net2002

If God is composed of three persons,
who share the same essence, but have distinct and defining accidents, then
it would imply that God is composite. God cannot exist
as an absolute reality because he is contingent, since the parts of God are
all in need of each other for existence.

net2002

if one agrees that God's nature *and* his volitional capa-
bilities are an *actual infinite* (God's composition would also be infinite)
in which case God could be triune and still be one. But God could then be
*any* number of distinct, composed persons while still retaining unity! God
could, literally, consist of an infinite number of distinct divine persons
while still retaining unity. Once open, who would close the floodgates of
such absurdities?

Philosoft

net2002,

I think your post has merit enough to remain here, but I've edited your thread title to something less, ah, inflammatory. This is a philosophical forum, the folks who frequent are fair intellectuals, and it doesn't require up-front emotionalism to get your point across. Thanks for your understanding.

~Philosoft, EoG moderator

TheUnbeliever

Furthermore, as constricting a sphere to two dimensions makes it nothing more than a circle, would not constricting God to the "dimensions of man" make him nothing more than a man?

Strictly speaking, then, Jesus was not "God."

Perhaps I'm running on too little sleep, but it makes sense to me at the moment.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Net,
You have posited a Triune God that has: That’s not the Catholic conception. And the Protestants have no conception. So where are you getting your nonsensical conception?

Catholic Scholastic theologians wrote the book on “accidents” and God ain’t got any. The material world, not God, is conceived of as being dualistic in the sense of having essences and accidents, i.e., what cannot be seen (e.g., the human soul) and what can be seen (e.g., the human body). Catholics believe in both. Naturalistic atheists believe in only the latter.

The distinction of persons you speak of is spoken of in Catholic theology as a “virtual” distinction, not a real distinction, like how the spoken word is distinctly different from the written word, but not really different. And the distinction is not a distinction in accidents or even essences, but of the relationship of a single essence with itself.

What is really different between the three persons of the Trinity is the mutual opposition of their relationships, like how the following three words are really different: “idea,” (God the Father) “word,” (God the Son) and “love,” (God the Holy Ghost). This is a de fide dogma of the Church, that God is an indivisible unity in all things except for the opposition of His relationships with Himself. “In Deo omnia sunt unum, ubi non obviate relationis opposition (Denzinger 703)." – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

TheUnbeliever

It would seem that only in Christianity would one encounter the doctrine "1+1+1 = 1."

More to the point, though, what about my comment regarding God being "confined" to existence as a man?

Albert Cipriani

Dear Unbeliever,
Your “point” is no point at all. It is a blotch of invisible ink that, when held up to candle flame, reveals your lack of knowledge regarding the hypostatic union of God and man.

The Incarnation was not a kind of reductionism, whereby the Creator was reduced to the status of a creature. It was a uniting of two essences, where human nature and divine nature became the hypostatic union “the difference of the natures in consequence of the unification being in no way abrogated, and the properties of each of the two natures remaining completely undisturbed. [Denzinger 148]

This de fide dogma of the Catholic Church was articulated in 451 A.D. against the Monophysitism heresy you wish to resurrect. That slain dragon had two heads: human nature was absorbed into the Divine nature, or the human and Divine natures were melded into a new third nature. You may sow those dragon teeth where you will, but they will not grow. That heresy is dead. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Calzaer

It never ceases to amaze me how much mental hoop-jumping people will go through to believe in such absurd things while at the same time calling me "irrational" for believing something different (if equally absurd).

Albert Cipriani

Dear Calzaer,
I said that Unbeliever lacked “knowledge” and that Net’s conception of the trinity was “nonsensical,” and what’s more important, explained why. No one has called you “irrational.”

Yet you complain that you were called “irrational.” Sounds irrational to me.

In the future, rather than merely demonstrating your irrationality, try to articulate it through argumentation. That could prove to be ever so slightly less boring. – Disdainfully, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Tristan Scott

Maybe the Cappadocians were employing Boolean logic?