The community of persons who are citizens of the USA is called Uncle Sam. He is a “person” who wears a big hat.
The community of persons who are essentially divine is called God. God is a “person” who sits on a big throne.
But look. I’m so far out of my depth here. I don’t know what Man is. I don’t even know what an atom is, or what time is. How can I possibly know what God is? The family/community metaphor makes sense to me at the moment. In a million years, I dare say we’ll all look back on these primitive ideas and smile.
I am always baffled at how people go off on weird journeys trying to justify an unjustifiable doctrine like Trinity. As some has said, was not biblically referenced, nor taught for the first 2 centuries of the churches existence.
How does God describe himself? As one…not 3. We are not instructed to pray to the spirit, but IN the spirit. Why? Because God 'IS" spirit. ALL spirit. There is only 1 spirit in existence. All life is from his spirit. There is not a separate spirit, but a portion of that life giving spirit enlivens and quickens All living creatures and returns to him at death.
All things were made by Jesus in this manifestation of Creation. To us he IS God. But he is the physical manifestation of God, begotton ‘before’ creation and filled with the Spirit of God. That makes him God. One day it is our hope to be filled exactly like that. We will become gods in a very real sense. No trinity then, but a many membered man=child company of "huios’ or fully formed mature sons of God.
An old testement example is where Pharoah imbued Joseph with authority equal to his own. Simple concept really.
Trinity has it’s roots in pagan far eastern religions that pre-existed before christianity and the converts just mixed their old practices and beliefs with there new. Mono-theism being so different.
So true, Allen. Which is yet one more reason not to be divisive about these areas about which we can understand so little.
Paidion, you don’t need to be put off by Trinitarians’ hesitancy to use “it” when speaking of Elohim (see? I used the singular plural there! ) We don’t say “it” because to do so would be impolite. That’s pretty much the whole reason.
In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.
I’m baffled by people who believe an eternal Lover can exist without an eternally Beloved. Such people actually think God is more like a rock than a person.
Let us make Man in our own image.
God is spirit. God is love. Love is the spirit, the creative, life-giving “energy” that flashes back and forth between lovers. It’s very simple. Nothing convoluted. No lovers = No love. ie. No Father and Son = No Spirit.
Frog begets frog. God begets God.
We are creatures by nature. We can no more become divine than my dog can become human. This does not mean my dog cannot become Family and share in the spirit (love) of the Family. But he will always be my dog, however smart he becomes, however loved. He will never, ever be my “begotten” son.
As for Pharaoh. There is no analogy. Joseph shared Pharaoh’s nature.
This is an ad hominem argument on a grand scale. ie. Because they’re pagan, they must be wrong.
God whispered truth into the ear of pagans as well as Jews. Christ is the perfect image of God, not the only image.
Allen if we cannot become divine then God could not have become human. What do you think it means to be just like him? This is my big beef with trinitarian theology, that it separates us from Jesus, who is the firstborn of the brethren. The firstborn of the sons. We will be given His name aka His nature. Just as Christ is so are you.
Now I don’t think we have divinity separate from the Father as He is the source of all. But I also don’t think Jesus has divinity separate from the father either being begotten and all.
It occurs to me that it might be useful/helpful at this point to know your definition of “divine.” What makes one divine? What are the characteristics of this derivative divinity?
But what is the reason it’s impolite? When we speak of “mankind”, the total human family, we freely say “it” without being impolite.
Not speaking for RHM, but as a non-Trinitarian, I would like to answer that question.
The early Christians said Jesus was generated (or begotten) before all ages.“Who can declare His generation?” (Isaiah 53:8, Acts 8:33). Okay, I admit I can’t declare it. But maybe I can explain a bit. Dog’s beget dogs and their offspring is canine. Cats beget cats and their offspring is feline. People beget people and their offspring is human. God begets God and His offspring is divine.
However, God is unique in that He begat ony one Offspring.
I’m not denying the Son comes from the Father. I’m saying the eternal Father has an eternal Son. There was never a “time” in the life of God when Father and Son didn’t exist in loving relationship. How could there be?
Well lets just say that our name will be YHWH. We will see him face to face, as in a mirror, As Christ is the image of the Father, we are (will be fully in the resurrection) the image of Christ. We will bear the image of the man of heaven. We will be just as he is (now glorified). The two shall become one. We are loved with the same love, the Father loves him.
John 17
3And this is life eternal, that they might know you the only true God,(the source) and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4I have glorified you on the earth: I have finished the work which you gave me to do. 5And now, O Father, glorify you me with your own self** with the glory which I had with you before the world was.**
22And the** glory which you gave me I have given them**; that they may be one, even as we are one: 23I in them, and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that you have sent me, and have loved them, as you have loved me.
Our divinity is/will be the same as Jesus’. It flows from the Father.
