The Trinity Flashcards
Why is the trinity necessary?
To define the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
What three things does the trinity assert?
- The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons.
- Each person is fully God; they coexist.
- There is only one God; the doctrine doesn’t split god into 3.
What is adoptionism?
The belief that Jesus was an ordinary man who only became the Son of God at his baptism.
What is sabellianism?
The belief that Jesus was divine and not human.
What is arianism?
The belief that Jesus was the highest of all created beings but not of the same substance as God.
What evidence in the Bible is there that God the Father is referred to as a plural?
Genesis - ‘Let us make mankind in our image’
In the New Testament, what evidence is there that Jesus is referred to as God?
Paul writes ‘though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited’
In the Bible, when is the Holy Spirit referred to as God?
Jesus sends the disciples to baptise people ‘in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’
How does the Christian Church regard the Trinity?
a mystery which
- no human words can express the reality of God
- that God is a community, a family of three in one.
What does the unitarian church teach?
Jesus was human and not God.
When/where was the doctrine of the Trinity first formalised?
In the christian creed agreed at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.
What did the creed originally state?
That Christians believe ‘in the Holy Spirit’. There was no elaboration.
What was the Nicene creed amended to?
‘We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.’
What was added to the amendment?
‘and the son’ but it was written in latin which is filioque.
What is the Immanent trinity?
Signifies what God is - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
