The truth about Trinity

Ahanu,
　
You have asked why I disagree with the Christian interpretation of the Trinity. I disagree with it because it assumes that God Himself chooses to only incarnate twice on this earth. I totally disagree with such an idea, because there have been many civilizations in the last hundreds of thousands of years that have come and gone (such as Atlantis), practically leaving no trace. One day even our present-day civilization will disappear just as thoroughly, leaving practically no trace, and future civilizations will know practically nothing about our present-day civilization. (When The Big Earthquake hits, we could all very well be thrown into a new stone age, causing all memory of our present civilization to be quickly forgotten.) To think that God would only incarnate into our civilization and ignore all other past and present civilizations does not fit into my belief system.
　
I would also like to explain where I believe the Christian concept of the Trinity came from. Look at this picture of Mary and baby Jesus.
　
blessed-virgin-mary.jpg

　
Now look at this picture of Guanyin, the most important deity in Buddhism.
　
kwan-yin.jpg


　
(Guanyin is almost always depicted as pouring water from a vase, as you can see in this picture.)
　
According to my belief system, Mary and Guanyin symbolize the same thing. In addition, both Mary’s baby and Guanyin’s water symbolize the same thing — the birth of our present-day universe. Both Mary/Guanyin and Jesus/water symbolize the exact same thing: the inherent triplicity of our universe.
　
According to my belief system, the Christians took the symbology of Jesus as our universe, and now say he is not a symbol but an actual incarnation of the deity. I consider this an unjustified deductive leap, and this idea does not fit into my belief system.
 
I disagree with it because it assumes that God Himself chooses to only incarnate twice on this earth.
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Twice? Jesus was not the only Incarnation?

So from your perspective, the Trinity understood by Catholics is all a big misunderstanding.

From my personal encounter with Christian friends, I have had few explanations of what the Trinity is. For example, my cousin has a MA in religion, but he says that, though he does not understand the Trinity, he believes it anyway. I also know a youth pastor that says the same thing. Another Christian friend of mine uses an analogy to explain the Trinity that is common among laypersons: water, ice, vapor. The three are the same, yet, at the same time, they are different. Discussions never go deeper than what I just described in a few sentences. I've never heard a rational explanation of what the Trinity is in local churches.
 
Sensei said:
Most christians believe that Jesus was God’s son..
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Jesus said "I and my Father are one and the same", and "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father", but in context we can see he was only speaking metaphorically as the following verses make clear that he wasn't God-

Jesus said - "I am going to the Father,' for My Father is greater than I" (John 14:28 )

Jesus said:-"Why do you call me good? Only God is good" (Luke 18:19)

Jesus said "Only God knows when Judgment Day will be, I don't know myself" (Mark 13:32)

High Priest-"Are you the Son of God?", Jesus - "I am" (Mark 14:61)

Jesus said - "I only say what my Father tells me to say" (John 12:49)

Jesus said to Peter:-"My Father has revealed to you that I'm the Son of God" (Matt 16:15)

And God said "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, listen to him" (Matt 17:5)

PS- As for the Trinity, it's just an invented word cooked up for convenience to save priests having to say the longer "The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost".
Basically, God and Jesus are like two halves of an oyster sharing the same guts (the holy spirit)
 
Earlier Thomas wrote:

But he also had an hypostatic union with and to the Divine Essence
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How does he know that? How did he come to that conclusion? If a person replies with "scripture" as the answer, then how did the author come to that conclusion? How does a disciple of Jesus, for example, figure out Jesus is identical to the Father, while Peter is not?

Thomas writes:

we're talking about something beyond natures altogether ...
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Okay. Here we both agree on God's trancendent nature, but how do we know Jesus is identical with the Divine Essence when we cannot establish a similarity with It? Yet we want to talk about sameness?!
 
God and Jesus are like two halves of an oyster sharing the same guts (the holy spirit)
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On second thought this actually sounds like the Sabellian heresy.
 
