Christians, can someone please explain the concept of trinity?

If you are confused about the trinity, then you are reading God's word with an open heart.

If a Christian says he understands the trinity, he / she is lying to themselves and others. Honest trinitarians admit that the trinity is only hinted at, but not stated.

Why do most bibles read as if there is a trinity? Because the translator believes the trinity.

Because many people also believe in the trinity, so they reject any bible that honestly translates God's word without the trinity slant.

Book "Truth in Translation" by Dr. Jason BeDuhn

Page 163, “it can be said that the NW (New World Translation) emerges as the most accurate of the translations compared.” Why? Because the other translations have to deal with the Protestant Burden:

The New World Translation is free from what he calls “the Protestant’s Burden. . . . one aspect of Protestantism that puts added pressure on translators from it’s ranks. . . . “The problem is that Protestant Christianity was not born in a historical vacuum, and does not go back directly to the time that the Bible was written. . . . it did not re-invent Christianity from scratch, but carried over many of the doctrines that had developed within Catholicism over the course of the previous thousand years or more. . . . the Protestant Reformation is incomplete, in that it did not fully realize the high ideals that were set for it.”

Page 164: “For the doctrines that Protestantism inherited to be considered true, they had to be found in the Bible. And precisely because they were considered true already, there was and is tremendous pressure to read those truths back into the Bible, whether or not they are actually there. . . . So even if most if not all of the ideas and concepts held by modern Protestant Christians can be found, at least implied, somewhere in the Bible, there is a pressure (conscious or unconscious) to build up those ideas and concepts with the biblical text, to paraphrase or expand on what the Bible does say in the direction of what modern readers want and need it to say.”

Example: NIV:

Edwin H. Palmer, Th.D., Executive Secretary for the NIV’s committee wrote:

“Here is why we did not: You are right that Jehovah is a distinctive name for God and ideally we should have used it. But we put 2 1/4 million dollars into this translation and a sure way of throwing that down the drain is to translate, for example, Psalm 23 as, ‘Yahweh is my shepherd.’ Immediately, we would have translated for nothing. Nobody would have used it. Oh, maybe you and a handful [of] others. But a Christian has to be also wise and practical. We are the victims of 350 years of the King James tradition. It is far better to get two million to read it—that is how many have bought it to date—and to follow the King James, than to have two thousand buy it and have the correct translation of Yahweh. . . . It was a hard decision, and many of our translators agree with you.”

Concerning the NIV:

Bruce Metzger: (NIV) "It is surprising that translators who profess to have 'a high view of scripture" should take liberties with text by omitting words or, more often, by adding words that are not in the manuscripts."

The NIV was translated by trinitarians, for trinitarians to prove the trinity.

There are simply too many scriptures on the finish of Christs ministry, when he pleads with the father. His pleading with the father is what rather makes no sense. If he is the daddy, then why plead with him? There may be simply no logic to it. Additionally we all know that God, is the father of Jesus, so when you believe in the trinity, you suppose that Jesus is his own father- he Fathered himself. I get what you're announcing concerning the Miracles, but this is where religion comes in relatively. He is a God and he can make these things occur. I believe a lot of the Christian world has been taught that God is confusing and incomprehensible and that we should now not attempt to recognize him- simply accept Him as our grasp and do His will. That makes it hard to clutch the alternate idea that maybe there's some good judgment to God and his existence. It's the equal approach that I think in the production over Evolution and giant Bang, considering the construction is a entire lot more logical to me that the opposite two theories. Miracles are just distinct to me. The miracles had been performed to help people consider in God and within the Deity of Jesus. They had been performed to affirm that he is the Son of God. There was once a reason for them. I assume the one method to be aware of for sure, is to ask the Lord. For those who ask in religion and open your intellect to the answers the Lord desires you to have, he'll testify to you if the Trinity is correct or now not. He will show you the best way.

PEOPLE who believe the Trinity teaching say that God consists of three persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of these three persons is said to be equal to the others, almighty, and without beginning. According to the Trinity doctrine, therefore, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, yet there is only one God.

