There is an apocryphal yet instructive story of a famous theologian who had just delivered a lecture on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. A student jumped to his feet to thank the professor, excitedly exclaiming that at last he felt he really understood the doctrine. His theological teacher surprised him by heaving a sigh of despair and saying: “If you understand it as clearly as that, then you have misunderstood it and I shall have to start all over again.”
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To speak today of God as three persons readily leads to a mental picture of a heavenly trio (a divine committee!), one which has even been portrayed visually in art. Such a view of God (and it is widespread in popular Christianity) deserves the condemnation which Muhammad heaped upon it. He called Christians polytheists, who had sadly regressed from the pure monotheism of Judaism which he himself felt called to reaffirm.
Lloyd Geering, February 28, 1987Â issue of the New Zealand Listener
The full article from which the above quotes were taken can be read at Sir Lloyd Geering: Rethinking the trinity
19 May, 2018 at 1:02 am
He was right. Christians cannot escape from the charge of polytheism as long as they continue to insist the three are each god.
19 May, 2018 at 1:24 am
My own faith tradition doesn’t “do theology”, so arguments over the nature of God are irrelevant. Liberal Churches here, mostly hold a view similar to Lloyd Geering, but I think many conservatives would prefer to be martyred than deny the Trinity.
19 May, 2018 at 1:40 am
God is three and God is one. God likes paradoxes- light is a wave and a particle.
19 May, 2018 at 4:14 pm
Logic puts me squarely in the non-theist camp, but experientially I’m not. Now there’s a paradox!
19 May, 2018 at 6:03 pm
I am rationally atheist and emotionally theist. I have a personal relationship with the God I do not believe in.
19 May, 2018 at 6:47 pm
Very well put Clare. It makes perfect sense to me, even though as an Aspie, I’m supposedly systematically logical and incapable of making abstract emotional connections.
Being married to a Japanese, and having a MÄori son-in-law and grandchildren, and a Tahitian daighter-in-law, I have learnt to value and experience values and concepts embedded in multiple cultures. Whether one calls it religion, spirituality, or simply culture, doesn’t matter. On the one hand I recognise they are humanly created concepts, yet on the other hand, they feel, and in reality, modify one’s world view.
19 May, 2018 at 1:47 am
It is very obvious in The Bible more than one god is depicted. They have spent centuries trying to prove otherwise, but right from genesis it’s obviously more than oneâIf any of it were true at all.
19 May, 2018 at 3:08 pm
Perhaps. An alternative way of looking at it to see it as an evolution of God. In other words the perception of what God is has evolved over time, and in fact it still hasn’t stopped. For example, is the way I or Lloyd Geering perceive God, a radically new God or is it the result of many small evolutionary steps over several millennia?
19 May, 2018 at 5:50 am
There is my physical body. There is my emotional being. There is also the rational image I have of myself. All three coexist (sometimes peaceably, sometimes not) within a single corporeal entity which occupies some minuscule part of the space-time continuum.
If this sounds nonsensical, you are correct.
19 May, 2018 at 7:03 am
It probably made sense 2000 years ago when no one doubted the existence of spirits and the concept of an imortal soul separate from the physical body was growing. But that doesn’t justify clinging to a belief that conflicts with newer knowledge.