15 Dec 09
1 edit
Originally posted by Conrau KFirst this creed is not the Bible. It was written by men that were not inspired by God as the Bible writers were. This creed was written for the puropse of combining the churches into one and to make this happen paganistic beliefs were allowed and accepted as dogma.
[b]Well I think your wrong on this as both Col 1:15 and Rev 3:14 are both very clear where it says he, Jesus, was the "Firstborn" of all creation. I know you guys sideskirt this all the time and I'm sure you will here too but this only means one thing and one thing only. Jesus was the first thing that God brought forth or created. And this was before anythi of the Father must have those same properties of perfection; ergo, Jesus Christ is God.
And the creed contradicts itself in that explination. Either Jesus is the son or he is God himself. Which is it?
15 Dec 09
Originally posted by reinfeldGood comment..
the holy spirit ( or ghost ) is not a third person but rather a power emanting from god in the same way that a wave sloshes onto the beach from ocean ( god ).
their is either only one god ( with the christ as a material manifestation with limited abiltie in the material domain ) or two gods, a god and a first created sub-being known as the christ.
15 Dec 09
Originally posted by menace71Why do you think we don't love Jesus and all that he did for us. The whole future of the human race depends on what he did by his sacrifice. But saying he is not God, his Father, is not watering down our love and deep respect for him and honoring his posittion that his Father elevated him to after his ressurection..
I agree with J-will on this. You just need Jesus 🙂 We can argue & fight but you will never fully get the trinity anyway but that does not excuse us from what is written. Dude people can laugh but Jesus loves us more than we can comprehend. He stands at the door and knocks. He wants to fellowship or as I like to put it in certain way kick it with you! LOL H ...[text shortened]... nk I get so heated because I see the Majesty of Christ in the scriptures is all.
Manny
15 Dec 09
Originally posted by galveston75When was the last time you told Him that you loved Him ?
Why do you think we don't love Jesus and all that he did for us. The whole future of the human race depends on what he did by his sacrifice. But saying he is not God, his Father, is not watering down our love and deep respect for him and honoring his posittion that his Father elevated him to after his ressurection..
15 Dec 09
1 edit
Jesus in the beginning according to the Bible.
First mentioned at Gen 1:26 where God said to him " let us make man in "our" image. ( God would not talk to himself.)
John 1:1-3, Ps 33:6, Col 1:16 brings out Jesus was directed by his Father to create, hence the term "Master Worker" was applied to Jesus. Prov 8:30 which also states that he was beside his father during this time. ( 2 distinct beings. )
Jesus is identified as the "First Born" at Col 1:15, Rev 1:1 & 3:14
Jesus said he exist because of his Father. John 6: 56, 57.
Jesus spoke of his prehuman existance at John 3:13, 6:38, 62, 8:23, 42, 58.
Jesus was refered to as "The Word" or spokesman of God. John 1:1 & 7: 16,17. Rev 19:13,16.
Any suggestions here of them being the same being?
15 Dec 09
i believe mr. g is a latter day saint as i think i see this theology in the last two posts.
the saints are christians that are pre-nicene and thus have some different views
than christians of the roman and protestant period.
while we may all differ on some things, even items which are very important, i think we can agree with brother joseph that looking to christ for salvation is central and all else "is merely an appendage".
15 Dec 09
Originally posted by reinfeldNo I'm A JW.
i believe mr. g is a latter day saint as i think i see this theology in the last two posts.
the saints are christians that are pre-nicene and thus have some different views
than christians of the roman and protestant period.
while we may all differ on some things, even items which are very important, i think we can agree with brother joseph that looking to christ for salvation is central and all else "is merely an appendage".
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15 Dec 09
2 edits
Originally posted by galveston75Can you prove that the council of Nicaea was convened to make the churches accept 'paganistic' beliefs? If you read many of the Church fathers, especially St. Augustine, you will see that there is a profound dislike of paganism (St. Augustine in The City of God goes into hundreds of pages individually refuting pagan beliefs.)
First this creed is not the Bible. It was written by men that were not inspired by God as the Bible writers were. This creed was written for the puropse of combining the churches into one and to make this happen paganistic beliefs were allowed and accepted as dogma.
And the creed contradicts itself in that explination. Either Jesus is the son or he is God himself. Which is it?
Anyway, my point is that the Council of Nicaea embraces Colossians 1:15. The Son is begotten of the Father who is God and the Son too is God because he shares in the divine nature of the Father. Jesus is begotten of the Father, comes and is sent from the Father but remains God.
15 Dec 09
i like to think of this issue as one thinks of a die ( a single dice ). it is a single cube but it has six faces and each face tells a different truth ( number 1 thru 6 ).
while each truth is told ( viewing the number ) it does not show the whole truth as one has to pull together the concept of all 6 sides into the mind or heart to understand the wholeness of it all ( all the numbers valued together ). so the nature of the trinity is like this perhaps. a wholeness we get to understand as only
one part of the whole appears to us.
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15 Dec 09
1 edit
Originally posted by reinfeldWell, that type of Modalism obscures the relationship between the Father and Son. If Father and Son are just equal manifestations of God or just different sides of a die, then how can the terms 'Father' and 'Son' apply? How can there be a familia relation between Father and Son if they are both just sides of a die? If they are mere sides of a die, how do they relate to one another, speak to one another (as at Jesus' baptism and crucifixion.) If the Holy Spirit too is just another die, how is it that Jesus blows the Holy Spirit onto his apostles?
i like to think of this issue as one thinks of a die ( a single dice ). it is a single cube but it has six faces and each face tells a different truth ( number 1 thru 6 ).
while each truth is told ( viewing the number ) it does not show the whole truth as one has to pull together the concept of all 6 sides into the mind or heart to understand the wholenes ...[text shortened]... ke this perhaps. a wholeness we get to understand as only
one part of the whole appears to us.
