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I think you're confusing incomprehensible with ambiguous. Yes we can not fully understand the Trinity, but we are not ambiguous when we say God is one in nature and three in Person. The doctrines are definite.

One must believe the Trinity, that is what all the Creeds say and it is a very important part of the faith.

By all the Creeds I mean the Nicaean, Apostle's and Athanasian which we share with Protestants but also the creed of Pius IV

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There has been a disintegration of Protestantism to the point where one can not say anything definitive about the whole lot of them. William Lane Craig, for example, rejects the Christology Protestants and Catholics have shared since the Reformation just so he can cling to his bizarre modern concept of God.

When I pointed out the Creeds as shared, I meant with historic Protestantism, yes you'll get some weird views if you search the internet for "hot takes" on settled doctrines, but that's not the point.

Anyone who says "the Holy Spirit is Jesus" is wrong. Sorry, that's just definitely and unambiguously wrong and Christians have known that for centuries|

I am not sure what Bible passages you think contradict these doctrines but consider (1) You can look at how the Church Fathers read those verses in the Cantena Aurea available here (2) Please consider that know passage that comes to your mind was unknown to the Christians of earlier centuries who defined these doctrines.

The problem is that those whom you trusted to teach about the doctrine appear to have done a poor job of it. This is understandable, because it is a difficult doctrine, and they are not alone in this.

The book I know of that does the best job of explaining the doctrine and (IIRC) explaining the verses you think speak against it, and explaining why it is not at all an unimportant optional belief, is Fr. Michael Gaitley's The One Thing is Three. You are missing something very important when you miss on the Trinity, and I encourage you to find the book and read it with an open mind.

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Please, read the book. The thing is, the Bible isn't your authority. YOU are your authority. Please see what informed people have said about this.

By the way, your point #5 renders the Incarnation pointless and means that we aren't saved. Jesus is the mediator precisely because He is both God and Man. He is less than the Father with respect to His humanity. And so on.

It is not unusual for problems with the Trinity to stem from problems understanding the Incarnation. You're just rehashing the first 400-500 years of Church history, and doing it badly--in fact, you're well on your way to reinventing Arianism. You owe it to yourself to read something that can show you where the problems are with what you're saying.

As the saying goes: lex orandi, lex credendi

This is what is prayer most Sundays of the year in the old mass right before the Sanctus

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I am sure Father will have something to say, but consider this:

Luke 3:22
And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape, as a dove upon him; and a voice came from heaven: Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.

If the Holy Ghost, Father, and Christ were "consubstantial" in the sense the OP meant, ie. they were all the same person in three different roles, this would make no sense. The interaction between the persons entails personal distinctions


And this also

Matt 28:19 Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

If the three persons were not truly united in essence this passage would make no sense either. Go baptize in the singular name of God,
just a man, and something different? No, the Persons share a name for they are consubstantial in the true sense of being a single Essence.

We could find some more passages, but really these two are remarkably explicit.

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Why should he know that? He (and I) would say that you should know otherwise.


This is something that you are bringing to the argument, not something you have given us any reason to accept.

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John 1: 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us

John 10:30 - I and the Father are one.

John 12:45 And whoever sees Me sees the One who sent Me.

Phil 2:5-7 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

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I don't doubt that you can come up with explanations for these, but that's my point: your allegedly simple approach is going to have to explain some difficult verses too (I can find more if you'd like).

The men who came up with the Creeds didn't do so on a whim. They didn't consider themselves above Scripture. Rather, they were convinced that only the doctrine of the Trinity did justice to all of the Scriptures.

Another book I would encourage you to read is Rod Bennett's The Apostasy that Wasn't, which you can get in electronic form for free, though I don't expect that offer to last long. It's the story of how the Church came up with the Creed, and it's not at all what most people expect.

nm

I'm not Catholic, and I deny that you are a Christian. I'm not terribly concerned what you "expect." If you say Jesus is not God, you are not a Christian. If you are a polytheist, you are not a Christian. Your rejection of the Trinity will lead to one or the other; or, more likely, is based on your commitment to one of those two errors. In short, your problem is with what Jesus says about Himself (and what the rest of Scripture says about Him), not merely with a doctrine the Church has put forward at least in part to help her come to terms with those facts.