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Jehovah is the name the Hebrews gave to God eventually, as YHWH became the principle deity among other deities they had, eventually to become the Universal God. So basically YHWH, is the Hebrew name for God.Well, the Bible teaches about Jehovah. Who is Jehovah for you?
Of course: you are using the Bible to negate the Bible, because you do not believe what the Bible says, even if you think that you can use the Bible to support your non-biblical ideas.
No. The holy spirit is not a person (John 16:12-14).
In the NT the great majority of the times that the holy spirit is referred to with a personal pronoun, the neuter is used. Sometimes it is personified, like fever is in Luke 4:39 or the winds and sea in Mark 4:39.
No. As I said, the Jews called God Jehovah. It's the same God, I just don't see the value in giving God a personal name like that. God is frankly, nameless. When Moses asked his name, the answer was "I AM". That's a little more consistent with my thinking on this. "I AM".So, for you Jehovah is a literary character that has to do just with Jews. Is it right?
I am the same religion that God is. I am not ashamed of that. I am liberated by that. Can you tell me what religion God is?PD: "Love, light and life" is not a religion, it is a philosophy. Why do you resist so much to clearly state your religion? Are you ashamed?
Where do you see the spirit that is from God, the Father, being described in terms of a person?What is a deity? Isn't that itself taking the Infinite Divine Reality and putting it into a form? A deity form? So theologically speaking, "person" applied to the Divine, is as much a device of the mind about the Infinite, as a deity form is, isn't it?
In other words "God", as a deity form, or "The Deity" form if you prefer, is not literal, in that that is what God literally is, but it is a way to put a "Face" upon that which is wholly beyond defining or comprehension. Would you agree with that?
Another way to express that is as the difference between God and Godhead. Generally speaking, when I refer to God, I am pointing to "Godhead", the Divine Reality, and not a specific deity form. God is another word for the "nameless" one, or that which cannot be defined or "named", in other words. (Naming something defines it as a thing, and God is beyond such limitations)
I agree. It's the localization of the Infinite into a form, be that in a form carved in wood or stone, or a form carved and defined in the mind through theological terms. A mental form of God, is as much an idol as one carved out of stone is. It's not the material that they are carved out of, wood or stone, or thoughts and idea and concepts, but the fact we limit God with these material or mental objects as defining what God actually is, that is the problem.
I agree, but we should not then just simply ball up all these local gods into a single god form, and then call that God. That is simply "a god" as well, if we see it as a literal definition of what God is, "The God of all Creation", is still simply seeing God in terms of gods, as independent entities acting upon the world, from outside of it. Make sense?
I don't think I'd say God is a title. That's a little too literal for me. I see God more as just a word that expresses the Transcendent and Immanent Reality in a single word. It's the word "Good", actually. And that word "Good", or "God" from the Anglo Saxon for 'good', is an apt description of the Absolute or the Divine Reality. "God is Love", or Good. So "Good" is the Absolute Reality, the Ground of Being, the Source, the All, etc. Those are all words expressing the same thing, pointing to the same Reality, which for simplicity sake, we call "God". It is all "Good".
This is a view of God as a Political force. I think that's a highly anthropomorphic view of God originating with human political leaders in history. God is beyond mere politics, though the expressions of God in the Bible, use that as a reference point to its audience of its day and time, that would have spoke of God that way.
For us today the whole "King" reference is a bit lost, as we did not grow up in a monarchical political system, at least not here in the United States. "King" or "ruler" doesn't communicate what it would have to those who grew up in a culture of that sort of political system. It's a bit of an outdated term for God, in other words.
In other words, God is not literally "a king", anymore than God is literally a "he". Anything that we name God with, a title, a personal name, a personal pronoun, etc, is simply a mental object, a device for our minds to try to contain the Divine Reality within, like a statue carved out of words instead of stone.
My point is, the writers of the the NT, did speak of the Holy Spirit in terms of a person. It's the language they chose to use to describe it.
"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and remind you of all that I said to you."Right there alone, you have three distinct "persons" being expressed in that language with personal pronouns. So that is all the Trinity is, is a way to say these "persons" are ultimately that One Divine Reality, not three divine realities. It's all antrophomoropic language, not literal definitions of what God is, anymore that God is a deity form that has a personal name like Bob or Steve, Jehovah, or Ishtar, or a literal gender identification as a "he" is. Those are all mental devices, not literally what God is. Same thing with the Trinity.
"When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, namely, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, He will testify about Me, and [l]you are testifying as well, because you have been with Me from the beginning."
I explained that in my response you quoted from. Please re-read this:Where do you see the spirit that is from God, the Father, being described in terms of a person?
My point is, the writers of the the NT, did speak of the Holy Spirit in terms of a person. It's the language they chose to use to describe it.
