Try the Trinity.

[otherbrother]

I believe that Jesus is "the son of God", because he was sent by God as Messiah.

I have issues with the Messiah thing. I think spiritual interface by means of showing us how to connect to a deep God zone works better. An agent needed to save us is still an outside in approach instead of an inside out approach. Even in the movie Trolls, the princess Troll enlightened the non-Troll townsfolk that you don’t have to eat Trolls to be happy; happiness is WITHIN you. To me, Mesiah is a tribal carryover of a sense of needing something out there to come in and save the tribe. Seems dualistic and pretty much just another version of idol worship.

 

[otherbrother]

The point being that God lies beyond the 'event horizon' or beyond the realm of physics, even quantum physics, which deals in particles and forces – the weave and weft of this dimension, or this kosmos – the Trinity are not of this kosmos (cf John 8:23).

Yes, beyond, but clearly (to most of us here willing to take the time to discuss it) not beyond reach, not not connected to those physical processes. Mind and matter interact.
I probably agree way more than I disagree with your views, but I do seem to think the divine shines through to the point that it is okay to speak of natural divinity — not to say that all physical things have the same divine glow as others, but to say all physical manifestations are potential portals to the Creator on the “other side”.
One Idealism (Assuming God is more like mind than anything else we can conceptualize) friendly way to look at it is: mind projects into thoughts but also reclaims the thoughts into its own holistic, whole, process. A technology philosopher, Kelly, called the reclaiming process “up creation “ because the created inform the creator. In the Idealism vein, Thoughts inform Mind. Which makes sense if you see mind as formless and thoughts as forms. The projections (thoughts) put form into the formless whole Mind. The result being an increasingly DIFFERENTIATED Whole. Basically Universal Intelligence.

 

[otherbrother]

I have issues with the Messiah thing. I think spiritual interface by means of showing us how to connect to a deep God zone works better. An agent needed to save us is still an outside in approach instead of an inside out approach. Even in the movie Trolls, the princess Troll enlightened the non-Troll townsfolk that you don’t have to eat Trolls to be happy; happiness is WITHIN you. To me, Mesiah is a tribal carryover of a sense of needing something out there to come in and save the tribe. Seems dualistic and pretty much just another version of idol worship.

I think true spirituality and religion (applying the spirituality) is a participation sport, not a spectator sport.

 

[muhammad_isa]

..To me, Mesiah is a tribal carryover of a sense of needing something out there to come in and save the tribe. Seems dualistic and pretty much just another version of idol worship.

No .. a Messiah is a spiritual leader, who is close to G-d (hence 'son of G-d' .. prophet .. saint).

Be assured, that G-d will send mankind a Messiah BEFORE all nations 'push the nuclear button'.
i.e. the world becomes more or less inhabitable

Isn't that a major problem in the world today .. squabbling over whom G-d has given Divine authority?
..or so they say, think .. but I see the majority of world population are more concerned with
financial authority .. not spiritual.

As Jesus is reported to have said: "You can't serve two masters".

 

[Tony Bristow-Stagg]

Be assured, that G-d will send mankind a Messiah BEFORE all nations 'push the nuclear button'.
i.e. the world becomes more or less inhabitable

So the button was pushed in 1945.

I personally have acknowledge that God did send a Messiah, who did warn us, who called on all humanity, and the Pope to embrace the "Most Great Peace", to embrace God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. It was rejected and a Lesser Peace was offered.

I will offer one insight, there are many

Abdu'l-Bahá speaking to a Japanese Diplomat in 1912, offered this.

"Scientific discoveries have increased material civilization. There is in existence a stupendous force, as yet, happily undiscovered by man. Let us supplicate God, the Beloved, that this force be not discovered by science until spiritual civilization shall dominate the human mind. In the hands of men of lower nature, this power would be able to destroy the whole earth."

Abdu'l-Baha had already predicted the first world war would be sparked in Europe in 1914. All this came from Baha'u'llah.

No need to respond. FYI

Regards Tony

 

[muhammad_isa]

So the button was pushed in 1945..

Yes, we all know that .. and the G7 seems to think it's worth spending money on
nuclear weapons as "a deterrent" ..

Some politicians consider it a waste of money, as it is immoral to employ them.
Who's right?

