Of course, believers don't make "rational observations" about the Trinity, that famously understudied aspect of Christian belief.
Believers certainly make rational observations based on the irrational mysteries that they believe. The Trinity is rationally derived as a concept given the propositions of the New Testament. None of the supernatural claims in them is rational. The two thousand year citadel of theology is thoroughly built on sand.
Assuming Love is the ground of infinite being and that Jesus is Love incarnate, rationally he wasn't, was not, the Second Person of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Unless you somehow believe that particular 'mystery'.
@Merry Vole It's true that there's much more to being Jewish than religion. There's shared history, and a very remarkable history at that. That the Jews still exist as a recognisable people is a miracle in itself. They would have been assimilated long ago, but for their passionate exclusivism. So it's perfectly possible to be a Jew and an atheist.
Their exclusivity is also very off putting to potentially converts, and that's the way they want it. Another thing that I could never accept, although I perfectly understand it, is their hostility to Jesus, to the point of trying to airbrush him out of their history.
In spite of how I must come across on here, Jesus has been the central figure in my life since I first drew breath. I may have difficulties accepting some of the historicity of Scripture, and some of the doctrines of the Church, but Jesus was the greatest spiritual Master and exemplar of a life dedicated to the will of God that we have on record. So I hold on to Jesus as Jacob did with the man he wrestled, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me"(Gen 32.26)
At the risk of being reductionist and tarring all liberally theological Christians with the same brush, some uber-liberal Christians I've come across strike me as practically atheist to all intents and purposes.
I may be doing them a grave disservice. Lord have mercy!
It's also the case that many ostensibly fervent Christians with what some may consider impeccable theological credentials fall well wide of the mark - through fanaticism, legalism, judgmentalism, Pharisaisism, spiritual pride and all manner of other evils ... hypocrisy, double-standards, party-spirit ... the list goes on.
Lord have mercy on us all.
Lord have mercy upon me the sinner.
@Martin54 - thanks - although I'm not sure I follow your logic but I see no reason why it can't be possible for Christ to be Love Incarnate and the Second Person of the Trinity at one and the same time.
What have you figured out that I have so far failed to see?
At the risk of being reductionist and tarring all liberally theological Christians with the same brush, some uber-liberal Christians I've come across strike me as practically atheist to all intents and purposes.
I may be doing them a grave disservice. Lord have mercy!
It's also the case that many ostensibly fervent Christians with what some may consider impeccable theological credentials fall well wide of the mark - through fanaticism, legalism, judgmentalism, Pharisaisism, spiritual pride and all manner of other evils ... hypocrisy, double-standards, party-spirit ... the list goes on.
Lord have mercy on us all.
Lord have mercy upon me the sinner.
@Martin54 - thanks - although I'm not sure I follow your logic but I see no reason why it can't be possible for Christ to be Love Incarnate and the Second Person of the Trinity at one and the same time.
What have you figured out that I have so far failed to see?
So who was minding the infinite (eternal) store? How did a perichoretic Person of the God substance, once, for all infinity (i.e. eternity, endless time, without beginning, without end, experienced by infinite matter (nature)) become a particular bloke for 33 years? At one point in infinity, between two eternities? 'It's a mystery' I suppose.
Why did you miss out Undivided?
The Second Person of the Holy and Undivided Trinity is utterly superfluous if Love is the ground of being, unless the beliefs of Paul and (some of) the gospel writers, minimally, which can be minimally three people all told, and Jesus assuming, with good will, he believed what was reported of him, have to be believed.
Fundamentalism is not limited to fundamentalists is it?
Yes it is. It's a way of thinking, rather than anything else, and absolutely afflicts atheists as much as anyone else. Like you.
The trinity is a metaphor. All descriptions of the divine are metaphor. Even the word 'God' is the ultimate deictic (thank you linguistics) - it refers back to the speaker and derives its meaning from them, rather than from its referent.
Of course metaphors have and create tensions. We can experience and relate to God, and that is what he craves. But in no sense whatsoever does he need or require anything from us - he offers total, unconditional love, and continues to do so, whatever we do. If the cross doesn't demonstrate that, then..............
Yes it is. It's a way of thinking, rather than anything else, and absolutely afflicts atheists as much as anyone else. Like you.
The trinity is a metaphor. All descriptions of the divine are metaphor. Even the word 'God' is the ultimate deictic (thank you linguistics) - it refers back to the speaker and derives its meaning from them, rather than from its referent.
Of course metaphors have and create tensions. We can experience and relate to God, and that is what he craves. But in no sense whatsoever does he need or require anything from us - he offers total, unconditional love, and continues to do so, whatever we do. If the cross doesn't demonstrate that, then..............
What, believing in something absolutely meaningless because it's in the Bible is not fundamentalist?
If you say so.
The Trinity (capital surely?) is certainly metaphor, all theology is. But for what? Not just 'the divine'. And yes, I'm fully familiar with the etymology of God. My posited God is Love.
