"The three parts of the Holy Trinity are widely held to be coeternal, of the same substance, and yet inexplicably different."
- I have seen this explanation many times before, and found it incomprehensible each time. Can this be rewritten? By definition, if three things are co-existent, co-eternal, and of the precisely the same substance, then they are not different. If these three things are different, then they are not precisely the same. Am I missing something here, or is this a re-working of Tertullian's claim that one must believe something to be true because it is incomprehensible? If so, then I guess the entry should be left as is. Understand that I am not criticising the belief in the Trinity - I am merely trying to find out what just what trinitarians believe in, and I am literally unable to parse the claims that were intended to describe it. The proposed explanation is a tautology.
It is possible for two things to be co-existent, co-eternal, and be of the same substance, and yet be different. They could differ in their accidents. (Sorry if I can't make it any clearer than that -- personally I think the doctrine of the Trinity is cognitively meaningless.) -- SJK
If I ever get around to writing up the Unification Church version of the Trinity, I'll include it in the article or supply a link to it. It's kind of a bridge between traditional trinitarianism and modern unitarianism (by the way, I was a UU when I joined the UC (on the QT)). Hmm, am I getting silly?
![[Home]](wikipedia.png)