Khalil Siddiqui asks >As a Muslim, I believe in the existence of only one God. And it is said >that Christianity is also monotheistic. However, I have never read or >heard a satisfactory explanation of how the Trinity can be interpreted >monotheistically. >There is God, the Father. >His Son (?), Jesus. >And the Holy Spirit. First, let's separate out questions about Jesus. That's really not an issue for the Trinity. The Trinity talks about the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the eternal Logos. I'll get back to Jesus later. I think the real answer is that Christians have a slightly more complex idea of what God is than Moslems. I'm going to give you an explanation that is based on the Western model of the Trinity. (There are several approaches to the Trinity that are consistent with the official standards. They tend to be associated with Eastern and Western Christianity.) Historically, the Trinity developed from reflections on Scripture and in reaction to views that the church regarded as unacceptable (and you would regard as even worse than the current view, I think). But in a deeper sense, I think the Trinity is a consequence of two things: - the idea of God as personal - the idea that Jesus shows us what God is like It is a basic principle of Christianity that God is loving. But love is a relationship. How can there be a relationship among one thing? One could of course say that God had to create the universe in order to have things to love. But then love isn't intrinsic to him, because he needed us in order to love. This suggests that there is some complexity within God: enough of a distinction of roles that there can be a lover and loved. The same thing is suggested by Jesus' statements that when we see him we see God. Forget for the moment whether Jesus actually *is* God. It's unambiguous in his teachings that he at least shows us what God is like. But what Jesus shows us is an obedient son. If Jesus shows us God, this says that God is not only a father but a son. This points in the same direction as the previous paragraph: at a God who has within his own experience both the love of a father and the obedience of a son. This is essential to the Christian concept of how salvation happens. The Bible (most explicitly in Paul's letters, but also elsewhere) teaches that on our own we are unable to do what God wants us to do. We become able to do so only by being in some way united with God. Through this union, God supplies what we need. He can do this because he is both Father and Son. Thus he has experienced not only the role of Father, but the loving obedience that we need. Hence he is inviting us into something he has already done. This is a somewhat different basic concept that God as lawmaker. Yes, God makes laws, but ultimately he also invites us into communion with himself. Now all of this implies that there is some distinction of role or person within God, but it need not indicate that there is more than one God. There's enough of a distinction for God to have the relationship of Father and Son. (For current purposes, the Holy Spirit can be thought of as the presence of the Father with the Son. This is probably not doing him justice.) Augustine's work "On the Trinity" is probably the most influential work on the Trinity in the West. In it, he uses a number of human analogies for the Trinity. Those that are the closest use faculties within a single person, e.g. memory, intelligence, and will. God isn't a human being, so no such analogy can be exact. But it will give you some idea of where he is coming from: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are thought of as being in some way within a single God. I'd like to suggest that for people who have experience with computers, this sort of thing should actually be easier to believe than for people in the 4th and 5th Cent. We've experienced systems where a single physical processor supports multiple virtual systems, and where multiple physical processors are combined into a single virtual system. When reading science fiction, most of us have no trouble dealing with the idea of colonial intelligences, where multiple bodies are part of a single entity. All of these are examples of things that are in some ways like a single entity and in other ways like multiple entities. I don't believe any of these examples is exactly like God. But that's not the point. I'm not currently trying to formulate a computer-based theology. Rather, I'm saying that we've seen enough examples to believe that there are ways to exist other than the human one. I think they make it plausible that there could be an entity that is in some ways like one person and in other ways like several separate people. I think that's all the Trinity really says. It says that in some ways God is best thought of as one entity, and in other ways he best thought of as three entities. There is also some understanding of in what areas it's most accurate to think of him as one and what areas it's most accurate to think of him as three. ---- Now, back to Jesus. The standard explanation of the relationship between Jesus and God is the doctrine of the Incarnation. This isn't the same thing as the Trinity, and in theory it would be possible to reject the Trinity and (with a slight modification) still hold the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation. (However I don't know of any group that has done so.) Let me be clear on terms: I use the term