So what God craves is not a need, a requirement, of, on God? And yes, if one believes that unconditional love is on offer from beyond matter, and that the story of the Cross demonstrates that, I'm happy for you.
@Merry Vole It's true that there's much more to being Jewish than religion. There's shared history, and a very remarkable history at that. That the Jews still exist as a recognisable people is a miracle in itself. They would have been assimilated long ago, but for their passionate exclusivism. So it's perfectly possible to be a Jew and an atheist.
Their exclusivity is also very off putting to potentially converts, and that's the way they want it. Another thing that I could never accept, although I perfectly understand it, is their hostility to Jesus, to the point of trying to airbrush him out of their history.
In spite of how I must come across on here, Jesus has been the central figure in my life since I first drew breath. I may have difficulties accepting some of the historicity of Scripture, and some of the doctrines of the Church, but Jesus was the greatest spiritual Master and exemplar of a life dedicated to the will of God that we have on record. So I hold on to Jesus as Jacob did with the man he wrestled, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me"(Gen 32.26)
This comforts me a great deal for your sake, as it’s hard to see how anyone who clings to Jesus is in danger no matter how heterodox their views.
A tangent from the Trinity discussion, but relevant I hope. Does God need anything from us? I don't know. But...
I've been thinking about the kind of suffering that's part of love. I have been the object of a love so intense that the lover suffers, as the child of loving parents. I haven't experienced loving as a parent.
We use the metaphor of a loving parent when we talk about God, and we are told that God is love (also a metaphor). It seems reasonable to say that God's love of us is akin to that of a suffering parent. So God's love for us might well include suffering so intense as to be beyond our imagining. Certainly Jesus suffered.
It occured to me some weeks ago that it is entirely appropriate to weep for God, to pray for God in some sense. Should we pray that God's suffering might be eased in some way? Do we pray that when we pray, "Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of Hell. Bring all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of your mercy"?
Do we pray for God's suffering to end when we pray, "Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy"?
Do we pray for God's suffering to end when we pray the Lord's Prayer?
Is this what it is to love God? To share in God's suffering by seeing it, acknowledging it, by running back into God's loving embrace?
I don’t know, but you come unnervingly close to an issue with Jesus I’ve been thinking on for some weeks. I don’t know if he’s ever gotten over his grief for Judas, or if it even makes sense to think he would. And Judas won’t be the only one, unless universalism is true. Another reason to hope, though I’ve no guarantee. I know of course that either way he chose his course from the beginning knowing what it would cost him. But it hurts me to think of…
Interesting questions @Simon Toad. If I were a 'Heresy Hunter' - never the nicest of people - I'd be jotting in my notebook, 'Aha! Patripassianism!'
You're nicked!
But I'm not. So I won't. 😉
What I will say is that the Patristic tradition has it that God the Father is immutable. But to get into all of it is above my pay grade.
It could be argued that the doctrine of the Trinity goes some way to addressing this one. But it'd take a loo-oo-ong time to expand on that.
I've never heard of God 'needing' our prayers. I'm sure he'd appreciate it if we tried, not because he is in need of our prayers but because it demonstrates compassion on our part. Although I imagine he'd much prefer us to pray for others.
@Martin54 - yes, it is the Holy andUndivided Trinity. 'One in Essence and Undivided' as the chant goes in every Orthodox Liturgy.
I don't see there as being a 'hole' in the Trinity as it were as God the Son was absent from heaven for 33 years. See @Leaf's comments about God and linear time.
Wiser minds than mine have pondered these things. Even angels, we are told, long to look into these things.
A 'Mystery' in Orthodox terms is something revealed. 'Beyond all question the mystery of godliness is great. He [God] appeared in a body...'
Was Karl Barth a fundamentalist when he replied to a question as to what he'd learned from all his years of theological study, 'Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so ...'?
It's not as if I don't question or struggle with these things. 'Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.'
But to start 'dismantling' the 'components' of the Trinity, if we can put it as crudely as that, as if we are under the bonnet (or hood for our American friends) of a car or dealing with a piece of IKEA flat-pack furniture rather misses the point it seems to me.
It's all so parochial isn't it? Small minded. Creation is infinite and eternal and at all stages concurrently, as it has been forever. Whether Love grounds it or no. If They do, then that applies to transcendent creation. Where all is well for all. That infinity is as large as the infinity of suffering. And of course universalism is true in Love. Who zens it all, as They always have. Nothing that suffers is lost. In my Love.
May I point out though late. It is one thing to say "Son of God" need not imply "God". It is quite another to claim Jesus was not accused for using such terms of blasphemy by the Jewish Authorities. Whether this was done for political reasons or not, it remains the case that this is clearly shown in the account of Jesus' trials.
Matthew 26:64-66
“You have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?”
“He is worthy of death,” they answered.[/qb]
Mark 14:61b-64
Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”
“I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. “You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?”
