Do serve God...or a 'Trinity'?

[Thomas]

To me it is also a logical consequence of consider why Jesus offer this about John.

Ah, OK, I can see that – we would say 'office', but same difference.

I of course will say that Jesus is not someone who fulfils the 'station' or 'office' of Christ, He is the Christ – a different order of understanding.

Christ is just one of the titles awarded Jesus. In terms of office (or station), He is Prophet, Priest and King, because all those offices belong rightfully to Him as a priori the Logos of God – "He is before all things, and in him all things consist" (Colossians 1:17).

 

[wil]

@Tony Bristow-Stagg so how will the upcoming years test all faiths?

How will they differ from the last decade?

And what does upcoming mean?

 

[wil]

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

SO.. "time" is all relative .. so they say

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind...

 

[TheLightWithin]

I had not thought about it before for Baha'i, hmmm or Islam... it does appear the disciples and Paul thought he'd be right back...

I thought all the Abrahamic faiths had a prophecy tradition that laid out some variation on end-times prophecies.

 

[TheLightWithin]

I of course will say that Jesus is not someone who fulfils the 'station' or 'office' of Christ, He is the Christ – a different order of understanding.

Is that the same or different to what Jews thought the Messiah would/will be? Is the messiah someone who fulfills an office, or is Messiahhood their very state of being?

 

[TheLightWithin]

My observation, Tony, is that restricting the power of God to communicate with the human race to the self-declared 'ascended' new messiah Baha'u'llah for the next thousand years, puts limits on God, etc ...

My observation Thomas is that the Trinity has put limits on God, trying to define the unknowable and unapproachable God has the undesired consequence of making God in our own image, restricting Christ to a Name Jesus.

My observation is that the dogmatic doctrine of the trinity does appear to put definitional limits on who or what God is, while also putting limits on other people attempting to understand God by insisting that only the trinity as conceived by the church is true and every other concept is heresy.

 

[muhammad_isa]

My observation is that the dogmatic doctrine of the trinity does appear to put definitional limits on who or what God is, while also putting limits on other people attempting to understand God by insisting that only the trinity as conceived by the church is true and every other concept is heresy.

One man's meat is another man's poison.
I see it as a question of where to draw the line.

If a person does not make a public proclamation, then they should not be deemed heretical.
Some people seek to cause division by preaching against the establishment.
Oh wait .. wasn't Jesus accused of doing that

 

[Tony Bristow-Stagg]

@Tony Bristow-Stagg so how will the upcoming years test all faiths?

How will they differ from the last decade?

And what does upcoming mean?

I see our struggle to find our unity will unfold on many fronts in many ways, much foretold in the Bible and in the Baha'i Writings, but that is another topic.

Regards Tony

 

[wil]

I see our struggle to find our unity will unfold on many fronts in many ways

Entire history of mankind....on every continent for as long as we have inhabited them...pretty much the same for every plant animal and mole spore as well eh? We have always fought over resources and space.

 

[RJM]

My observation is that the dogmatic doctrine of the trinity does appear to put definitional limits on who or what God is

Don't all religions put their own definitional limits upon what God is, or is not? They're just different limits for different religions? Islam and Baha'i limit God by insisting God cannot be a trinity, imo

while also putting limits on other people attempting to understand God

People are free to ignore a religion they don't agree with?

only the trinity as conceived by the church is true and every other concept is heresy.

Only a Catholic can be accused of heresy. The term doesn't apply to anyone else

 

[Tony Bristow-Stagg]

Entire history of mankind....on every continent for as long as we have inhabited them...pretty much the same for every plant animal and mole spore as well eh? We have always fought over resources and space.

I could be much more specific, but it is not an answer to the OP.

In God I trust.

Regards Tony

 

[Thomas]

My observation is that the dogmatic doctrine of the trinity does appear to put definitional limits on who or what God is ...

I think there's a distinction between limit with regard to the Trinity per se, and limit with regard to what we might say about it.