Ahanu,
　
You asked,
　
"Twice? Jesus was not the only Incarnation?"
　
--> Twice in the sense that Jesus lived and will come again.
　
"I've never heard a rational explanation of what the Trinity is in local churches."
　
--> Fortunately, I have what I consider to be a rational explanation. There are only two basic essences, spirit and matter (although I do not mean ‘matter’ in the sense of physical matter.) At the beginning of a new universe, spirit and matter interact (which is exactly what is meant in Genesis 1:2 by spirit moving across the waters, spirit meaning spirit and the waters symbolizing matter) to produce what can be best described as manifested existence. (Unfortunately, the result of spirit moving across the water is not clearly stated in Genesis.) This is my explanation of the trinity (spirit, matter, and manifested existence) although the church would never accept such an explanation.

"So from your perspective, the Trinity understood by Catholics is all a big misunderstanding."

--> I'm afraid the 'change' in interpretation that I'm referring to was intentional, not unintentional nor a misunderstanding.

　
 
Thanks for the clarification, Nick. I understand your trinity position, but I'm still confused about Thomas'.

You wrote:

"This is my explanation of the trinity (spirit, matter, and manifested existence) although the church would never accept such an explanation."
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I've recently dabbled into 13th to 14th century Christian discourse.

To be more precise, I now know the Trinity is about identity and distinction. This is the main issue. I do not understand the characteristic that makes these "persons" distinct from one another.

Augustine says only two of Aristotles ten categories can be used for God: substance and relation. He believes God has an independent existence, just as Nick the Pilot has an independent existence, so God is substance. Relation, on the other hand, does not look at the thing itself, but the circumstances of the thing or the disposition of that thing in relation to other things. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each distinct in God in some way, but not distinct essentially.

"Substance preserves unity, relation multiplies the Trinity."
-Boethius

So, at the moment, all I can say about how each person is distinct from the other is through relation.

I'll try to post more later.
 
Ahanu,
　
You said,
　
"The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each distinct in God in some way, but not distinct essentially."
　
--> Let me explain how I understand this dilemma. There is only one single essence that truly exists. (It is called the One True Reality.) This single essence does not have any characteristics or attributes that can be recognized or described by us humans. It is simply The One.
　
But at the beginning of each new universe, something happens to the one that is best described as ‘differentiating.’ The one differentiates into the two. This is absolutely necessary, because in order to have things that happen in the universe, there needs to be one thing that reacts with something else. This causes things to happen, things to change, time to pass, etc. (Time and change can only be measured by comparing one object to another, so time and change are said not to exist/happen before the one differentiates into the two.) We call one differentiation spirit (Father) and the other matter (Mother) but these are merely arbitrary names for different aspects from the same oneness. (By the way, I do not use the names Father, Son, and Holy Ghost/Spirit, I use the names Father, Mother, and Son, because they more accurately describe what is going on.)
　
To some extent, Genesis corroborates this idea. According to Genesis, God says "Let there be light" (and I think most Christians interpret Light to mean Jesus). This means there was a time before the Light existed; before Jesus existed (which brings up a whole different topic for another thread). In this way, Genesis supports this idea of differentiating the singular into the plural. Genesis also corroborates the idea of the one differentiating into the two, when it says that spriit moved across the waters. (But it also infers that God caused spirit to move across the waters, and I disagree with such an idea. Genesis also says the light appeared before spirit moved across the waters, which, again, is an idea I disagree with.)

Let me give you an analogy. Let’s say there is a school which wishes to have its students play a football game. The school divides all of the students into two teams, the red team and the blue team. Because of this division they can now play a football game, and a game is impossible without this arbitrary and artificial division. Does the red team exist? Yes. But does the student body also exist as a singularity? Yes, these distinctions are merely aspects, merely different ways of looking at the same thing. The same is true of the trinity. The trinity is one, yet it has different aspects, and each of the aspects ‘exist’ just as much as the single trinity ‘exists.’ But all of these ‘things’ which ‘exist’ are only arbitrary and artificial distinctions which will end when our present universe ends. When this universe ends, all of these distinctions (even the trinity itself) will disappear, and everything will ‘melt back’ into the oneness. There, everything will ‘rest’ until it is time for the next universe to appear, and then the whole process will start all over again.
 