They all condemned him as worthy of death.
Luke 22:66-71
At daybreak the council of the elders of the people, both the chief priests and the teachers of the law, met together, and Jesus was led before them. “If you are the Messiah,” they said, “tell us.”
Jesus answered, “If I tell you, you will not believe me, and if I asked you, you would not answer. But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the mighty God.”
They all asked, “Are you then the Son of God?”
He replied, “You say that I am.”
Then they said, “Why do we need any more testimony? We have heard it from his own lips.”
and from John 19:7
The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
Jesus is found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death. Elsewhere he is accused of blasphemy for claiming to be God John 10:33-37 but quick enough to escape the accusation
“We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”
Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods”’? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside— what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? 37 Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father.
So yes NT Wright is correct that what Jesus says in some context was held not to be Blasphemous and Jesus knew it as did the Jewish Authorities. However, that circumstance was not during Jesus' trial by the Jewish authorities when they wanted him dead. The phrases are not going to be construed in a favourable light even if Jesus had managed to make the point again.
So NT Wright can be right and Jesus still be sentenced to death for blasphemy for using the term. Context is everything in deciding whether something is blasphemous. I have no doubt that the Jewish courts wanted to get Jesus on an account of Blasphemy and thus ascribed blasphemous intent to the words he chose.
I don’t know, but you come unnervingly close to an issue with Jesus I’ve been thinking on for some weeks. I don’t know if he’s ever gotten over his grief for Judas, or if it even makes sense to think he would. And Judas won’t be the only one, unless universalism is true. Another reason to hope, though I’ve no guarantee. I know of course that either way he chose his course from the beginning knowing what it would cost him. But it hurts me to think of…
Is it St Theresa of Avila who prays to experience the suffering of Christ in her own body, and describes an ecstatic state in which she does so? Quite macabre to modern sensibilities, but I suspect that it is ours that are less connected with reality.
Like St Theresa, I should probably pepper my thoughts with pleas to read my posts in ways that make them consistent with the teachings of Mother Church.
@Martin54 - yes, it is the Holy andUndivided Trinity. 'One in Essence and Undivided' as the chant goes in every Orthodox Liturgy.
I don't see there as being a 'hole' in the Trinity as it were as God the Son was absent from heaven for 33 years. See @Leaf's comments about God and linear time.
Wiser minds than mine have pondered these things. Even angels, we are told, long to look into these things.
A 'Mystery' in Orthodox terms is something revealed. 'Beyond all question the mystery of godliness is great. He [God] appeared in a body...'
Was Karl Barth a fundamentalist when he replied to a question as to what he'd learned from all his years of theological study, 'Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so ...'?
It's not as if I don't question or struggle with these things. 'Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.'
But to start 'dismantling' the 'components' of the Trinity, if we can put it as crudely as that, as if we are under the bonnet (or hood for our American friends) of a car or dealing with a piece of IKEA flat-pack furniture rather misses the point it seems to me.
From the bottom:
Well it would to you wouldn't it? What point?
If you need to believe something truly, utterly, meaninglessly unbelievable on top of the premiss of God, knock yourself out.
Yes. Lovely as it is.
The incarnation is not a fraction of a problem per se until you have to believe something extra about it. See two up.
I'm not aware of any non-believer wise pondering these things. Apart from my good self.
I don't see how a believer's 'theory' of time to make TSPOTHAUT constant and concurrent with them also collapsing once for 33 years in the middle of infinity in a Jewish country carpenter genius of late antiquity, is mandated on Love.
But I understand that if you have to believe that what three or four blokes said two thousand years ago defines God, sure. That that's what the Lord needs from you.
I don’t know, but you come unnervingly close to an issue with Jesus I’ve been thinking on for some weeks. I don’t know if he’s ever gotten over his grief for Judas, or if it even makes sense to think he would. And Judas won’t be the only one, unless universalism is true. Another reason to hope, though I’ve no guarantee. I know of course that either way he chose his course from the beginning knowing what it would cost him. But it hurts me to think of…
Is it St Theresa of Avila who prays to experience the suffering of Christ in her own body, and describes an ecstatic state in which she does so? Quite macabre to modern sensibilities, but I suspect that it is ours that are less connected with reality.
Like St Theresa, I should probably pepper my thoughts with pleas to read my posts in ways that make them consistent with the teachings of Mother Church.
Not just to modern sensibilities. The Orthodox always tended to wary of seeking experiences like this and of stigmata and so on.
That said, they have certainly gone in for wild and woolly things and extreme asceticism. People sitting on top of poles and so on.
I don’t know, but you come unnervingly close to an issue with Jesus I’ve been thinking on for some weeks. I don’t know if he’s ever gotten over his grief for Judas, or if it even makes sense to think he would. And Judas won’t be the only one, unless universalism is true. Another reason to hope, though I’ve no guarantee. I know of course that either way he chose his course from the beginning knowing what it would cost him. But it hurts me to think of…
Is it St Theresa of Avila who prays to experience the suffering of Christ in her own body, and describes an ecstatic state in which she does so? Quite macabre to modern sensibilities, but I suspect that it is ours that are less connected with reality.
