A nation needs to foster unity not just diversity

The multicultural trend was…manifested (in the USA) in a variety of legislation that followed the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s, and in the 1990s, the Clinton administration made the encouragement of diversity one its major goals. The contrast with the past is striking. The Founding Fathers saw diversity as a reality and as a problem: hence the national motto: e pluribus unum,…”The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of of its continuing as a nation at all,” warned Theodore Roosevelt, “would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.” In the 1990s, however, leaders of he United States have not only permitted that but assiduously promoted the diversity rather than the unity of the people they govern.

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Samuel P. Huntington. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996, p.305-6

The promotion of multiculturalism in the UK has led to ghettos. In the end it may lead to Balkanisation

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The Trinity is the sole ground of love

The Nicene Creed – three persons, one God… Whether you realize it or not that catapulted the Nicene Creed right into our century and its discussion: three Persons in existence, loving each other, and in communication with each other, before all else was. If this was not so, we would have had a God who needed the universe as much as the universe needed God. But God did not need to create; God does not need the universe as the universe needs Him. Why? God is a full and true Trinity. The Persons of the Trinity communicated with each other before the creation of the world. This is not only an answer to the acute philosophic need of unity in diversity, but of personal unity and diversity. The unity and diversity cannot exist before God or behind God because whatever is farthest back is God… The unity and diversity are in God Himself – three persons, yet one God… this is not the best answer; it is the only answer. Nobody else, no philosophy, has ever given an answer for unity and diversity… Every philosophy has this problem, and no philosophy has an answer. Christianity does have an answer in the Trinity. The only answer to what exists is that He, the starting-place, is there.

Francis Schaeffer, quoted in Michael A. Robinson, God Does Exist!, Author House 2006, pp.154-5

A unitarian god would be a god that lacked. He could not be love in himself since he would need a creation to love. He would not be an eternally loving being. Neither would a unitarian god be an eternally communicating being. In addition, the Triune God supplies the ground for equality (such as between persons generally and the sexes in particukar) because the different roles of the divine persons in no way diminishes their equality since they are of one substance.

We have a tri-unity in the universe composed of time, space, and matter

We have a tri-unity in the universe composed of time, space, and matter. Each aspect is comprised of its own tri-unity. In the universe these are three distinct dynamics. All three of these are also divided by three. Space is comprised of height, width and depth – a tri-unity. All is space, yet a distinct aspect of space. Matter is comprised of solid, liquid, and gas which make up a tri-unity of matter. Time is past, present, and future. Each ‘time’ is fully time. We can see God’s nature reflected in His creation.

Michael A. Robinson, God Does Exist!, Author House 2006, p.148

When we shall have done away with the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three…we shall then be…worthy disciples

When we shall have done away with the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three…we shall then be…worthy disciples.

Thomas Jefferson, quoted in Michael A. Robinson, God Does Exist!, Author House 2006, p.144

But the Trinity does not state this. A straw man is easily refuted. Persons and substance are not the same.

Jefferson also went on to say:

• “It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticism that three are one, and one is three; yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one;….” (Jefferson’s Works, Vol. 6, p. 192 by H.A. Washington).
• “No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity;…. The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousand and thousands of martyrs…. In fact, the Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most montrous,… With such persons, gullability, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.” (Jefferson’s Works, Vol. 7, p. 269-70 by H.A. Washington). – Thomas Jefferson

But the Athanasian Creed states:

…we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. (excerpt)

It seems there is an unwillingness of certain people to state the doctrine properly and hide behind the phrase, ‘It’s contradictory’. It’s not easy, but who would expect to peer into the very being of God and grasp that being so easily?

The Trinity also means that God’s creation can be both one and many. Secular philosophy veers between the two extremes of monism (the world is really one & plurality is an illusion) and pluralism (the world is radically disunited and unity is an illusion)

The Trinity also means that God’s creation can be both one and many. Secular philosophy veers between the two extremes of monism (the world is really one & plurality is an illusion) and pluralism (the world is radically disunited and unity is an illusion). Secular philosophy moves from one extreme to the other because it does not have the resources to define a position between the two extremes, and because it seeks an absolute extreme or another-as if there must be an absolute oneness (with no plurality) or else a universe of unique, unconnected elements, creating an absolute pluralism and destroying universal oneness… But the Christian knows there is no absolute unity (devoid of plurality) or absolute plurality (devoid of unity)… The Christian knows that God is the only absolute, and that the absolute is both one and many. Thus we are freed from the task of trying to find utter unity or utter disunity… When we search for ultimate criteria or standards, we look… to the living God.

John M. Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 1994), p. 40-50. Quoted in Michael A. Robinson, God Does Exist!, Author House 2006, p.142

Thus the connection of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Paraclete, produces three coherent personae, who are yet distinct one from another. These three are, one essence, not one person

Thus the connection of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Paraclete, produces three coherent personae, who are yet distinct one from another. These three are, one essence, not one person, as it is said, ‘I and my Father are one’ [John 10:30], in respect of unity of being not singularity of number.

Tertullian (ca. 160 – ca. 220 A.D.), Against Praxeas

NB the early formulation of the Trinitarian doctrine based, as it is, firmly in the text of the NT. It is not a (very) late development entirely unknown to the early church.

The Trinity in the baptismal formula

The precise form of the formula must be carefully observed. It does not read: “In the names” (plural)—as if there were three beings enumerated, each with its distinguishing name. Nor yet: “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” as if there were one person, going by a threefold name. It reads: “In the name (singular) of the Father and of the (article repeated) Son, and of the (article repeated) Holy Spirit,” carefully distinguishing three persons, though uniting them all under one name. The name of God was to the Jews Jehovah, and to name the name of Jehovah upon them was to make them His. What Jesus did in this great injunction was to command His followers to name the name of God upon their converts, and to announce the name of God which is to be named on their converts in the threefold enumeration of “the Father” and “the Son” and “the Holy Spirit.” As it is unquestionable that He here intended Himself by “the Son,” He here places Himself by the side of the Father and Spirit, as together with them constituting the one God. It is, of course, the Trinity which he is describing and that is as much as to say that He announces Himself as one of the persons of the Trinity.

B. B. Warfield (Biblical Doctrines, p. 204):