1.God The Father
2.God The Son
3. God The Holy Spirit
This looks like three Gods to me.
The trinitarian view on the godhead makes little to no sense and is unbiblical. God the father God the son God the holy spirit are not biblical terms. Either is co-equal co-eternal. Either is trinity.
Some Trinitarians can be "Oneness" in their logic. For example, I was listening to a Trinitarian explain that the Father is God in transcendence, the Son (Logos) is God expressed within time and space, and that the Spirit is God's very own Spirit working in the spiritual plane. He went on to explain that God never changes and has always existed in this manner. Therefore, there are three distinct centers of consciousness. Each can technically be called a "person" with relation to distinction... yet they are also the same person with relation to being... because they are each the very same being revealed in three ways.
Thus according to Him... God is a single person... yet revealed in three distinct personas/persons that eternally emanate from His being in relation to time, space, and spirit.
Alexander Campbell on the Trinity: (Campbell started what would later be the church of Christ groups)
Quote:
But we shall go on to specify a sample of those Babylonish terms and phrases which must be purified from the Christian vocabulary, before the saints can understand the religion they profess, or one another as fellow disciples. I select these from the approved standards of the most popular establishments; for from these they have become current and sacred style. Such are the following: "Trinity. First, second, and third person in the adorable Trinity: God the Son; and God the Holy Ghost. Eternal Son. The Son is eternally begotten by the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. The divinity of Jesus Christ; the humanity of Jesus Christ; the incarnation of Jesus Christ. This he said as man; and that as God.
...
For instance, the terms Trinity, first and second person of--Eternal Son, and the eternal procession of the Spirit, are now the fixed style in speaking of God, his Son Jesus Christ, and of the Spirit, in reference to their "personal character." Now this is not the style of the oracles of God. It is all human, and may be as freely criticized as one of the numbers of the Spectator.
...
These terms originate new doctrines. Thus the term "trinity" gives rise to the doctrine of the trinity. And what fierce controversies have originated out of this doctrine! How many creeds and martyrs has it made! Courteous and pious reader, would it not be as wise, as humble, and as modest, too, for us, on such topics, to prefer the words of the Holy Spirit, and to speak of God, his Son, and Spirit, as the apostles did. Moreover, these terms do not help our conceptions of God at all. They rather impede than facilitate our understanding the divine oracles. It is more difficult to conceive of an eternal Son eternally begotten, and of a Spirit eternally proceeding, than to understand anything God has ever spoken to men. And see on what a slender thread those distinctions hang! Because Jesus Christ told his disciples that he would send them the Spirit, which Spirit would or was to proceed from his Father, or to be sent forth by his Father as well as by himself; therefore the schoolmen affirm that the Spirit eternally proceeded, or was eternally coming from the Father!! This is the whole thread on which this "doctrine" hangs.
From The Ancient Order of Things, "Extract from the Minutes of the Baptist Missionary Association of Kentucky, began and held at the Town-Fork
Meeting House, in Fayette county, on Saturday, the 11th September, 1824."
Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; Heb 1:3
Of course, it speaks of Christ being the image of HIS person, and thus the term person (hypostasis) is used in the singular in regard to God, not the plural.
Linear Mode