Jesus to refer to the human being who was born in 4 BC or whatever the date is. I use the term Logos for the second person of the Trinity. The terms Christ and Son can be used in several different ways. Thus for precision I'm going to avoid them here. In the previous section I used Son as equivalent to the Logos. (This explanation is based on one of several different ways of explaining the Incarnation. I specifically reject the concept of anhypostasia, which effectively says that no real human being Jesus existed. I'm following more or less the understanding of Theodore of Mopsuestia.) Basically Christianity says that Jesus is the human form of God. He is not a separate God, but the one God's way of being present through a human life. The Letter to the Hebrews explains it thus: "He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word." By "imprint" I understand the imprint of a seal on wax. The wax imprint is of course distinct from the original metal or ceramic seal. It's a different material. And yet in a more abstract sense, they're different forms of the same seal. No one is confusing humanity with God: we all understand that the human being Jesus is mortal, and has the limitations of a human being. Yet in some more abstract way, Jesus is the human form of God. I take this to mean two things: - when we see Jesus, we see God. - Jesus' actions are also God's. I believe these can both be supported by Jesus' explicit statements and the implications of what he did. Yet there is an indirectness in God's presence. In a certain sense, when Jesus died, God died. God so identified himself with Jesus, that he experienced what Jesus did. So he experienced death. But it was through Jesus. Clearly God didn't in a direct sense die, since he is immortal. Nor does Jesus cease being a human being. Rather, in Jesus there are two different things going on: a human being and the presence of God in and through him. This is why I have problems with Christians saying "Jesus is God". I would say "Jesus is the incarnation of God". One can justify the statement "Jesus is God", but to someone who doesn't know Christian theology it sounds like either a claim that there are two gods, or a claim that Jesus and God are the same thing. Neither of these is quite right. Note by the way that Jesus is most emphatically not the physical son of God. Somehow a number of Moslems seem to have gotten this impression. That would imply that Jesus isn't a real human being, but some kind of demi-god. Jesus is the incarnation of God because God has chosen to identify himself with Jesus and be present through him, not because Jesus is super-human. In fact, the basic Christian concept of how salvation occurs would fail if Jesus were not fully human. ---- To answer your specific questions: >1. Jesus is either God or he is just a man; you can't have it both >ways. I've tried to understand it both ways. Some have tried to >convince me that he is sort of a 'God-man,' but that just doesn't wash. >So presumably God made himself a body and came down here to walk around >among us, i.e., Jesus was God. If Jesus was a man, then, well, you're a >Muslim. In the sense you are asking, I would say that Jesus was a man. I haven't said "just a man", because there's no way to understand Jesus without also noting that this man was the incarnation of God. That doesn't change his humanity. But it means that in order to understand fully what was going on you need to look at things from more than just the human point of view. [Again I note that I'm giving you one of two possible approaches. The other one effectively says that God used Jesus' body, mind, etc., to walk among us, so when you were dealing with Jesus you were actually dealing with God. Although all the parts of a human being were there, including a human will, in some sense there was no actual human being. This is probably the more common view, but one that I think is in violent contradiction with Scripture. It makes sense, and doesn't violate monotheism. I just think it's wrong.] >2. If Jesus is God, well, then what's up with being his own Son? I >find it hard to believe all Christians just accept that happily, as if >it makes perfect sense. Some have said to me, "No, Jesus isn't God, >he's God's Son." Asked if that makes him God, they repeat it. Is there >an accepted 3rd form of deity, somewhere between God and men? What is a >'child' of God? If God can have one child, why do some bristle at the >possibility of there being more than one 'child of God?' Jesus is >seated at the right hand of the father. He's beside Himself. Sorry :-) The term "Son" is ambiguous. It's used in at least three different ways, and most Christians aren't clear how they're using it. No wonder you're confused. It is used for: - the eternal Logos, the second person of the Trinity - Jesus - the eternal Logos as incarnated in Jesus. (I have this urge to hyphenate the whole thing and find a 40-character long German word for it.) I wouldn't say that God is his own Son. I'd say that the Son is one of the three persons or roles within God. (I'm hoping that no other Christianity have made it this far, or I'll get accused of Sabellianism. The problem is that if I qualify every statement enough to avoid falling into heresy, you won't be able to follow it.) When I described the Incarnation of God above, I spoke of Jesus as being the Incarnation simply of God. However technically he is normally thought of as being the incarnation