{"id":6704,"date":"2017-01-03T00:15:40","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T06:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=6704"},"modified":"2017-01-02T19:17:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-03T01:17:39","slug":"1113-not-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=6704","title":{"rendered":"1+1+1=3 NOT 1!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>It is common to see Christians use the 1+1+1=1 equation to describe the trinity.\u00a0 Their intention is good, but I think utilizing this equation as an illustration of the trinity is misguided.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>When we look at the equation we conclude that the trinity is irrational.\u00a0 All our lives we have known 1+1+1=3 not 1.\u00a0 But now we are instructed that there is a heavenly math of sorts where it equals 1.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I was sharing the gospel with a Muslim years ago at the University of Texas in Dallas. He said he could never become a Christian because the trinity was irrational.\u00a0 I shared with him that irrational was not the right word.\u00a0 Mysterious to be sure, but not irrational.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Irrational would mean we are saying God exists simultaneously as one Person and three Persons.\u00a0 Another irrational option would be to say God exists simultaneously as one Being and three Beings.\u00a0 But of course, Christians don\u2019t believe either one of these things.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>We do believe that God is one in His Being or Essence, yet three in Person.\u00a0 Each Person is fully God not 33.333% God.\u00a0 That is why you can\u2019t conceptualize the trinity.\u00a0 It is indeed beyond our understanding, but that does not make it irrational.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I asked my Muslim friend if he could conceptualize everything about Allah.\u00a0 He conceded that he could not.\u00a0 He could not get his head wrapped around such things as God being uncaused or self-existent.\u00a0 I asked if he thought uncaused or self-existent would be irrational.\u00a0 \u201cNot if He is God,\u201d he replied.\u00a0 Of course, it would be irrational to say God is both self-existent and dependent on someone\/thing else for His existence.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>So let\u2019s drop the 1+1+1=1 for the trinity.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to give the impression that belief in the Christian God is irrational.\u00a0 Mysterious and beyond our comprehension to be sure, but not irrational.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is common to see Christians use the 1+1+1=1 equation to describe the trinity.\u00a0 Their intention is good, but I think utilizing this equation as an illustration of the trinity is misguided. When we look at the equation we conclude that the trinity is irrational.\u00a0 All our lives we have known 1+1+1=3 not 1.\u00a0 But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islam","category-theology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6705,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6704\/revisions\/6705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}