Like St Theresa, I should probably pepper my thoughts with pleas to read my posts in ways that make them consistent with the teachings of Mother Church.
If so, she's got far more courage than me!
Which isn't surprising. But wow.
I'm not too fussed about the macabre aspect. At the extremes love tends to ... well, go to extremes.
@Martin54 - yes, it is the Holy andUndivided Trinity. 'One in Essence and Undivided' as the chant goes in every Orthodox Liturgy.
I don't see there as being a 'hole' in the Trinity as it were as God the Son was absent from heaven for 33 years. See @Leaf's comments about God and linear time.
Wiser minds than mine have pondered these things. Even angels, we are told, long to look into these things.
A 'Mystery' in Orthodox terms is something revealed. 'Beyond all question the mystery of godliness is great. He [God] appeared in a body...'
Was Karl Barth a fundamentalist when he replied to a question as to what he'd learned from all his years of theological study, 'Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so ...'?
It's not as if I don't question or struggle with these things. 'Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.'
But to start 'dismantling' the 'components' of the Trinity, if we can put it as crudely as that, as if we are under the bonnet (or hood for our American friends) of a car or dealing with a piece of IKEA flat-pack furniture rather misses the point it seems to me.
From the bottom:
Well it would to you wouldn't it? What point?
If you need to believe something truly, utterly, meaninglessly unbelievable on top of the premiss of God, knock yourself out.
Yes. Lovely as it is.
The incarnation is not a fraction of a problem per se until you have to believe something extra about it. See two up.
I'm not aware of any non-believer wise pondering these things. Apart from my good self.
I don't see how a believer's 'theory' of time to make TSPOTHAUT constant and concurrent with them also collapsing once for 33 years in the middle of infinity in a Jewish country carpenter genius of late antiquity, is mandated on Love.
But I understand that if you have to believe that what three or four blokes said two thousand years ago defines God, sure. That that's what the Lord needs from you.
Eh? What the Lord 'requires' from me - he doesn't 'need' anything - is for me to 'act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly' with him.
Sure. I believe in the Trinity. Get over it already. You no longer believe. That's your prerogative. There's a thread on losing faith which you can use to offload.
I have no idea what your great big acronym stands for and find much of your post incomprehensible.
Julian of Norwich asked to feel the full pain of Christ, and has some kind of near-death experience, from which she is only summoned by being presented with a crucifix, and she has her shewings in the course of this three-day experience. She ends up conscious of Christ's overwhelming, limitless empathy with humanity, and the way in which this is expressed in the crucifixion and resurrection.
@Martin54 - yes, it is the Holy andUndivided Trinity. 'One in Essence and Undivided' as the chant goes in every Orthodox Liturgy.
I don't see there as being a 'hole' in the Trinity as it were as God the Son was absent from heaven for 33 years. See @Leaf's comments about God and linear time.
Wiser minds than mine have pondered these things. Even angels, we are told, long to look into these things.
A 'Mystery' in Orthodox terms is something revealed. 'Beyond all question the mystery of godliness is great. He [God] appeared in a body...'
Was Karl Barth a fundamentalist when he replied to a question as to what he'd learned from all his years of theological study, 'Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so ...'?
It's not as if I don't question or struggle with these things. 'Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.'
But to start 'dismantling' the 'components' of the Trinity, if we can put it as crudely as that, as if we are under the bonnet (or hood for our American friends) of a car or dealing with a piece of IKEA flat-pack furniture rather misses the point it seems to me.
From the bottom:
Well it would to you wouldn't it? What point?
If you need to believe something truly, utterly, meaninglessly unbelievable on top of the premiss of God, knock yourself out.
Yes. Lovely as it is.
The incarnation is not a fraction of a problem per se until you have to believe something extra about it. See two up.
I'm not aware of any non-believer wise pondering these things. Apart from my good self.
I don't see how a believer's 'theory' of time to make TSPOTHAUT constant and concurrent with them also collapsing once for 33 years in the middle of infinity in a Jewish country carpenter genius of late antiquity, is mandated on Love.
But I understand that if you have to believe that what three or four blokes said two thousand years ago defines God, sure. That that's what the Lord needs from you.
Eh? What the Lord 'requires' from me - he doesn't 'need' anything - is for me to 'act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly' with him.
Sure. I believe in the Trinity. Get over it already. You no longer believe. That's your prerogative. There's a thread on losing faith which you can use to offload.
I have no idea what your great big acronym stands for and find much of your post incomprehensible.
Have you answered my question?
Yes.
The Second Person Of The Holy And Undivided Trinity.
My not believing it it is independent of whether I know Love is the ground of infinite being or not. I don't believe apart from in unconditional positive regard. But, again, if one posits Love, the Trinity is not necessary, let alone possible. Unless you have to believe what for antique blokes said.