Many who believe the Trinity admit that they are not able to explain this teaching. Still, they may feel that it is taught in the Bible. It is worth noting that the word “Trinity” never occurs in the Bible. But is the idea of a Trinity found there?

Regarding the end of this system of things, he quotes Jesus as saying: “Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36) How do these words confirm that Jesus is not Almighty God?

Jesus says that the Father knows more than the Son does. If Jesus were part of Almighty God, however, he would know the same facts as his Father. So, then, the Son and the Father cannot be equal. Yet, some will say: ‘Jesus had two natures. Here he speaks as a man.’ But even if that were so, what about the holy spirit? If it is part of the same God as the Father, why does Jesus not say that it knows what the Father knows?

"Precisely what that doctrine is, or rather precisely how it is to be explained, Trinitarians are not agreed among themselves." - A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge

This is because

"Neither the word Trinity, nor the explicit doctrine as such, appears in the New Testament, nor... in the Old Testament." - The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1985, Micropedia, vol. 11, p. 928.

(An honest, clear statement of the Trinity Doctrine isn't a difficult statement for anyone to write, let alone an inspired Bible writer. But you will never see it (not even once) in the inspired Scriptures.)

Trinitarians themselves admit that "The Trinity...is an INFERRED doctrine, gathered ECLECTICALLY from the entire Canon". - page 630 of the highly trinitarian publication, Today's Dictionary of the Bible, Bethany House Publishers, 1982.

So Trinitarians are forced to rely on a certain type of 'reasoning'. "Proof” offered by Trinitarians is always specious, vague, and/or ambiguous.

Instead of using the entire Bible as context, many who believe that Jesus is God or in the Trinity rely on a few selected, so-called 'proof-texts' which, when properly examined are not proof of the Trinity in any way:

http://examiningthetrinity.blogspot.com/2011/03/ex...

"At first the Christian faith was not Trinitarian .... It was not so in the apostolic and sub-apostolic ages, as reflected in the NT [New Testament] and other early Christian writings." - Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Hastings.

"The doctrine *developed gradually* over several centuries and through many controversies .... It was not until the 4th century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons." - The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1985, Micropedia, vol. 11, p. 928.

Recommended Article:

Must You Believe in the Trinity to Be a Christian?

http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2010088

Trinitarians, non-trinitarians, 3 in one, 2 in one, 1 in 1, does it really, really, matter? Or is this whole debate centered around who's beliefs appear to be winning the argument?

This never ending debate about the essence of the grand God Almighty, is to say the least pedantic and self serving. By pedantic I mean:

1.Like a pedant, overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning.

2.Being showy of one’s knowledge, often in a boring manner.

3.Being finicky or fastidious, especially with language.

The bible does not specifically indicate any specifics as to what a spirit creature actually looks like or what it is made of. Who knows for sure? Endless posturing and preening about how much more christian or non-pagan our view over their view of God is a worthless endeavor. It has been debated now for almost 2,000 years. Isn't it time to move on to something more important, like maybe the answers to the really HARD questions.

If there is a God is he still active in our lives?

What is the purpose if any to mankinds life life?

What proof is there that life after death is a reasonable hope?

Does establishing the winner of the debate about the substance of someone that no one alive has ever seen or heard, going to make you believe or faith any more than you do now?

The trinity has been "official" Christian doctrine since the early 4th century. However, neither the doctrine, the terminology used to explain it, nor the word itself are found in the Bible. Best defined by the Athanasian Creed, the trinity doctrine states that there is one God who eternally exists as three separate, co-equal, co-eternal, co-existent persons, namely, the God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Scripture never uses such terms as co-equal, co-eternal, co-existent, or God the Son, nor does it ever refer to God as persons. (It does, however, refer to His person, singular, in Job 13:8-10) The only verse that attempts to connect the number three with God is a proven fraud, not even accepted as valid by trinitarian scholars. http://www.bible-researcher.com/comma.ht%E2%80%A6

Athanasius was so determine to prove the absolute deity of each "person" that he backed himself into a corner and admitted belief in three gods... but then quickly added that the religion forbids them to SAY three gods. (Source: Latin text of the creed)

In scripture, we have two examples of people finding themselves standing before the throne of God. (Isaiah and John) Both recorded the same scene: one throne and One sitting on it. If there are three persons, two seem to be habitually absent!

