Speaking to Non-Christians about the Trinity and Incarnation

[siliconwafer]

If a non-Christian were to say to you, "How can God be both one in substance and three in person?" or "How can someone be both God and man at the same time?", how would you respond? Sometimes I hear non-Christians ask these questions. They just want to understand the Trinity and the Incarnation.

[robertb]

These are sacred mysteries of the church.

[headheart]

These are sacred mysteries of the church.

At first I thought that was a great answer but in retrospect I think it's a cop out. The titles are mysterious but they are closer to us than our words.* I know that sounds mysterious but it's just like watching a program about Einstein' General Theory of Relativity (now doesn't that sound sacred and mysterious) or how about Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection? Yet they've been revealed to us and though not everyone understands them, some do and are able to explain them to us lesser mortals who fidget or fall out of windows* and need to be resurrected. If you get my meaning?

Okay,

Peace,
Eric.

*Paul said it.
*Under the influence of Paul's preaching.

[shunyadragon]

If a non-Christian were to say to you, "How can God be both one in substance and three in person?" or "How can someone be both God and man at the same time?", how would you respond? Sometimes I hear non-Christians ask these questions. They just want to understand the Trinity and the Incarnation.

If God or Gods in reality exist they potentially could be anything or of any nature, outside human efforts to rationalize God(s). Most often the claims of traditional Christians who believe the Bible and especially the NT is in someway Divinely inspired, are based on the testimony of Paul, which they feel is corroborated in some way by the gospels, particularly John. Beliefs like this do not fair well in trying to rationalize argument to someone like an atheist or agnostic, or a believer in another religion who does not consider the Bible in this way.

[Adrift]

If a non-Christian were to say to you, "How can God be both one in substance and three in person?" or "How can someone be both God and man at the same time?", how would you respond? Sometimes I hear non-Christians ask these questions. They just want to understand the Trinity and the Incarnation.

Since the question seems directed mostly towards Christians, you may find better responses in the Remedial Christian Theology or Theology 201 sub-forums.

In answer to your questions, I think it mainly depends on who the Christian is discussing this with. I haven't really done any heavy research on the trinity and the incarnation, but without trying to get too deep into the subject, I suppose I'd parallel the trinity to maybe a corporation with the Godhead being something like God Inc, and the members of the trinity being the board of directors, though I don't think that really encapsulates the concept very well. Apologists like WLC tend to keep metaphors at arms reach feeling that most popular metaphors for the trinity fail and would lead most folks down one of the heretical rabbit trails (eggs, water, husband/father/son, clovers all being poor analogies in his opinion). He does grant one simple illustration of the trinity though, Cerberus, the three-headed dog of Hades in Greek Mythology who was one substance, with one will, yet each head would probably be a distinct person. I'm not sure how great that analogy is really, but he only uses it briefly to make a point or two, and of course all analogies fail when pushed to their limits. Being a Marvel fan I'd probably have chosen the Living Tribunal, but meh...

The question about the incarnation is a bit more tricky for me personally, because I think that the best answer to the question may lay in some form of kenoticism. Most mainstream Christians consider kenoticism to be borderline heretical, though a number of modern philosophers, theologians, and Biblical scholars have reexamined the concept and believe that an orthodox argument can be made for it (see for example Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God with contributions from C. Stephen Evans, Gordon D. Fee, Sarah Coakley, Stephen T. Davis, Ronald J. Feenstra, Bruce N. Fisk, Ruth Groenhout, Edward T. Oakes, SJ, Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Thomas R. Thompson, Edwin Chr. van Driel.)

That said, the mainstream position is that the second member of the trinity did not strip himself down to some sort of man-ish state, or turn himself into a man, rather he assumed a human nature in Hypostatic union with his Godly nature, and this allows him to be truly God and man.

I think I'd flesh the answers out a bit more with a seeking individual, and what questions I don't know, I'd let them know I don't know, but that I'd help them find the answers, if answers are available.

[fm93]

To an adult I'd say:

God is ultimately a supremely powerful mind. That mind has the attributes of wisdom and power. The wisdom and power depend on the mind of God for their existence. Because of this, we can say that God is like a Father, since things depend on him for their existence in the way that a child depends on its father for its existence. However, the mind itself can’t exist without having wisdom and power (that’s part of what makes up a thinking mind). So for as long as God has existed, wisdom and power have existed as well. What’s special about this is that while our wisdom is just an impersonal attribute, God’s wisdom is actually alive and conscious, and so is his attribute of power. Since those attributes have consciousness, they can be said to be persons (since persons are ultimately centers of consciousness). God planted his attribute of wisdom into a human brain in a human body, so that conscious wisdom now has a human nature along with a divine nature. This, of course, is Jesus. To use an analogy, suppose you wanted to communicate with ants and had special powers. You might transfer your conscious mind and soul into the body of an ant. This way, you’re still you (aka, you still have a human mind and soul, so you have a human nature), but at the same time, you’re an ant, so you have an ant nature as well.