"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and remind you of all that I said to you."Right there alone, you have three distinct "persons" being expressed in that language with personal pronouns. So that is all the Trinity is, is a way to say these "persons" are ultimately that One Divine Reality, not three divine realities. It's all antrophomoropic language, not literal definitions of what God is, anymore that God is a deity form that has a personal name like Bob or Steve, Jehovah, or Ishtar, or a literal gender identification as a "he" is. Those are all mental devices, not literally what God is. Same thing with the Trinity.
"When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, namely, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, He will testify about Me, and [l]you are testifying as well, because you have been with Me from the beginning."
As I also said before, it doesn't matter who is sending who or what to whomever. The fact these are being spoken of in terms of differentiation as agents, is what does matter. That's the whole point. As I said in detail above which I hope you spend some time unpacking and digesting more, these are not literal definitions of what God is.God SENT HIS SPIRIT as a gift to the believers. It was not a gift from Jesus. Jesus only sent it onwards to them. It says so right there in the verses you quoted. If someone sends onwards (a postman) one thing someone else sent, do you call the postman the sender … Or the deliverer of the gift?
You're thinking way too literally here. The same argument you just made against a literal interpretation of the Trinity doctrine, can be applied to your own position on this. Why on earth would the gospel speak of God sending his Spirit if it is actually Himself he is referring to? Why not just have Jesus say, "The Father shall come to you"? Could it be because he was trying to speak in parables to his audience to help them understanding some Truth, in narrative terms that they could relate to?And is the gift a person? If there was such a thing as three as one, how in heaven could ONE send ANOTHER since they are all three ONE ENTITY. A member of a committee of three cannot SEND one member of the committee as a gift by way of the third member since all are equally ranked. Who in the committee decided which member should be de-ranked so they could be ordered about? There cannot be three (or even two) kings of a single country at the same time…
The idea of God as a entity or being separate and apart from Creation itself, is also crude and false to its core. All of these ways about talking about God using mental constructs and concepts, are crude and false. God is by definition, ineffable, beyond comprehension and beyond languaging, or putting into theological terms and constructs. And when we imagine our ideas of God, to be the actuality of God itself, then we are guilty of a form of idolatry.The idea of a Trinity of equal almighty persons is so crude… false to its core!
How do you view the pre-incarnate nature of the human named Jesus, which is spoken of in the prologue of John's gospel then? Was that a created entity, or was that "Logos" the Divine itself, viz., "The Logos was God"? Obviously, the Logos, which became a human in verse 14, was not a physical being, "In the beginning with God" in verse 1? No physical anything had been created yet, right?And to answer someone else (maybe), No, I am not a modalist…
I believe in one ethereal almighty intelligent SPIRIT entity that created a physical world and set a physical high status element (a person of humanity) in charge as it’s king.
It’s as simple as that:
- God (a Spirit being) rules the spirit world…
- Jesus (a physical being) rules the physical world!
- The physical world is a mere ‘room’ in the mansion of rooms in the spirit world
There was no pre-incarnate being. That is pure trinitarian. God’s word is simply that: His spoken utterance. He said, and it was… ‘Let there be light’ and it was so!I explained that in my response you quoted from. Please re-read this:
Again, I see it all as a manner of speech, using anthropomorphisms, speaking of aspects of the Divine Reality in terms of agents who act in behalf of one another. So "persons" is really a theological term to capture that idea of agents. The language of the NT authors speaks of the Spirit of God as an agent in behalf of God, just as the Son of God acts as an agent of God - yet all are spoken of as of the same essence as God itself.
These are not meant to be taken as concrete-literal descriptions of what God actually is. They are a mental device for the mind to reach into some transcendent abstraction wholly beyond its capacity to fathom. In other words it simplifies, or 'dumbs down' the Divine Reality into terms that the average mind can relate to.
Think of them, these agents or "persons" as parables. They are not actualities in definitions, but are pointers to some transcendent Mystery beyond the characters of the story, or parable.
Try to understand what I just laid out there, as that's what I've been driving at the whole time. There are those who need to think of God or the Divine in concrete-literal terms, such as the other poster imagines God as a 'spirit-person' having a spirit body that can literally be seen; much akin to the classic image of God as a man with a white flowing beard.
But to peer a little deeper beyond what such an image conveys, we see that image is only a device for the mind, and not what God actually is. Same thing with the Trinity, as I said before.
As I also said before, it doesn't matter who is sending who or what to whomever. The fact these are being spoken of in terms of differentiation as agents, is what does matter. That's the whole point. As I said in detail above which I hope you spend some time unpacking and digesting more, these are not literal definitions of what God is.