It's all so parochial isn't it? Small minded. Creation is infinite and eternal and at all stages concurrently, as it has been forever. Whether Love grounds it or no. If They do, then that applies to transcendent creation. Where all is well for all. That infinity is as large as the infinity of suffering. And of course universalism is true in Love. Who zens it all, as They always have. Nothing that suffers is lost. In my Love.
@Martin54 this is incomprehensible, or very nearly so as is your recent invented acronym. Please remember that you are required to post comprehensibly.
Julian of Norwich asked to feel the full pain of Christ, and has some kind of near-death experience, from which she is only summoned by being presented with a crucifix, and she has her shewings in the course of this three-day experience. She ends up conscious of Christ's overwhelming, limitless empathy with humanity, and the way in which this is expressed in the crucifixion and resurrection.
Oh it was Julian of Norwich I meant! I really must learn to check my guesses before I post. St Theresa was on my mind as I'm beginning to dip my toe in The Interior Castle.
It's all so parochial isn't it? Small minded. Creation is infinite and eternal and at all stages concurrently, as it has been forever. Whether Love grounds it or no. If They do, then that applies to transcendent creation. Where all is well for all. That infinity is as large as the infinity of suffering. And of course universalism is true in Love. Who zens it all, as They always have. Nothing that suffers is lost. In my Love.
@Martin54 this is incomprehensible, or very nearly so as is your recent invented acronym. Please remember that you are required to post comprehensibly.
BroJames, Purgatory Host
I am sorry @BroJames. I got carried away in response to @Lamb Chopped immediately really, and then @Gamma Gamaliel, the whole thread . And I know that friends like @Kendel, with a reading age of about 200, definitely get me. That's not an excuse. Sorry, not intending to be Stygian at all, just paving the way to try and be more comprehensible, especially to Hosts.
I don’t know, but you come unnervingly close to an issue with Jesus I’ve been thinking on for some weeks. I don’t know if he’s ever gotten over his grief for Judas, or if it even makes sense to think he would. And Judas won’t be the only one, unless universalism is true. Another reason to hope, though I’ve no guarantee. I know of course that either way he chose his course from the beginning knowing what it would cost him. But it hurts me to think of…
This makes Jesus extremely parochial, which I happen to agree with, but not in the same way. There's no way 'the Second Person of the Holy and Undivided Trinity' (TSPOTHAUT), I referred to at the top of the page, and should have added my acronym then, not just used it later, is rationally limited to Earth. Unless one has to believe the former to be literal. Fundamentalist. Positing the incarnation in an otherwise rational schema means that Jesus' parish is Earth. Only in an irrational particular schema does God the Son (that looks shorter than my acronym! It isn't.) incarnate once for all past and future presentist eternity, on one infinitesimal world. Unless we push out Leaf's eternalist schema and say that God the Son can be Himself, be His own beyond infinite Person, and concurrently incarnate infinitely. Which gets rid of the problem of particularity. At some cost...
And in Love, transcendent Jesus knows Judas is fine. Probably since He ascended, Heaven is populated. They've been friends for two thousand years. Or does He have to wait a hundred thousand years or so before we're done? The general resurrection is literal? Seems a bit of a waste of time...
And Dame Julian of Norwich helplessly made herself ill.
One of the fathers, Irenaeus IIRC, wrote that the glory of God is a human being fully alive.
God created because God wanted not to be everything. We are made to love God and our neighbour and God wants us to love God and our neighbour to be fully ourselves.
(I gather from those better at it than I that from the inside it looks like we're losing ourselves, as Jesus said. From the outside in my experience you can tell the difference between true and false spirituality in that false spirituality suppresses the self rather than loses it, and true spirituality releases it.)
I think I would have to summarise my approach in this way: if anyone gives me a list of things I have to "believe" in order to be "saved" I run a mile! If it's accompanied by one of those little evangelical tracts, whose punch line is "believe what we tell you to believe or you're going to hell for eternity" I run further and faster!
If someone tells me that our job in this world is to conform our lives, as far as possible, to the life of Christ, in humble submission to the will of God, and to see the face of Christ in everyone we encounter, I will listen with joy, and dedicate to the task.
One of the fathers, Irenaeus IIRC, wrote that the glory of God is a human being fully alive.
God created because God wanted not to be everything. We are made to love God and our neighbour and God wants us to love God and our neighbour to be fully ourselves.
(I gather from those better at it than I that from the inside it looks like we're losing ourselves, as Jesus said. From the outside in my experience you can tell the difference between true and false spirituality in that false spirituality suppresses the self rather than loses it, and true spirituality releases it.)
I think I would have to summarise my approach in this way: if anyone gives me a list of things I have to "believe" in order to be "saved" I run a mile! If it's accompanied by one of those little evangelical tracts, whose punch line is "believe what we tell you to believe or you're going to hell for eternity" I run further and faster!
