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Old 01-20-2002, 11:04 AM   #1
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Post Christians, make sense out of the trinity for me.

If the Christian God has existed for all eternity, how can you account for its triune nature? The OT mentions only one god. It says nothing of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The NT comes along and mentions all three.

Now, I assume God (Christian) has existed for eternity, for that is what just about all Christians tell me. However, Jesus originated some 2000 years ago. That would make a portion of the trinity to be somewhat less than eternal. As to the Holy Ghost, I have no idea where it came from.

If your God begat a son, created another portion of the Godhead if you will, Jesus cannot be eternal.
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Old 01-20-2002, 11:14 AM   #2
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Hey Foxhole A,

You may as well just say "Hey Christians, spew incomprehensible nonsense in my general direction"!. I have long given up hope that someone can justify the equation 3=1. Good luck, though. Maybe someone will come along and suprise us.

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Old 01-20-2002, 11:41 AM   #3
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Cool

Foxhole: I have asked this question and the answer most frequently given is that the Trinity is ultimately a mystery. In other words, we don't know but damn those ancient bastards for coming up with this and expecting us to defend it 1600 years later. It's certain that Jesus didn't see himself as the Jewish God or any part of this God. He would have seen this claim as serious blasphemy.
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Old 01-20-2002, 11:42 AM   #4
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Very easy Foxhole Atheist.

At least in Catholicism (which is after Jesus) we have the capacity to become Christ (the Baptist tell me it is in the Cathechism and object to it, (or I would not know it was there)).

If we have the capacity to become Christ and Christ can become one with God "my Lord and my God" Jn.24:28), we, as humans while in oblivion to this reality, are divided and so are God the Father, God the son, and God the HS because of our oblivion. From this follows that when we are no longer in oblivion (one with God) the HS is redundant wherefore we crown Mary as seat of wisdom because she was the master of ceremonies throughout it all (in charge of our destiny== hence the lack of free will).

This now makes the Holy trinity an earthly perspective and the Happy trinity a heavenly perspective.

It is explained very easy in another way. If you are divided in your own mind between your conscious and your subconscious mind your conscious mind would be the son and your subconscious mind would be the father. The relationship between the two would be the HS. This now also means that when these two become one the HS would be redundant and Mary becomes the mediatrix. Why Mary, because of the positive and negative stands needed for intercourse.

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Old 01-20-2002, 02:01 PM   #5
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There you go, Foxhole Atheist, doesn't Amos's explanation make it all crystal clear?

We can place a space craft on another planet yet drivel like this is still being served up and believed. It is unbelievable.
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Old 01-20-2002, 03:27 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally posted by sullster:
<strong>There you go, Foxhole Atheist, doesn't Amos's explanation make it all crystal clear?

We can place a space craft on another planet yet drivel like this is still being served up and believed. It is unbelievable.</strong>
But sullster, it is easy to go to the moon if you know how to do it. In fact, nothing in life is hard if you know what you are doing.
 
Old 01-20-2002, 04:26 PM   #7
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sullster:

I think I’ve figured Amos out. He’s like a writer that keeps a voice recorder handy to capture his thoughts as they arise. I do the same thing myself for keeping track of issues at work.

However, unlike myself, that edits those thoughts as I capture them on paper in an effort to have them make sense when I convey them to my staff, Amos simply writes them down verbatim and then posts them here. It is up to us to do the editing.

As to the trinity, I give up. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />
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Old 01-22-2002, 10:48 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally posted by Foxhole Atheist:
<strong>If the Christian God has existed for all eternity, how can you account for its triune nature? The OT mentions only one god. It says nothing of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The NT comes along and mentions all three.

Now, I assume God (Christian) has existed for eternity, for that is what just about all Christians tell me. However, Jesus originated some 2000 years ago. That would make a portion of the trinity to be somewhat less than eternal. As to the Holy Ghost, I have no idea where it came from.

If your God begat a son, created another portion of the Godhead if you will, Jesus cannot be eternal.</strong>
If I were going to deny God, I hope that I would at least take the time to make sure I understood what I was denying.
You are mistaken that the OT does not mention the Trinity: It is explicit almost from the very first verse; "the Spirit of God was over the waters..;" and "let us make man in our image."

The Father did not "beget" the Son "in time." The Son became a man, Jesus, in time.

The Trinity cannot be experienced, so cannot be made "sense" of. If you really want to understand the idea, I recommend the article by Jonathan Edwards, it's the best explanation I've read.

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: theophilus ]</p>
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Old 01-22-2002, 12:14 PM   #9
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Quote:
<strong>theophilus:</strong>If I were going to deny God, I hope that I would at least take the time to make sure I understood what I was denying.
You are mistaken that the OT does not mention the Trinity: It is explicit almost from the very first verse; "the Spirit of God was over the waters..;" and "let us make man in our image."
Obviously, <a href="http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/j4j-2000/index.html" target="_blank">the Jews disagree</a>. If the OT explicitly stated that God was some form of triune being, why is it that the doctrine was not introduced until the formative period of Christianity and even then, there was disagreement as to whether or not the NT even mentions it. At best, even the New Testament only hints at it.

Quote:
The Father did not "beget" the Son "in time." The Son became a man, Jesus, in time.
If the Son had existed from the beginning of time, it seems like a sufficiently important fact to be included in the Old Testament, don't you think? Find me a mention of "the Son" in explicit language in the OT. Or for that matter, find a simple, explicit statement of the trio "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" in the NT. To the best of my knowledge, such passages don't exist.

Quote:
The Trinity cannot be experienced, so cannot be made "sense" of. If you really want to understand the idea, I recommend the article by Jonathan Edwards, it's the best explanation I've read.
It seems more likely that a nonsensical doctrine would be in error rather than questioning the reliability of human comprehension. After all, we were created in the image of God, and if that God has a triune nature, it should be well within our bounds to understand the concept, it should be intuitive, yet that is not the case.

By the way, even Edwards admits that the trinity has scant Old Testament justification.

Peace out.
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Old 01-23-2002, 01:26 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally posted by Grizzly:
Hey Foxhole A,
You may as well just say "Hey Christians, spew incomprehensible nonsense in my general direction"!. I have long given up hope that someone can justify the equation 3=1. Good luck, though. Maybe someone will come along and suprise us.
Griz
Well, how can Atheists justify the equation 2=1?
They have and I will bet even you do.
The problem here is that Atheists don't allow themselves to understand that there are things that do exist (even in our Space-time continuum) that are beyond our complete understanding. We must simply put off the demand that SingleDad makes: "Of course, I will want to underdstand everything,..." until we are capable of understanding it. In other words, I. Newton didn't understand General Relativity.

But I really want you to answer the question above: How can the majority of Atheists believe 2=1?

Wizardry said:
Quote:
Obviously, the Jews disagree. If the OT explicitly stated that God was some form of triune being, why is it that the doctrine was not introduced until the formative period of Christianity and even then, there was disagreement as to whether or not the NT even mentions it. At best, even the New Testament only hints at it.
Your reference to the Jewish web site was to general, which article were you refering to?
What do you mean "whether or not the NT even mentions it"?

Quote:
It seems more likely that a nonsensical doctrine would be in error rather than questioning the reliability of human comprehension. After all, we were created in the image of God, and if that God has a triune nature, it should be well within our bounds to understand the concept, it should be intuitive, yet that is not the case.
Same as with the 2=1 concept you hold, we can only grasp a small part of infinity by generalizing it. Methods of dealing with infinity in calculus are perhaps a good anology. Scientist say there were once more than the 3 spacial and 1 temporial demension we experience today. I don't undersatand it, but I accept it after their simplified explanations.
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