This does not fly, because it is already present in a very early form in the letters of Saint Paul, who was Jewish and writing to mixed communities of Jews, Greeks, and Romans.
B.S. That’s like saying that the God of Moses and the God of Abraham and the God of Noah make Judaism non-monotheistic. Or appearing as a Pillar of Fire or Pillar of Cloud or showing his back to Moses, or as a burning bush. Deliberately doing that would be anti-Semitic. It is no less disgusting when it is pointed at Christians. If you want to be an atheist, that’s fine with me, but if God wants to dress up as Jesus one day or float about as the Holy Spirit the next or walk through the Garden as the Father on another, that doesn’t mean he is any more illogical than finding that Star Trek aliens can have off-spring with humans, in fact less so.
Mocking people’s religion for kicks is impolite and borish. Those of us who are religious get that you don’t think it makes sense and don’t believe. There is no need to be an asshole about it. And if you insist on being a jerk, at least use smilies.
This was not intended to be mocking in even the slightest way. It is intended to explain how this offshoot of Judaism became so popular among the pagans.
Whatever I think about the theology of the early church fathers, I have to admit that they were absolutely brilliant marketers. Much of the principles of Christianity post-Jesus can be understood in this way. I am definitely not contending that Paul was a cynical salesman. I’m sure he absolutely believed in what he preached, but he had an intuitive genius in using marketing principles in doing so. Consider the abolition of dietary rules. When your product has something which stands in the way of its adoption by the masses, you change it. Is it really easier to believe that God changed his mind about this or that there was an attempt to assist people in achieving salvation at the expense of eliminating these laws.
What are patron saints more similar to - something in Jewish tradition of Roman minor gods? (Saints are not gods, they just take on some of the functions of these gods.) We know that Christianity adopted many customs from the pagans - why not this also?
This has nothing to do with atheism, and everything to do with not being raised in an environment where Christian beliefs were a given.
I’m not sure an analogy to fiction, whether Star Trek or Sherlock Holmes, helps the case for the trinity much. Humans are amazingly inventive in finding explanations for even the most evidently self-contradictory texts. (Let’s wait for a replay of the Easter Story challenge as an example.) That many believers here just say the Trinity can’t be explained by logic marks is as particularly flagrant. None of this proves that it is not true, but an alternate explanation that explains all the facts must be considered.
The authentic letters or the ones written by others? In any case, I think this tenet would have evolved fairly early, since it would be an obvious issue with those who thought the Roman gods real. Did the Peter/James group push the Son of God or Son of Man aspects? I’d think they’d be closer to traditional Jewish belief - and closer to the actual beliefs of Jesus also.
I admit it’s been awhile since the last time I considered any of this, but my recollection is that the notion that “there is ONE God, the Trinity represents the sides or aspects of him” doesn’t represent the theology of any long-established Christian denomination.
The problem isn’t that he wants to dress up as Jesus one day and walk through the Garden as the Father on another. The problem is that he wants to dress up as Jesus while praying to the Father, saying stuff like “Let not my will, but your will, be done.” That’s non-monotheistic in a way that “pillar of fire one day, burning bush another, white-bearded old dude some other time” isn’t.
We don’t need a mystery that cannot be conceived to grasp the Jewish concept; it’s like something out of Star Trek or maybe a comic book, but it’s still pretty straightforward. An entity who asks his father to forgive those who know not what they do, and then asks why have you forsaken me – for him to be the “you” and the “me” in that conversation is endlessly mysterious for would-be monotheists.
That’s modalism.
Anyone who says they can explain it, especially by analogy, inevitably explains it wrong - because it’s exceptional. It’s not like anything else.
It’s only logically contradictory if you assume that only one state is possible at a time.
I can explain it. It’s a case where contradictory assertions have been made and it has been decided that none of them can be rejected because that would cast doubt on the reliability of the canon. Thus, a conscious decision has been made to ignore the contradictions on an institutional level.
Seems simple enough to me, and analogizes directly to when any TV show breaks canon with a successive episode and does not attempt to retcon the peices back together - except possibly that most shows don’t make ignoring the issue an official stance.
That’s an interesting and possibly useful explanation of how it works, but not what it is.
Just to elaborate. It can easily be described. It cannot be coherently explained how the description works.
Yes it is; “contradictory assertions”. They are assertions - bare, evidence free claims - that contradict each other. There is no underlying reality; not even a conceptual framework for one, which is why it gets labeled a “mystery”. The assertions are all there are.
Plus, TV shows that have a canon don’t claim to be something other than fiction.
What’s to describe? As noted, all that’s here are assertions. If I were to assert that the sisters’ mother in Charmed was killed by a water demon, and then later assert that she was killed by a (very different) sea hag instead, can you explain how this contradiction “works”?
It’s just an unreconciled contradiction in asserted dogma. That’s all there is to it. The only notable thing about is is that the church is refusing to admit that there’s a problem there. Which given the usual stance to the various other contradictory stuff in the bible isn’t even that notable.
Actually I’ve met very few shows that admit to be fiction inside the canon, and have read a few first-person fiction books that claim to be true in their text, with no disclaimer in sight. (Make of that what you will.)
I don’t believe that’s being contested in, or is even the topic of this thread.
I don’t think the church is avoiding addressing the contradiction, but rather, is cherishing it and insisting that it indicates something profound.
That’s kind of avoiding addressing it though (at least the contradiction part of it, anyway). I guess I just don’t see any further depth to be found in the subject, besides perhaps the academic question of what the classifications of the different heretical attempts to inject some sense of the notion are.
The topic is “Is the Christian Trinity Incoherent?”; pointing out that the claims made about it are contradictory is a way of saying “yes”. So yes, it is on-subject. Besides; what I said was in response to something you said.
Again, the problem is that this isn’t about a “successive episode” that breaks the TV show’s earlier canon; the better analogy would be to some TV show that establishes and breaks canon in the same episode. The official stance in this case really is that the character who asks “why have you forsaken me” after explicitly specifying that “let not my will but thy will be done” does claim to be “you” and “me”.
Did the theologians here on the SDMB think that this is a particularly new debate? And that they could shed some additional insight that hadn’t come up in the last 2000 years?
