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Question to christians

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
Psychology - defined - study of the soul. I don't think it is necessarily translated as a "religious sense". There are many subjects that are secular but still biblical... or biblical but still used secularly.

Understand trying to not making in "christianese". I suppose you could use "life-force"... but it might be lessen the reality of what it is. Maybe we can liken it to a man in a space suit. The space suit is our body that lets us operate in this physical world but the real you is your spirit man. The body is the visible expression of who you are?

I guess I'm am limited in my vocabulary to correctly express it.

Christianese. That's cute. I don't use life-force myself. Sounds sci-fi. If you dropped the words soul and spirit, you can say the former is the psyche and the latter is the "act' of expression." The body is the vehicle through which the act (motion/spirit of something/passion) or behavior is expressed.

"His heavy trauma burdened his soul, paralyzed his body, distorted his mind, and stagnated his spirit."
 

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
What's the difference between man being a soul and man being a spirit?

My understanding of that is that God "breathed life" into man and he became a living soul.
Doesn't say God breathed life into plants, or birds etc.. In fact Genesis says that birds came
out of the seas - which is true in an indirect way.
A major theme of the bible is that man is TWO creatures, the flesh of 'clay' and the living
spirit which dwells within. This is emphasized through stories such as Cain and Abel, Isaac
and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau. One brother symbolizing the spirit and the other the world
and the flesh.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Do you believe in the trinity?

Why? Why not?
The problems with the Trinity doctrine are many.

For a start, the idea simply doesn't exist in the NT. Jesus never once claims to be God in the NT, and expressly denies he's God in each of the gospels; and Paul also expressly denies it. It doesn't become doctrine till the 4th century CE, more than two clear centuries after the NT was written, the result of church politics around the demand that Jesus be elevated to God status without making Christianity polytheistic like the pagans.

And having become doctrine, it has the embarrassing quality of incoherence. The church expresses this fact by calling the doctrine "a mystery in the strict sense". A "mystery in the strict sense" means it "cannot be known by unaided human reason apart from revelation, nor cogently demonstrated by reason once it has been revealed" ─ their words, not mine. Another way of saying the same thing is that the Trinity Doctrine is a nonsense.

The incoherence boils down to the claim that each of the Father, Jesus and the Ghost is 100% of God, that 1+1+1=1. It includes the question, who answers the phone when you pray to "God"? It has Jesus on the cross saying "Me, me, why have I forsaken me?". And since Jesus is the son of God, Jesus is 100% his own father ─ though of course both the Father and the Ghost are each 100% Jesus' father too.
 

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
I worship who Jesus worshipped: his Father (Yahweh/Jehovah), the God of ancient Israel & the First-century Christians. —John 20:17; cf. 1 Corinthians 8:5-6 & Psalms 83:18

Have a good evening, my cousin!
 

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
The problems with the Trinity doctrine are many.

For a start, the idea simply doesn't exist in the NT. Jesus never once claims to be God in the NT, and expressly denies he's God in each of the gospels; and Paul also expressly denies it. It doesn't become doctrine till the 4th century CE, more than two clear centuries after the NT was written, the result of church politics around the demand that Jesus be elevated to God status without making Christianity polytheistic like the pagans.

And having become doctrine, it has the embarrassing quality of incoherence. The church expresses this fact by calling the doctrine "a mystery in the strict sense". A "mystery in the strict sense" means it "cannot be known by unaided human reason apart from revelation, nor cogently demonstrated by reason once it has been revealed" ─ their words, not mine. Another way of saying the same thing is that the Trinity Doctrine is a nonsense.

The incoherence boils down to the claim that each of the Father, Jesus and the Ghost is 100% of God, that 1+1+1=1. It includes the question, who answers the phone when you pray to "God"? It has Jesus on the cross saying "Me, me, why have I forsaken me?". And since Jesus is the son of God, Jesus is 100% his own father ─ though of course both the Father and the Ghost are each 100% Jesus' father too.

Yes, Jesus said "I and the Father are one" but he also said that He and His disciples were one.
Wolves in sheep's clothing played games with those words.
 
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blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Yes, Jesus said "In and the Father are one" but he also said that He and His disciples were one.
Wolves in sheep's clothing played games with those words.
Yes, Jesus says that in John In 10:30. He explains what he means by the expression in John 17:

20 “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. 22 The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.​

In other words, says John’s author, the oneness is of a kind available to all believers, not an equality with Yahweh.
 

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
No, because God is one person rather than three co-persons.

Jesus is God.

That's word games. Jesus in ONE with the Father, but he is not God.
Jesus himself said he did not know what his father would do concerning
judgment and his return, for instance.
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
Man is a physical body and a non physical spirit. The soul and the body are really the same thing. Adam became a living soul. The same word translated as soul is also translated as animal or beast or body. Mam is a body and a spirit. God is a father and a son. Both are dualities not trinities.
I don't think so... the body was created... The soul without the body is a dead body. When Moses appeared to Jesus, it wasn't his physical body.
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
Christianese. That's cute. I don't use life-force myself. Sounds sci-fi. If you dropped the words soul and spirit, you can say the former is the psyche and the latter is the "act' of expression." The body is the vehicle through which the act (motion/spirit of something/passion) or behavior is expressed.

