When there was a pantheon and Council of Canaanite Gods and angels.
Drawings are not an argument for the Trinity.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Why is the Trinity so controversial?
- Thread starter Eddi
- Start date
When there was a pantheon and Council of Canaanite Gods and angels.
Drawings are not an argument for the Trinity.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Seems to help most people.
syo
Well-Known Member
Yes. Among them. Not including us.
They both rule the whole creation.
No thousand words in this picture. If people need the help they need to learn to read.
Yes. Among them. Not including us.
Not according to Jesus, who stated 'the Father is greater than I.' The heirarchy of Gods is standard in polytheism. In the Bible it is also 'my God is greater than your God.' The conflict between the different tribes is most often exemplified by a rivilry of Gods.
Along with the Council of Deities (angels or more Gods?) in Heaven, and a Satan despite being condemned in Genesis and cast out, he is player in the Book of Job.
Last edited:
Like I said, for many a picture is worth a thousand words. You happen to be a reader.
syo
Well-Known Member
I think you're absolutely right, I think the Greek philosophy and style of language influenced the thinkers a lot and it ended up mixing with some Jewish things and let to these weird compromises and explanations after lots of arguing and debating and then the language and the references and symbolism was increasingly lost or taken more literally by people who weren't deeply versed in all these things. When the Greek Philosophers talk about things, even the Gnostics, it can make a lot of sense, and we understand them as just speaking about things with multiple meanings and symbolically a lot of the time, but when it is taken super-literally it can lead to the current way many Christians seem to be thinking about things, and confuse the heck out of people.
The Stoics seem to have been at least one factor, along with their term "Logos" or "The Word" or whatever as "God's Command".
Now this version of the Trinity can make sense to me:
God (Zeus Hypsistos) generates from himself "Logos", The Word, in Hinduism its "Vac", and this is God's Power to Bring Forth or Make Things Real, to Generate Information, which in the Qur'an it says is God's Ability to "Say" "Be" and it "Is" or "Be and it Be, Kun Fiya Kun", instant generation of reality, which is the Invisible God's Power (even Zeus was described as being non-visible, so that his statue was described as being symbolic of this invisibility by being naked up top, while clothed on the bottom representing how he is concealed by the fabric of reality perhaps or nature as well as civilized, but in essential form is nude to represent invisibility). So then it makes sense that "God" and "God's Power to Generate" which is "Coming Out of God" in a sense, something God produces or emits, can be called metaphorically "Son" which also translates as "Servant" "Herald" "Product of" and God as "Father" can be translated also as "Master, Originator".
Finally, the third quality after the ability to Generate, would be the ability to Animate or move, give life to, which would be the Holy Spirit, the Animating Power, as all things appear in motion and animated and not still, it would be this all pervading Spirit of God underlying and within and behind all this Animation and Moment of what is generated by God's Word or Command.
Then it suddenly makes sense when it says that through the Word all things were brought forth or created.
It seems also that they were saying "Jesus Christ" "contained, and spoke the Word of God" as in his teachings were God's teachings and in accordance with God's words and laws.
So something so straightforward really, seems to have gotten really contorted and mangled with the way people were using and understanding words over time.
So in the sense that I described it, I believe in all these things and the Trinity in that sense, that God is the Originator, called "The Pater of Heavenly Lights" as in the Originator of the Constellations and Stars and Planets (also called Zeus Hypsistos) and the essential power of this unseeable, non-physical Mind or intelligence, is the power to Generate Experience or Reality via "Word" or "Command", basically thinking or metaphorically "speaking" things into existence, the Logos, and then also animating them, breathing life and motion and movement into everything, and creating change and different moments one after the other, and that is God's All Pervading Holy Spirit which is God as well, who is The Unseen Mind, the Unseen Power that Generates all experiences and all that is within those experiences every moment, and the experiencers, the life, the movement the animation and change that we see in all this movement and activity and everything vibrating and moving about being God's spirit behind it all, also giving us our lives and breathing and whatever, and when our life leaves us, it returns to God and becomes One with God, and then may be given back to us for afterlife experiences or whatever God then generates.
So that is fine by me, but the Christians refuse that interpretation or meaning at this point, even though it would save them a lot of trouble, and it would be so much easier and simpler really, but instead they love to be apart from everyone and everything, and their whole religion seems to have formed as a kind of steady defiance of this or that, made up of opposites, so that they couldn't accept the other Gods even as references to their God, but had to make all those out to be demonic entities, and rejected all of them as literal and basically evil angels or monsters, and made their God unlike any other that has ever been thought of or referred to before, having no precedent in all the history, all the scriptures. They wouldn't even accept the "Pagan Monotheism" which seemed to pop up and even gets some statements mentioned through the Oracle of Apollo at Didyma, but no, they rejected it all. I guess its not dissimilar to some of the incessant rejection that the Buddhists did in relation to some of the Vedic beliefs and philosophy, though they still never seemed to come up with anything so strange a belief at the top of things as the Trinity, but ideas like the Dharmakaya and Rupakaya and "Three Kayas" or something did pop up.
