The Trinity of Christianity

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by kenod

...Actually, I am praying to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, at the same time. Jesus Christ is the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Mat 28:19).

I am currently reading "Hunted Heretic", the story of Michael Servetus who was burnt to death in 1553 for saying what I just said. Strange to think that if we'd lived back then you might have been lighting my pyre ... rather than patiently posting polite messages!

Actually, if you look at the collective of my posts the past three years, you might find, I'd be the "sheriff" who tried to stop the burning of a wise and inquisitive man. My only "beef" with "him" personally, would be his penchant for "humanism", but I'm certain I would have gotten over it (I seem to do so now...).

v/r

Q

[RubySera_Martin]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

The phrase 'Trinity' is NOT in the bible, so I simply ask the Trinitarians, "Who or what authored your belief?"

I don't know my history well enough to answer your question. I am sure if you read up on Christian Church History you can find the answer. What you post is quite normal for non-Trinitarians to think. It's basically making fun of beliefs one does not understand or accept.

[soma]

Kenod and Quahom you are two saying the same thing. You approach the unity of everything from different angles, but both of you express it eloquently. Here is another attempt.

The Holy Trinity is; the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost and is the Christian symbol for God from which the universe emanates, has its growth, realizes pure consciousness and merges in the end. When the Holy Trinity is in equilibrium it transcends the limitations of time; past, present and future; the genders; masculine, feminine and neuter; and the mind; conscious, subconscious and unconscious. When the equilibrium is disturbed, each principle of the Holy Trinity has the opportunity to express itself. This is the emergence of being from non-being or what we refer to as creation. The primordial waters are a theoretical expression showing the creative spirit of God bringing order out of what seems to be chaos. In creation there is still oneness, but the awareness of this oneness in all things becomes lost in the individual awareness of the parts. The Trinity is a way to express to the parts the unity that Jesus express when he said, "I and the Father are one."

Those that don't believe in the Trinity have nothing to worry about. There is no need to crucify someone that does and vica versa.

http://thinkunity.com

[BlaznFattyz]

if one denies christ, one denies god, and you worship something else.

[soma]

Nobody is denying Christ. Christ is not a plastic statue that glows in the dark. He is bigger than you can imagine so we should not put Our Lord and Savior into a mold that is small and narrow.

[BlaznFattyz]

christ is love and gives your soul peace and rest. he is forgiving, loving and died for your sins and desires a relationship with you. there is no need to try and substitute a born again christians indwelling of the holy spirit or a persons personal relationship with the living god with an insufficient substitute of christ consciousness.
there is no mysticm in christianity, god has made himself known to man, what he requires of us, and has made his word able to be understood. it is no secret that christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and that we are saved by faith through his grace.
all that sustains us is gods love, and out of that love comes the desire to please god because we have been saved by grace, we try to live according to his word and willingly to a higher standard.
"the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," (Prov. 9:10)

[soma]

it is no secret that christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and that we are saved by faith through his grace.

You read that or someone told you. Can you feel Christ? Can you feel the way inside your consciousness or are you just doing what you are told. Christ is love and he is guiding us with love to the Father. You fear the Lord, the love, the way? People can say the words, but feeling the love, the way in consciousness is important. Words are symbols that point to something in this case we are talking about God which is more than what we can describe, but we try.
The love Christ talked about must be realized, we cannot just simply preach how to love God then strive to defeat other faiths or religions. When love touches our consciousness, it makes us one with all life because we love it. Love comes from the visible and invisible teachers. Jesus is teaching us within our own consciousness; therefore, we must open our consciousness to the infinite Power, the universal Principle and find it operating in our experience.

[Blue Jay]

Originally Posted by Quahom1

Actually, if you look at the collective of my posts the past three years, you might find, I'd be the "sheriff" who tried to stop the burning of a wise and inquisitive man. My only "beef" with "him" personally, would be his penchant for "humanism", but I'm certain I would have gotten over it (I seem to do so now...).

v/r

Q

And thereby forfeited your own life? Is the strength of your argument in the word "tried"?