What scripture does say is that God exists, not as 3 persons, but as one Spirit. (John 4:24; Eph. 4:4) Since God is a Spirit and is holy by nature, Holy Spirit is obviously a title that refers to God Himself, not a third person or an active force. That same Holy Spirit caused Mary to conceive (Mt. 1:18-20), thereby becoming the Father of Jesus. So Father and Holy Spirit are not separate persons, but simply titles of the same one God. Jesus was fully human, but the same Spirit who was His Father chose to inhabit the body of His son. (2 Cor. 5:19; 1 Tim. 3:16) This means that Jesus was also the one God in flesh. Isaiah identified the son as both God and Father. (Is. 9:6) Jesus confirmed His identity as God in John 8:58 (the I AM) and as the Father in John 14:8-9. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in the body of Jesus. (Col. 2:9)

Jesus is the NAME of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, since they aren't three persons, but just 3 titles of the one God who took on flesh. The apostles confirmed this by the way they obeyed Mt. 28:19. They never once used those three titles in baptism. Every recorded Christian baptism in the Bible was performed using only the name of Jesus. (Acts chapters 2, 8, 10, 19, 22)

So while you may not understand the concept of trinity, those who say they do understand trinity don't understand the biblical description of the Godhead.

The Trinity was the result of Christians finding out, in the third century, that there were different and contradictory ways to explain what they believed.

We (Christians, that is) started out with a difficulty that Jews and Muslims don't have: We believe in the God of the Hebrew scripture, but we also believe that God lived a human life and died a human (and, as it happens, particularly nasty) death, and that God did that as a way of healing the deep separation between humanity and God, purely because he loves us. We also believe that after that human death, the human incarnation of God came back to life and hung around for a bit, teaching his followers, and that after he returned to Heaven God returned to us in a new way, as an influence and guide within us.

We believe that all of these different ways we know God are all one God. But we've also got accounts that say God (in human form) prayed, and taught his followers to pray, to God in Heaven, and that he spoke of God in Heaven as another person, whom he called the Father. (Actually, the Aramaic word was more familiar than that; "Daddy" might be a better translation.)

This of course is all a bit confusing, and eventually people realized that different Christians understood it very differently. The big argument came when a fourth-century priest actually started teaching that the human God, Jesus, was a separate, subordinate God. After a few decades of arguing (not to mention occasional rioting and political intrigue), it was decided the orthodox (that is, official) teaching of the church was that there is one God, but that the three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) we knew were all encounters with that one God. And yet the three persons are different from each other.

There's a formal statement of this: the Athanasian Creed. (See the source section below for a link to a modern English translation. You can ignore all the believe-this-or-you-can't-be-saved stuff; it reflects church politics of the time. The point is the description of the beliefs: one God, in three Persons.)

It's worth observing that the whole notion we have, that any Being is tied to a single Person, is based on our experience with the only persons we know: other humans. It's anthropomorphic. The whole claim that it's self-contradictory or illogical comes from a demand that God has to be just like us. Christians have, for nearly 18 centuries now, officially recognized that God isn't just like us, and that clears up all the logical issues. It may not be easy to understand, but it's consistent.

There's one bit that might deserve a little extra focus, with respect to your question. The whole notion of "Father" and "Son" does not have to do with the human incarnation. Those terms are a metaphor, based on human experience of father-son relationships: authority and obedience, guidance and support. We say--that Creed says--that these two Persons had a relationship, somewhat like that of a human father and a human son (though of course also different), from the start; that God was always these three Persons, expressing Love within his very existence, even before he had a Creation on which to bestow it. The Father-Son business isn't genetic; it isn't even human, but it's a relationship we humans can only understand in human terms.