Again, since Jesus is ultimately wisdom, which is an attribute of the Father’s mind, he depends on the Father for his existence. That’s why he says things like “The Father is greater than I” and “I can do nothing apart from the Father.” However, this does NOT mean that the Father is more important than him, since, as I mentioned earlier, that mind MUST have wisdom to even exist. So the Father can of course be said to be God, but since the wisdom and power (which is the Holy Spirit) are from and of that same divine mind that is the Father (remember, God is ultimately an unembodied mind), they each share the same nature.

But if that's too philosophical for some people, I'd analogize it to the American federal government. There are three branches of it, each with different functions and roles, and yet each branch can legitimately be singularly referred to as the federal government.

[siliconwafer]

These are sacred mysteries of the church.

It is true that they are mysteries; we cannot fully comprehend God, but do you think that is all that can be said when a non-Christian asks the questions stated in the OP?

[siliconwafer]

If God or Gods in reality exist they potentially could be anything or of any nature, outside human efforts to rationalize God(s). Most often the claims of traditional Christians who believe the Bible and especially the NT is in someway Divinely inspired, are based on the testimony of Paul, which they feel is corroborated in some way by the gospels, particularly John. Beliefs like this do not fair well in trying to rationalize argument to someone like an atheist or agnostic, or a believer in another religion who does not consider the Bible in this way.

When we talk to non-Christians about the Trinity and the Incarnation, we can say much more than, "Those things are mysteries." We can refute the non-Christian's objections to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, but we cannot make them fully comprehend those doctrines.

[robrecht]

If a non-Christian were to say to you, "How can God be both one in substance and three in person?" or "How can someone be both God and man at the same time?", how would you respond? Sometimes I hear non-Christians ask these questions. They just want to understand the Trinity and the Incarnation.

With respect to the Trinity, I believe the essential message is that God is Relational, Interpersonal. This is a fundamental part of the definition of person in some humanist and personalist philosophies because it is such an important aspect of who we are. A medieval council (IV Lateran) verbalized this by saying that the only ways in which the persons of the Trinity differ are insofar as they are in relation. A person is defined by their relationships. A person only exists insofar as they are in relation to others. The Incarnation is best understood as God's ultimate plan of divinization of all creation. God became man so that man might become God. Anselm's, Cur deus homo? The Incarnation is best understood in terms of why, not what or how or any other limited attempt to understand intellectually, but why. Why did God create? Why did God become man? The answer can only be Love, the Love that defines the very inner life of God, a love that surpasses human understanding.

[shunyadragon]

When we talk to non-Christians about the Trinity and the Incarnation, we can say much more than, "Those things are mysteries."

This response is playing the Three Stooges, Duck, Bob and Weave. How could this response be the basis of refuting objections of non-Christians.

We can refute the non-Christian's objections to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, but we cannot make them fully comprehend those doctrines.

In all my years of studying religions I never seen a good refutation of the non-Christian objections about the Trinity and incarnation. I have been with Tweb for more than 5 years, and nothing has come up other than the shaky argument from scripture between the OT and NT, and this does not amount to much from the non-Christian perspective, especially the Jew.

[Chrawnus]

In respect to the OP, I'd say that that fm93's and Robrecht's answers are pretty good. There's plenty of indications of a Wisdom Christology in the NT based on (among other things) personification of Wisdom in intertestamental Jewish literature. And it also seems to be true, as Robrecht writes, that God is interpersonal and relational. John seems to hint at the multipersonality and relational nature of God when he writes that "God is love" in his first letter. Love is something that needs to be shared in a relationship with someone else. This paired with God's self-sufficiency suggests that God is a multi-personal being, because otherwise it would seem that God created humans in order for Him to fullfill a need to express his love for someone, which would put God in a position where He is dependent upon humans in some sense, Only when understanding that God is a multipersonal being does that problem go away.

But in respect to the question "How can God be one in substance, but three in person" I must admit I'm a bit confused over what the issue is. It's not like there's a logical problem inherent here, unless the objection is somehow equivocating between the term God and person. Otherwise there simply is no problem here. When we say that the Father, Son or Spirit are God we're not telling who they are, but what they are. I.e it's a claim about their nature, not their identity.