[inhumility]

Originally Posted by kenod

While I acknowledge that God is beyond reasoning, I do not believe that He is contrary to reasoning. To accept the Trinity explanation, it seems you have to sacrifice rational thought, which comes from God. The most simple explanation is often the most accurate. God is one, and He reveals Himself in three different ways. It seems such a sensible concept to me and yet I am repeatedly labelled a heretic ... glad I didn't live a few hundred years ago ... can't stand the heat!
Ken

Being an Ahmadi,a faith in Islam I would like to revise the paragraph as under to make it acceptable for me:-
While I acknowledge that the person of God is beyond our understanding, I do not believe that He is contrary to reasoning. To accept the Trinity explanation, it seems you have to sacrifice rational thought, which comes from God. The most simple explanation is often the most accurate. God is one, and He reveals Himself to us human through many of His attributes. It is ONENESS of God and is such a sensible concept .Thanks

[kenod]

Originally Posted by inhumility

Being an Ahmadi,a faith in Islam I would like to revise the paragraph as under to make it acceptable for me:-
While I acknowledge that the person of God is beyond our understanding, I do not believe that He is contrary to reasoning. To accept the Trinity explanation, it seems you have to sacrifice rational thought, which comes from God. The most simple explanation is often the most accurate. God is one, and He reveals Himself to us human through many of His attributes. It is ONENESS of God and is such a sensible concept .Thanks

I respect your right to believe whatever you wish. As Christians we believe that God dwelt in Jesus Christ, and raised Him from the dead. After His ascension, the Holy Spirit was sent to guide us. For many Christians there are three distinct "persons", but I believe they are all the One Person.

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by Blue Jay

And thereby forfeited your own life? Is the strength of your argument in the word "tried"?

I forfeit nothing. Realising the argument is mute and a waste of energy, I continue to live by the "Word" as best I am able, thereby setting an example that can not be argued with (you there!!! stop trying to set an example by acting decent!!!)

v/r

Q

[Saltmeister]

Originally Posted by kenod

I respect your right to believe whatever you wish. As Christians we believe that God dwelt in Jesus Christ, and raised Him from the dead. After His ascension, the Holy Spirit was sent to guide us. For many Christians there are three distinct "persons", but I believe they are all the One Person.

When the Christian apostles warned against false teachings, they never said anything about a defence against a Trinity concept. That was probably because the early Christians didn't need a Trinity concept, even though they used the same terminology as we use today: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They probably understood the Christian concept of God, and the terminology associated with it, better than we do today.

So what, then, was the "Trinity?"

The idea of Trinity that emerged was probably more of a mantra, a saying, an expression of one's relationship with God. We connect with God through an experience of the Father (spiritual Source), experience of the Son (demonstrator and demonstration of God) and the experience of the Holy Spirit (spiritual radiance, divine breath of God).

The way I would see it is, God reveals Himself in only one form: the experience of His holy personality -- the personality of a spiritual being that is morally upright, just, responsible and accountable for everything He does. Jesus was not God taking human form. Jesus was a medium through which an experience of God was conveyed. That's why Jesus had to die and become invisible. He was a sign of the real invisible God.

When he lived on earth as a human, he was an image of the invisible God, not in flesh, but in the way he lived. He was a visible demonstration of the personality of an invisible God. But he had to die because he was just a projection of an invisible God. He came for a moment to demonstrate to us what God was like, but after that, people needed to believe in the real God who sent him.

I was thinking of it like this . . .

When we believe in Christ, the invisible spiritual leader, I think it is really faith in the invisible God. The invisible Christ is like a symbol of the invisible God. Christ plays the role of an invisible spiritual guide, but that is really God's role. So it is really not Christ leading us, but God. Christ was a metaphor for God.

That's perhaps why we hear him say, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." He was a demonstration of God. He wants us to believe in the demonstration -- that what he demonstrated was true of God. What he demonstrated was a way to understand God Himself. When Jesus declares that he is the Way, it is really what God, who sent him, is saying about Himself. It's just that God sent Jesus to say that on His behalf just to see who would believe in his story.

That was maybe why Jesus also said, "God is Spirit and His people must worship in spirit and in truth."

We can't define God, and never will, but we can at least explain what He is like, understand Him, connect and relate with Him. The metaphor of Christ is perhaps one way in which this relationship could be conceptualised.

So why didn't the Christian apostles include the concept of Trinity as one of the things to defend against in false teachings? Perhaps the reason is that the Trinity was never essential at all!!! It is neither an "essential concept" nor an "illegal concept." It's an approach to and expression of faith, not a magic bullet or magic formula.

. . . that the experience of the Father, experience of the Son, experience of the Holy Spirit are experiences of God.

[Blue Jay]

Saltmeister, your emphasis seems to be on experience. Don't you think we have to believe in Jesus' death and resurrection for salvation?