If someone tells me that our job in this world is to conform our lives, as far as possible, to the life of Christ, in humble submission to the will of God, and to see the face of Christ in everyone we encounter, I will listen with joy, and dedicate to the task.
Then I would run a mile from the Roman Catholic Church. Since I jumped the fence I cannot even take communion, the meal that is supposed to bring us together in an RC church. There is very strong view among some that the RCs have the only true way.
I do not run a mile. I actually have many RC friends . My wife and I led worship at the Post Alpha Catholic training sessions in my area when we lived in London. I was making the point that it is not just Evos that behave the way you claimed.
@Hugal I don't entirely run away. I attend Masses in the Catholic Church quite often, but I don't receive communion as I have no intention of becoming RC. As a teenager, in the late 1960's, I vowed that I would never join or belong to any religious institution which taught a doctrine of eternal conscious torment because it was, and remains for me, an idea totally incompatible with a God of infinite love, who is omniscient.
I partly compromised when I joined the Church of England in 2001, at the age of 47. Yet a 1996 Commission had stated that the C of E bo longer follows lurid medieval descriptions of hell, but suggests " annihilation for all who reject the love of God." It followed with "Whether there be any who so choose only God knows." I can live with that. It doesn't specify what it means to reject the love of God, nor state that anyone will do so.
I don't personally favour annihilationism over apokatastasis, because if an all knowing God creates someone in the knowledge that He will have to annihilate (or eternally damn) them, he's either cruel or incompetent. Does God preside over failed experiments of creation? Yet this is what I love about being an Anglican. In the modern church there's no condemnation over lifestyle. Remarried people, unmarried and gay couples all find welcome. Thete's open communion where any Christian can partake. Nobody asks you what you believe nor tells you what to believe. For someone who has many doubts about doctrine, yet has an irresistible urge to worship the one God, as revealed to us in the teachings and whole life of Jesus Christ, it's a perfect spiritual home.
Comments
Believers certainly make rational observations based on the irrational mysteries that they believe. The Trinity is rationally derived as a concept given the propositions of the New Testament. None of the supernatural claims in them is rational. The two thousand year citadel of theology is thoroughly built on sand.
Assuming Love is the ground of infinite being and that Jesus is Love incarnate, rationally he wasn't, was not, the Second Person of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Unless you somehow believe that particular 'mystery'.
And you're welcome, also with no irony, @Gamma Gamaliel.
Their exclusivity is also very off putting to potentially converts, and that's the way they want it. Another thing that I could never accept, although I perfectly understand it, is their hostility to Jesus, to the point of trying to airbrush him out of their history.
In spite of how I must come across on here, Jesus has been the central figure in my life since I first drew breath. I may have difficulties accepting some of the historicity of Scripture, and some of the doctrines of the Church, but Jesus was the greatest spiritual Master and exemplar of a life dedicated to the will of God that we have on record. So I hold on to Jesus as Jacob did with the man he wrestled, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me"(Gen 32.26)
At the risk of being reductionist and tarring all liberally theological Christians with the same brush, some uber-liberal Christians I've come across strike me as practically atheist to all intents and purposes.
I may be doing them a grave disservice. Lord have mercy!
It's also the case that many ostensibly fervent Christians with what some may consider impeccable theological credentials fall well wide of the mark - through fanaticism, legalism, judgmentalism, Pharisaisism, spiritual pride and all manner of other evils ... hypocrisy, double-standards, party-spirit ... the list goes on.
Lord have mercy on us all.
Lord have mercy upon me the sinner.
@Martin54 - thanks - although I'm not sure I follow your logic but I see no reason why it can't be possible for Christ to be Love Incarnate and the Second Person of the Trinity at one and the same time.
What have you figured out that I have so far failed to see?
So who was minding the infinite (eternal) store? How did a perichoretic Person of the God substance, once, for all infinity (i.e. eternity, endless time, without beginning, without end, experienced by infinite matter (nature)) become a particular bloke for 33 years? At one point in infinity, between two eternities? 'It's a mystery' I suppose.
Why did you miss out Undivided?
The Second Person of the Holy and Undivided Trinity is utterly superfluous if Love is the ground of being, unless the beliefs of Paul and (some of) the gospel writers, minimally, which can be minimally three people all told, and Jesus assuming, with good will, he believed what was reported of him, have to be believed.
Fundamentalism is not limited to fundamentalists is it?
The trinity is a metaphor. All descriptions of the divine are metaphor. Even the word 'God' is the ultimate deictic (thank you linguistics) - it refers back to the speaker and derives its meaning from them, rather than from its referent.
Of course metaphors have and create tensions. We can experience and relate to God, and that is what he craves. But in no sense whatsoever does he need or require anything from us - he offers total, unconditional love, and continues to do so, whatever we do. If the cross doesn't demonstrate that, then..............
What, believing in something absolutely meaningless because it's in the Bible is not fundamentalist?
