Teritos
Active Member
Yes three Gods, for they are three different persons, but in their divine nature they are one.
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Christians are polytheists?
- Thread starter Teritos
- Start date
I don't think I've ever heard a Trinitarian state they believe in three gods. I think the Trinitarian formulation is to speak about the distinct 'roles' in the Divine "Being", which can be thought of as "persons", not in the literal sense of actual entities, but in the metaphoric face of the Divine. That "face" of God, not a different God.
It's rather more like this. Let's call the Absolute, "Source", or "All", or "God". In the New Testament language, God is portrayed as Father, as Jesus Christ, and as the Holy Spirit. It is all the same God, seen through different sets of eyes. These are not three different gods. Rather they are archetypes of the Divine Reality, interpreted through human experiences. The Trinity formula is an attempt to take something wholly transcendent and mystical in nature, and to create a sort of "formula" for the rational mind to contemplate as it seeks Enlightenment. Sort of like a Koan.
Now, of course, people need to make the Divine concrete and literal, in order for them to think about it before they've actually tasted what the Divine actually is. The early conceptual God is very much external to one's own person, supernatural, a cosmic entity, and such. So that is how the Trinity formula gets interpreted as, through that framework or lens of reality.
Although, not a being a big fan of the word "persons" to describe the Trinity, as it has so much anthropomorphic baggage, I suppose you could think of them as different deities. That really depends on the individual. But to the real point, it is all one Divine Source, and each of these expressions of the Divine is fully expressed as God in all three. That to me, is more what the Trinity is, and I believe it touches into metaphorically.
Sand Dancer
Crazy Cat Lady
Isaiah pretty much was the first time monotheism was cemented.
I think there's an inherent contradiction in the doctrine of the Trinity. Many people who call themselves Trinitarians have resolved the contradiction by adopting a position that they don't realize isn't Trinitarianism (e.g. Modalism, often).
I would still consider a Modalist who calls themselves a Trinitarian to be a monotheist.
Creative interpretation of the Bible, there.
Regardless, I do sense a bit of goalpost-shifting from your OP. I have no doubt you think your faith is correct; you wouldn't be in it if you thought it was false... but was that really the point you were trying to get at with this thread?
Teritos
Active Member
That's not "creative." The Bible clearly states that only those who believe that God became man, was crucified and raised from the dead will enter paradise. Only the Trinitarians believe in this message, as did the first Christians like Ireneaeus.
Sure it does.
Certainly some early Christians believed it. The insertion of the only explicitly Trinitarian passage in the Bible centuries after the book's original authorship had to come from somewhere.
I think I'll agree with this. As I mentioned elsewhere, the Trinity is by nature paradoxical. That means it is inherently self-contradictory. That does not mean it is not true however. It means the dualistic mind cannot comprehend the nature of the Absolute, or the Infinite. Which statement itself is logical. Can any mind comprehend infinity?
But as I posted to another poster in this thread today, people dumb things down into concrete literal terms, trying to put fixed handles upon Infinity and call it an object outside of oneself. So I agree, because they can't rest in a paradox and need to be able to conceptually imagine God in order to be able to relate to the Divine, the more rational solution is modalism. It keeps the Three, all God, as opposed to what the JWs do in stripping Jesus of Divinity. I agree.
Actually, that's precisely what it means.
You are saying no paradox can exist and still be true? If it's not rational, it's not true?
I'm saying that internally contradictory things cannot be true.
The word "paradox" gets applied both to things that only appear to be contradictory as well as things that really are contradictory.
Of course, if you disagree with me, I trust that you acknowledge the possibility that we're both right.
No. It's just non-Trinitarians trying to tell us what we believe. I certainly never believed in 3 separate deities.
Teritos
Active Member
It's so great you are an atheist, i pray you will stay your whole life as an atheist.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
" God became man and was crucified and was raised, which is of course my personal belief. "
And it is not correct. Jesus never said it. Please quote from Jesus in first person in this connection, not from the Gospels, which is a third person narrative, please.
