[Vision2020] What is the Trinity?

[Ralph Nielsen]

“Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity,  
the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost the third. Each of  
these persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son. The  
Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both. The son was begotten  
by the father, but existed before he was begotten--just the same  
before as after. . . .

“So, it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son God, and the  
Holy Ghost God, and that these three Gods make one God.

“According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three,  
and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction, if  
we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally  
peculiar, if we add two to one, we have but one. . . .

“Nothing ever was, nothing ever can be more perfectly idiotic and  
absurd than the dogma of the Trinity.”

-- Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899), "The Trinity" (from "The  
Foundations of Faith," The Works of Ingersoll, 1895. vol. 4, p. 266).