..but that is besides the point .. if all nuclear warheads currently in the world were all detonated,
we'd all be poisoned by nuclear fallout, if we weren't dead already.
Abdul Baha is not here to stop them.

Are you saying that Bahai leaders can do better than the UN? I think not.

 

[Tony Bristow-Stagg]

Yes, we all know that .. and the G7 seems to think it's worth spending money on
nuclear weapons as "a deterrent" ..

Some politicians consider it a waste of money, as it is immoral to employ them.
Who's right?

..but that is besides the point .. if all nuclear warheads currently in the world were all detonated,
we'd all be poisoned by nuclear fallout, if we weren't dead already.
Abdul Baha is not here to stop them.

Are you saying that Bahai leaders can do better than the UN? I think not.

I am saying the steps needed to implement the Lesser Peace have been given. They all need to be embraced, or peace will not be possible.

Regards Tony

 

[Thomas]

I have issues with the Messiah thing. I think spiritual interface by means of showing us how to connect to a deep God zone works better.

From an Abrahamic perspective:
The basic rule of thumb is we cannot transcend our nature.

Human nature is open to the infinite in every respect, but being 'open to' does not necessarily mean 'entitled to' nor 'able to' transcend itself. Grace, that is union with the Uncreate, is always an unmerited gift, and although the divine image is imprinted, as it were, in the depths of the soul, the soul itself is a created nature, and thus cannot assume the properties of the Uncreate under its own steam.

The 'Messiah thing', then, in Christian terms, is to identifiy Christ as the Logos of God.

God the Father is, in the words of the Fathers, the narche anarchos – the Principle without Principle, whilst the Son is Logos or arche, the principle.

To use your analogy (loosely) God the Father contains everything in the Divine Mind, and God the Son orders everything, according to the Father's will.

The stumbler is we then suppose terms like 'mind', 'will', etc. of the Father, when in fact the Father (and Son, and Spirit) are above all categories and forms. So these things – Mind, Will, Intellect, Understanding, Love, Justice, Mercy and so on, exist unformed and undifferentiated in the Divine.

An agent needed to save us is still an outside in approach instead of an inside out approach.

From a secular pov, yes. but from a spiritual pov, no.

Everything is Brahman, all natures are Buddha Nature, and in Christianity all natures are the individual and differentiated logoi that flow from the undifferentiated Logos. So it's not outside/inside for us, rather it's the idea of the (individual) self and Self-as-such.

To me, Mesiah is a tribal carryover of a sense of needing something out there to come in and save the tribe. Seems dualistic and pretty much just another version of idol worship.

OK, I can see how one can see it that way, but really that's not what the sacra doctrina nor the tradition is pointing to.

 

[Thomas]

Yes, beyond, but clearly (to most of us here willing to take the time to discuss it) not beyond reach, not not connected to those physical processes. Mind and matter interact.

Here we have a category issue – I do not believe 'Mind' is synonymous with God, rather, God transcends mind (as I have said above).

Again, my answer lies in the realm of the union between created/uncreate, or finite/infinite.

We are finite natures, open to the infinite, but bound by our infinitude. However, because we are open, that horizon can be crossed, but by the process of being drawn up/drawn in, not by any effort on our part – there are no processes that are absolutely certain to realise our Buddhanature or achieve Beatitude – were that the case then the Divine would be, in some sense, a mechanism.

I probably agree way more than I disagree with your views, but I do seem to think the divine shines through to the point that it is okay to speak of natural divinity — not to say that all physical things have the same divine glow as others,

Oh, I agree – everything is theophany – the trick is not kidding ourselves that we are inherently that.

but to say all physical manifestations are potential portals to the Creator on the “other side”.

I'd say everything has that potential.

One Idealism (Assuming God is more like mind than anything else we can conceptualize) friendly way to look at it is: mind projects into thoughts but also reclaims the thoughts into its own holistic, whole, process.

OK

A technology philosopher, Kelly, called the reclaiming process “up creation “ because the created inform the creator

I would say the creator cannot be 'informed', as the Infinite cannot increase or decrease in any sense.

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecclesiates 1:9). I'd suggest that is the same all the way up ...