If you say so.
The Trinity (capital surely?) is certainly metaphor, all theology is. But for what? Not just 'the divine'. And yes, I'm fully familiar with the etymology of God. My posited God is Love.
So what God craves is not a need, a requirement, of, on God? And yes, if one believes that unconditional love is on offer from beyond matter, and that the story of the Cross demonstrates that, I'm happy for you.
This comforts me a great deal for your sake, as it’s hard to see how anyone who clings to Jesus is in danger no matter how heterodox their views.
I've been thinking about the kind of suffering that's part of love. I have been the object of a love so intense that the lover suffers, as the child of loving parents. I haven't experienced loving as a parent.
We use the metaphor of a loving parent when we talk about God, and we are told that God is love (also a metaphor). It seems reasonable to say that God's love of us is akin to that of a suffering parent. So God's love for us might well include suffering so intense as to be beyond our imagining. Certainly Jesus suffered.
It occured to me some weeks ago that it is entirely appropriate to weep for God, to pray for God in some sense. Should we pray that God's suffering might be eased in some way? Do we pray that when we pray, "Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of Hell. Bring all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of your mercy"?
Do we pray for God's suffering to end when we pray, "Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy"?
Do we pray for God's suffering to end when we pray the Lord's Prayer?
Is this what it is to love God? To share in God's suffering by seeing it, acknowledging it, by running back into God's loving embrace?
You're nicked!
But I'm not. So I won't. 😉
What I will say is that the Patristic tradition has it that God the Father is immutable. But to get into all of it is above my pay grade.
It could be argued that the doctrine of the Trinity goes some way to addressing this one. But it'd take a loo-oo-ong time to expand on that.
I've never heard of God 'needing' our prayers. I'm sure he'd appreciate it if we tried, not because he is in need of our prayers but because it demonstrates compassion on our part. Although I imagine he'd much prefer us to pray for others.
@Martin54 - yes, it is the Holy andUndivided Trinity. 'One in Essence and Undivided' as the chant goes in every Orthodox Liturgy.
I don't see there as being a 'hole' in the Trinity as it were as God the Son was absent from heaven for 33 years. See @Leaf's comments about God and linear time.
Wiser minds than mine have pondered these things. Even angels, we are told, long to look into these things.
A 'Mystery' in Orthodox terms is something revealed. 'Beyond all question the mystery of godliness is great. He [God] appeared in a body...'
Was Karl Barth a fundamentalist when he replied to a question as to what he'd learned from all his years of theological study, 'Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so ...'?
It's not as if I don't question or struggle with these things. 'Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.'
But to start 'dismantling' the 'components' of the Trinity, if we can put it as crudely as that, as if we are under the bonnet (or hood for our American friends) of a car or dealing with a piece of IKEA flat-pack furniture rather misses the point it seems to me.
Matthew 26:64-66
Mark 14:61b-64
Luke 22:66-71
and from John 19:7
Jesus is found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death. Elsewhere he is accused of blasphemy for claiming to be God John 10:33-37 but quick enough to escape the accusation
So yes NT Wright is correct that what Jesus says in some context was held not to be Blasphemous and Jesus knew it as did the Jewish Authorities. However, that circumstance was not during Jesus' trial by the Jewish authorities when they wanted him dead. The phrases are not going to be construed in a favourable light even if Jesus had managed to make the point again.
So NT Wright can be right and Jesus still be sentenced to death for blasphemy for using the term. Context is everything in deciding whether something is blasphemous. I have no doubt that the Jewish courts wanted to get Jesus on an account of Blasphemy and thus ascribed blasphemous intent to the words he chose.
Is it St Theresa of Avila who prays to experience the suffering of Christ in her own body, and describes an ecstatic state in which she does so? Quite macabre to modern sensibilities, but I suspect that it is ours that are less connected with reality.
Like St Theresa, I should probably pepper my thoughts with pleas to read my posts in ways that make them consistent with the teachings of Mother Church.
From the bottom:
Well it would to you wouldn't it? What point?
If you need to believe something truly, utterly, meaninglessly unbelievable on top of the premiss of God, knock yourself out.
Yes. Lovely as it is.
The incarnation is not a fraction of a problem per se until you have to believe something extra about it. See two up.
I'm not aware of any non-believer wise pondering these things. Apart from my good self.
I don't see how a believer's 'theory' of time to make TSPOTHAUT constant and concurrent with them also collapsing once for 33 years in the middle of infinity in a Jewish country carpenter genius of late antiquity, is mandated on Love.
But I understand that if you have to believe that what three or four blokes said two thousand years ago defines God, sure. That that's what the Lord needs from you.
Not just to modern sensibilities. The Orthodox always tended to wary of seeking experiences like this and of stigmata and so on.
That said, they have certainly gone in for wild and woolly things and extreme asceticism. People sitting on top of poles and so on.
If so, she's got far more courage than me!
Which isn't surprising. But wow.