The only disagreement I have with you on this regards Jesus. He is a co-eternal member of the Trinity, who alone have immortality, and so He is divine in a way we can’t be. He has life within Himself. Our life flows through and from Him. I guess there may be one more thing – that is that we already ARE these things – though I couldn’t disagree with you that we do not have them to the degree we will then.
I don’t remember whether you are Trinitarian or not – obviously I am. If you’re not, then your position is as it must be and no one can fault you for that. We just disagree.
You missed the points I was making entirely Allan. We will become as Christ makes us. If he is divine then Christ within us shall be our hope of glory. Get it?
How you treat your dog or your frog is YOUR business. Nothing to do with doctrine. Hug what you want.
The analogy of Pharoah and Joseph was concerning the way they shared authority, which seems to be an issue concerning trinitarians and the way they see the Father and the Son interact. I was saying their idea of power and it’s context is different then ours. Which is the same context and understanding with which the OT was written in the first place. And how it needs to be understood. If you can’t grasp the importance of context, then don’t bother studying scripture. It won’t help you.
I wasn’t judging paganism. I was talking about a mixing of the belief systems that came from being raised in the culture that taught multi-theism and peoples conversion to a mono-theistic belief system. Of course because of the carnal nature of man, they mixed. That is the root of Trinity. You teach what you think you know…
Don’t put words or meanings in my mouth. I can speak for myself.
The Father preceded the Son. The Father begat him. That is the word.
I used to use the pagan argument against the trinity, but don’t so much anymore. I still am not a trinitarian, mainly because I don’t think the bible backs it up.
The main reason I don’t use the pagan argument is well a good portion of the bible has pagan references in it. In fact its everywhere. Heaven is Uranus, Star is Aster (Ashter). But the one at hand here is Logos.
I’ve been doing some reading on the Greek understanding of the Logos. Very interesting. I’ll be doing a proper post about it soon. The word was first used in about 500 BC by a greek philosopher. Plato used it, Socrates, etc. Anyway the fact that John used that word is very interesting. It had a meaning (a “pagan” one), which is pretty much how I see it. The big difference between what John said and the greek understanding was that the Logos became flesh. This was scandalous to the Greeks, but still he spoke of the Logos in very similar terms. BTW I think this understanding of the Logos is a big strike against trinity.
Anyway just thought I’d throw that out there, and if anyone has done in depth study of the greek Logos, I’d be interested to hear what you’ve got. You can message me.
That’s just shorthand. I say the same kind of thing, too, on a regular basis: the distinct person of the Son is still the one and only God Most High, even though the distinct person of the Son is not all three Persons.
I am certainly very well aware of the details – I know I mean only the 2nd Person Incarnated, but I also know I mean the Son is God Most High (along with the other Persons) and that the Son is not the Trinity.
That could be charged as unintelligible nonsense, but it’s different from the claims you’re talking about in the syllogism.
Yep, that’s the theotokos doctrine, also held by the Central Orthodox – I’m not sure how far the Nestorians hold it, I know they don’t like the theotokos phraseology, but they’re still trinitarians and do affirm the two natures of Christ, fully human and fully divine with the divinity unique to the one and only God Most High; also that the 2nd Person was present with the human nature at conception thus truly incarnating. Originally the Orthodox and the Nestorian party were saying the same thing, the Nestorians just didn’t think “theotokos” was the best way to say it. (Which the Oriental Orthodox down in Alexandria, who became the Coptics, Ethiopian and Armenian Orthodox, thought was evidence that the Central Orthodox were talking about two distinct persons of Christ along with the Nestorians. Which neither of them were.)
What the Central Orthodox (along with the Alexandrians, who came to be called the Oriental Orthodox despite being west of Constantinople (I guess because they were somewhat east of Rome), and the Nestorian party, which came to be called the Church of the East) were trying to take a stand against was a revival of Arianism denying that there was ever an incarnation but rather an adoption (with God empowering Christ in various variations): the first largescale evangelism outside the Empire had been undertaken by the Arian Emperors in the 4th century and lots of the Germanic tribes had converted to a neo-Arianism or lower Arianism where Christ was a hero chosen by God to be empowered by God (rather similar to how pre-Christian emperors regarded their own ‘divinity’), and now this was coming back home to roost. (Kind of violently in some cases as the Germanic tribes were rebelling and pressing toward Rome.) So the central and western orthodox (including the Roman side of “central”) thought an affirmation of “theotokos” was super-important; Nestorius and his party thought the idea was important but worried that the language would be read (especially by pagans or near-pagans) as meaning God Most High originated by a human woman.
Anyway, all three trinitarian groups (with Rome included in central orthodoxy) were all talking about the 2nd Person of Christ Incarnating, not any of the other Persons, but they all meant God Most High by reference to the 2nd Person just like they meant God Most High by reference to the 1st and 3rd Persons. What they disagreed about were some subtle differences in how the two natures of Christ operated with one another. But they agreed the one and only God Most High incarnated, and that not all three Persons of God Most High incarnated but only the second Person. Thus they talked about it both ways depending on convenience and the circumstances: when two of the three insisted on “theotokos” they didn’t mean the Father and the Spirit were born of Mary any more than the Nestorians did.
