by Sean Russell

Created on: December 19, 2006   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

To thoroughly understand the concept of the trinity as it applies itself to Christian faith, it is necessary to clearly define the integral aspects of the Christian Trinity, and put the idea of "the triune God" in its historical perspective.

The Trinity, or "Three in One Rule," is essentially the belief that God is manifest in three different, but same entities. These entities are God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit. These entities display different parts of the whole of Gods power, by inspiring man to action in different ways. God the Father, for example, appeared to Moses on Mt. Sinai as an incorruptible bush perpetually enflamed. He dispensed His law and created a covenant with the Hebrews. God the Son, preached the word of God and experienced life as a man, to show by example the way of goodness. God the Holy Spirit is more of a directed muse, calling people to action through great realization and unique occurences of inspiration. While rarely visible, the Holy Spirit makes the occasional physical appearance, such as tongues of fire over the apostles.

These entities make up what is known as "the Triune God," that is, three manifestations of the same consciousness. They exist both inependently of eachother, and are indivisible. How can something be three distinct things and still one thing? Interesting question...

The concept was put forth at the Council of Nicea. Here, at this Council, Emperor Constantine, the Emperor to make Christianity Rome's official religion, sat down with the highest theologians of the day and decreed that they not leave until they had organized the Christian religion into a dogma.

You see, up until that time, Christianity had been a blanket word that described a whole plethora of religions, each with their own customs and beliefs mutually exclusive from each other. This is all well and good when you're a back woods religion with few hearty voices in Rome, but Constantine knew an official religion must do one thing if nothing else, consolidate the people behind their Emperor. In order to do this, he needed a single set of principles to bottleneck the people. A "Straight and Narrow" path which amounted to social laws which could be used to enforce the will of the ruling body.

Among the issues of major contention is "was Jesus God or a man." After long deliberation, it was decided he was both. It was also almost decided that the Emperor was both divine and human. The other major issue of course is "What

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