The word persona

[Richard]

I retired from it several years ago but for about 5 years I was an active debator on religeous issues. I learned a lot more about the gospel during that time then I expected to initially. Eventually I got burned out on it.

Anyway, I had discussions with some pretty knowlegable Catholics on a few occaisions. What I found was that when they couldn`t prove their assertions with the Bible they would insist on quoting what they called the early church fathers and they wanted to give them the same authority as my King James. Since I couldn`t get anywhere with them I did a crash study on some of these writings which are early Catholic writings. I studied the oldest ones and found a suprising amount of things that i could use in debating modern Catholic doctrines.

One was this. I have issue with catholic trinity doctrine and the early church writers wrote in Latin. The Latin word for a person is Homo. However when these early Catholics wrote abouty God as a trinity they used the word persona instead of the word homo. The modern word person is derived from the Latin word persona and of course means something different then the original Latin.

A persona in Latin is the mask an actor would wear to play a part or a roll. When they talked about a trinity they were talking about a God with three personas that He has presented to the world.

[creationliberty]

I haven't spoken much about this, but I was questioning my own use of the phrase "God in the Persons," only because I was concerned that people would start thinking that I believe that God only has "three offices," but is not three distinct entities. (i.e. I believe both that God is one God, but also three separate entities at the same time, which is what Jesus taught.) So far, it seems I have been accused of that, when that's not what I believe, but frankly, I cannot find any other way to speak of it in Scripture. I don't know another way to label it yet, and as of now, I don't believe there is a way to label it because the concept is beyond our comprehension; we can accept it, but the full nature of God is something we cannot understand in our current forms in the flesh.
Is The Trinity a Biblical Doctrine?

[Richard]

Accusations of Modalism are just a way to force you to use the term person. A modalist is a person who believe God exists in one form at a time. Such a person must deny the Father or the Son and qualifies to be considered anti christ according to the 1st epistle of John.

But anyone dissenting from the Catholic trinity doctrine is going to get called a modalist by Catholic style trinitarians.

Myself, I don`t like using the term person but I don`t think it`s necessary to criticize someone who does as long as they acknowledge that God is One. God as Triune is found throughout the Old Testament if you know what you are looking for. It`s easier to discern for people who can read Hebrew and they have less issue with God being both One and Triune. The Hebrew style comes through in the translation and it`s pretty easy to see when you know what I mean by that.

[Richard]

The trinity article led to an article on Christmas.  Christmas originated with the Roman Saturnalia  festival which was the most important holiday in pagan Rome. As Rome adopted Christianity it Christianized Saturnalia. The first historical reference to 12-25 as the Birthday of Christ was in 354 AD

[strangersmind]

I haven't spoken much about this, but I was questioning my own use of the phrase "God in the Persons," only because I was concerned that people would start thinking that I believe that God only has "three offices," but is not three distinct entities. (i.e. I believe both that God is one God, but also three separate entities at the same time, which is what Jesus taught.) So far, it seems I have been accused of that, when that's not what I believe, but frankly, I cannot find any other way to speak of it in Scripture. I don't know another way to label it yet, and as of now, I don't believe there is a way to label it because the concept is beyond our comprehension; we can accept it, but the full nature of God is something we cannot understand in our current forms in the flesh.
Is The Trinity a Biblical Doctrine?


What about labeling it the god head?