In the Idealism vein, Thoughts inform Mind. Which makes sense if you see mind as formless and thoughts as forms. The projections (thoughts) put form into the formless whole Mind. The result being an increasingly DIFFERENTIATED Whole. Basically Universal Intelligence.

But the Formless is prior to the forms – it has no need of forms because it already knows in its own ineffable manner – that's where the form came from in the first place?

In the Mystical Traditions of the world religions, union with the Divine always involves an element not just of self-identification, but the transcending of such distinctions – it is above Intellect, above Mind, above all forms.

+++

Referring to that category difference, as I see it, you see Mind as the all-in-all? And I see Being as prior to mind.

The discussion, I suppose, relates to how you and I perceive 'soul' and 'mind'?

 

[Thomas]

Hey, @otherbrother – as fate would have it, I've just read an article on the Eclectic Orthodox website.

Rather than pick through it, can I commend the whole article to you? I think it's relavant.

The Beautiful Mind
"Entering stage left, on the side of idealism and classical theism, we have Psyche, Eros, and Hermes. On the side of materialism, we have poor, outnumbered Hephaistos. They pass their days now in the Metakosmia, an idyllic habitat devoted to good work, good food, and good conversation. The dialogue kicks off with Psyche plucking a rose and contemplating everything about such a mundane act. Whence comes this deliberate and intentional action? This internal thinking and then doing? The mind that unites all these factors together?

Psyche and Hephaistos are the primary interlocutors—with the goddess offering Hart’s overall argument, and Hephaistos throwing up materialist and mechanical opposition. Hermes adds perspective on language, and Eros on love (though he also helps the lost reader by asking for clarification on the terms used).

Psyche is “amazed” at “how little amazed we often are by consciousness and life.” Everything exists “wholly within consciousness.” In fact, it’s not “some discrete phenomenon among other phenomena that we can isolate and examine.” It’s more than that. It’s the “ground and possibility of any phenomenon—phenomenality as such” (29). It’s awareness that is aware of itself being aware.

Crucially, as Psyche contends, this is not an epistemic limitation—as though we will one day get to a point where we’ll unlock a materialist understanding and all we’re lacking now is data (32). It’s more like the uncertainty principle in quantum physics—by definition, it cannot be got around. The only reason we think we can eventually arrive at a sensible materialist theory is because our investigations have been hamstrung by a commitment to methodological naturalism, the seemingly innocuous idea that the investigation of nature should restrict itself to natural causes, but which has evolved into a metaphysical naturalism asserting that nothing but natural causes exist (59, 66). This led, tragically, to the conception of the universe as a great machine, and to mind as itself something mechanical. It’s a similar sad story to the one Hart told in Kenogaia, in which the “great machine of earth and sky” is celebrated by the novel’s antagonists, along with a call to “Know thyself, who art the most superb machine of all.”2

Such a restrictive methodology will never arrive at an answer. Mind will always be a problem for a materialist philosophy. Instead, asserts Psyche, the “primary reality of all things is mind.” Her position is idealism in the classical sense and Aristotelian in seeing mind and life as “one reality” (50). The mechanical inverse, “a proper reduction of mind to matter . . . could only be the mind’s elimination” (67). And, importantly, one of the fallacies she enumerates—the pleonastic fallacy—crops up again and again, the rule that an infinite distance cannot be crossed by finite quantitative steps (42)."

 

[TheLightWithin]

yep we could buy them books and buy them books yet all they want to do is look at the pictures

Wait, what?

 

[TheLightWithin]

What if God is a kind of Super Quanta that can act like a wave (Holy Ghost/Spirit) or a particle (being: Divine Being as Father, Incarnate Being as Son).
If we are looking or calling from the attitude of being an individual physical being, the Super Quanta would act like a particle/being in order to interface a similarly acting entity. But even in discrete being form, it would maintain greater quantum coherence (the wave function not collapsing as much) as the particular being calling or looking. It would relate as a Divine Other that helps restore some of the lost quantum coherence. Feelings of greater wholeness and abundance would ensue,
But if the person/being were to be heavily (and heavenly?) identifying with the Super Quanta’s wave characteristics (Holy Spirit), then prayer/calling and perception would act like a PROCESS or STATE more than a thing/being. It would seem like a seamless aspect of the True Self, instead of an Other.