"His heavy trauma burdened his soul, paralyzed his body, distorted his mind, and stagnated his spirit."
Very good thought-filled statement.
 

PearlSeeker

Well-Known Member
Do you believe in the trinity?

Why? Why not?
No. Not as defined in the dogma (3 persons = 1 God). After researching pro and contra arguments the latter seemed more plausible. But I see the triune pattern/archetype everywhere in universe (yin, yang and connection/relation). It is the way God manifests.
 

74x12

Well-Known Member
That's word games. Jesus in ONE with the Father, but he is not God.
Jesus himself said he did not know what his father would do concerning
judgment and his return, for instance.
Yes, those were the days when he was in the world, in the flesh, born a mortal human being. At the time He said that; but after the resurrection He said "all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth"

So if you have all power that leaves nothing left. So he knows everything. For example they asked Jesus the same question in Acts 1. Previously he said he doesn't know the day or hour that the Son of man returns. Now in Acts 1 he says it's not given for them to know the time that God put in his own power ... So he doesn't say he doesn't know. Only they don't know. Jesus knows everything once he ascends into heaven.

Ephesians 4:10 even says Jesus ascended up far above all heavens and fills all things. How do you fill all things if you aren't God?
 

lostwanderingsoul

Well-Known Member
exactly.... which is why I say the body is not the spirit.
You are exactly right. The body is not the spirit. But the body IS the soul. Adam became a living soul. Same word can mean animal or beast or body. Adam did not GET a soul. Adam was a soul. And that soul became a living soul or creature when life was breathed into him. Everything in nature is a duality. Up and down, positive and negative, male and female, body and spirit, father and son. God IS a spirit and God is holy. The Holy Spirit is God's spirit not some separate "person" in a trinity.
 

Vee

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Do you believe in the trinity?

Why? Why not?

Hi, no I don't believe in the trinity..
I believe the concept of Trinity was one of several pagan ideas adopted by Christianism. Trinity has been around for many years and is common to a number of religions. The Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics points out that “In Indian religion, we meet with the trinitarian group of Brahmā, Siva, and Viṣṇu; and in Egyptian religion with the trinitarian group of Osiris, Isis, and Horus . . . It's not only in historical religions that we find God viewed as a Trinity.
This believe isn't backed by the Bible.
In the entire Bible there are only three verses (1 John 5:7; Matthew 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14) that speak of the Father, Son and holy spirit in some sort of connection, but not one of these says anything specific about the trinity.
1 John 5:7 says "for there are three witness bearers", Matt 28:18 says "Go, therefore, and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit" (please notice it doesn't say to baptize them in the name of the trinity), and 2 Cor. 13:14 says "The undeserved kindness of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the sharing in the holy spirit be with all of you."
These are the verses usually "blamed" for the idea of trinity in the bible, but there is no actual mention of it, on the contrary. There are verses where God identifies Jesus as His son, and verses where Jesus identifies God as His father. A father and a son cannot be the same person.
In John 20:17 Jesus says "Stop clinging to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father and to my God and your God". John 23:31 reinforces that Jesus is God's son and not God himself "But these have been written down so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and because of believing, you may have life by means of his name".
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
You are exactly right. The body is not the spirit. But the body IS the soul.

No... the body HAS a living soul and that is why the soul is still alive when the body dies and why the body of Adam was nothing but clay until he received the soul. Without the soul, he is still a lump of clay and, as the saying goes, you came from dust and will return to dust.
 

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
Yes, those were the days when he was in the world, in the flesh, born a mortal human being. At the time He said that; but after the resurrection He said "all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth"

So if you have all power that leaves nothing left. So he knows everything. For example they asked Jesus the same question in Acts 1. Previously he said he doesn't know the day or hour that the Son of man returns. Now in Acts 1 he says it's not given for them to know the time that God put in his own power ... So he doesn't say he doesn't know. Only they don't know. Jesus knows everything once he ascends into heaven.

Ephesians 4:10 even says Jesus ascended up far above all heavens and fills all things. How do you fill all things if you aren't God?

Still doesn't say that Jesus will judge or knows the day of judgment.

I see this Trinity business like this:
It was firstly a political thing, a compromise that Constantine personally made to
stop doctrinal feuding. Constantine, BTW, was the Herod of his day.
Questions of Trinity probably became a test of a person's allegiance to Catholicism.

At the same time these doctrines (like indulgences, transubstantiation, purgatory etc)
were added to "Christianity" (ie Catholicism) much of the simplicity of the Gospels was
removed from doctrine and practice.
 

lostwanderingsoul

Well-Known Member
No... the body HAS a living soul and that is why the soul is still alive when the body dies and why the body of Adam was nothing but clay until he received the soul. Without the soul, he is still a lump of clay and, as the saying goes, you came from dust and will return to dust.
I can also say no. You are confusing spirit and soul. The spirit is the life force in a body. The soul is the body. In Genesis when it says God created the animals and fish, it is the same word that is translated "soul" for Adam. Adam became a living animal or beast or creature. A living body.. Otherwise God created the souls of the fields and the souls in the sea. They are just animals and so is Adam. Except Adam has a spirit and the others do not.
 
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