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The Holy Trinity

  
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
16:57 / 19.11.02
Three persons in one? What the hell? How does this make sense? The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I've found that many protestant's answer is that we are not meant to know the mysteries of the structure of God, and that it is the way it is so we need to accept it and move on. I've always thought that was a load of shit, because the Holy Trinity is a doctrine thought up by the bishops of the early Christian church. Unfortunately, the bishops didn't leave behind a detailed description of how it really works. Which may seem remarkably short-sighted, but I suppose if they had actually tried to agree on the details of something like this it would never have gotten anywhere.

Let's look at what the doctrine is really saying: that God is literally three different persons in one. Not that He is three in our experience of Him and His works (which is called Modalism, I think, and was labled heresy by the early church), but that the Trinity is the structure of God and would still be so if He had never created man or anything else.

So how does it work? Someone once described it to me as this: I am at once a son, a brother, and an uncle. Three persons in one? Well, sort of. I've never liked this explanation, because for one, you have several different roles, yes, but in several different relationships. I am not my own father nor my own son. Also, as in the argument of St. Augustine of Hippo ("the mind can be split in three as well: the memory, intuition, and will"), three is an arbitrary number. I can think of numerous roles that I play at once, and the mind can certainly be split into more than three parts.

And I'm sure we've all heard the egg argument. "There's the shell, the white, and the yoke. See? Three in one." Well, yeah, no one is saying that one single thing cannot be seperated into three parts. The problem many have with the Holy Trinity is that Christ is not only Christ but his father as well. And God is not just God but his son Christ and also the Holy Spirit. Everyone is everyone all at the same time. The white is not the yoke. The shell is not the white. The yoke is not the shell.

I've heard someone on this board speak of Christ almost as if he were God's fiction suit, something He wore for a while to be able to come into contact with us. And it sort of makes sense. If the relationship of man to God in Islam can be seen as a High King and his servants in the court, then the relationship between God and man in Christianity can be seen as a High King who fell in love with one (or all, if you want) of his servants. And if a High King falls in love with a servant, how does he get the servant to reciprocate? Not by showering the servant with gifts and riches and making him/her the King/Queen. Sure, the servant'll be happy, but would he be in love with the king or The High King? To really reach the servant, the king would have to go down to the servant's level and shoot for love there. While, you know, disguised as a servant.

Alright. I suppose that shows how God can be both Christ and God at the same time. But that diagram smacks of Modalism, which is not the same as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Apparently the Son has been around forever.

One of my professors described it as this: There's God and his son Christ, right? And the holy spirit is the relationship between the two. But can a relationship be thought of as a seperate entity apart from the two entities in it? Hmm. Have you ever been in a relationship where you thought you had to do something for the good of the relationship, but it was something that your partner didn't want to do? At those times, you put the relationship above the wants and desires of the either of the two people in it. It seems like Christ ran into that problem all the time on earth. Always trying to give his people what they needed rather than what they wanted...

Alright, that's better, but it still doesn't explain how Christ the Son is also God His Father, yet two seperate entities. Hmmmmm...

Ah, crap. I'm tired and have a history test to take care of. I'll come back to this later. Meanwhile, what are your ideas on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity?
 
 
grant
20:14 / 19.11.02
Weird - research on patron saints today led me into temptation by way of Catholic encyclopedia entries on Gnosticism and related heresies. They're really down on them, as you might expect. It's odd, though, reading about Gnostic texts from the perspective of someone writing before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library... but I digress.

Here, a page on Manicheanism has this to offer:

Outside the Father there are his Five Tabernacles or Shechinatha, Intelligence, Reason, Thought, Reflection, and Will. The designation of "Tabernacle" contains a play on the sound Shechina which means both dwelling or tent and "Divine glory or presence" and is used in the Old Testament to designate God's presence between the Cherubim. These five tabernacles were pictured on the one hand as stories of one building -- Will being the topmost story -- and on the other hand as limbs of God's body. He indwelt and possessed them all, so as to be, in a sense, identical with them, yet again, in a sense, to be distinct from them. They are also designated as aeons or worlds, beata secula, in St. Augustine's writings.

So there you have two metaphors: the stories of a building and the limbs of the body. Currently, I'm partial to the limbs one.

