The Problem with the Orthodox Doctrine of the Trinity as It is Taught

 Thoughts lately and today. The main problem with the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is that it tries to set boundaries on that which has no boundaries. It tries to limit the limitless, and make finite the infinite.

    The Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, like its deviations and heresies, was the result of human beings trying to understand how Jesus Christ could also be God in addition to His Father being God, and then also the Holy Spirit being God, and yet there only existing one God. The heresies and deviations denied either that there was only one God, or they denied that Jesus Christ Himself was God. 

     But all of this presumes that there is a demarcation point where God ends and "other" begins. It presumes that it is possible for there to be a place in space and time where God is not. It presumes that God exist within the boundaries of space and time instead of these moving through His infinity. This requires that God not be omnipresent or infinite. It makes sense when looking at God through the eyes of ancient man more familiar with gods made in man's image, but not when taking into account the God described by the Bible. The Being who only describes Himself as "I Am."

     Where the Logos is concerned, this is a concept older than the New Testament and it is certain that John is making use of that concept with which everyone was familiar at the time. Paul too describes the Christ with the same language with which the Stoics describe the Logos. It is clear in Stoic writings that the Logos originates with the God, firstborn of all creation, and through which the creation was made. It is clear that the Logos is made of God, but is distinct from the Father God. What is also clear from these writings is that every human being holds a piece or shred of that Logos. Every human being can be said to be incarnate Logos. Jesus Christ was unique in that He was born without our inherited error and without its influence. He was unique in that He is the Head and we are parts of the body of the Logos. But he was not the only born, but the firstborn among many siblings. 

     And so in the Scriptures we see the Father God, the Logos, and the Spirit and yet only a single infinite God. We see a single incarnate Logos and yet many incarnations of the parts of the Logos. And so we see not just a Trinity, but a Logos that is also unity in diversity among all human beings.

     But we are not just Logos, but incarnate Logos, Logos with flesh, Divine Logos and animal, and the animal part of the human being is malfunctioning. The system of our animal brain which deals with survival threats and necessities is working with physical parameters it was not designed to work with. It is over reactive and colors every action, word, and thought we have. It has us fearful or angry at things which haven’t even happened, or things which have long since passed and no longer threaten us. It has us hoarding things it believes to be necessities which aren’t, and refusing or attempting to destroy things it believes to be threats that may or may not be. Jesus Christ alone was born without this error within His animal flesh. It is this error which keeps us responding as though everything was a threat or necessity and as such keeps us from responding from the logos that we truly are, keeps us from experiencing the natural union of substance with Love Himself.

     It is this error that Jesus Christ taught us to recognize and bypass through His words, His life, His death, and His resurrection because what has died is made right from this malfunction. Detachment from the error, a weakening of the error’s hold over us is a natural outcome of death and resuscitation, and by including all of us in His death and resurrection or resuscitation, He made His experience our reality, and gave us the tools to submit to and cooperate with the part of the Divine Logos which we all hold if we choose it. He gave us the tools to experience our oneness with the substance of God as body-parts of this second person of the “Trinity,” the Logos, which is our birthright as much as it is His, as He is the firstborn among many siblings.

     And so the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is incomplete as it is because it does not include the entirety of the incarnate Logos, that is, the rest of humanity each of which contains a shred, piece, or part and is a part or member, fully in communication or not, of the body of the Logos who is Jesus Christ.