Instead of saying that Jesus was generated via the power known as The Word and was made to "Be" and also spoke the words and commands of God to people to teach them as a messenger or herald of God (alternative meanings of the words used and translated sometimes as "child" or "son", pais and huios), they insisted that Jesus was the God on Earth, and Son of God, which the people might have possibly understood as a claim that he was a Living Hero, a Demi-God, half mortal, half God or something, but the Christians said "no no, he was not like that, or those other ones aren't real, but Jesus was God, called God's Son, Born Through Mary, who said the Father is Greater Than I, and that Not even The Son Knows when the Day of Judgment will Be, and every sort of confusing thing which seems to contradict the idea that Jesus was God incarnate really, except that it is said by son that Jesus is The Word, and The Word was with God and the Word was God, which some also take as "was a God", creating a lot of difficulties and confusion.
At this point, the ones who seem to be really quite polytheistic in their theological ideas are mainly the LDS Church, the Mormons, though they try to conceal it, they barely conceal it, and other Christians reject them for such reasons.
syo
Well-Known Member
Satan is an angel, if i am not mistaken. he is a servant of God.
i think, the evil that happens in our world is because people think satan rebelled and he now has power.
but satan never rebelled. he is a servant of god. as i understood.
i think, the evil that happens in our world is because people think Satan rebelled and he now has power.
It is difficult to describe Satan as only angel? or 'a servant to God?' since He has his own domain and independent influence on Creation.
The question is whether Satan rebelled and Biblically Genesis he did and was kicked out, but hangs around playing games in the Book of Job.
It is a fact that the Hebrews were a polytheistic Canaanite tribe and this is reflected in Genesis equivalent to Canaanite texts including names of Gods. Monotheism came later, but persists in the text and is the part of basis of the Christians claim of the Trinity. .
Last edited:
syo
Well-Known Member
Independent? No. He takes permission from God.
Take Job for example. Satan suggests but God takes the final decision.
syo
Well-Known Member
Are you talking about the forbidden fruit? I don't take this particular part very serious.
The trinity is 3 persons with each their own role, but the trinity owns all the creation. the creation is not divided to fit the trinity.
SeekerOnThePath
On a mountain between Nietzsche and Islam
One thing that is missed in mainstream Christian theology is the concept of the "bride of Christ".
Which like the Eucharist is to actually be taken literally.
In the New Testament there is constant fractal metaphors (e.g. John 15:5 - this is not mere metaphor), In Paul's epistles and in the Johannine epistles the same thing is expounded in regards to the concept of "The Church" (akin to Caliphate in Islam).
Basically the Trinitarian model misses the fact that in the NT, Jesus is said to bind creation to God itself.
The "Holy Spirit" is not an individual thing like the Son is, the Holy Spirit is just a force not an intelligence.
Greek Philosophy was very influential on the New Testament and later Christian theology, though yes.
Back to the fractal analogies. Basically, take Revelation 19:7-9, 21:9 as a good example, as with 1 Corinthians 12:13, 12:27, Ephesians 1:22, 5:23-24, Romans 7:4, etc.
Basically what is actually being conveyed, in an anthropomorphic manner is apotheosis.
The real NT Trinity, if there ever was one, would be: The Father, The Son, The Bride/Church.
dybmh
דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
It becomes polytheistic if Jesus is used as a gate to get to The Father.
Gargovic Malkav
Well-Known Member
I don't understand how The Holy Trinity is so controversial...
And I don't see why it is taken to be polytheism either
It seems to make perfect sense to me:
View attachment 44829
It's a single entitiy made up of three separate parts
Just like a triangle is a single entity made out of three separate lines...
It says that God is a single entity which we may know as either a Father, the Holy Spirit, or as Jesus Christ
I know people find this confusing and call it polytheism but I don't really know why...
I'm not out to bicker or debate, I genuinely want to know
I'm especially interested in the accusation of polytheism
I understand how it's not polytheism, as these parts are supposed to represent 3 different aspects of the same God. Yet, it makes things unnecessarily complicated in my opinion. According to my logic, God the Father is God in His original form, the One who is, even before creation was. The Son is like His perfect servant(though I myself consider it blasphemous to call such a servant God, nor do I think such a title only applies to Jesus per se), reflecting His Ways in human form. And I regard the Holy Spirit as what I would call "the right mindset". The Holy Spirit is the way of thinking and seeing one needs to become that perfect servant. This is just based on my own way to make sense of it though and doesn't seem to accord with what is taught in most Christian denominations. I'm personally not a fan of the Trinity doctrine because, like I said before, it makes things unnecessarily complicated.
Last edited:
That's not Trinitarianism; that's modalism.