Thanks. Maybe. I am more interested in people getting together no matter what they believe in to do things that lead to a more humane world. This is just thought provoking chatter to entertain myself. I don't think any of this debate means more than that - deep down.. "the rest is commentary"
How do you explain the Trinity to kids?
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Thanks. Maybe. I am more interested in people getting together no matter what they believe in to do things that lead to a more humane world. This is just thought provoking chatter to entertain myself. I don't think any of this debate means more than that - deep down.. "the rest is commentary"
Delightful Life
M&M, Cascadian Lovers
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wrong thing to write, Kimmio
some of the people here deeply believe
and they are going out of their way to share their hard earned knowledge with you
and it looks like you're just here to entertain yourself and not willing to try to actually learn? now that's lazy and not really fair to those who are giving of themselves to you here...but whatever...
It's not that it's not important to me to learn - it's something I should have a clearer understanding of - I cannot debate the details effectively - but deep down I believe that no matter what we believe or know or believe we know about the finite details we have to come together to say what's important here is saving humanity. The past is past. And rather than doing anything helpful today...I am simply admitting that I have wasted time chatting about this and that's not really how I feel I could best be helpful.
so back to the original post: How does one explain the Trinity ? I suspect over years, allow children to ask tough questions, allow children to read and find their own answers - that is my best guess of how Jesus rolled. Faith and belief is always an individual path; guidance and loving protection helps, but ultimately it is a personal journey. Sunday school is about 45 minutes in a week - possibly the best way is to teach caring and thoughtfulness by example throughout the res of the week. Seems to me that is the major message of the Trinity. Be kind, Be thoughtful, Be caring - maybe it is that simple
I don't disagree with you at all. The past is full of bloody wars and power struggles and Christianity - the institution - played no small part in them. Are the finite details important, though, or are they just interesting and sometimes distracting (I.e. something to bicker about while I could be out handing out sandwiches to homeless people or something)?
I'm going to take my next thoughts to a different thread.
That's the saying - then again there are also those who have understood history very well and repeated it intentionally. Maybe we all have to try to understand our own mistakes from where we're at and try not to repeat them, then for some generation, history will start to not look so bad when looking back on it.
I'm sorry if I've been defensive or a jerk today.
Neo
Well-Known Member
RevJohn said:
I personally try not to assign any "ism" to my truths. I do, however, tend to cherry pick truths from all religions, weaving a silver line that runs through them all.
I think revsdd is correct, the physical Sun by it's very existence heat and light.
The real secret to understanding this analogy, of the Sun symbolizing a regent and physical presence of God, is best seen, I believe, when one first studies their own micro natures. "Man, know thyself" speak one oracle of history, and "the truth lies within" says another. Only then, when we apply those micro observations of ourselves to the greater Macrocosmic Whole, can we turn one of the secret keys of Life, that deep mystery, the mystery of the greater Macro Life Whom we call, for lack of a better term, "God".
If we are to believe that we ourselves have a physical side of form and matter and a formless and spiritual side, then it would stand to reason that the Sun too, in a much higher turn of the wheel, would also have a spiritual and invisible (from our point of view) aspect to It's Being.
The Sun is much like an electron, but on a much larger scale. It is pure energy with a nebulous but physical form. And energy is the closest thing we could ever appropriate to "God" in the physical world. Energy is what ties the formless spiritual to form of matter
"God is a consuming fire" says the Old Testament, and "electricity" is the highest form of matter says the new age tenets. The energy of all physical matter is made up of nothing but positive, negative and neutral electrical forces. Matter is like frozen but pliable energy, as it is constantly moving and changing form. The forms themsleves are temporary and ephemeral in nature. Yet at the atomic level, the same trinity of forces, the positive, negative and neutral particles that make our physical world, are the same particles that have been around since the creation of time and space. They are relatively eternal in nature.
If Arianism believes the Sun to be the body of God, then I agree. As the Bible says "we live and move and have our being" within the body God. This is a physical fact and a very ancient concept. But the Sun is still only the lowest aspect of a stupendous energy, an energy that is reponsible for all life within our Solar System as it works it 's way from the Spiritual into physical form.
Within the heart of our Physical Sun lies an even greater Spiritual, or Central Sun. And that sacred Heart Central is Itself part and parcel of a Greater Heavenly Man, stretching out across space. In our Father's house there are many mansions.
We, as human beings, are microcosms within the body of this great Macrocosm. We too, as human beings have a spiritual centre with our hearts. In this way we are made in the image of God. It's in our growing awareness, I believe, that we become like unto God. First by becoming aware of "the tree of good and evil", e.g. the pairs of opposites of positive and negative where rational thoughts, discerning between good and evil, starts us on our long journey home. And secondly, and eventually, we discover the Christ Consciousness within, that is the Christ Awareness within that joins the two opposites of Spirit and matter. It's the force of equilibrium that connects the yin and yang, making them One.
Such are my ponderings.
This is a really interesting and easy to follow article I found about early Christianity, Judaism, Rome, Paul and Constantine.
http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/from_paul_to_constantine/
http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/from_paul_to_constantine/
revsdd
Well-Known Member
Neo, I largely agree with your concerns about "isms."