It might also be possible to use a movie projector as a metaphor, or more accurately, the light in a movie projection:
The pre-lens colored light = The Father, or source
The post-lens light, invisible in mid-air = The Holy Spirit, or messenger
The projected image on the screen = The Son, the fulfillment of the projection onto/into the material world.

But they're all metaphors, you know. They all fall short.
 
 
at the scarwash
21:41 / 19.11.02
I think that the Trinity, as understood by mainstream Christianity, is a vestige of earlier mystical trends. The concept of a three-for-the-price-of-one Godhead doesn't really serve any purpose in the context of Christian orthodoxy, but as grant pointed out about the Shekinah, Manicheans (and other Gnostics), as well as pre-Kabbalistic Jewish mystical theorists had some use for the idea. The Shekinah, as I understand it, describes God's presence on Earth, as it directly interacts with the created. This seems to be the immediate precursor for the Holy Spirit.
As for Jesus, the Christian Gnostics seem to sort of agree with you about the fiction suit. The Messiah was an emanation of the Godhead, who left the Pleroma and entered into the Cosmos (which, in context, is precisely a fictional space) in order to restore the parts of the Godhead that are trapped in it to the Fullness.

Both the Shekinah and the Gnostic Christ are described in their respective mystical literatures as being identical with God, but also somehow not as much as God. They have to be this way. If you have a perfect omni-everything being, source of absolutely everything, one so amazingly mighty and powerful that man can't comprehend him, how can It be involved in the world? How can it become mired down in this imperfect existence, surrounded by sin and impermanence? It uses an intermediary. Grant's projector metaphor is quite good, but I'd adjust it to say that God is the filament in the bulb.
And how does it work? I don't know that the Trinity actually does work in contemporary Christianity. What purpose does it serve? What do most everyday Christians get from a three-for-one God? Most Christians don't seem to believe in a completely transcendent God (unless they need to explain something away or deal with theogony, and only for as long as that takes). In my experience, most Christians pray to God pretty directly, not necessarily dealing with Christ or Holy Spirit. So the trinary structure doesn't really seem to serve much of a purpose, except for liturgical rhythms.
 
 
Pepsi Max
00:50 / 20.11.02
I've heard someone on this board speak of Christ almost as if he were God's fiction suit, something He wore for a while to be able to come into contact with us.

Might it be more productive to look at the Trinity as a form of divine Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)? The trauma of creation was so bad that it created three compartmentalised versions.

Also, Christ's death can be seen as an attempt to reintegrate at least two of the personalities. Or act of monstrous self-loathing.

The Jesus-as-God's-avatar (in both the Hindu and Snowcrash terms) thang gives a different spin to the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
 
 
grant
18:21 / 20.11.02
Y'all might want to search up some relevant mainstream believer discussions on the Christian BBS... like hereand here, and here, for starters.


That last one has some nice charts and stuff.


I don't think I buy the MPD thing - the different persons in the Trinity aren't really "personalities" as much as fulfilling different functions.

It's important to realize that the Triune God is omnipresent and omniscient, but might only make His/Her/Hir/Their presence known in one of three ways: a powerful evocation of Creative Law, an invocation of Divine Inspiration, and a finite, historical Person, whose existence echoes the original creation of humanity: in His image made He them.

Who answers depends on who's asking....
 
 
Seth
18:39 / 20.11.02
The Trinity is certainly a part of a modern Christian's prayer life (depending on theology and denomination). I've heard people pray to all three Persons, sometimes in the same prayer.

Regarding the nature of the Trinity, I don't see it as much of an issue, certainly not a brain melter. I've lost count of the number of different faces that I wear when I need to, or ones that manifest seemingly without cause. I'm not a Dissociative Identity case, either - just someone who recognises that identity is fluid.
 
 
Cherry Bomb
18:40 / 20.11.02
Just to throw a complete monkey wrench into this discussion...

In recent years, I've taken to a notion on the holy trinity that it exists as part of a creation myth. The father, the son, and the holy spirit. Together these entities created life. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit seem to be male deities. But in truth, to create life we need a man and a woman to create a new human being (spirit). The myth of the Holy Trinity effectively removes woman from the creation equation, which is a helpful thing for religions in which one worships all male deities. Also helpful in killing goddess-based religions. What do women have to do with the creation of life as we know it? According to the Holy Trinity theory, apparently nothing.

