EmpiricalGod

Triune God is custom made for us

I cannot but help to think that Jesus mostly but also the holy spirit that make up the Christian trinity only exist to serve a purpose us humans.

Let me elaborate. First let’s remember that the orthodox doctrine of Christianity is that the triune God is eternal and always was, that means to exist before the universe and humans were created.

Let’s recall all the functions that each God-head can only perform.
First we have the Holy Spirit, some mysterious force that guides Christians from day to day, and convicts them, can’t do much else though. Then we have Jesus , who is the only way to the Father God-head. He can also manifest in flesh, and apparently die and get resurrected to take sins away. The Father godhead apparently is the one judging; and who can’t be seen by human eyes.

Now imagine the time before the universe was created. In eternity past, all those abilities of each God-head now sound ridiculous and don’t make sense. In other words they are all custom designed to serve some purpose for us humans, if you remove us from the equation Jesus’ ability of being the only way to the Father for example is absurd, since nothing else is in existence, to whom would he be the way to?

Lógos Sokratikós

I agree. Absurd.

But with us in the equation it's still absurd!
An all powerful God who nonetheless could not forgive humanity unless he incarnated as a man and killed himself, went to hell, soared back to heaven where his other split personality is, and sit on the right side of it, to send a third split personality down to earth as a "defender", who by the way seems to be on leave of absence because he can't even keep his followers believing the same things, splintering into sects and when not killing each other deploring each other.

The crux of the absurdity is the need for atonement of himself to himself because he cannot convince himself to forgive humanity (for being ourselves BTW), while Islam and Judaism work a.o.k. without such complications.

Martian Astronomer

One question that I like to ask is: Even if you assume that Christianity and the conventional interpretation of the trinity are true, wouldn't it still be possible that there are other "persons" of the godhead that we don't know about yet?

I mean, if you look at the Old Testament, God went out of his way a lot to tell people "The Lord your God is One." and "There are no other gods beside me." The law of Moses was supposed to be "perfect" and "eternal." (The prophecy of Joel's new covenant didn't come along for quite some time, and even from a Christian perspective it can be argued that the prophecy has not been fulfilled yet.)

In the New Testament (again, this is a conventional interpretation), we find out that for the law of Moses, "perfect" means "perfect in terms of law but not actually binding anymore" and "eternal" means "eternal in the sense that we should still remember it even after it has been superseded." With respect to God, we find out that yes, God is still "one," but "one" actually meaning "three mushed together to be one, but with three parts still distinguishable." God still has "no other Gods beside Him" because the separate persons of the Son and Holy Spirit are still "Him" - even though they're not. And, most importantly, even though God was hiding a great deal about his nature in the Old Testament, but still allowed the people to think that they had God pretty much figured out, this time, we really understand what God wants to do, and this time, God's certainly not going to show up and change all the rules again.

Or is He? If God hid the other parts of the Trinity from humanity during the Old Testament, and was perfectly content to hide a large part of His nature and His plan, what reason do we have to think that He isn't still holding out on us now? Why, according to to Christianity, couldn't God show up tomorrow and say "Guess what, everybody! I'm giving you a newer, even better set of rules to live by, since obviously you guys weren't even able to handle the New Testament stuff. The Bible's still in effect, but now you need to interpret it through the context of my brand new Newer Testament 2008 - Divine Edition. Oh, and to help you guys out with the new plan of salvation, let me introduce a few members of the Godhead that you haven't met yet - God the Mother, God the Rich Uncle, and God the Pool Cleaner."

I've never gotten a good answer as to why this couldn't happen.

Barefoot Bree

Now you guys are finally getting it. The whole triune god thingy is nothing more than a Christian koan - something for the fools to chew over until their minds are twisted like a pretzel, to squeeze out the endorphins. And voila! the resulting rush is interpreted as God's Holy Presence, reinforcing the belief.

Neat trick if you can manage it. My mind just doesn't bend that way.

But of course it doesn't make logical sense. It wouldn't work as a koan if it did!

Civil1z@tion

To the OP:

I've never thought about it like that, but you're right. The purpose of God's three aspects only seems to make sense in relation to the existence of humans. Given that, wouldn't it make sense that Christians have their casuality wrong. Humans can exist without God (ex: us) but their God has no meaning outside of humanity. Thus the logical conclusion to come to is that humans came before God, and since there is no evidence for God coming into existence in the time since humanity arose, the next logical step is to assume humans made up this God.

Thanks for giving me a new argument to use. :thumbs:

Newfie

If you are looking for newer testaments featuring novel (and lucrative) ways of interpreting the New Testament look no further than the shelves of your local Christian bookstore. Who is to say that in some future time excerpts from Billy Graham and others wouldn't be formally canonized?

As for the Godhead, other members will be revealed as required, no doubt. A future mindset may require that the feminine face of God reveal Herself. A Newer Testament (Pink Edition, perhaps) may also develop from this movement. Who can say what the future holds. I doubt that Moses thought "Well, I'll write this for now, but God is bound to have someone update it every few thousand years."

Great post, by the way!