They are linguistic devices for the mind, which thinks in dualistic, concrete terms, to try to grapple with a Mystery, viz., the Nature of God, beyond those modes of conscious reality, into the Transcendent. These are all metaphors, not descriptors.
You're thinking way too literally here. The same argument you just made against a literal interpretation of the Trinity doctrine, can be applied to your own position on this. Why on earth would the gospel speak of God sending his Spirit if it is actually Himself he is referring to? Why not just have Jesus say, "The Father shall come to you"? Could it be because he was trying to speak in parables to his audience to help them understanding some Truth, in narrative terms that they could relate to?
The idea of God as a entity or being separate and apart from Creation itself, is also crude and false to its core. All of these ways about talking about God using mental constructs and concepts, are crude and false. God is by definition, ineffable, beyond comprehension and beyond languaging, or putting into theological terms and constructs. And when we imagine our ideas of God, to be the actuality of God itself, then we are guilty of a form of idolatry.
How do you view the pre-incarnate nature of the human named Jesus, which is spoken of in the prologue of John's gospel then? Was that a created entity, or was that "Logos" the Divine itself, viz., "The Logos was God"? Obviously, the Logos, which became a human in verse 14, was not a physical being, "In the beginning with God" in verse 1? No physical anything had been created yet, right?
I never said "being". And I'm not injecting any trinitarian theology into that verse. I'm just asking you what the Logos is that John is referring to in Jn 1:1, which is also spoken of has having become flesh, ie, Jesus of Nazareth. I was speaking of the pre-incarnate nature of Jesus, which John clearly is making reference to at great length. What is your view of that?There was no pre-incarnate being. That is pure trinitarian.
So you believe John was trying to communicate to his readers that Jesus was God's vocalizations becoming incarnate? It is curious language to speak of one's utterances as "with you", as it speaks of Logos "with God" in the beginning, isn't it? I don't quite see "spoken utterance" as capturing the depth of what John was attempting to convey.God’s word is simply that: His spoken utterance. He said, and it was… ‘Let there be light’ and it was so!
That's a bit of stretch and really can't be supported in the context of the text or the culture and audience the author was writing to.He said he would send a saviour: He gave His word … and his word was that he would send a saviour who would diHis bidding (Isaiah 42:1). That saviour would have the spirit of God on him - and all was so, just as God said. His word came true: He put FLESH on the bones of his word…!
There is a difference between the human Jesus and the divine Christ. Theologically speaking, this is known as the hypostatic union, that Jesus was 100% human, and 100% divine. When scripture speaks of the man Jesus, that is his flesh. When it speaks of him as "with God in the beginning", that is the eternal divine nature. So don't confuse the temporal, finite, created flesh references, with the eternal, timeless, spirit or Christ references. Both of these are found throughout the NT writings.Jesus was anointed (which mean to be set aside for priesthood and/or kingship. Jesus was anointed as both: Kingship over the world - and Priesthood to God. It could hardly be that Jesus (whom Trinitarians claim IS GOD could BECOME a high priest to ….GOD!! And for Jesus to BECOME king over creation is a DEMOTION if Jesus IS GOD!
Not it doesn't it. Jesus is the human flesh that was finite and could die, but his divine nature was that of the Divine itself, according to the writings of John. Think which side of the hypostatic union one is talking about in terms of submission to God, death and resurrections, and so forth.The point is that God does not change: is immutable. But trinity has Jesus changing myriad times in his life…! That makes God being immutable a fallacy.
Yes, the eternal Logos, the Divine "agent" of Creation itself, became flesh. And that flesh was called Jesus. The Logos was not born of a woman.Also, Jesus was born of a woman: an egg enlivened by the Spirit of God just as the body (the egg in Jesus’ case) of the first man was enlivened by the spirit of God. Hence, Jesus is called, ‘The Last Adam’.
No it doesn't fit the context, the language, the culture, or the beliefs of the day.Everything fits this way without torturing the scriptures. No confusion, no purposeful misinterpretation required, no contradiction found.
Although you say you are not reading any trinitarianism into what you are saying, you don’t seem to understand that you exactly ARE doing so.I never said "being". And I'm not injecting any trinitarian theology into that verse. I'm just asking you what the Logos is that John is referring to in Jn 1:1, which is also spoken of has having become flesh, ie, Jesus of Nazareth. I was speaking of the pre-incarnate nature of Jesus, which John clearly is making reference to at great length. What is your view of that?
