The nature of God is crazy difficult to understand, even for the most educated theologians. God, in His holy word, describes Himself as a Holy Trinity of Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They are not the same person as each other, yet they are all the same God; they are all God. According to Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry, "Each has a will, can speak, can love, etc. These are demonstrations of personhood. They are in absolute perfect harmony consisting of one substance. They are coeternal, coequal, and copowerful. If any one of the three were removed, there would be no God."
Now we all know, or at least if you've read my blog before you should be well aware, that Mormons do not believe in the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Let me say it another way. Every professing Christian denominational church embraces this belief in the Holy Trinity. Oddly enough, even though Mormons claim Christianity they also stand firm and deny the Holy Trinity doctrine. They believe in a completely different Godhead than all other Christian churches...even though they claim to be a part of the Christian church. This fact has always made me chuckle...but whatever...moving on.
Having said this, I can hear my brother protest, "Dude. You cannot POSSIBLY know that all the other Christian churches believe in what you claim to be the Christian doctrine of the nature of God." Ok, bro. Maybe this will help. According to About Religion, there are a few Christian groups that do in fact reject the Trinity doctrine that I just described. According to this study, these "rejectors" are the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Christian Scientists, the Armstrongisms, the Christadelphians, the Oneness Pentacostals, the Unification Church, the Unity School of Christianity, and the Scientologists. Most of these Christian churches I've never even heard of, and I doubt most of you have as well. This tells me that they are relatively small denominations and are not major movements in the church. Furthermore, you can review what Religion Resources Online says about each religion and what it has to say on the Holy Trinity (see below). One can see that most of the Christian Churches seem to state the same thing, albeit in different ways. They all claim that the Holy Trinity doctrine is Biblical and they believe it, profess it, and live by it.
Now, I wanted to talk about this because I've had many conversations with Mormons that just cannot and will not believe in the Holy Trinity. In my experience, it basically boils down to the fact that Mormons find the Christian doctrine of a Holy Trinity as being too confusing and therefore untrue. Now, I will not deny that this doctrine is confusing, because it is. As I said earlier, even the best theologians cannot fully grasp the idea that is God. However, just because a teaching is confusing does not mean it cannot be true.
Throughout history, a lot of people have tried to rationally explain God because a doctrine that is hard to explain is bothersome. Believing in something that cannot be fully comprehended is very troubling. When you can't fully explain something, you can't fully defend it, and therefore your beliefs are weak (or at least that is the perception). Mormons have then followed the path many have taken and tried to humanize and rationalize God to fit into something they can understand. That is why the Mormon God makes sense. He's a guy that became God, got married, had a son, sent that son to die on a cross, and is now seated in glory in heaven awaiting our return. That makes sense. That's a God that I can understand. (although there is the question of where that God came from, and so on, and so on, but...whatever...moving on)
Funny thing is, Mormons weren't the first to try and fit God in a box. Back in the early church, there was a belief circulating around called Arianism. Arianism was the belief that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are creations of God but not one in nature with Him. This heretical idea gained so much popularity within the church that it spawned the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea and the creation of the Nicene Creed in response. So many people were straying from Biblical teaching that it was tearing the church apart. The church in response created this creed that would unify the church body and uphold the Biblical view of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
There was also something called Modalism. This states that God merely manifested Himself in three modes or forms. It states that God is a single being that morphs into the Father, then the Son, and then the Holy Spirit. These modes are consecutive but never simultaneous. Another belief was in the doctrine of Partialism. Partialism states that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all add up to make God. By themselves, they are only a portion of God, but together they form 1 complete God. All of these by the way have been declared by the Church as being heretical in nature and we are advised not to believe or preach them.
All that to say, even our best explanations of God are wrong. To fully grasp our creator, it would seem that we need to compromise some part of scripture. The reason being is that our finite human minds will never be able to explain or even comprehend the Biblical doctrine of God. But that's a good thing! It can even actually strengthen our faith!
Lets take the idea of how God is Eternal, or Infinite. Now, since I am a math guy, I can only show you how crazy infinity is by using math. Take the integers for instance (i.e - the numbers ... -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ...). Now, the set of integers is infinite, meaning you will never run out of integers! This means you can write any integer and I could come up with one bigger or smaller, or both! But lets take the idea of infinity even further, to something that is crazy difficult to explain but mathematically sound.
Let's look at the real number line.
Now, if we were to pick a number between 1 and 2 we'd have a lot of choices. Well, mathematically speaking we'd have an infinite amount of choices. We could choose 1.1, or 1.41, or 1.9001, or 1.5, or 1.9896369863, or.... you get the picture. So lets narrow it down even further. Let's choose a number between 1 and 1.1. But we run into the same problem. I can pick 1.01, 1.005, 1.0999999, etc. The same thing would keep happening even if we picked a number between 1 and 1.00000000000000001. This is because the real numbers are infinite. Now here's the crazy part. Because of this, we cannot name two consecutive real numbers. Since there are an infinite amount of real numbers, there are an infinite amount of numbers in between them. This means there are no two numbers "touching" thus revealing "gaps" between all the real numbers! That's just crazy talk!!!
Hopefully your mind is not completely blown yet, because I need you to hear this point. Remember God is infinite. God is 100% just, yet 100% merciful. He is grace, but also truth. The Bible, the book that God wrote about Himself, makes some pretty crazy claims regarding His nature. A lot of it we cannot fully comprehend, but that doesn't mean it's bad theology. It means that we have an awesome God that cannot be contained! How can God speak and light appear? I don't know, but the Bible says He did it. How can God make man out of dust? I don't know, but the Bible says He did it. How could a man Jesus never have sinned? I don't know, but the Bible says He did it. How can God make all that I've seen and will ever see in only six days out of nothing? I don't know, but the Bible says He did it. How can Jesus die for me, a man who deserves neither His grace or His affection? I don't know, but the Bible says He did it. How can Jesus be God and His son? I don't know, but that's what the Bible says. How can God be three in one? I don't know, but that's what the Bible says. Maybe instead of trying to fit God into our understanding, we should try to fit our understanding on God. Maybe instead of trying to rationalize God and overlook a few passages in the Bible to make God into something that we can fully comprehend we should take God at His word and marvel that we have no idea how to even comprehend Him. Stop trying to make God fit your world, because He wont fit. God is too powerful, too big, too mighty, too great, too omnipotent, too Holy, Holy, Holy, too perfect, too much to fit into our imperfect little minds.
References:
https://carm.org/trinity
http://christianity.about.com/od/christiandoctrines/tp/denytrinity.htm
http://www.religionresourcesonline.org/different-types-of-religion/compare/holy-trinity.php
