Try the Trinity.

talib-al-kalim said:
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.
Click to expand...
The question about the Father and Son being equal or not is one of those debates that raged around in the early church. The belief that the Son was not equal to the Father was called "Subordinationism" and declared a "heresy" by the winning party (the emerging orthodoxy of the church).
 
EricPH said:

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’?
Click to expand...
EricPH,
Two tracks of my recent thinking (one with philosophizing with my youngest son earlier today. The other while reading chapters 4 and 5 of J R Daniel Kirks’s book, Romans for Normal People). And now your thoughts seem to form a third converging track.
My point with my son was that our present world culture brainwashes us into thinking there some humans are winners and others are losers. Owning stuff (as in the definition of capitalism being “OWNING” the means of production”) equates with winning and being a winner. The ability to accumulate money is the way of keeping score of one’s power to own stuff. In the world as it is currently played out, the owners practically “own” the laborers, who may not be the losers that the unemployed are, but certainly are not winners. Generous profit sharing might be a way to get off this dehumanizing merry go round, but that is seldom used because it would amount to sharing and would even up
 
talib-al-kalim said:
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.
Click to expand...
EricPH,
Two tracks of my recent thinking (one with philosophizing with my youngest son earlier today. The other while reading chapters 5 and 6 of J R Daniel Kirks’s book, Romans for Normal People). And now your thoughts seem to form a third converging track.
My point with my son was that our present world culture brainwashes us into thinking there some humans are winners and others are losers. Owning stuff (as in the definition of capitalism being “OWNING” the means of production”) equates with winning and being a winner. The ability to accumulate money is the way of keeping score of one’s power to own stuff. In the world as it is currently played out, the owners practically “own” the laborers, who may not be the losers that the unemployed are, but certainly are not winners. Generous profit sharing might be a way to get off this dehumanizing merry go round, but that is seldom used because it would amount to sharing and would even up the score too much—making the winners feel like they might end their winning streak.
Owning and winning define the worldly person. And heavy participation in the worldly game tends to rub of on its participants, making them “worldly.”
My main point to my son was that the world that the Meek shall inherit is not THIS world, but a transformed new world based on sharing and synergy of all human gifts. Democracy is a step towards that world because it attempts to share decision making and power via a voting process and a government to act on the collective decisions. The kind of brotherly and sisterly love advocated by Jesus Christ was laying the foundation for a new world order based on massive cooperation and good will. The current world is based more on competition and winners and losers than it is on cooperation and nurturing EVERYONE’S God given potential.
Kirk’s writing, especially in chapter 6, describes the standard “substitutive atonement “ (that I personally don’t buy) in which Christ dies for our sins in order to save us from not only our own sins but from the sinful world, and paves the way for a new world (either here on earth, in another dimension, or both). But by the standards of the old world order, dying on a cross is LOSING—not winning. Christ was a loser in this world. But by showing us that there is something more than this world’s silly and potential-robbing game, he frees us to work together to make a loving, spiritual (wholeness-making) new world.
Your notions about showing God’s love fits right in with the two philosophical/theological tracks of my recent thoughts. Thank you.
 
otherbrother said:
EricPH,
Two tracks of my recent thinking (one with philosophizing with my youngest son earlier today. The other while reading chapters 5 and 6 of J R Daniel Kirks’s book, Romans for Normal People). And now your thoughts seem to form a third converging track.
My point with my son was that our present world culture brainwashes us into thinking there some humans are winners and others are losers. Owning stuff (as in the definition of capitalism being “OWNING” the means of production”) equates with winning and being a winner. The ability to accumulate money is the way of keeping score of one’s power to own stuff. In the world as it is currently played out, the owners practically “own” the laborers, who may not be the losers that the unemployed are, but certainly are not winners. Generous profit sharing might be a way to get off this dehumanizing merry go round, but that is seldom used because it would amount to sharing and would even up the score too much—making the winners feel like they might end their winning streak.
Owning and winning define the worldly person. And heavy participation in the worldly game tends to rub of on its participants, making them “worldly.”
My main point to my son was that the world that the Meek shall inherit is not THIS world, but a transformed new world based on sharing and synergy of all human gifts. Democracy is a step towards that world because it attempts to share decision making and power via a voting process and a government to act on the collective decisions. The kind of brotherly and sisterly love advocated by Jesus Christ was laying the foundation for a new world order based on massive cooperation and good will. The current world is based more on competition and winners and losers than it is on cooperation and nurturing EVERYONE’S God given potential.
Kirk’s writing, especially in chapter 6, describes the standard “substitutive atonement “ (that I personally don’t buy) in which Christ dies for our sins in order to save us from not only our own sins but from the sinful world, and paves the way for a new world (either here on earth, in another dimension, or both). But by the standards of the old world order, dying on a cross is LOSING—not winning. Christ was a loser in this world. But by showing us that there is something more than this world’s silly and potential-robbing game, he frees us to work together to make a loving, spiritual (wholeness-making) new world.
Your notions about showing God’s love fits right in with the two philosophical/theological tracks of my recent thoughts. Thank you.
Click to expand...
I didn’t address the dynamics on the losing side of the world as currently constituted. Losers feel so powerless and deficient that they desperately long for a win. Any kind of a win, even if by putting others down, scapegoating to blame THEM, and finally feeling superior to someone. Of course this is not a dynamic of unifying love. It is based on fear, shame, and an incorrect belief that winning is everything. If one were to personify that dynamic, it would be Satin and his power of evil. Especially good if they think they are worshipping “God” all the while. And/or that some apparently good end justifies the evil means, A big win for “Satin!”
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top