specifically of the Son. The reason should be clear: the aspect of God that he shows most clearly is the Son. His life was primarily one of a servant. There most emphatically is not a form halfway between God and man. Or if there is, Jesus isn't it. Jesus is a normal man. Because he is the incarnation of God, he is in some other sense God. But he's not a compromise. >3. Okay, the Holy Spirit? Is that God as well? What is the Holy >Spirit, and how is it different than God? Why differentiate? Yes. We differentiate because the Bible differentiates. The Holy Spirit is clearly spoken of as God, but is also spoken of as distinct from the Father. >4. The stock answer seems to be that the Trinity is a mystery, and you >shouldn't think about it too much. But that bothers me. If the >monotheistic character of the Trinity is not meant to be understood, >doesn't that raise some warning flags? It seems that monotheism should >be the rock on which a monotheistic religion is built (lest its people >should go astray and worship false gods), and therefore it should be >cast in stone, not left to the imagination of its followers. But >instead, the Gospels are replete with confusing words like 'Son of God.' >It seems that would be a very bothersome phrase, and yet most are >content that God can have children, which is a bizarre thought for a >monotheistic religion. "Son of God" is not meant physically, as I've indicated. The term seems to have a quite a range of meanings in the Bible. Because of Hebrew idiom it often means simply a godly man. I believe it's clear from context that it is often used of Jesus in a unique sense, but it's possible that not all uses are that way. Remember that in the New Testament, terms are not used the same way they are used in technical Christian theology, and not even in quite the same way by all the NT writers. The NT writers were not professional theologians, and there hadn't been time for the sort of technical vocabulary to build up that built up by the 5th Cent. When Jesus is called son of God in the NT, I think it's normally combining some aspects that later showed up in the Trinity and the Incarnation. It's referring to some combination of the distinction between Father and Son as roles within God, and the distinction between God and his incarnation in the human being Jesus. I haven't looked carefully, but I suspect that it may be different in different passages. I think "Son of God" didn't bother the NT writers precisely because of the history of the Hebrew idiom. It was clear that it was not being used literally. I claim that the Trinity and the Incarnation are there precisely to defend monotheism. Christians are committed to something like the Trinity, because the Bible refers to Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a way that make it clear there's some distinction. They are also spoken of in ways that make it clear that they are God. Thus there was a very real danger of either tritheism or at least demigods. The Trinity interprets Father, Son and Holy Spirit as aspects of one God. Thus it preserves monotheism, in a situation where other outcomes were all too likely. Similarly, we're committed to the Incarnation because of a set of passages that talk of Jesus as having many of the properties of God, or at least a demigod. The Incarnation interprets Jesus as the one God taking to himself a human being and using him as his way to be present with humanity. Again, it preserves monotheism by avoiding having Jesus turn into a second god or almost-god. To the extent that Jesus is God, it is because the one God is using him or is present in and through him. ---- As a postscript: Christian theology has a history of liking paradoxical language. This is partly because so many of the heresies have involved oversimplification. Many points in Christian theology involve keeping two or more alternatives in balance. Most heresies can be understood as overemphasizing one alternative. One way to defend against that is to insist on maintaining paradox. In my opinion, the easiest way to explain the Trinity is to say that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three parts of one God. This would almost certainly be regarded as heretical. There are certainly some dangers to using "part" in this context, but I think we could guard against the dangers by adding appropriate qualifications. I think the real problem is that it would be too easy to understand, and Christian theology has adopted paradox as a major defense mechanism. This is fine when we're dealing with discussions among Christians, and the major problem is with people who oversimplify. But it becomes a problem when we're dealing with non-Christians, and the major problem is that people think we speaking nonsense. Similarly, I think there are ways to deal with the Incarnation based on Theodore's approach that would be a lot easier to understand. Again, the problem is that there are so many heresies that anything that can be understood can be claimed to be heretical in some way or another. Given that 90% of our own members don't understand what the Trinity and Incarnation are about, I think the time has come to accept the risks of saying something intelligible, and add the necessary qualifications to guard against heresy. This posting is a compromise. I've tried to speak fairly plainly, and have departed from standard language in some cases. But I'm trying to stay fairly close to orthodox explanations.