Nick the Pilot said:
Panentheism is an important part of my belief system.
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Hi Nick, would you be willing to elaborate on how panentheism plays into your belief system?

I am very interested in the panentheistic views of many Native American tribes, who lived much closer to nature than most of us do today.
 
Iowa Guy,

I may have spoken too soon in saying I am a panentheist. I just read its definition on Wikipedia, and I thought the definition was different. I also just read Wikipedia on these terms:

Pantheism
Panentheism
Polytheism
Advaita Vedanta

I need to go back and re-read each of these definitions carefully, and then I'll be able to tell you more clearly which one of these is closest to my own personal belief system.

So let me ask you: of the four, which one is closest to your own personal belief system?
 
Nick the Pilot said:
Iowa Guy,

I may have spoken too soon in saying I am a panentheist. I just read its definition on Wikipedia, and I thought the definition was different. I also just read Wikipedia on these terms:

Pantheism
Panentheism
Polytheism
Advaita Vedanta

So let me ask you: of the four, which one is closest to your own personal belief system?
Click to expand...

Hi Nick, I don't follow any organized religion (though I come from a very religious family and attended Southern Baptist churches for the first 18 years of my life), and am hesitant to label myself into a pigeonhole. But to answer your question, I consider myself agnostic with pantheistic leanings along with a bit of unitarian universalism.

I have a background in engineering and environmental science, and spend as much time as possible outdoors including daily lunch walks and 20 days per year on solo backpacking/canoeing trips. I tend to think very rationally and have great respect for the environment which we depend on for our existence.

I'm agnostic in that I have no evidence of the existance of a deity (creator, providor, someone pulling our strings, punishing/rewarding us, etc) and no evidence of a personal afterlife for myself, my soul, etc. I don't believe in the supernatural world as I have no evidence it exists. I do not believe the world was created for humans to dominate, or that the world was created so that humans could be the highest-order creatures on this planet. As I gaze into the star-filled sky and try to contemplate how many millions of years light has been traveling from some distant galaxy I am humbled by how small we are in this universe.

I try to keep an open mind, and would be open to changing my agnostic views if I found solid evidence to support them (which I haven't in my last 20 years of truth searching since leaving home).

I have some pantheistic beliefs in that I know nature exists and that I am part of nature and nature is part of me. In my garden, I can plant a seed and watch it grow. If one of my chickens happens to eat that plant before I do, part of that plant's energy goes into the egg which I eat for breakfast next week. Part of that plant's energy turns into chicken muscle which I eat for dinner as chicken soup this winter. Part of the plant's energy passes through the chicken as manure which I then use to fertilize my next vegetable planting and the circle of life continues. When I shoot a deer that animal's energy nourishes my family. The deer carcass becomes worm food and the worm castings fertilize the plants which the next generation of deer eat next year repeating the cycle. I believe all of nature is connected and interdependent. I came from the energy of the earth/universe, and when I die, I will return to be part of the energy of the earth; just like the plants and animals I use for my existence. If I am buried under an oak tree I will nourish subsequent acorn crops, and the deer that eat them, which will then nourish future hunters. I am very thankful to be part of this cycle.

Although I appreciate many Native American spiritual views, I do not see the need, as many Native American tribes did, of attibuting our existence to a "Great Spirit" that created the natural world, or somehow controls nature from up above ("let's see," says the Great Spirit, 1 inch of rain for Iowa this week, 2 months of drought for Texas, a tsunami for Japan, etc.). Postulating the existence of a creator makes things more complicated than they need to be. And I don't see why people believe that God/Great Spirit/Wonka Tonka is distinct from the world/universe we live in.

