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Well, it certainly sounds like it.
We speak of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy
Spirit! Actually we only believe in one God, and we
believe that very firmly. But isn’t that contradictory?
It’s certainly confusing.
Why don’t Christians keep it simple
and just talk about God, even if they sometimes call him
“Jesus”? The reason is that we would lose a lot from the
Christian Faith if we did.
It all started in the Bible.
Obviously, there is a God in heaven. He’s often referred
to as our Father. Then came Jesus and he soon got into
trouble for claiming to be God. And yet he prayed to God
in heaven. This wasn’t a case of schizophrenia. They
were actually two distinct persons, each said to be or
claiming to be God!
Of course, someone might say that
Jesus was mistaken and he wasn’t really God. If that is
the case then Christianity is fundamentally false.
Jesus’ death is a sad story but has no relevance to or
benefits for us. So the two billion Christians in the
world are deceived. We should all convert to Islam or
Judaism!
But if Jesus was not God, but
thought he was, he must have been mad. If he knew he was
not God, but claimed to be God, he must have been bad. I
find those ideas completely incredible, especially when
you remember the huge effect for good Jesus has had on
the world.
However, Jesus complicated it even
more by referring to the Holy Spirit and making it clear
he was God too!
And yet, as a very observant Jewish
rabbi, Jesus believed firmly that there was only one
God! It doesn’t seem to make sense. What are we to
make of it all?
My first response is to ask why do
we think we would be able to understand with our little
minds the eternal God who created, and sustains, this
vast universe? What sort of God would he be if we could
easily understand him and explain him and there is no
mystery about him? The answer is – a little tin-pot
idol.
The Christian belief in the Trinity
(God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit) is
mind-boggling. It’s a mystery. So what? It’s only to be
expected.
When Christians say that God is
three persons yet only one God, they are saying God is
“super-personal.” His personhood is so much greater than
ours that the only way we can describe it, in our
limited human words, is that God is “Tri” – three
(persons), “unity” – one, i.e. Three in One: Trinity.
However, there is a much more
wonderful reason why Christians believe in the Trinity.
The universe has been around for 13.7 billion years and
human beings for a much shorter time than that. God is
eternal and he existed before anything else came into
being and long before human beings existed. Yet we
Christians believe God is so loving that we say: “God
is love.”
The big question is: if God was
only one person who would he have had to love before the
universe and human beings were created? Talk about
unrequited love! But, if God is, as Christians believe,
three persons (yet still only one God) there would have
love within the Trinity for all eternity. Putting it
simply, Christians believe that God is a “family” of
persons bound together by infinite and eternal love.
So on Trinity Sunday (May 18th)
we shall be reflecting on the boundless, awesome love of
God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Tony Higton
PS Check my blog on
www.churchinthewoottons.net for new contributions on
Computer Games, Children needing stricter upbringing,
Marriage going out of fashion, Politicians doing God and
updates on the Archbishop’s Comments on Sharia. |
Do
We Believe in 3 Gods?
