>learn about the trinity
>"okay so there are three persons"
>sounds like polytheism
>"and they have the same essence"
>this sounds weird
>"and they have the same will, power and nature"
>hmmm what does it mean then when they say there are three persons in the trinity?
>"n Trinitarian theology, personhood means distinct relational identities within the one Godhead, allowing three persons with one will and intellect"
okay so the trinity is a nothingburger? christians believe in one god and unlike hindus the god has the same will and intellect. of course our muslim friends think the trinity is polytheism if you say god is three persons.

>okay so the trinity is a nothingburger?
Not quite. The Trinity isn’t just God playing dress-up, nor is it three gods chilling in a divine flatshare. It’s one divine essence, fully possessed by three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) who are really distinct, not by substance, but by relation.

>sounds like polytheism
Only if you assume "person" must mean "separate being" the way creatures are. But God’s nature isn’t like created nature. In creatures, three persons means three 'separate substances'. In God, three persons share the same singular divine substance eternally.

>this sounds weird
It should. If God were totally graspable, He’d be a mere human construct. The doctrine of the Trinity is a revealed truth, not a man-made rational system. Its coherence doesn’t lie in easy analogies, but in its faithfulness to Scripture and the lived worship of the early Church.

>unlike hindus the god has the same will and intellect
And unlike Muslims, that will isn’t frozen in pure will-to-power. Christianity’s God is logos, not brute force. The Son is Reason, the Spirit is Love, and the Father is the eternal Source. Not exactly a nothingburger if you ask me.

>>17788028
If you use the word person, then it sounds like you're implying there are three different guys in one. But given how they share the same essence, power and will then it's clearly monotheism.

Islam is polytheistic, because they can not comprehend how multiple people can have the same will and intellect. They submit, and bend over, to the will of a warlord, because they must. They do not relate to their father, as an act of love and mutual understanding.

>>17788032
When the Church uses 'persona' (Greek hypostasis), it doesn’t mean three individuals with their own minds and feelings like three dudes in a car. It means three relations in one divine being: the Father as unbegotten, the Son as begotten, and the Spirit as proceeding. Think less “three guys” and more “three distinct ways of subsisting within the same infinite act of being.” They're not parts of God either. Each is fully God, not a third of God. The persons are who God is in relation, not what God is in essence.

>>17788041
I get it up to the parts, part.

>>17788046
Don't worry, it's fine.

When we say the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit aren’t “parts” of God, we mean that the divine nature isn’t divided up. Each Person possesses the fullness of the divine essence. The Son isn’t 1/3 of God. He is fully God, just as the Father and the Spirit are.

Think of it this way: God’s essence is simple, not composite. He’s not built out of pieces like Legos. So if He’s going to have three persons, those persons can’t be like parts of a whole. They have to be full expressions of the whole. That’s why the Trinity isn’t like a three-headed god, and it’s also why it’s not modalism. Each Person is distinct, but they are what the other is, in terms of nature. Which means that:
>not parts, because God is indivisible
>not duplicates, because there’s only one divine essence
>not masks, because the persons are really distinct
>not three gods, because they share the same will, power, and act

It’s metaphysically thick, but not incoherent. Let me know if you're still lost.

>>17788046
"Part" means seperation. As in, to part ways, or seperate. Relations are distinct, but still connected. Like the relativity of speed. In your position, you are standing still. But to an observer in space, you are moving through space on a rock. Your speed is relative, but completely your speed. If its zero, or if its 67,000 mph. Both are your speed, not parts of your speed.

>>17788011 (OP)
It's pagan nonsense, Yeshua is a human messiah.

>>17788070
Pick up your mat and walk.

>>17788011 (OP)
The trinity is either polytheism or just one being taking on different forms. Every other explanation makes no sense.

>>17788011 (OP)
>personhood means distinct relational identities
Relational to what? Each other?
So it's multiple personality disorder?

>>17788078
The theology of the trinity was created by greeks and person was a useful word to use way back when.

>>17788074
I'm not a Muslim they're also pagan.

>>17788080
Ok ignore the personality disorder comment and focus on the first question as that was the serious one.
If it's the same god in all aspects except being distinct "persons" in relation to each other, that would nessecitate different wills as well (how else would they ever diverge otherwise?)

>>17788083
If you interpret person as: having the same essence, will and intellect, then there is only one person in god. The christian useage of person is different from the everyday useage. The technical term is something like hypostasis.

Jesus said to only pray to the Father. Christians mostly pray to Jesus (and the saints). Virtually no one prays to the Holy Spirit. Yet it shouldn't matter which one you pray to.

>>17788083
>(how else would they ever diverge otherwise?)
They never 'diverge' (by which I take it you mean act differently from each other) because of having differing wills (John 6:38) but in execution of the divine plan which He set up before the foundation of the world.

>>17788057
How is subordinationism wrong? It seems pretty clear through the gospels that the Son is subordinate to the Father. "Not my will, but yours be done" for example.

>>17788232
The son is the way, the truth, and the life. Being that the way is a direction, I would say that makes him a coordinate.

>>17788011 (OP)
Two men and a bird is god?

>>17788011 (OP)
The trinity is necessary for Christian theology because without it attributes like God as “father” or the Christian identification of God with love fall apart. You cannot be a father without a child, so in some sense the child conditions the father just as much as the father conditions the child. If you say God is father to humanity, then before humanity came into being God could not be father and that would mean a real change occured in God’s nature, God could not be an eternal “father”. Making Jesus an eternal person in the trinity solves this. Likewise, if you say God is loving and that love is essential to the nature of God, then the question “who/what is the object of God’s love?” arises. If you say the world or humanity, then again you have the problem of these things not being eternal realities and thus God would have undergone real change when he created the world because before that there would be no object of God’s love. With the trinity, you can say that the persons love eachother, and since they’re all eternal realities then love as an essential attribute of God’s nature is preserved. This actually serves as a powerful critique of Islamic theology, which also endorses attributes like God as lord or master and all-loving and merciful. If they deny the world as an eternal reality, then either God’s nature is not immutable and unchanging or these things are not and never have been real attributes of God. Neoplatonism solves this rather nicely by just accepting that, yes, The One is absolute and attributeless. It is pure being and unconditioned. The cosmos is a “shadow” and not as real as The One. This shadow is really related to the One, but the One cannot be said to be really related to the shadow.

TL;DR: Christianity runs into serious metaphysical problems without the trinity, but there are much cleaner and more elegant ways to solve those problems philosophically than the trinity.

>>17789286
The Trinity becomes necessary to solve existential sociological and political power gap problems that come with the practice of Christianity.
It's not like there weren't powerful and successful non-trinitarian factions in history, but that ultimately more dominating religious identities win out with better forms of collectivism.
Nobody understands the theology anyway, but they do intuitively know that Jesus as God is a lot stronger than Jesus as another man in the long line of prophets.

>>17788011 (OP)
It means that they took stupid Greek metaphysics that we eventually realized was retarded. Only the Christians never let go of it.