[BlaznFattyz]

Originally Posted by Saltmeister

Jesus was not God taking human form.

can you explain what you mean by this? and what you mean by God? i consider jesus as god in human form. his spirit is that of god because proceeded from god. jesus being perfect, sinless, righteous, forgiving, eternal, good, and the creator puts his characteristics as God. Jesus is my Lord God and Saviour and i am having trouble with your statement.
"I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour." Isaiah 43:11

[Saltmeister]

Originally Posted by Blue Jay

Saltmeister, your emphasis seems to be on experience. Don't you think we have to believe in Jesus' death and resurrection for salvation?

I suppose we do if it's true, but I guess we need a reason to believe that it's true.

Our experience gives us that reasoning. Our experience includes everything we have seen, heard, learnt and believe. The reason why I said that is because I reckon if someone tells us to believe something, what they tell us to believe must be compatible with the experiences that we have accumulated so far.

I don't believe we need to prove Jesus' death and resurrection, but I do think we need to justify why we think it's so important. It's about telling people what Christianity means to us. Justifying why it's important doesn't mean we just say what the preacher told us to say. I think the concept should be explored further. We are individuals and because we all come from different walks of life, we have different ways of explaining the same thing. We should seek to discover where we stand in God's kingdom as individuals. Spontaneity should be encouraged.

All beliefs could ideally be justified, so all beliefs would ideally be compatible with one's experiences. If certain beliefs cannot be justified, then we could always explore the concepts further and decide whether or not there's a way to justify them.

Ok, personally, one may not believe that he/she needs to justify their beliefs, that one should simply have faith. However, what happens when you have to share your faith with others?

When we share our religion with other people, I think it's important to share our personality as well. This is where our experience comes in. Our experience is a part of our personality. If we simply say that we believe in something because "we simply have faith," it might be difficult to understand why because it doesn't seem to match one's personality. You're not being yourself. That's why I would think that beliefs and faith work best with our experience and personality. Spiritual truths don't have to come from a textbook, they could come from deep within our heart and soul.

That's what I meant about being spontaneous about one's religion. Be unique. Find your place in the cosmos.

Moreover, this is the post-modern era. In the modern era, people would have been interested in logical reasons for why you believed in something. Some individuals are post-modern in their mind-set, so they'd probably be more interested in why your personality possesses certain beliefs rather than what Logic has to say about "Truth."

That's why I think experience is so important. I don't consider "logic" to be important. Logic is deterministic. I don't believe spirituality is deterministic and logical. I don't think God made us to be monotonic beings of logic and determinism. Experience tells me we are capable of discerning in the vague and abstract, so God gave us minds to think in the abstract. Logic, science and determinism can't explain or capture everything in this universe. Logic and determinism can't capture spirituality. Spirituality is a completely different dimension altogether. Of course, I can't prove that spiritual beings, to the lowest level of functionality, are deterministic machines -- and that they simply interact in an abstract and vague sense.

But that's the thing: I don't think it matters even if we are deterministic state machines at the lowest level. The point is we interact in the abstract. We observe and experience things in the abstract. That's probably why God gave us emotions. He wanted us to trust abstractions rather than determinism, where we have to calculate and formally prove everything.

When people tell me I am not logically justified in following my religion, they are telling me that my personal thoughts, personal experiences and personality do not matter. But God created my personality. Why should I pay any attention to someone who tells me I am not logically justified in what I believe when their logic, which supposedly refutes my religion, isn't even compatible or reconcilable to my personality? I am God's creation and I don't answer to logic. I answer to God. Who created me, God or Logic?

Logic is not always necessary to justify beliefs. Sometimes abstract sentiment is sufficient, in which case logical and deterministic justifications or refutations are redundant and irrelevant.

I believe we need a reason to believe, but I don't believe we need to formally and deterministically prove that the reason why we believe in something is the logically right reason for believing. I put my trust in abstract sentiment. I put my trust in the experience. If I have sufficiently explored the reasons for believing why I believe than I am justified in what I believe.

I believe Christianity is rational, but not in a logical and deterministic sense that philosophers (you gotta love that word!!!) prefer, but in an abstract sentimental sense.

There's nothing wrong with believing in experience if it can be justified. I probably come from a different walk of life to you. If one reckons one should simply have faith, then good luck!!!! We all come from a different walks of life.

The important thing is that we both have the same spiritual leader.