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developed, helped by the semantic distinction between person and being or essence: God is one
Being but three persons. But simple labels do not dissolve the complexity, and many have
believed that the trinity presents a logical problem that cannot be solved. Louis Berkhof, clearly
no irrationalist, overstated what nonetheless has been a common intuition in historic Christianity
that humans "cannot comprehend it and make it intelligible. It is intelligible in some of its
relations and modes of manifestation, but unintelligible in its essential nature."
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Some early
Christian reflection on the biblical teaching showed signs of trying to reduce the logical tension
in the direction of oneness (Arianism or modalism) or threeness (tritheism),
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but the Church
resisted a simplistic logical solution and formulated the classic trinity doctrine, a pluralistic
monotheism. In response to the trinity doctrine, Jews, Muslims, and Jehovah Witnesses believe
the Christian religion is fundamentally irrational.
They may have also been thinking of the incarnation, which Kierkegaard called the
"Absolute Paradox." How could an omnipresent being be located somewhere in space, and how
could an eternal being do something novel and enter time and history? How could the Creator
become a creature? And how could the self-existent, living God die? The incarnation creates
problems for human reason because the terms "God" and "human" are in all other uses mutually
exclusive.
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The incarnation is in a class by itself, but there are many, other concurrences in the
relation between God and humanity. How could the eternal God create a temporal order? When
did he begin to do this? God is beyond time and unchanging, and yet He also participates fully
in history, interacting genuinely with humans.
32
How does God work through humans (so that
their good works are really from Him), and yet humans accomplish nothing without their own