In the first, with regard to both God and the Trinity, the Church declares without reserve and dogmatically that the Divine Nature is, in and to itself, 'incomprehensible' and 'ineffable' because it is 'absolutely simple' and transcends all categories, all definition, and by virtue of that, any limitation – all we can do is speak of God and the Trinity in barely-adequate analogies.

Much the same with regard to the Trinity – we can only speak in terms of analogies, adequate to our modes of thinking, but because God is Infinite, anything we predicate of God can never be determinate in the sense of defining a limit.

However, when the analogy itself is flawed or erroneous, as in the case of the early 'heresies', such as monarchianism and subordinationism, the limit does not apply to God, but to a flawed idea of God.

When I was doing my degree, we played a 'gong-show' game in which the object was to talk about the Holy Trinity, the gong sounding when someone strayed into error ... A fun game, and no-one lasted very long ...

In my view, the flaw of Trinitarian heresies is they actually limit what the orthodox doctrine says – as the Orthodox Patriarchies shake their heads at the Roman Catholics for what they regard as trying too hard to define what is indefinable and should be accepted simply as 'a mystery'.

The West does love a definition.

... while also putting limits on other people attempting to understand God by insisting that only the trinity as conceived by the church is true and every other concept is heresy.

Well ... I'm not sure that's the case?

The RCC is in fruitful dialogue Judaism and Islam, with Hinduism and Buddhism, and so on ... we do not accuse non-Christians of heresy, as @RJM points out, you have to be a Christian to be a heretic – there has to be orthodoxy for there to be heresy.

Personally I am a lot more sympathetic to Arius than perhaps Athanasius was – but then he had more to lose. I don't see him as a monster, rather as someone misguided who played politics and was soon well out of his depth. But I cannot understand how he could not see the inevitable problem that his too-Platonic doctrine would lead to – polytheism – but then I have a millennia and a half of philosophical and theological reflection to draw on.

 

[theMadJW]

The 'Trinity' is NOT in the Bible at ALL- yet people continue to believe it because of Churchianity!

 

[TheLightWithin]

People are free to ignore a religion they don't agree with?

Only in a free society / didn't used to be
Plus, social pressure can be an oppressive force. There are negative consequences to questioning prevailing ideas

Only a Catholic can be accused of heresy. The term doesn't apply to anyone else

Interesting, I don't recall whether I had heard that or not.
Ideas can be declared heretical (modalism for example)
Back when, anybody accused of disagreeing with the church was a heretic.
All the gnostics or non-trinitarians or just people with a different take on Christology. (Limiting how others understood God or Christ, fo
I guess now we are all "schismatics" instead.

 

[TheLightWithin]

However, when the analogy itself is flawed or erroneous, as in the case of the early 'heresies', such as monarchianism and subordinationism, the limit does not apply to God, but to a flawed idea of God.

The confidence held by the orthodox that they had a less flawed idea of God... smh.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I cannot understand how he could not see the inevitable problem that his too-Platonic doctrine would lead to – polytheism..

You seem to know him personally..
..so non-trinitarians are polytheists? Hmmph!

 

[talib-al-kalim]

The term "Mother of God" appears in a prayer dated to around 250AD: "Under thy protection we seek refuge, Holy Mother of God".

This 'Marian Doctrine' as we call it was first defined at the Council of Ephesus in 431. She was declared 'theotokos' – an adjectival compound of two words Theos, 'God' and tokos, 'childbirth, parturition; offspring'. A close paraphrase would be "(she) whose offspring is God" or "(she) who gave birth to one who was God". The usual English translation is simply "Mother of God".

The wording of the document goes on: "... the Mother of God, not as if the nature of the Word (Logos) or his divinity had its beginning from the holy Virgin, but because of her was born that holy (human) body with a rational (human) soul, to which the Word (Logos) being personally united is said to be born according to the flesh." (text in brackets mine by way of clarification)

(Scriptural basis for the dogma is found in John 1:14, Galatians 4:4 and the early chapters of Luke.)

So Mary is the mother of the human person who is the Incarnate Word (Logos) of God – she bore the man who is God, so as such is the mother of God, but not the source of His divinity.

Hope that helps?

The text is a century younger than the estimated age of the earliest hymn that implies worship to Mary.