Feel free to disagree. Thoughts?
 
 
bpm77
19:08 / 20.11.02
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit seem to be male deities. But in truth, to create life we need a man and a woman to create a new human being (spirit). The myth of the Holy Trinity effectively removes woman from the creation equation, which is a helpful thing for religions in which one worships all male deities.


disagree. the threefold god is an old one (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, or Maiden, Mother, Crone for a female example). the Trinity doctrine was created during the Council of Nicaea. Roman emperors created the majority of modern christian thought and theology. Early christians were deists, with no concept of a "trinity" and a very different concept of jesus than the present position held by pretty much any christian group. Constantine himself put forth the "of one substance" theology. Not at all intended to remove women from the church. Much, much arguement over this topic, but not over the above facts. if you want more, run a search on Constantine and the Trinity on google.
 
 
grant
19:17 / 20.11.02
In the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, there are a lot of grammar games being played with God's gender - the Old Man sort of swings both ways, sometimes, if what I read is correct.


This page supports that idea nicely, actually, with this smidge of linguistic trivia:
The Hebrew word for "spirit" is "RUACH". This word also has several other meanings such as "wind", or "breath". When used in conjunction with "QODESH" (3 times) it is translated "Holy Spirit". In other places it appears with the word "god" (without "holy") and is translated "Spirit of God". In other places God speaks of it as "My Spirit", or "the Spirit". (e.g Gen 6:3; Num 11:17 - use a Concordance to check it out)

In Hebrew, "RUACH" is always FEMININE gender! However, no one in their right mind, would ever suggest that means God's Holy Spirit is a separately existing FEMALE DEITY!

To correctly assign English Gender when translating this word, we must make a careful study of the way it is used in the Old Testament. This will show that the Spirit of God is NOT spoken of as a person at all. Rather it is clearly seen to be something which belongs to God in exactly the same way that the spirit of a man belongs to the man. A man's spirit is NOT another person existing apart from the man. It is an essential part of the WHOLE man. Without it the man simply would not exist.

On the other hand, this page makes the unusual claim that "he" and "she" don't exist as separate pronouns in Hebrew. As well as pointing out that Paul used a singular "they" in translating Old Testament passages which implied a single gender for the subject. (Shades of the gender pronouns thread!)
In fact, this discussion of the gender of the Holy Spirit is so relevant to the gender-pronoun thread, it's a bit scary.

It's worth pointing out in this thread that God is referred to as "Elohim," which is a singular plural construction... sort of an ultra-"royal we." A compound entity.

And it appears that a lot of gender concerns spring from Hebrew's way of assigning gender to words, the way Spanish or German does. "Book" is a "he" in Hebrew. "Spirit" is a "she".

---------------

On the other, patriarchal hand, if you really want to indulge this diversion, check this essay out. It's a criticism of the new "gender-neutral" prayer book for Reform Judaism - pointing out why it's important *not* to make YHVH a goddess.
The basic gist: In Judaism, nature and humanity emerge not as part of an undifferentiated birth of the universe, but through discrete acts of creation in which all things are appointed a place in the hierarchy of the world. Good and evil, right and wrong, are known not by reference to nature's processes, impulses, and vitalities, but through the words and commandments of a transcendent God. Because God is not identified with the cycles of natural recurrence but with unique revelations and mighty acts-especially the Covenant-time is given meaning by progressive development, and history is imbued with direction and purpose. Human beings are not permitted to view themselves or their impulses as divine; they are to understand themselves, rather, as creatures made "in the image and likeness of God," with a dignity and worth above the rest of nature, and with free will to act according to transcendent laws concerning good and evil.
 
 
grant
19:31 / 20.11.02
Here's an excerpt of that discussion of the gender of the Holy Spirit linked to above:
The Lexicon groups the Spirit in the last category as being the ancient Angel of the Presence and later Shekina (Isa. 63:10-11; cf. also the concepts in Neh. 9:20). Thus the Spirit was made manifest to Israel first in the Angel of the Presence, who later became Messiah. Messiah thus is embodied with the Spirit as the power of God. Later it became evident as the Shekina. ...