A bit of unitarian universalism in that I try to incorporate the good parts of different religious teachings into my daily life. I agree with much of Jesus' and Buddha's teachings (except for the heaven/hell/reincarnation parts ;)) and strive to eliminate suffering in my life, treat my neighbor as myself, not judge others, forgive my enemies, etc. I like many Native American views regarding the circle of life and being one with nature and try to incorporate these principals into my life by living as sustainably as possible. I think the cultural universal of religion serves the same basic roles in people's lives: social connection, peace of mind in explaining death and other unknowns, purpose of life, etc. I believe that there is something to learn from every religion.

My background and life experience have obviously shaped my views, they might not work for someone else. I don't believe in a "one size fits all" religion and I don't think that any one religion is "right" and others are "wrong". I agree with the Dalai Lama that, if following a particular religious belief makes someone a better person and he/she therefore makes the world a better place, then this is good.

Sorry for the long post, but it was helpful for me to put this in writing. Here are some relevant quotes in closing.

What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass
and loses itself in the Sunset.
- Crowfoot (1830-1890)

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
- Frank Llyod Wright (1867-1959)

"But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature's softening influence."
- Chief Luther Standing Bear (1868-1939)

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)​

Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.
- Chief Seattle, 1854

The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts.
- John Muir (1838-1914)

 
IG,
　
It sounds like your belief in nature is enough to sustain you. That’s good.
　
You said,
　
"…I don't see why people believe that God/Great Spirit/Wonka Tonka is distinct from the world/universe we live in."
　
--> A lot of people don’t. A lot of people agree with you and reject a basic duality of nature, that God is over there and we are over here. A lot of people also reject the idea of a personal God, with which we can have a personal relationship. There is one word which sums up nature nicely — impersonal. I would also say the difference between God and nature is that God is an anthropomorphic idea and nature is not. Many people reject an anthropomorphic God. Also, God represents the idea that God is over there and we are over here, while the idea of nature discards such an idea.

I also agree that one religion does not work for everyone. There are different kinds of people, so we need different kinds of religions.
　
And I certainly agree with you that this world was not made especially for humanity.

But all of this begs the question: What do you think happens to you when you die?
 
Nick the Pilot said:
IG, What do you think happens to you when you die?
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I have absolutely no idea. If I had to wager a guess, I would say probably the same thing that happens to other sentient beings such as deer and chickens when they die.

Personally I choose to focus my energies on the present moment, and trying to "be the change I want to see in the world." We'll find out soon enough what happens to us when we die...
 
IowaGuy said:
I have absolutely no idea. If I had to wager a guess, I would say probably the same thing that happens to other sentient beings such as deer and chickens when they die.
..
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So you reckon you might end up in a KFC bucket??!! :eek:
 
IowaGuy said:
Hi Nick, would you be willing to elaborate on how panentheism plays into your belief system?

I am very interested in the panentheistic views of many Native American tribes, who lived much closer to nature than most of us do today.
Click to expand...

Panentheism means that God is all, and yet beyond it... I agree with this partially, but it becomes questionable when you ask where exactly is God in this picture? Pantheism doesn't describe it either, and nor does Monism because God is not only manifestation, it is indeed something beyond. Panentheism is the closest I have seen to a generic description, but I know God to be simply a higher level of consciousness - that which has manifested all creation. It is the subtle form of creation as soul is the subtle form of a person - but we live in the gross manifestation. God is not separate, yet it is not correct to say he is the same either - it is both, always truth is and/also rather than either/or.
 
IowaGuy, excellent... I agree with Nick. Check out Wordsworth (for his nature theology) and Rufus Jones (for his bent on universalist mysticism) you may like them both.

Pax et amor vincunt omnia radarmark.
 
radarmark said:
Check out Wordsworth (for his nature theology) and Rufus Jones (for his bent on universalist mysticism) you may like them both.
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Hi Radar, thanks for the suggestions, I'll check them out. As I'm sure you've noticed, joining this forum adds significant literature to one's winter reading list!
 
Jesus was God in the flesh


John.1

[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
[2] The same was in the beginning with God.
[3] All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
[4] In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

John.10

[30] I and my Father are one.



1John.5


  1. [7] For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
 
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