Thoughts of a Doubting Christian ✓

The Holy Trinity

What exactly is the Holy Trinity, and how does it work? This is a question that many people, Christians and non-Christians alike, have puzzled over for centuries. I am no exception, and while my views on the Holy Trinity will be considered heretical by most, I wanted to discuss my thoughts on this concept.

Simply put, the Holy Trinity is the idea that God is present in Three Persons, namely the Father (God), the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. It's widely understood that Christianity is a monotheistic religion with only one God, but also that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are just as authentically God as the Father. (I know, it's confusing. Even Christians find it confusing, hence why it isn't talked about much.)

When I was little, I didn't question the Holy Trinity, but I also didn't know much about it, nor did I treat each "Person" equally. To this day, I pray only to God (the Father) and not to Jesus or the Holy Spirit, because it feels awkward to pray to anyone else. However, eventually I started to wonder what this whole Holy Trinity was about, and so I started to do research on it.

It turns out that the way I thought about the Trinity for most of my life is heretical. I had always pictured the Holy Trinity as being three different forms of the same God, just as H2O exists in gaseous, liquid, and solid forms. However, this is heresy called modalism (the idea that the members of the Trinity are not three distinct Persons, but merely a manifestation of the same Being). Nor is the Trinity an expression of three different gods, which is heresy called tritheism. This left me extremely confused on how God could be present in Three Persons but also exist as One Divine Being. That's when I started to wonder:

What if the concept of the Holy Trinity is wrong? Where does it come from, and why do we see it as being vital to being a "true" Christian? Is it backed up by sufficient biblical evidence, or was it mostly developed from later writings and Christian theologians?

Before I delve into those questions, however, I should explain the Holy Trinity better. I don't want anyone to be confused on what the doctrine is!

The biggest reason why the Holy Trinity is a confusing idea is because the Persons of the Holy Trinity are seen as one God (e.g. gas, liquid, solid) AND separate Beings at the same time. Although they are all God, they play different roles. God the Father is the Creator of all things. God the Son (Jesus) is the Savior of humankind, the sacrifice for humanity's sins, and the bridge between us and the Father. Finally, God the Spirit lives inside of believers, helping them pray, learn more about God, and decipher right from wrong. Yet, as the doctrine goes, they are all unified as one God.

In addition, some of my readers have given me some interesting analogies and thoughts about the Trinity, which I will leave here:

ThorsteinStaffStruck — ❝God is our Father and Creator. Jesus is his Son and our Savior, and since he is the only begotten Son of God is much like God. The Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost) is the medium God uses to communicate with us 'in spirit'.❞

Carolyn_Hill — ❝For a long time, I considered it to be the three manifestations of God. Just like humans have body, mind, and spirit. So God the Father would be pure mind, God the Son pure body, and God the Spirit pure soul. So you can have a body, mind, and spirit and still be the same person. . . . The problem comes when you view the trinity as separate entities, which makes zero sense to me. They are all one in the same. The metaphor of the shamrock is often used. Fair enough. But they are still three leaves of one plant. . . . I don't understand why you would see the same being as having a father/son/spirit dynamic. If you see God the Father as the rational part of God, God the Son as the physical part of God, and God the Spirit as the emotional/intuitive part of God, it's SOOOO much easier to reconcile the paradox of the Trinity.❞