{"id":3996,"date":"2019-04-18T13:57:32","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T18:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/?p=3996"},"modified":"2019-04-18T14:00:07","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T19:00:07","slug":"x-the-word-trinity-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/?p=3996","title":{"rendered":"X  THE WORD &#8216;TRINITY&#8217; etc."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Bible passages about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">are not difficult<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>The word &#8216;trinity&#8217; and all the other created words surrounding it <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">are impossible<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>If we just skipped the word &#8216;trinity&#8217; and &#8216;co-equal&#8217; and &#8216;co-eternal&#8217; and &#8216;is&#8217; and &#8216;is not&#8217; and &#8216;same&#8217; and &#8216;different&#8217; and &#8216;three-dimensions&#8217; and &#8216;tri&#8217; and &#8216;unity&#8217; and &#8216;essence&#8217; and &#8216;1+1+1=3&#8217; and &#8216;1+1+1=1&#8217; and &#8216;persons&#8217; and &#8216;water, ice, and steam&#8217; and &#8216;light, heat, radiation from one sun&#8217; and &#8216;no illustration is perfect&#8217; and &#8216;triangle&#8217; and &#8216;pyramid&#8217; and &#8216;height, width, depth&#8217; and &#8216;look like, sound like, behave like, but not . . .&#8217; and &#8216;not three gods&#8217; and &#8216;one god&#8217; and . . . and . . . and . . . , then we could focus much better on encouraging people to read what is actually in the Bible.<\/p>\n<p>The above collection illustrates the point of ridiculous futility created by inventing the word &#8216;trinity.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>All that came from just one article titled,<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The following clearly and briefly explains the Trinity . . . three gods or one?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I must say, &#8220;absurd.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And, ten videos with the following titles &#8220;How I Explain the Trinity,&#8221; &#8220;How to Explain the Trinity to An Unbeliever,&#8221; &#8220;The Trinity Explained,&#8221; &#8220;Share Jesus: the Trinity Explained In Under 3 Minutes,&#8221; &#8220;Explaining the Trinity to Children,&#8221; &#8220;Christian &#8216;Trinity&#8217; Explained In 3 Minutes (Father, Spirit, Son) Part One,&#8221; &#8220;3 Minute Theology 1.1: What Is the Trinity?&#8221; &#8220;What Is the Trinity?&#8221; &#8220;How Can I Best Explain the Holy Trinity to a Child?&#8221; &#8220;How to Explain the Trinity: by Jeff Durbin&#8221; were sufficient to make me quit without watching any.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>To make my point of ridiculous&#8212;I simply typed &#8220;explain the trinity,&#8221; and over 38,000,000 results showed up&#8212;that&#8217;s thirty-eight million&#8212;besides the eleven I refer to here.<\/p>\n<p>Theologians have created lots of ridiculous stuff, but I think this tops them all.<\/p>\n<p>Why doesn&#8217;t anyone else see the obvious, like the kids&#8217; book, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Emperor Has No Clothes<\/span>?<\/p>\n<p>The article then went on to quote a lot of Bible verses about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n<p>Not one of the verses was complicated or hard to understand or believe, just as written.<\/p>\n<p>So why don&#8217;t we just use the Bible verses, and not the man-made gobbledygook?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If we could simply let go of the invented word &#8216;trinity&#8217; and the unbelievable time and effort and umpteen millions of books and articles and illustrations unsuccessfully &#8216;explaining&#8217; the word &#8216;trinity,&#8217; it could so free the church for the mission of the church, that it would rival the revolution of the Reformation.<\/p>\n<p>No credible case can be made for maintaining the use of the word &#8216;trinity&#8217; and its monumental mystic manipulations by man, that get us not one step closer to God&#8212;EXCEPT that &#8220;we&#8217;ve always done it this way,&#8221; the &#8216;trinity,&#8217; that is.<\/p>\n<p>Well, actually, we haven&#8217;t always done it that way.\u00a0 Some theologians had a meeting and came up with the word &#8216;trinity.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Not Jesus, not Paul, not in the Bible, not helpful at all, not defensible at all.<\/p>\n<p>I believe a very strong case can be made for the damage caused by creating the word &#8216;trinity&#8217; and the distractions it has caused, as a great deal of time, wasted time, is spent explaining and defending the &#8216;trinity&#8217; as a given assumption without question&#8212;precious time borrowed from sharing the simple Word of God.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Profound, theological, Biblical summary:<\/p>\n<p>God does not fit in a three-sided box.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>(Analogy&#8212;if you teach enough public school students that evolution is a fact, you end up with generations that believe it is a fact.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bible passages about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not difficult. The word &#8216;trinity&#8217; and all the other created words surrounding it are impossible. If we just skipped the word &#8216;trinity&#8217; and &#8216;co-equal&#8217; and &#8216;co-eternal&#8217; and &#8216;is&#8217; and &#8216;is not&#8217; and &#8216;same&#8217; and &#8216;different&#8217; and &#8216;three-dimensions&#8217; and &#8216;tri&#8217; and &#8216;unity&#8217; and &#8216;essence&#8217; and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational","category-faith_based","category-inspire_lifter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3996"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3999,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996\/revisions\/3999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}