Thanks for your serious concern.

I completely understand your quest for the truth. I have been on a similar path for a very long time, and have seriously engaged many traditions without and within Christianity. And I agree that churches are teaching all sorts of nonsense. And I’m glad that you seem to understand that God’s truth is not dependent upon nor effected by the nonsense that claims to be God’s truth.

Can I recommend some book that will convince you of the reality of the Trinity? No, but not because there are no such books, but because books and logical arguments cannot reveal the reality of the Trinity. I can only assure you that you yourself do not actually (functionally and practically) doubt the reality of the Trinity, you only misapprehend Him (Acts 17:28). There is no life apart from Him, and you appear to be alive. (I’m not toying with you, but am quite serious about this.)

In my first post I said, “the Trinity is not an ‘object’ of knowledge that can be dissected in order to understand. He (the Trinity) cannot be known until He is know subjectively.” You have not mentioned this in your responses, which suggests that you have not “heard” it yet.

The Trinity is not a fact like other facts in the world. He functions like Aristotle’s Prime Mover, or biblically He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end (telos—purpose). He is known by induction not deduction (look carefully at the definitions of these words). He is not the conclusion of a particular argument, but the very axiom of predication itself. He is the object of faith, not a reasonable conclusion (though all reasoning absolutely depends upon His reality). I’m not waxing mystical here, but am trying to point to the source and foundation of our human context.

When I first read the Bible I ran into those various verses that caused me to ask, “How can that be true?” The healings, miracles and mysteries of Scripture contradict common sense. It led me to doubt my assumed understanding of reality that came from my senses and various conclusions about reality based upon them. In fact, Scripture forces people to choose whether to trust IT or to trust themselves. Do I choose to make my own perspective objective, or do I allow God’s perspective to be objective (Matt. 6:24). For whatever reason, it made sense to me to doubt myself (my objectivity) and to trust God’s. I knew that I didn’t know.

Unlike Descartes, who famously said, “I think, therefore I am.” I thought, “I doubt myself, therefore I must believe an other.” At that point, I began to take the question (How can the Bible be true?) seriously. Rather than doubt it, I began to look for a perspective from which it could actually be completely true. Decades later I found that, while I could not deduce the reality of the Trinity (God in the fullness of His character), He had inducted me. I had been filled with sense that was common only to other believers, even though the vast majority of them were so wrong about so many things. Their various doctrinal wrongness was dwarfed by the rightness of their simple belief. They trusted in what they could not understand—as do I, and were trying their best to explain it—as am I.

If this makes sense to you, you might try my book on Colossians, subtitled “Christos Singularis,” which is an alternative understanding of the motto of the Reformation, Solas Christos. If Christ is God, then Christ is Father, Son and Holy Spirit—but how can that be? In the Godhead Itself there is unity in the midst of plurality, both unity and diversity of identity.

Just who do you think you are? And who do you think God is (John 15-17)? Which would be more correct: Your understanding of me, or my understanding of me?

I grew up not doubting the trinity doctrine at all, but have found many really poor and wrong doctrines being perpetrated as truth by churches and for various or unknown reasons. My motto may be Act 17:11. Therefor I have started doing my own deeper research and reading a lot. I have read Calvin on the trinity for example and have found that much of his arguments are based on assumptions that have been shown incorrect (but that doesn't phase trinity adherents from still believing it anyway). I have also read critical work on this obviously.

Yes, there are apparently biblical arguments for the trinity, but many are just not sustainable. (Take Gen 1:26 argument for example, neatly shown here http://www.israelofgod.org/genesis1.htm for what it really is by someone that it qualified to make that assessment)

Can you please point to me work you consider compelling that points out why the trinity view is the only one that holds true for all of scripture? You bet "I wanna"! And not just since yesterday. Yes, truth is hard to find. But letting go of errors is just as hard. That's why I'm on a quest to learn and then share with others what I have found. I will not blithely accept what I read though and will scrutinise the details, until I find enough light on the matter.

There are many good reasons to assume the trinity, but the first and foremost is that the personhood of the Holy Spirit cannot be accepted apart from the reality of the Trinity. Apart from the actual Personhood of the Holy Spirit He becomes no more than team spirit, where the whole team pulls together in corporate unity.

Biblical arguments for the existence of the Trinity are plentiful. So, there is no reason to rehash those arguments here. If you want to know, rather than just wanting to argue, you can find a wealth of literature.

There is much in Scripture that cannot be understood with a model of a divine Father whose Spirit is not distinct from his being, as you put it. But it cannot be seen with objective analysis, as I said. No argument can be made to prove the reality of the Trinity to you, just as no argument can be definitively made to prove your own existence. You cannot prove what you are. Rather, you must be experienced to be known. The same is true for the Holy Spirit.