The following poem touches on this both/and (Being and Process) nature of the Super Quanta (God):


Call



You want to know me

And call me by name?

First, know that True Self

And Divine Other

Are one and the same.

I posted a video in my comment about a year ago, comment #366 in this thread, that demonstrates something like this.
They are actually using the example of 2nd, 3rd, 4th dimensions to explain the point.
I generally find the Trinity incoherent. I am always intrigued by ideas that make it more coherent.

 

[TheLightWithin]

Very true.
However no one will disagree that the OT we have today is the same as the Dead Sea Scrolls, say of Isaiah, which dates from 260BC.
And the Old Testament gives a full description of the Triune God.

And, I assume you will not venture into claiming that I wrote into the Dead Sea scrolls that YHWH, spoke to His Spirit and asks who knows the name of His Son.

The OT of today is the same as the Dead Sea Scrolls? What do you mean?
I'm sure it's more complicated than that.

 

[otherbrother]

God the Father is, in the words of the Fathers, the narche anarchos – the Principle without Principle, whilst the Son is Logos or arche, the principle.

To use your analogy (loosely) God the Father contains everything in the Divine Mind, and God the Son orders everything, according to the Father's will.

Liked that. A lot

 

[otherbrother]

I posted a video in my comment about a year ago, comment #366 in this thread, that demonstrates something like this.
They are actually using the example of 2nd, 3rd, 4th dimensions to explain the point.
I generally find the Trinity incoherent. I am always intrigued by ideas that make it more coherent.

I’ll look that up!

 

[EricPH]

Jesus prayed that we should be one, in exactly the same way that he is one with the Father. Could the greatest commandments possibly describe how Christ is one with the Father.​

The Father loves the Son as he loves himself.

The Son loves the Father as he loves himself.

Could the spirit be the power of God’s love; working through the perfection of the greatest commandments?

1 Samuel 18-1, NIV version. Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself.

Can there be any greater definition of ’Oneness’?

 

[talib-al-kalim]

Jesus prayed that we should be one, in exactly the same way that he is one with the Father. Could the greatest commandments possibly describe how Christ is one with the Father.​

The Father loves the Son as he loves himself.

The Son loves the Father as he loves himself.

Could the spirit be the power of God’s love; working through the perfection of the greatest commandments?

1 Samuel 18-1, NIV version. Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself.

Can there be any greater definition of ’Oneness’?

Sounds good, but does it withstand a closer look?

Let's step back to the image used:
The father (lowercase) loves his children. True for a normal father. The son loves his father: usually true if the father loves the son.
But the love of the father to the son is a different kind of love than the love for himself, even if both are intact. Equally, there's a qualitative difference between the love of the father to the son and the love of the son to the father.

Even more, our love to the Father (God) is qualitatively different from the love of ourselves or the love to our father. And the love of God to himself bends the image to an invalid degree.

 

[Faithfulservant]

You are mistaking the word love as this thing humans feel. Agape is a whole different thing.

 

[Thomas]

Sounds good, but does it withstand a closer look?

As ever, in John 17:11 & 22 the Father-Son relation is a figure of speech, and can certainly be treated as such, and read as you do, if you take the text in isolation ... but really 'to look closer' I would suggest 'contrast and compare' to similar texts, such as John 10:30 ... then a deeper meaning begins to emerge.

 

[talib-al-kalim]

You are mistaking the word love as this thing humans feel. Agape is a whole different thing.

As ever, in John 17:11 & 22 the Father-Son relation is a figure of speech, and can certainly be treated as such, and read as you do, if you take the text in isolation ... but really 'to look closer' I would suggest 'contrast and compare' to similar texts, such as John 10:30 ... then a deeper meaning begins to emerge.

My point is that the Father and the son/Son are not equal; the oneness with God has no equivalent counterpart in a oneness of God with a human, be it even God's chosen Messiah. In ideal oneness, the soul of the human is in full harmony with God and the works of the human are in full harmony with God's creation. The seed of this is faith and care (agape: caring love). You cannot exchange God and human in this. God guides, and God provides. The counterpart of human faith is guidance, and the counterpart of care is welfare.