John did not Aidan of a pre-incarnate nature… that is trinitarian twisted terminology. The scriptures teaches clearly that Jesus was born of a woman (Mary the virgin). The Angel Gabriel informed Mary that she was to have a child by means of the spirit of God… not by procreation with a human male. AND because the child was to be created this way he would be Holy, sinless, and righteous since the creational force is holy, sinless, and righteous. If if was by a man then since man is sinful the child would also be born in sin.I'm curious since you said Jesus is physical, yet John speaks of that pre-incarnate nature as eternal and divine. How do you view Jesus in light of John 1:1-14? Obviously, John is describing him as more than just flesh or a created thing there, correct? I'm asking for your views on this. I personally don't view the Logos as "a being", anymore than I view God as "a being" or entity.
I don’t use the word ‘Incarnate’… and I did not say that Jesus was the LOGOS. You keep falsely putting it in my way. The utterance of God is eternal. What He says will occur…. in long or in short but certain!So you believe John was trying to communicate to his readers that Jesus was God's vocalizations becoming incarnate? It is curious language to speak of one's utterances as "with you", as it speaks of Logos "with God" in the beginning, isn't it? I don't quite see "spoken utterance" as capturing the depth of what John was attempting to convey.
Who is Philo? Was he’s trinitarian? If so, then there is your answer!!!It doesn't really fit the context or purpose of the prologue, nor his specific use of the word Logos, which had external references to his readers they would have understood by Philo's specific use of Logos as the agent of expression of the Divine. One can't just read the word "Logos" out of context like that.
Only if you can’t read the context right.That's a bit of stretch and really can't be supported in the context of the text or the culture and audience the author was writing to.
‘Christ’ just means ‘Anointed one’… it’s just to signify that this person named Jesus is specifically the one that was anointed by God. All other anointed men were done so by priests acting on the command of God: David, Solomon, Levi…. Samuel, Nathan, …..There is a difference between the human Jesus and the divine Christ. Theologically speaking, this is known as the hypostatic union, that Jesus was 100% human, and 100% divine. When scripture speaks of the man Jesus, that is his flesh. When it speaks of him as "with God in the beginning", that is the eternal divine nature. So don't confuse the temporal, finite, created flesh references, with the eternal, timeless, spirit or Christ references. Both of these are found throughout the NT writings.
Why do you keep referring to ‘incarnate’… Jesus is a man, a human Being (See above!) Even Jesus referred to himself as a man:So the images of Jesus, as ruler or king, is that as the incarnate Christ, the Divine Logos in flesh, as John 1:1-14 specifically details. There is an incarnation that happened in that passage of Divine essence into human flesh.
Ha ha ha…. Trinitarianism all the way…. Submission to God…. Is God… is divine…. Is not submissive to God …. Confusion and obfuscation!!!!Not it doesn't it. Jesus is the human flesh that was finite and could die, but his divine nature was that of the Divine itself, according to the writings of John. Think which side of the hypostatic union one is talking about in terms of submission to God, death and resurrections, and so forth.
Straight out of the trinitarian handbook…. Sorry, does not compute!!!Yes, the eternal Logos, the Divine "agent" of Creation itself, became flesh. And that flesh was called Jesus. The Logos was not born of a woman.
That’s the only answer given when Trinitarians see that their fallacy has been thwarted by common sense!No it doesn't fit the context, the language, the culture, or the beliefs of the day.
I dont know what group you are referring to, but they certainly did not get their idea from the Shema, or any part of the Torah.Some strange ideology claims that Moses told the Israelites that Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, is three persons but one God.
Im unable to see how that is expressed in the scriptures (both old and new).
Can someone throw light on this strange matter and show where, how, and why there are three equal almighty beings as the one YAHWEH God?
I take it that you are saying that you’ve never heard that there is such a false theology preached?I dont know what group you are referring to, but they certainly did not get their idea from the Shema, or any part of the Torah.
Some strange ideology claims that Moses told the Israelites that Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, is three persons but one God.
Im unable to see how that is expressed in the scriptures (both old and new).
Can someone throw light on this strange matter and show where, how, and why there are three equal almighty beings as the one YAHWEH God?
Some strange ideology claims that Moses told the Israelites that Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, is three persons but one God.
Im unable to see how that is expressed in the scriptures (both old and new).
Can someone throw light on this strange matter and show where, how, and why there are three equal almighty beings as the one YAHWEH God?
I'm saying that I have never heard of ANY Christian scholars that say this. It's a made up story, but do people believe it on rare occasions? Heck some people believe that Hillary Clinton is a reptilian shapeshifter.I take it that you are saying that you’ve never heard that there is such a false theology preached?
No, it does not mean "united as one." It can be used as part of such a phrase, but even within the phrase it refers to a quantity of one in a figurative sense. And at any rate, the Shema does not use the words "united as one;" it simply states "one."The word translated
The Hebrew word translated God is in the plural
The Hebrew word translated one does not mean one singular It means united as one
The same word is ues in regard to marriage "The two become one flesh"