Regards
Regarding the divinity and resurrection of Jesus, they can be gleaned from the text of the New Testament, but outside of this, they are conjecture. The crucifixion, however, is independently verified through the few available historical sources (see Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus, and a brief reference in Mara bar Serapion’s letter).
The New Testament (the standard of Christian belief and practice) is crystal clear on this matter: while other cultures and religions have their own beliefs, for the Christians, there is but only one God.
DNB
Christian
Why would you be content to be called a polytheist - it is in and of itself a contradictory term.
How can more than one omnipotent, omniscience and omnipresent entity exist simultaneously within the same sphere of existence? If each one is entirely complete, entirely perfect with no room for growth or mutability, first, how would you be able to recognize or refer to one from the other, and two, how in the world could there be any practical or functional reason to share the same realm - it would be the epitome of redundancy.
Therefore, any notion of more than one divine being is fundamentally absurd and implausible. If the term divinity necessitates perfection and completion, in all attributes and functionality, then to exist in a sphere where you are duplicated implies imperfection - your presence is purposeless, inefficacious and superfluous.
Thus, trinitarian theology defames the one true God on so many levels (Biblical attestation, soteriology, ontology, meaning of faith, etc...). In all truth, both modalism and trinitarianism are heresies and both deny one salvation (no, you wouldn't be in paradise as it stands now). The transcendent God cannot become non-transcendent, nor can the omnipresent God become circumscribed in space and time. Trinitarians, contrary to their creed, are polytheists - they have defined a circle, but merely called it a square.
Only the God the Father is the one true divine being in the entire universe.
DNB
Christian
Yes, ...but where the controversy lies is whether they have earnestly defined their creed correctly - they claim monotheism, but the formulation of their creeds demands an interpretation of polytheism. Each person of the godhead can individually, autonomously and simultaneously, create an entire universe on their own, providentially care for the maintenance and sustentation of all things pertaining to their universe, and answer all the prayers of the beings created in their image - for all intents and purposes, this is categorically not monotheism!
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Polytheism would be to say that there are three deities with independent minds and wills.
Trinitarianism does not posit this at all. It posits three "distinct manners of subsisting" or instantiations of the one, self-same divine essence, entity, being and mind in relation to Itself. Not three minds with independent consciousnesses cooperating with one another.
We have to carefully scrutinize what the Fathers (Tertullian, Athanasius etc.) actually meant by persons here, because it does not carry our modern connotations of independent agency and being.
As I noted above, it means three subsisting and concrete relations of one divine being, not three 'individual' minds with independent agencies, wills, thoughts and intentions etc. The persons are nothing other than the active relations subsisting in the eternal divine ousia.
The personality of God, His consciousness, is singular and found in the one essence (the ousia) which each Person is, because as St. Thomas Aquinas tells us in the Summa: “the act of God’s intellect is His substance (essence)” and thus His self-consciousness as an object in Himself is common to the Persons as one 'being', rather than individuated.
I'm not a Modalist, nor am I polytheist but a Trinitarian monotheist. I know what I believe and how to differentiate it from heresies to the left and right of that Nicene orthodox position.
To reiterate:
Trinitarianism - we're talking about three distinct manners of relating of the one and same Being to Itself, which are called subsisting relations because they actually exist in our theology ('subsist') and are not just different modes in which God manifests Himself to us (modalism). Unity of the one essence is consubstantial between the three hypostases or relations that subsist/exist in the divine essence, each of which is that one, singular and self-same supreme reality "God".
Tritheism - three separate divine beings united, like three different human persons, together by a shared plan. Unity of essence can only be meant analogously in this case, not literally.
Modalism - one divine person simply "manifesting" Himself in different temporary guises in relation to us (His creation) with no real distinction of relations in Himself. This is Unitarianism, God has no distinctions of hypostases, only the one essence and attributes (i.e. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are merely "masks" He assumes or temporary ways in which he reveals Himself to us).
Trinity - God relating to Himself in three distinct subsisting relations, Tritheism - three gods relating to one another, Modalism - God relating to us in three masks/modes/ways.
To an atheist, I appreciate that this probably seems a bit like "angels dancing on a pin-head" level stuff but to a theist like myself, the distinctions are extremely important.
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