I'm not too fussed about the macabre aspect. At the extremes love tends to ... well, go to extremes.
Eh? What the Lord 'requires' from me - he doesn't 'need' anything - is for me to 'act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly' with him.
Sure. I believe in the Trinity. Get over it already. You no longer believe. That's your prerogative. There's a thread on losing faith which you can use to offload.
I have no idea what your great big acronym stands for and find much of your post incomprehensible.
Have you answered my question?
Yes.
The Second Person Of The Holy And Undivided Trinity.
My not believing it it is independent of whether I know Love is the ground of infinite being or not. I don't believe apart from in unconditional positive regard. But, again, if one posits Love, the Trinity is not necessary, let alone possible. Unless you have to believe what for antique blokes said.
I require that of myself.
@Martin54 this is incomprehensible, or very nearly so as is your recent invented acronym. Please remember that you are required to post comprehensibly.
BroJames, Purgatory Host
It's perfectly clear. Every time. Over and over.
Wounds for all.
Oh it was Julian of Norwich I meant! I really must learn to check my guesses before I post. St Theresa was on my mind as I'm beginning to dip my toe in The Interior Castle.
@ThunderBunk - yes, of course.
If you want to discuss hosting issues, do so in Styx.
Doublethink, Admin
If it's perfectly clear then maybe I'm sailing on the wrong Ship....
*cough*
Doublethink, Admin
Right. Sorry.
OK. What does he ask we do?
I am sorry @BroJames. I got carried away in response to @Lamb Chopped immediately really, and then @Gamma Gamaliel, the whole thread . And I know that friends like @Kendel, with a reading age of about 200, definitely get me. That's not an excuse. Sorry, not intending to be Stygian at all, just paving the way to try and be more comprehensible, especially to Hosts.
Context:
This makes Jesus extremely parochial, which I happen to agree with, but not in the same way. There's no way 'the Second Person of the Holy and Undivided Trinity' (TSPOTHAUT), I referred to at the top of the page, and should have added my acronym then, not just used it later, is rationally limited to Earth. Unless one has to believe the former to be literal. Fundamentalist. Positing the incarnation in an otherwise rational schema means that Jesus' parish is Earth. Only in an irrational particular schema does God the Son (that looks shorter than my acronym! It isn't.) incarnate once for all past and future presentist eternity, on one infinitesimal world. Unless we push out Leaf's eternalist schema and say that God the Son can be Himself, be His own beyond infinite Person, and concurrently incarnate infinitely. Which gets rid of the problem of particularity. At some cost...
And in Love, transcendent Jesus knows Judas is fine. Probably since He ascended, Heaven is populated. They've been friends for two thousand years. Or does He have to wait a hundred thousand years or so before we're done? The general resurrection is literal? Seems a bit of a waste of time...
And Dame Julian of Norwich helplessly made herself ill.
God created because God wanted not to be everything. We are made to love God and our neighbour and God wants us to love God and our neighbour to be fully ourselves.
(I gather from those better at it than I that from the inside it looks like we're losing ourselves, as Jesus said. From the outside in my experience you can tell the difference between true and false spirituality in that false spirituality suppresses the self rather than loses it, and true spirituality releases it.)
Surrender our critical faculties, I should say.
Perverse that I am, it ain't necessarily so. This site is full of believers who use theirs predicated on belief.
If someone tells me that our job in this world is to conform our lives, as far as possible, to the life of Christ, in humble submission to the will of God, and to see the face of Christ in everyone we encounter, I will listen with joy, and dedicate to the task.
I love this.
Then I would run a mile from the Roman Catholic Church. Since I jumped the fence I cannot even take communion, the meal that is supposed to bring us together in an RC church. There is very strong view among some that the RCs have the only true way.
I do not run a mile. I actually have many RC friends . My wife and I led worship at the Post Alpha Catholic training sessions in my area when we lived in London. I was making the point that it is not just Evos that behave the way you claimed.
I partly compromised when I joined the Church of England in 2001, at the age of 47. Yet a 1996 Commission had stated that the C of E bo longer follows lurid medieval descriptions of hell, but suggests " annihilation for all who reject the love of God." It followed with "Whether there be any who so choose only God knows." I can live with that. It doesn't specify what it means to reject the love of God, nor state that anyone will do so.
I don't personally favour annihilationism over apokatastasis, because if an all knowing God creates someone in the knowledge that He will have to annihilate (or eternally damn) them, he's either cruel or incompetent. Does God preside over failed experiments of creation? Yet this is what I love about being an Anglican. In the modern church there's no condemnation over lifestyle. Remarried people, unmarried and gay couples all find welcome. Thete's open communion where any Christian can partake. Nobody asks you what you believe nor tells you what to believe. For someone who has many doubts about doctrine, yet has an irresistible urge to worship the one God, as revealed to us in the teachings and whole life of Jesus Christ, it's a perfect spiritual home.