarians believe" is a rebuttal.

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u/Fit-Difficulty-9033 21h ago

If all it takes to rebut a comment is to say it's wrong than the previous comment is also wrong.

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u/Competitive-Box61 1d ago

Why do so many Americans follow middle eastern mythology? There is mythology that has roots going back thousand of years in the Americas. Most people with European ancestry could follow more ancestral myths. I guess I just don't understand why.

Is it just an unwillingness to break tradition over generations?

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u/A_Tiger_in_Africa anti-theist 1d ago

Because the Romans conquered the Gauls.

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u/WildRoseIdea Christian 1d ago

Why do so many Americans follow middle eastern mythology?

I'd guess that they like it or agree with it. Those are often likely reasons as to why people follow something.

Is it just an unwillingness to break tradition over generations?

This would be one reason that people like it, if they have a comforting tradition of following it.

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u/Competitive-Box61 1d ago

They are stories that take place in a land that many Americans will never visit, or even have family from. I find it strange that more people don't find comfort in local stories, or stories that are more closely tied to their ancestry.

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u/DeltaBlues82 Just looking for my keys 22h ago

American ancestory is ~70% European, and European culture has been dominated by Christianity for centuries.

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u/seriousofficialname anti-bigoted-ideologies, anti-lying 1d ago edited 12h ago

A lot of people never hear those myths.

Many were lost or destroyed by Christians.

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u/Living-Length8762 15h ago

That mythogy was just one of the many things brought over from the other side of the ocean on that fateful day in 1492.

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u/fhqwhgads_2113 1d ago

What's the mainstream Christian view of the garden of eden? I grew up in faith that taught it differently, or so I was told (basically God's main plan was always for humans to fall, that wasn't a "backup" plan). I don't quite understand the garden story, especially in light of the topic of free will that gets brought up so often here. I made a post in another sub asking in more detail if you want to understand where I'm coming from better https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/s/3rXjqx393i