15 Dec 09
i am not making a theological definition but rather just a simple way to hold the idea in my head. god is the whole of the die and the numbers are like pi ( infinity so that all is possible ) and god, as a natural divine man ( christ ) is that part of god which he shows us ( say the number 5 ) but the rest of the die is still there we are just looking at only one face of it, etc.
15 Dec 09
Originally posted by Conrau Khttp://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/trinity.htm
[b]Well I think your wrong on this as both Col 1:15 and Rev 3:14 are both very clear where it says he, Jesus, was the "Firstborn" of all creation. I know you guys sideskirt this all the time and I'm sure you will here too but this only means one thing and one thing only. Jesus was the first thing that God brought forth or created. And this was before anythi ...[text shortened]... of the Father must have those same properties of perfection; ergo, Jesus Christ is God.
15 Dec 09
Originally posted by Conrau KAccording to Diog. Laer. ix. 20 (K. 37), “When Empedokles said to Xenophanes that the wise man was not to be found, he answered: “Naturally, for it would take a wise man to recognise a wise man”.
[b]the holy spirit ( or ghost ) is not a third person but rather a power emanting from god in the same way that a wave sloshes onto the beach from ocean ( god ).
This is the heresy of modalism which posits that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are just modes of God, ways of expressing and revealing Himself, otherwise known as Sabellianism. The Nicene ...[text shortened]... are one in being (thus rejecting the second idea that one is a sub-being to the other.)[/b]
Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic School who was born about 580 B.C., according to Diog Laer. iii. 16; Cic. de nat. Deor. i. 27, said amongst else:
-- “But if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give them bodies in form like their own -horses like horses, cattle like cattle”.
It seems to me that the Trinity is merely the sum of the essential fundamental distinctions which man perceived through time in his own nature. This is the reason why the concept of Trinity is understood slightly different by the Western and by the Eastern religions.
Furthermore these distinctions -as offfered by you- are followed in analogy too with the supposed nature of the universe thanks to the idea that God exists in the Human and that the Human is a creation kat’ eikona kai kath’ omoiosin tou Theou. It seems to me that the idea of the Trinity is a fusion of polytheism and monotheism, of imagination and wannabe reason, of fiction and reality.
The Trinitarian theologian offer that these three persons are not essentially distinguished or different due to the fact that they are omoousia (they are one in essence). And we can surely imagine three different persons that they are identical in essence: our three persons will do have a different identity but human beings they would remain due to the fact that their essence in common is their human nature. Well, this is indeed a fine example of the sharp use of our everyday empiricism and it is justified by our mind and by our feelings too. Furthermore, these three persons are united because their inner nature is also pure love and above the trivial discriminations that are related to the common mortal human beings like social taxis, IQ etc. And all of them three persons are perfectly capable to feel to the hilt sympathy and compassion -and on the other hand they are omnipotent, ultra smart, ultra powerful and ultra whatever. And them three persons have constitute through love a single moral personality whilst each one holds in full a divine and at the same time a physical existence for himself.
Furthermore, these three persons can be absorbed in each other and they do not dispense with each other -and at the same time they have always a formally independent existence. This is the trinitarian God, whose three persons have no existence out of each other. These imaginary “persons” that they are totally different in nature from the real human beings lack of a real personality due to the hypothesis that the real personality of God is not one by one these three separated personalities -and this is the mechanism used by the theology in order to have the polytheistic element excluded and to prove the unique divine nature of tris-hypostatos Theos. However this negation turns these three personalities/ hypostases into a ghost and therefore their self-subsistence is annihilated in the self-subsistence of the unity, and at the same time it is never annihilated at all. The Son does not exist without the Father, the Father does not exist without the Son and the Holy Spirit expresses merely the relation of the two to each other. However the three divine persons are distinguished from each other only thanks to the agents that constitute their mutual relations. The essential in the Father as a person is that he is a Father and of the Son that he is a Son. Over here the Father is God, and as God he is identical with the Son as God, and this is the reason why it is said that “God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost” God is in all three alike, and that there is one person of the Father, another person of the Son and another person of the Holy Ghost but the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all one”. So they are indeed distinct entities but without distinction of substance, and thus the personality is related solely in the relation of the Fatherhood, and therefore we come to the conclusion that the idea of the person is indeed only a relative idea.
But in the real life a Human father is not a father without the son and he has a formal existence for himself apart from his son; but in God the Father, there is no distinction between God the Father and God the Son as God -however at the same time these relations have to do not with ghosts but with real substances, and so the truth of polytheism is reaffirmed whilst the truth of monotheism is denied. To require the reality of the persons is to require the unreality of the unity, and to require the reality of the unity is to require the unreality of the persons.
Of course all the above is merely theology (with the exemption of Xenophanes’ aphorisms), and it probably works perfectly for the theologians and their fellow believers. However for the philosopher the so called “holy mystery” of the Christian Trinity, which is supposed to represent an “absolute truth” distinct from the human nature, it’s bonkers -it collapses into itself and it cannot be accepted dew to its obvious contradictions and sophisms😵