Why is God Trinitarian? I don’t have sufficient hubris to ask that question, must less to answer it. Why is the sky blue? Why do you have two eyes, but only one nose? Why is your brain bifurcated? Sheesh! The problem with these kinds of questions is that they stand objectively over what they seek to analyze. But you and I (humanity) do not stand over God objectively, but arsy varsy. If there is any objectivity to be had, God has it. Not us. The secret of knowledge is not getting all of our questions answered, but knowing which questions are worth answering.

God’s threeness, like His oneness, is not numerical, but analogical. It suggests that His character, like the structure of reality itself, is best expressed as unity in diversity. There are three basic theological or philosophical positions: 1) monotheism or unitarianism, 2) dualism or Zoroastrianism, and 3) trinitarianism. Only trinitarianism solves the philosophical problem of the “one and the many,” which has led to the development of science and technology.

I realize that I am simply asserting these things, rather than arguing them out. But, seriously, do you expect a sufficient argument of this kind of thing in blog comments? You will have to work a little harder than that. But don’t blame me, truth is complex, far more complex than any of our ancestors could ever imagine. The answers are all there if you really want an answer.

But, as we told out kids as they were growing up, “You gotta wanna.”

What is in the scriptures that demands that we have trinity model of the divine persons? What in scripture cannot be understood in a model of a divine Father (whose Spirit is not distinct from his being), who has a divine Son, the first born of many siblings and is the initiation of the Father's ever expanding family of believers? I use the term "model", since we don't know enough to say that this is the way it is for certain, so we construct a model of understanding for ourselves. As we learn more and more is revealed, we adjust that model, although this is not science per se.

You say: "God is Trinitarian in character" Why?
You say: "God created humanity in “Their image” (Gen. 1:26), and because God's Trinitarianism is the most unique aspect of God's person(s), the "image" in which God created humanity is a reflection of His Trinitarian character." I ask, what about "Their image" makes it 3-in-1? That's a really shaky basis for such a grand presupposition.
The you say: "Therefore, to deny or ignore the Trinity ..." but you haven't established anything.

Can one start without a presupposition and arrive at the trinity theory from scripture or can't one? If the former, then those that choose to believe in trinity are doing so because of good reason, but if the latter, then we should move away from this idea, don't you think?

God is Trinitarian in character. God created humanity in “Their image” (Gen. 1:26), and because God's Trinitarianism is the most unique aspect of God's person(s), the "image" in which God created humanity is a reflection of His Trinitarian character. Therefore, to deny or ignore the Trinity is to miss the most unique aspect of God's character, and the reflection of that uniqueness in one's own character.

Without the Trinity, the character of God cannot be adequately known, and neither can the truth of one's own character. To fail to adequately know the character of God is to fail to truly love Him. And to fail to adequately know the truth of one's own character (not just that it is a dim reflection of God's character, but how it is such a reflection) results in the failure to adequately love one's self and one's neighbor.

The Trinity is not hard to understand. What has made it hard is that the early church fathers drug it through the mud of Greek philosophy, and "essentially" lost it in abstraction (pun intended). That said, however, the Trinity is not an "object" of knowledge that can be dissected in order to understand. He (the Trinity) cannot be known until He is know subjectively.

Rather, the truth (or doctrine) of the Trinity is an assumption or presupposition. How so? When the Trinity is known subjectively, His reality becomes an assumption, presupposition or a contextual reality of one’s own existence. We don’t go around proving our own existence. We simply assert it and assume it because it is obvious. The same thing is true about the Person of the Trinity. His reality and identity are caught up in our own reality and identity such that He becomes so much a part of who we are that we find it cumbersome and unnecessary to attest to His presence and reality.

And those who deny Him or who deny His reality, actually do not know what they are talking about. They “do not know” Him, though they live and move and have their own being in Him.

Anyway, I write a lot about the Trinity in my books, should you be interested – http://www.pilgrim-platform.org/books/

Tim Kellar opens the talk by claiming that the trinity is universally accepted in the Christian Church. Surely he cannot be ignorant of the serious work of those that are disputing this? Then the talk continues along the same lines as some infamous other circular arguments: We know the Bible is true because it says so. Surely John Piper knows that the greek for John 1:1 shows that this cannot be used "prove" the Son is the same as the Father.

I admire all three these men and the work they do and have done, so I'm showing contempt for them. On the contrary. I am however doing what the Bereans where commended for in Acts 17:11 by checking whether what is being said "checks out" so to speak.

I would like to re-issue the challenge: Show me at least two clear instances of scripture that requires the trinity. I'm not looking for proof that Christ is divine (e.i people are human but distict, The Father and the Son are divine, but distinct). There is no question about that in my mind. Also don't quote me scriptures that describe the unity between the Father and his Son (the Father and I are one - John 20:10). After all, that is what Jesus expects of us, so, as John Piper points out quite correctly, the presence of the Spirit of the Father in us makes us capable of loving and becoming one with our brothers and sisters and also with the Father and his Son (1 Cor 15.28). I see this much like the Father's ever expanding family, of whom the Son was the first, as scriptures clearly states.