Hi there! Well you should be confused, as one Trinitarian apologist said: "Confused? Good! That is just where you need to be."[1] The Trinity presents God as an impersonal "What" of three personal "Whos": the Father, Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is then a Who of two Whats, a divine and human nature in hypostatic union as one divine person. This is expressed in the Scutum Fidei.[2] Also, while some Trinitarians use the egg illustration, the Trinitarian apologist referred to above condemned that as improper and heretical. Thus, we can see that Trinitarians are very divided on how to express their theology.

Fortunately, we can be most thankful that the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ believed that God IS a person, the Father! He clearly expressed this in John 17:1-5. Jesus is therefore not a who of a what, but our Lord and Savior who honors the Father in heaven!--Revelation 3:12.

The higher we go in hierarchy, the more the functions and names they have.

Jesus has many names: the branch, the vine, God's son, Lord, King of Kings...

shows Who He is, and the names show the function.

As God's son, Jesus came and redeemed us. As Lord, He is Lord of Lords

over this earth, so function.

Trinity is not used, but father, son and Holy Spirit ALL have abilities that

they do that only God can do.

This is hotly disputed, so then you research this online and see what

you come to.

I've come to the fact that they are all 'God' ,part of the Godhead, all

able to lead us, make decisions, but those are 100% in one accord,

one with another.

Isaiah 9:6

6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the

government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

This passage was written many hundreds of years before Jesus was born, let’s examine the prophecy. Who is the child born and son given? Jesus! The phrase “his name” gives reference to a name that was not yet revealed, a name that is not in the context. That name is Jesus. The name Jesus shall be called… . When looking at Jesus we see wonderful, counseller. Is Jesus wonderful and counselor? Yes he is! We also see according to this verse he is “The mighty God“, “The everlasting Father“. How long has Jesus been the Father? From everlasting. If he has been the Father from everlasting (forever) than he must be Jehovah the creator of Gen. 1:1. How many mighty Gods do we have? Only one! Is he one third God? Is he one of three gods? No, no, no, a thousand times no. Jesus Christ is the “true God and eternal life” of 1 John 5:20. Thomas called him “Lord and God“. John 20:28.

John 1:10

10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

Who was in the world? Jesus the son of God. The world was made by him. Who? Jesus the creator of Heaven and earth. Jesus is the Jehovah God of the Old Testament.

Colossians 2:8-9

8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

9 For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

As in Col.2:19 the above verse states that all of God dwelt in the body of Jesus Christ. There are no persons, entities or spirits of God outside and separate from Jesus Christ. When looking at Jesus you see all there is to see in God.

Isaiah 43:3

3 For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.

4

When we see the word LORD in all caps in the OT. Then we know that, that is referring to Jehovah God. God is the savior.

Isaiah 43:10,11,15

10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.

The trinity teaching is that the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God and is separate from God the Father. If they are separate one from the other, then we have three separate gods. God said there was no other god formed.

11 I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.

If Jehovah is the only savior as he says then what about Jesus? If they are separate persons then we have more than one savior. They are not separate persons but one in the same LORD God.

15 I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King.

Isaiah 44:6, 8

6 Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.

In verse 6 the term “beside me” is used. The trinity teaching id that the Son sits next to (besides) the Father on the throne. God said no God was “beside him“. Who is correct the Trinitarians or God? If God the Son sits next to God the Father on the throne than God is lying. In Rev. 4:2 John saw only one sitting on the throne. Is John right or the current day Trinitarians? Look at the next verse how God reiterates this same fact of God being alone.

8 Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any.

Isaiah 44:24

24 Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;

In the previous verse we see God making the claim to have been alone on the day of creation. The trinity teaching is that the Son was with the Father at this time as a separate person. They use John 3:16 and a passage from Genesis to make their claim. How could God be alone and his Son be with him at the same time? Understanding God’s image clarifies the subject and makes us know that God is one in number with many manifestations, titles and offices.