Trinity/Talk

"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

Actually, this is clearer. I think I understand what you mean; the only problem is that if this is describing God, it is difficult to describe this model as strictly monotheistic. It sounds like my concept of polytheism. Since I am not a member of the Christian faith community, I don't get a vote in saying whether its rational or not. But I don't find it to have any cognitive meaning if it supposed to be monotheistic. It might be interesting to point out in some article (maybe not thos one) that Jewish esoteric mysticism (Kabbalah) has a concept much like this. This is the concept of God's ten sefirot (emanations). There is no one official text that describes "the" Kabablistic view; rather, different authors describe them in different ways...and one of these ways seems a precise analogue to the Trinity. That particular Kabbalistic view is a minority within the Kabbalah, and has been criticised by rabbis as being "worse than the Trinity", since it makes God into Ten-in-One, instead of Three-In-One! Nonetheless, this view does seem to exist in some Orthodox Kabbalistic texts. (Note: Jews are not religiously obligated to believe in any part of Kabbalah at all, and if they do, they are not obligated to believe in any one particular understanding of the sefirot.) RK

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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?

Are there any official or standard UU views on the trinity, or are you saying that you will describe the range of most commonly held views? Either way is fine. RK