When it comes to the question about the incarnation I have a similar problem as I have with the first question, namely that the question is a bit too vague for me. The question seem to presuppose that there is some sort of problem inherent with having both a divine and human nature, but I simply fail to see how that is the case. Maybe the objection has something to do with the fact that man is limited in almost all aspects while God is not? If that's the case, then the problem seem disappears if one assumes that the soul/mind of man is in nature similar to the mind of God, the difference being that while the mind of man is limited in knowledge and power, God's mind is not. The Son/Word/Wisdom could then incarnate as a human, by choosing to limit and restrain his knowledge and power, perhaps by "storing them away" in his subconscious, or in another place. A theory that is perfectly plausible, as long as you do not mistake the mind of a person as the actual person himself.

Now, I don't know if this answered any particular objections you were thinking of, since your OP seemed a bit vague, but I thought I'd share my thoughts here regardless.

[Chrawnus]

This response is playing the Three Stooges, Duck, Bob and Weave. How could this response be the basis of refuting objections of non-Christians.




In all my years of studying religions I never seen a good refutation of the non-Christian objections about the Trinity and incarnation. I have been with Tweb for more than 5 years, and nothing has come up other than the shaky argument from scripture between the OT and NT, and this does not amount to much from the non-Christian perspective, especially the Jew.

What would you say are good objections about the Trinity and incarnation specifically? It doesn't seem to matter much that there are no good refutations of the objections, if the objections themselves are not good, so surely you have some examples that you could give?

[shunyadragon]

What would you say are good objections about the Trinity and incarnation specifically? It doesn't seem to matter much that there are no good refutations of the objections, if the objections themselves are not good, so surely you have some examples that you could give?

The OT does not support the Trinity, nor is it mentioned specifically, and it is in violation of basic OT beliefs concerning the nature of God. A human cannot be God. Christians have to resort to very interpretive passages to support the Trinity.

[Chrawnus]

The OT does not support the Trinity, nor is it mentioned specifically, and it is in violation of basic OT beliefs concerning the nature of God. A human cannot be God. Christians have to resort to very interpretive passages to support the Trinity.

What basic OT beliefs specifically? The Shema? The Shema meshes perfectly with trinitarian thought, as long as one does not assume that God in order to be one cannot be multipersonal. And while the OT is not clear enough on the question of God's nature that one would go away from the text with a trinitarian understanding of the text without reading it in the light of the NT it certainly is ambigious enough to allow a understanding of God as multipersonal.

And why is it that a human cannot be God? I'd certainly agree if you said that a human cannot become God, but I fail to see how it's impossible for God to become (not change into) human by adding a human nature to himself. This claim seem to be an unfounded assertion, based upon an assumption of the nature of God that would make it impossible for him to become human, which cannot be supported from Scripture. And do note that the question whether or not God is a man or not, is different from the question of whether or not he can become man.

[shunyadragon]

What basic OT beliefs specifically? The Shema? The Shema meshes perfectly with trinitarian thought, as long as one does not assume that God in order to be one cannot be multipersonal. And while the OT is not clear enough on the question of God's nature that one would go away from the text with a trinitarian understanding of the text without reading it in the light of the NT it certainly is ambigious enough to allow a understanding of God as multipersonal.

Bogus!!!!! There is no concept of a multipersonal God in the OT, and the concept of Shema is clear and unambiguous, GOD is ONE, not three in one.. I think the thread the where the Jews have presented a clear understanding of OT references to God make that clear. The multipersonal concept of God is clearly pagan in origin

And why is it that a human cannot be God? I'd certainly agree if you said that a human cannot become God, but I fail to see how it's impossible for God to become (not change into) human by adding a human nature to himself. This claim seem to be an unfounded assertion, based upon an assumption of the nature of God that would make it impossible for him to become human, which cannot be supported from Scripture. And do note that the question whether or not God is a man or not, is different from the question of whether or not he can become man.

Clearly, man cannot become a God, exist as a God, nor will God become a man. All these things are clearly against OT doctrine and belief concerning God. The traditional view of the Trinity is that it all ways existed, and did not suddenly come into being with the coming of Christ. It is clearly a polytheistic concept similar to Hindu beliefs when some Hindus separate out Gods as being individual Gods apart from Brahman the Hindu name for God. Polytheistic pagan beliefs are woven into the OT, and progressively rejected as pagan. There is no reason another polytheistic tradition should be any different.. See showmeproof's thread on this. Its very comprehensive