The Spirit is thus the Power of God. It is not merely or only the Power of God. No concept of the Holy Spirit as the third person of a closed Trinity could grasp the omnipresent all embracing extension of the nature and personality of God that will ensue from this process of God becoming all in all ....


So, you've got God as God's Power being feminine not only as "ruach" or "spirit" but also as "Shekinah" - nowadays, in Reform Judaism, prayed to as the female Godhead.

The dude writing the essay, however, is really down on the idea of the Trinity as such, however:
Historically, it is useful to understand the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. It was not suggested that the Holy Spirit was a person nor was it considered as such until the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE.

The Holy Spirit was not fixed in the doctrine at all in the Council of Nicea (325). It failed to gain formulation at Constantinople (381). Only at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 was the doctrine formulated. There is no evidence that the apostles or the early apologists saw Christ as other than created and the Spirit as other than the power of God until the end of the third century, except with the Modalists and the Gnostics. It was these groups that finally emerged as the Trinitarian faction under Theodosius in 381 and by force of arms introduced their heresy.


His point is that gendering God is part of the same process as encapsulating God in the Trinity - a process of limiting God's potential as the Ultimate and Infinite. Which is an interesting leap to make.
 
 
The Falcon
19:33 / 20.11.02
There is a numerological correlation: father (or God)/infinity, son (or Jesus)/one, holy ghost/none.

So, I reckon it is that which is all things, one thing and nothing. Post-binary concept, an' all.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
20:31 / 21.11.02
I don't think I buy the MPD thing - the different persons in the Trinity aren't really "personalities" as much as fulfilling different functions.

But according to the doctrine, the Holy Trinity is quite literally three different persons. The words that it's derived from can easily be interpretated as "persons".

Regarding the nature of the Trinity, I don't see it as much of an issue, certainly not a brain melter. I've lost count of the number of different faces that I wear when I need to, or ones that manifest seemingly without cause.

But according to the doctrine, they're not just faces. Again, the doctrine states that God isn't three in our experience of Him, but that he is three and would be three regardless of whether or not he had any creation to show himself to.

And besides, in this case the number three is again an arbitrary number. Why is it a trinity?

I'm not a Dissociative Identity case, either - just someone who recognises that identity is fluid.

Depends on what you call identity. But to avoid the question of what the "self" is, I'll leave this one alone.
 
 
Wrecks City-Zen
21:06 / 21.11.02
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit seem to be male deities. But in truth, to create life we need a man and a woman to create a new human being (spirit). The myth of the Holy Trinity effectively removes woman from the creation equation, which is a helpful thing for religions in which one worships all male deities.


The Holy Spirit = The Mother. The ghost/spirit idea has always forced me to believe that the "spirit" position is a spot that was once occupied.Could it belong to the fallen?

Could the devil be a woman?

And could she have held that spot in the trinity?

And if so what happened?

Ok, Im leaving now Haus...
 
 
Yagg
03:10 / 22.11.02
Why does God have to have any gender at all, as we understand "gender?"

Well, here's a picture painted from the Gnostic Christian Mystic stuff I've been studying lately...

What if "God" is the source of all existence?

What if "The Son," commonly known as "Jesus" was a projection of God into this world in a localized time and place? You could say that Jesus was the impact point of God intersecting with our reality.

Jesus spoke of a "counselor" who would come after him.

What if that was the Holy Spirit? Still a part of God, but non-localized. It can exist in any time and any place. The Holy Spirit could be seen as "leaking" through the hole punched by Christ, spreading in all directions in space, forwards and backwards and sideways in time.

So...What if the Son and the Holy Spirit are just different human perceptions of God interacting with our world? But they are all the same God. Think of a three-dimensional creature poking into Flatland, showing different shapes each time. Sometimes a foot, sometimes a finger, but the same Mind behind it all. Something that exists inside and outside time and space. As we understand it.
 
 
grant
13:40 / 22.11.02
I think that's close to my understanding as well - a multidimensional personality intersecting with 4d time-space will appear to be different personalities/persons along different 4d cross-sections. In fact, will actually *be* different 4d persons... as projections of a larger, infinite, unknowable singularity (the Word, if you like, that exists before time and space and energy).
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
15:24 / 22.11.02
Look, these are all very interesting, and I agree with the ideas behind many, and would like to hear more about them some other time. This thread is set up to discuss the doctrine laid out by the Church, and whether or not it's a load of crap only half-thought out by some bishops, or if there is indeed a deep level of profundity present in it. Once we're done with that, I'd love to hear more about all of your theories.
 
 
grant
17:01 / 22.11.02
Well, the doctrine laid out by the church is intentionally laid out as a mystery, you know.

