A simplistic discussion on the Trinity

This is not a full-blown model of the Trinity, but it will allow a simplistic articulation of the orthodox doctrine. The Trinity is a very complicated debate and I don’t have the brainpower to say anything remarkable about it. The only thing I will attempt is to explain or formulate a decent trinitarian doctrine. We will start with Biblical monotheism and move from there. In Christian theology, we know that only one God exists, Yahweh. This is foundational to a Biblical worldview(Deut 6:4, Psalm 86:10, Isa 40-48, John 1:1-3,17:3, 1Cor 8:4-6, Gal. 4:8-9).

This also puts us in a strange situation of the fact that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each called and are attributed the Divine attributes, properties, or qualities. This is what we usually mean by speaking about the essence, substance, or being of God.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are what we usually call persons. How shall we define a person? The way I understand this is that there exist three centers of consciousness in the Godhead. That is to say that they have self-awareness of their status. The Father knows that he is the Father in contradistinction to the Son and Spirit. This allows each to have their own first-person perspective and indexical statements.This also includes other properties like intentionality and having a will. These minds share the same basic content. That is none of these minds have access to more information than the other. They also have a shared perspective where statements like “We are the Trinity” would be known. As Necessitarian recently stated:

One way is as follows: God is a personal being. That is, He has personal properties. One of these is tripersonality, meaning that God’s being includes three centers of consciousness, each equally essential to God.

What do these three persons share in common? We would say the nature of God. I think the question is whether they share a generically identical nature or a numerically identical nature? We have to ask what these terms mean before we answer. To say that the Son and his divinity are generically identical with the Father’s divinity is like to speak of how you and I share the same humanity (or Human nature). This is to say they are the same in a genus. To say that the Son and the Father share a numerically identical nature is to say they are one and the same. The issue is that Generic identity seems to lead to tritheism. We wouldn’t say that because we are of a specific class that all of its members are one being. We may share “humanity” and 7 billion others and yet we would not say that we are all one being. I think it would be best that the persons would share a numerically identical nature.

The issue is that the Trinity is probably never going to be reducible to simple formulations. Our creatureliness only seems to allow us to sort revealed datum for the best approximations. The Bible allows room for simple articulations and complex models. We will just have to live in this world knowing that we only know in part.

I have only given a starting point and hopefully, you will go from here. Here are helpful sources for the further reading. Enantiomers, mirror symmetries, and Mandelbrot set.

Further Reading:
TheSire-

http://spirited-tech.com/COG/2017/08/19/jesus-the-copycat/

Dr. James Anderson-

A Brief Response to Tuggy’s Challenge

Further Thoughts on Tuggy’s Challenge

Van Til’s Serious Trinitarian Theology

Gordon Clark’s Paradoxical View of the Trinity

“Positive Mysterianism Undefeated: A Response to Dale Tuggy,”

“In Defence of Mystery: A Reply to Dale Tuggy,”

Steve Hays-

Telepathy and Trinity

Is the Incarnation possible?