I think it's that one word that is throwing me off, nature. Nature is generally something we use for wordly terrestrial things....not godly things. I know I said " The Trinity is the nature of God" and it made sense at the time, but I'm thinking nature is the wrong word to use, because it can refer to too many things.
By nature of God I mean things like saying whether the three persons are co-equal, that God is infinite and/or doesn't change, that the three persons are of the same substance, hypostases, etc.
What the New Testament seems to consistently highlight as important is the relationship between the three, not their "nature" or "properties." An example would be to say that the Father sent the Son, and that the Son speaks for the Father. I suppose it may be helpful to contemplate their nature in order to understand their relationships better. Contemplating their "nature" and "properties" helps us "visualise" their relationships. But it seems unlikely we need to do anything else once we achieve that. The concepts regarding "nature" and "properties" don't have to be enforced. The nature and properties of God and the three may be seen any number of ways and still have the same relationships described in the NT.
Shouldn't we want to know more about our all-merciful glorious God? People want to study and find out more about human nature, but suddenly we get to God and people lose interest or say that it isn't necessary. It is important though, even though it is a mystery and we're probably never going to get it all. Can we really comprehend things like the essence of God? Not a chance. But that's okay, because if we are willing to learn more and more about God and his attributes and " nature " for lack of a better word in the Trinity, that's always a good thing.
Really? You want to
know more? Doesn't that sound a bit like . . . a kind of "gnosticism?"

Knowing God's nature . . . Having a well-defined, more-refined, more accurate and precise concept of God? Do we need to define God?
Know his nature? Do we really need to "
know" this? Do we have to define God, the universe, their nature and structure ? . . . Just an observation.
Creepy, right? The whole Nicene creed wasn't to throw the trinity out there to shut everyone up so they'd stop inquiring about it. I mean, if anything, people inquired more, especially about the "essence" of God that unifies all the hypostases.
I would say inquiring about the Trinity is ok, but inquiring about the nature of God, His structure and properties, that would lead nowhere (ok but pointless). The NT doesn't talk about the nature of the Three, but the relationships between them.
My belief about the purpose of the Trinity was that although it made a statement about the nature of God, it was only in response to Arianism. The reason why I think the Christians of that time waited almost three centuries until the Council of Nicaea was because the nature of God simply wasn't important at the very start. It only became important because Christianity was being threatened by a pseudo-Christian faith that did speculate on God's nature. In other words, they started coming up with a concept of the nature and structure of God in response to non-Christian influences. The Nicaean Creed could be thought of as an exercise in apologetics. Well . . . that's just a possible explanation.
I would suggest that the reason why so many denominations have sprung up over the Trinity, or in opposition to it, with their varying concepts, is because people started to believe that contemplating the nature of God is important. The question is, are they right to believe that? In other words, it's not what they believe about the nature of God, but whether believing it's important to define God is right in the first place. Speculating and contemplating may be helpful, but once we understand something, should we still go ahead and try to actually define it? Would we be over-stepping our obligations there?
The Church up until then had had to contend with Gnosticism, or forms of "gnosticism." Could this inquiry not have been a new kind of gnosticism? That of knowing more about the nature and structure of God? Knowing His composition? If that's the case, then many of the denominations that have sprung up in the last 2,000 years,
trying to know God's nature, structure and properties are really a subtle form of gnosticism that crept up on Christianity. Most of us therefore, could be gnostics and don't know it. It's that's true, then gnosticism didn't really die off. It's been with us all along. It's simply reappeared in a different form.
Yes, Maid in Russia, I believe this
is starting to get a bit creepy.
Ok, this is just a theory -- a possible a conspiracy theory. I just like getting to the bottom of things.