Like the transubstantiation. It's not supposed to make sense without some personal mental gymnastics. That's kind of the point.

You will find more on the Holy Mysteries (so-called in the Orthodox Church) here.

Starts out with an important linguistic note:
The word "sacrament" is the Latin equivalent of the Greek "mysteria" which gives us the English "mystery".

In these two articles, you'll find a Roman Catholic discussion of/meditation on the divine mysteries of the Eucharist (is it bread? is it flesh?) and the Trinity.
Includes this passage:
Jesus, whose body we receive in the Eucharist, is the Word of the Father. He is never outside of the Father, for He and the Father are one (cf. Jn 10:30). Hence, Christ never comes to us alone: "I am in the Father and the Father in Me" (Jn 14:10). It is not only in seeing Jesus that we see the Father (Jn 14:9), but union with Christ brings us immediately into union with the Father: "If a man loves Me,...My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (Jn 14:23). Similarly, our love for Christ will also allow a new effusion of the Holy Spirit into our hearts: "If you love Me,...I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth.... you will know him, for He dwells with you and will be in you" (Jn 14:15-16. 17b).....This reflects the statement of St. Athanasius: "The Word assumed flesh so that we might receive the Holy Spirit; God has become the bearer of flesh so that man could become the bearer of the Spirit."

and this one:

Here, in this first point, we want to emphasize three truths. First, there is no greater love possible than that with which the Father has first loved us, both creating and redeeming us in Christ. Second, there is no greater happiness possible than the heavenly blessing of Divine sonship in Jesus, the SON of God. If anyone is happy, it must be God, and we are called to share in His own happiness. Third, there is no other means to this happiness except Jesus Christ alone, anointed with the Holy Spirit.


In other words, the Trinity works like love works, with a lover, the loved, and the transmission of love between them. It's all love, just in three different persons, in a way.

The Eucharist (in the first excerpt) typifies the experience of the Trinity because it is a union with Christ (as the Flesh) from the Father (as the bread - think Passover, manna) through the auspices of the Spirit (that which transforms bread to flesh).

The Catholic Encyclopedia goes on at great length on the Trinity (as you might expect), including a rather long bit on the Trinity as Mystery.

Excerpt: The Vatican Council has explained the meaning to be attributed to the term mystery in theology. It lays down that a mystery is a truth which we are not merely incapable of discovering apart from Divine Revelation, but which, even when revealed, remains "hidden by the veil of faith and enveloped, so to speak, by a kind of darkness" (Const., "De fide. cath.", iv). In other words, our understanding of it remains only partial, even after we have accepted it as part of the Divine messege. Through analogies and types we can form a representative concept expressive of what is revealed, but we cannot attain that fuller knowledge which supposes that the various elements of the concept are clearly grasped and their reciprocal compatibility manifest.

In other words, dude, you've reached the Zen of Christianity.
 
 
Jack Fear
17:17 / 22.11.02
Or, as the Voice from the Whirlwind would have it, It is because it is. It just is. No, you can't understand it. Ever. You just have to believe it, without understanding it. Yes, I know that makes it harder to believe. That's the point. It's not supposed to be easy. Now shut up and eat your dogma.
 
 
grant
17:42 / 22.11.02
Heheh.

Here, I scrolled up and started reading the Catholic Encyclopedia article from the top.

It's full of gems like:

Attempts have been made recently to apply the more extreme theories of comparative religion to the doctrine ot the Trinity, and to account for it by an imaginary law of nature compelling men to group the objects of their worship in threes. It seems needless to give more than a reference to these extravagant views, which serious thinkers of every school reject as destitute of foundation.

Man, they don't write like that any more.
 
 
Yagg
00:40 / 24.11.02
"In other words, our understanding of it remains only partial, even after we have accepted it as part of the Divine messege."