To go a bit deeper into Arianism and the trinity. Arianism was one of the early forms of Christian belief that was deemed heretical. Arianism posits that the Son of the trinity was a created being - created by the Father and therefore not co-eternal with the Father and therefore subordinate to the Father, and therefore not fully God. The official position of the church became that the Father and the Son were of the same substance and were co-eternal. The Son was not a creation of the Father and was not subordinate to the Father. I agree with that. I might draw a slight distinction between Jesus and the Son, in that "Jesus" was flesh and blood and fully human and in his human nature was a creation. But "the Son" - who can be equated with the divine nature of Jesus - has always existed with the Father, and is of the same nature and substance with the Father. Thus, when the Son becomes incarnate in Jesus, it is God (Father and Son and Holy Spirit) becoming incarnate in Jesus in that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God. Another of the debates of the early church in this vein revolved around what is known as "patripassionism" - the issue of whether the Father suffered with the Son on the cross. I am a patripassionist. All of God experienced the suffering of Jesus. God was not compartmentalized so that only some of God experienced the suffering of Jesus. Jesus is the revelation of all of God in other words. It may seem an arcane debate, but the church claims, of course, to follow Jesus (not always very well, I concede) and, if so, it becomes rather important to decide the nature of the one we're following. That's called "christology" - our theology about the christ. I have a high christology. I believe that Jesus - as the Son - was God Incarnate. Among other things that is important because if Jesus was not God Incarnate (all of God rather than just a part of God) then God withheld a part of God's self. Indeed, if Jesus was only human and not divine then God has given nothing. My theological position is that God withheld nothing - that God's incarnation (the Creator choosing to become, in Jesus, a part of the Creation) is the ultimate sign of God's completely self-giving love for that which God has created. While I said above that I have trouble with the traditional doctrine of the trinity, my trouble with it is not with the truth it is revealing, it is that for some people the doctrine (a human construct) becomes the last word; the absolute truth about God that must be accepted word for word. "One God in three persons" (not biblical language) can then become a thoughtless mantra to be repeated as if repeating it actually accomplishes something, rather than being an invitation to go still deeper into the mystery of God, which will never be fully understood. The "going deeper" is, in essence, spirituality. Spirituality is the ongoing quest to go deeper into our origins and into our nature and to have a sense of wonder and awe about them. In that sense, science (even when engaged in by atheists) is a spiritual endeavour. In my view, one rejects spirituality if one comes to the position that by reciting a list of doctrines one suddenly knows everything there is to know (or at least everything that one needs to know) about God.
Back to Arianism. revjohn's declaration of my analogy being a form of Arianism is based on his mistaken belief -
- that light is created by the sun rather than being simply a part of the sun which has been emitted by the sun for as long as the sun has been a star. I argue that not even a split second could have passed during which a star does not emit light because a star emits light by its very nature. As soon as a star is a star it emits light. The emission of light is one of the things that makes a star a star. A star can't be a star unless it emits light. God is not God unless God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Therefore, if God is eternal, then Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co-eternal, because all are equally God.
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Is jerk a beef ... or just popular as that old lady searching out the beef ... a classic problem solver? in levity (a lighter form of heaven)?
revjohn
Well-Known Member
revsdd said:Back to Arianism. revjohn's declaration of my analogy being a form of Arianism is based on his mistaken belief -
The bad analogy is proven by the fact that the light and the heat will continue to radiate across the universe long after the star itself dies.
Come on Patrick get with the program.
revjohn
Well-Known Member
redhead said:
Back to the original answer. I don't.
Yes I can go over the doctrine and yes I can go over the history and development of the doctrine.
To explain the Trinity I'd have to understand the Trinity and I don't claim to know it that well. I'm more than happy to wrestle through it with others so long as everyone knows going in that we will exhaust ourselves long before we get close to finishing.
For the record I don't claim to know everything about the non-deities in my life either. If I did they would be incapable of surprising me.
I will claim that I know them better and more completely than any of you.
While anecdotal experience should never be mistaken for universal truth I would like to share that I never am asked to field questions about how each person of the Trinity interacts with another. Most questions are more personal and focus on how the individual relates to others and God.
Doctrinal queries are generally brief and want surface answers not a whole historical treatment. Typically I ask a few questions about what is wanting to be known just to avoid overloading with a lot of stuff that isn't being sought.
Doctrine can be a lecture or a discussion. I can plan a lecture. I have to live a discussion.
revsdd
Well-Known Member
The bad analogy is proven by the fact that the light and the heat will continue to radiate across the universe long after the star itself dies.
Come on Patrick get with the program.
But the analogy - imperfect as are all analogies - is based in the here and now. Sun, heat and light are in a symbiotic relationship. Again, the weakness of the analogy is not that it's Arian. The weakness of the analogy (which is inevitable when using analogy to try to explain the nature of God) is that one must use finite "things" to describe an eternal God. Thus, one can only come close, but one can never be perfect. Picking apart analogies will keep us all busy for - well - eternity.
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That's an oldie but a goodie.