I could even support the explanation of this text on the background of the Quran.

The problem is rather the reception of such concept that resulted in the misconception that Mary became the adressee of worship; Christians started to pray to Mary instead of God, for intercession, for adoration, in front of images, which is certainly far off anything Jesus taught.

 

[Thomas]

You seem to know him personally..

Just trying to defend him against misrepresentation – that, too, is the work of old you-know-who .

He was not a bad man, and gifted in many ways, by all accounts, very popular with his parishioners, until he started telling them what they saw as contrary teachings.

There's anecdotal evidence of a lot of popular, grass-roots support. I can't remember where, but a Christian writer bemoans the fact that (in my own words) "You can't even go out to buy groceries without someone stopping you in the street, demanding to know 'was there a time when he was not' (the cry of the Arians) ... not all disputes had such a grass-roots following, that has to something about the character of the man.

..so non-trinitarians are polytheists? Hmmph!

Two things:

One: Arius wasn't a 'non-Trinitarian' – as he believed in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He baptised using the tripartite formula.

He says little regarding the Holy Spirit, but it seems that as he believed the Son created in (pre-)time by the Father, he likewise believed the Holy Spirit was created by the Son, before the world began, and that all three were, before the world was, in a distinct hierarchy.

The table here shows how Arius follows the logic of NeoPlatonism:

Neo-Platonism	Attributes	Orthodoxy	Attributes
The One	eternal, one, good, uncaused	the Father	eternal, one, good, uncaused
Mind	emanates from the One, its own (lesser) essence	the Son (Logos)	begotten of the Father, equal in essence
Pneuma	emanates from Mind, the substrate of all matter	Holy Spirit	Spirit of God not yet defined in Christian terms
Psyche	the eternal souls, which fall into matter, space and time, change and decay	Soul	created ex nihilo by God

Arius proposed what one might call a hierarchical Trinity, following neoPlatonic emanationism. All three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit exist in eternity, before the world (space and time) yet paradoxically the Son is a creation (emanation), and the Holy Spirit a subsequent creation (emanation).

The issue of polytheism is particular to Arius, in the formulation of his doctrine of Jesus as a lesser divine, a God of God (the Father) but not the same substance as God (the Father) – hence, inevitably, another God ...

... I wonder how, given time, how he would have defended himself against that claim, and no doubt he'd use neoPlatonism to do so.

Two: I never said non-trinitarians are polythesists. Please do not put words in my mouth.

 

[Thomas]

The text is a century younger than the estimated age of the earliest hymn that implies worship to Mary.

Devotion, please ... devotion!

The problem is rather the reception of such concept that resulted in the misconception that Mary became the adressee of worship; Christians started to pray to Mary instead of God, for intercession, for adoration, in front of images, which is certainly far off anything Jesus taught.

Well we'll pray to anyone for intercession with the Boss, we're not fussy!

(She did intercede and her intercession with her Son seems to indicate the start of His ministry:
"And the wine failing, the mother of Jesus saith to him: They have no wine. And Jesus saith to her: Woman, what is that to me and to thee? my hour is not yet come. His mother saith to the waiters: Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye."
There was a lot of discussion about stereotypes of the Jewish 'momma' when we discussed this on my course.

Two things strike me:
The Divine Feminine refuses to go away ...

The belief that Mary was assumed into Heaven.

+++

When we say the Rosary, for example, the 'Hail Mary' says two things:
1: It gives her what is rightly hers, it's Scriptural, based on the Lucan narrative.
2: It then asks her to pray for us.

In praying the Rosary, we recall the Mysteries of Christ – in that sense the Rosary is a very Christalogical prayer.

The one you will have trouble with is the Salve Regina:
Hail, holy Queen, mother of Mercy.
Hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry,
poor banished children of Eve;
to thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping,
in this vale of tears.
Turn then, most gracious advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us;
and after this our exile, show unto us
the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving,
O sweet virgin Mary.

All I can say is the hymn is, in a sense, to the first Christian and the model and archetype of faith.

 

[theMadJW]

(Edited by moderator to remove link)