"No, you can't understand it. Ever. You just have to believe it, without understanding it...It's not supposed to be easy. Now shut up and eat your dogma."

Well, that about sums up the explanation from my long-ago Catholic upbringing. "It just is. Becasue I said so. Now go say the frikkin' rosary, kid."

Was the Trinity a defense against creeping polytheism? It would make sense for the concept to have evolved as an attempt keep Christianity centered on just one God. "No, the God in the sky and the God on the cross and the God who blows in like a wind and makes people speak crazy languages are actually all the same God. Don't get carried away and start adding new Gods to our God! It's just one God! Uh, three in one, yeah, that's the ticket."

Polytheism made it's way into the Church anyway in the form of the elevated status of the Saints.

We could revise that awful "Chicken Soup For The Soul"-type adage:

"When God closes a door, Gods open about 10,000 stained glass windows."
 
 
glassonion
10:44 / 25.11.02
Whoever it was, was it Augustine? was sent to sit on his own and work out the whole nature of god. Being a learned man he maybe had some idea of what he'd find, familiar with the jewish godhead kether chokmah binah or brahma shiva vishnu of the hindus. Forced to sit and pray, all alone, unil the nature of things revealed themselves, the saint looked deep into the centre of his one being. At the heart of its very pivot the saint saw himself reflected, giving birth to the concept of two. Simultaneously the two discreet events in coexistence gave birth to three - the concept of one and two, and the difference between them. [This process rolls on twice more to create all the nine numbers.] And suddenly the saint had it. All the foundations of math and language laid out before him, all the means humans use to shape, describe and connect the universe as it phenomenises. Can we call that god?
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
16:10 / 25.11.02
Well, the doctrine laid out by the church is intentionally laid out as a mystery, you know.

What, seriously? I never thought the bishops did that on purpose. So they come up with a doctrine, and never once had anyone explain it in detail? I've always assumed "because it is" was the standard answer for parents who didn't know and Protestants in general, not the Catholic Church's official answer. That's fucked up.
 
 
grant
16:57 / 25.11.02
That's faith for you....
 
 
Jack Fear
18:20 / 25.11.02
Is it any more fucked-up than a Zen koan, a question with no "logical" answer? The koan (or kung-an, depending on your language) is supposed to force you into a different way of thinking. Thich Nhat Hanh put it this way:

"In Zen, practitioners use kung-an as subjects for meditation until their mind come to awakening. There is a big difference between a kung-an and a math problem - the solution of the math problem is included in the problem itself, while the response to the kung-an lies in the life of the practitioner. The kung-an is a useful instrument in the work of awakening, just as a pick is a useful instrument in working on the ground. What is accomplished from working on the ground depends on the person doing the work and not just on the pick. The kung-an is not an enigma to resolve; this is why we cannot say that it is a theme or subject of meditation."

So there may be no "answer" as we understand the word, but the value is in the asking. I think that's how "mysteries" in the Judeo-Christian tradition are supposed to work, too. Thinking about the nature of God is a reward unto itself.

I mean, you have read the bit in SANDMAN where they talk about the difference between Secrets and Mysteries, yeah?
 
 
Seth
22:31 / 25.11.02
I've got to admit, this thread mystifies me. I just can't see the problem with the concept of the Trinity. Why does it have to make logical sense? Try reading The Thunder, Perfect Mind sometime, it might help to put things into perspective. I find the notion of sacred concepts happily lining up and categorising themselves for the rational mind a bit quaint these days. It's a bit like getting pissed off with your dreams for not conforming to popular notions of narrative structure, thereby dismissing their potential significance out of hand.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
15:15 / 27.11.02
So there may be no "answer" as we understand the word, but the value is in the asking. I think that's how "mysteries" in the Judeo-Christian tradition are supposed to work, too. Thinking about the nature of God is a reward unto itself.

Ah. Well, when you put it like that...

I mean, you have read the bit in SANDMAN where they talk about the difference between Secrets and Mysteries, yeah?

no.

I've got to admit, this thread mystifies me. I just can't see the problem with the concept of the Trinity. Why does it have to make logical sense?

It doesn't. But several theories have been put forth with a logical interpretation, and I was trying to figure out if there was any depth to them.
 
  
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