All trinitarians do believe that, because all trinitarians believe the 2nd Person of God is the one and only God Most High. But no trinitarian thinks the 2nd Person is also the 1st and 3rd Persons. That’s modalism (which denies the distinction of the Persons altogether.)
That distinction is the detail you’re leaving out of the syllogism.
English has divorced most of our nouns and all our verbs from gender, so even though a team may be singular and comprised of persons (and even comprised of masculine persons) we don’t say “he”. (On the other hand, since we have no personal non-gender or intdeterminate genders in English, the masculine pulls double-duty when speaking of persons where we don’t know their gender. Or we switch to plural even though referencing a single object.)
In other languages, the impersonal singular word “it” we use in describing a team would commonly be a single gendered pronoun depending on the term for “team”, although that wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with whether the team was comprised of persons.
At any rate, we have to make do with makeshift grammar when discussing something that is sui generis: there can only be approximate similarities to compare to the one and only ground of all reality.
Yeah, well, speaking as a hyper-orthodox trinitarian theist, don’t put words in my mouth, I can speak for myself, and I am entirely sure that I am not getting the Trinity from pagan multi-theism, nor from the carnal nature of man.
Now if the scriptures (as RHM suggests) were inundated with pagan multi-theism and so that way came to routinely speak of one and only one YHWH Who acted as two-or-three persons including in their interactions with one another (and this was picked up by Christians in writing the NT), then the problem is with the scriptures inherently. But you needn’t blame persons following the Judeo-Christian scriptures and putting together the pieces for that.
On the metaphysical side of things, the concept is quite distinct from polytheism or cosmological multi-theism, and pagan philosophers worked hard to arrive at anything other than a personal ground of existence (much less a multi-personal single substantial ground of existence). It was the Arians who introduced dyads and demiurges and so forth trying to account for Christ, as Philonic Alexandrian Judaism introduced similar notions to account for the visible YHWH (against which the Hebraist appears to be writing: Christ is not a super-angel but is the one and only unique YHWH upon which all depends for existence, even though also personally distinct in relation to the Father.)
The notion of the one and only ground of reality being actively self-existent instead of statically self-existent isn’t a pagan multi-theism idea – the religious pagans went in for modalism or polytheism, and the philosophical pagans went in for static self-existence of foundational reality. Jewish theism in the OT went for the Living God I AM THAT I AM. (With the visible YHWH Who declares this to Moses identifying Himself as this and also speaking of being a messenger for YHWH unseen. Which is admittedly confusing, but it’s only superficially similar to paganism, which God is hard set against.)
Jason, I’m not implying the scriptures are full of pagan multi-theism. I’m countering the idea that “all pagan is bad”. IF that were the case then I don’t think the Greek and Hebrew would be using pagan deity names, especially Uranus, since heaven was a fill in for the name of YHWH. I think the Jewish notion of “all pagan bad” is wrong. I know that probably comes as a shock to most since when I first came here I was the anti-pagan guy, even to the point of driving Leifin from the board I think
I believe the pagans had truth, the jews had truth, but Jesus the exact imprint of the Father clarifies those truths, and discards the dross of untruths they held.
That doesn’t account for the periods of time that the Jews were in bondage or invasion. Rome was unique in that they let the Jews practice their own faith with some freedom. The others did not.
Egypt…400 years and again in the 1st century BC
Babylon…70 years
Persia
Assyrians
Philistines or sea people in David time and in the 1st century for about 70 years.
Romans
Almost 1000 years in bondage. Enough time to affect changes to beliefs and teachings I think.
These were advanced well formed cultures with their own religions and political practices who in most cases forced their defeated foes to assimilate their ways…all which included poly-theism.
It would just take 1 generation for the children to take it on board just like immigrant children take on their new culture.
There is just too much evidence of the mixing of cultures and religious belief. RHM didn’t bring that up. I did.
Your arguments for trinity are beginning to stretch a little thin if you are already pulling out the meta-physics.
If you are right then your point should be far easily made with more substantial arguments. The evidence just isn’t there.
How does my pointing out a historical fact put words in your mouth? It was all the eastern bishops who came from the pagan cultures who tried to bring trinity into the church canon at Nicea. Eusabius with 11 western bishops ( Ceaserea being considered west at this time) was able to talk Constantine from allowing it to enter the canon. So for almost the first 400 years, trinity was not officially taught at doctrine to the early church. Maybe it was taught unofficially to many, but this is just another sign of mixing.
) We don’t say “it” because to do so would be impolite. That’s pretty much the whole reason.
