Meanwhile, the Catholic church's own profusion of saints whom you are supposed to beseech for specific blessings is dangerously close to a polytheistic practice in its own right.
The problem with the First Council of Nicaea was that it was decided wrong. The whole "there are three gods, but only one god" is inherently confusing. There's a reason why Arianism keeps recurring over and over again. All the new nations who have been introduced to this aspect of Christianity find it bizarre.
If the decision would have been more along the lines of Islam (i.e. Jesus is super holy, but not God) then it would have been easier to maintain unity. In fact, Islam's adoption of a form of Arianism is one of the reasons it replaced Christianity so quickly in North Africa and the Middle East. (Well, that and the sword.)
I imagine it would be. But that's not what the council of Nicaea decided, nor what Christians believe. It's further developed in the Athanasian creed that the Trinity is understood as one God (homoousios - same substance), but three persons. Whether or not the philosophy of consubstantiation is that useful to modern believers is another issue; attempts to reformulate the doctrine (like "there are three gods, but only one god") usually end in heterodoxy, or at least misunderstanding.
I don't have the numbers on hand, but I recently read that a remarkable number of US Evangelicals regard each member of the Trinity as an autonomous entity. This might invite you to scoff at sola scriptura, but I can't imagine the numbers being better for other denominations.
It's a strange thought: how many, maybe most devotees are actually heretics, especially when you consider more remote cultures. I've been looking for fiction that explores this idea. I think Black Robe touches upon it, but I haven't seen it in two decades and could be misremembering.
That is the Trinity.
In some ways the (English) word "God" has become 'overloaded' over time:
* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/12/christians-muslims-...
And that's not even getting into "god":
* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/04/further-thought-on-...
> You see the problem. If you include the filioque, you fight the Arians in the West while inadvertently supporting the Sabellians in the East. But if you exclude it, you fight the Sabellians while inadvertently supporting the Arians. At its heart, the filioque is really a linguistic debate, not a theological one.
* https://old.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/68hb00/eli5_th...
(I don't know about the intricacies/subtleties enough to know how 'technically accurate' the above assessment is.)
I have heard some fairly convincing (to a lay person) discussion between orthodox and catholic scholars that the filioque is potentially resolvable as a linguistic problem yes. But it's not worth really pursuing without a solution for the bigger issue of papal primacy. I don't know anyone who claims to have a viable path to reconciliation there. Plus, you know, the thousand years of mutual distrust and enmity.
Jesus said he was the Son of God bc WE - HUMANITY is in fact that. It's not an actual parent child relationship but 2500 years ago Jesus had nothing in his pocket to explain better than the family analogy.
The actual OG basis of almost all religious teachings in almost every religion is that WE are in fact God, living as human, experiencing his creation first hand, as US.
Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and didn't lie even if not true the way we believe it to be. It was also prolly a great way to get attention as he had a Father, ppl must have spoke of that.
The Orthodox allege that the Filioque amounts to a demotion of the Holy Spirit. Comparing the liturgies, disciplines and general character of the two churches, it’s difficult to feel totally confident that they don’t have a point.
The Holy Spirit is like the force - it's behind all things, like lines of code behind a web page - but more specifically it's similar to a background process within a system that allows for all actions on the page to exist, by their causes, their consequences and the ensuing causes and consequences and so on forever and since the start of time.
The Holy Spirit is similar to fate but unlike fate we have ability to dictate and direct our reality - like in "How to Win Friends and Influence People" this is the force within reality that delivers what we expect and believe will be.
This is what pushes us along - individually and collectively, that which is behind evolution and behind the miracle rain dance is the same thing.
Faith that moves mountains is merely the most known example of the ability attained by our true understanding of the Holy Spirit - it allows us to access all the powers and forces and laws and systems of this reality and utilize them to our benefit and ends. One who knows and has faith has higher authority than all worldly authorities and can bend them to utilize them to attain whatever desires.
If one needs the Queen of England to write a letter, that person must only believe - enough to kno for certain, that she has already done so and it will be so.
Expectation is part of asking when we have desires of God - ask and expect to receive - expect more, ask less. Asking is less important than expecting - faith is part belief, for example a belief that you can ask God - the other part is expecting God to deliver as he said he would...
Again, this is a rant but this conversation hopefully adds to your spiritual progression faster than the teachings I'm reading professed here will allow any of you.
I have faith that those with hears will hear and act accordingly, there are no limits - only consequences.
One side is obviously right, the other just doesn't want to admit it ;)
Nobody hesitates to call Shintoism polytheistic, and its core practices, to an outsider, seem strikingly similar to how a Christian, especially a Roman Catholic, interacts with the saints.
But overall in any case I think it's sometimes valuable to think of christianity this way and sometimes not. It is a syncretic religion so of course it has regional variations and contradictory remnants of absorbed practices. IIRC some of the specific saint traditions, like icons in the home, predate christianity in the mediterranean.
But on the other hand there are practices and relationships common in true polytheistic religions that you don't see in christianity at all. If taking the saints as minor deities, you don't find sects exalting one of them exclusively, nor do you see individual christians "defect" from one saint to another for personal advantage. There's no theology of competition or opposition between the saints to base such practices on at all. So there are limits to the usefulness of this perspective too.
The shintoism example is interesting, I'll need to look more into it. I had considered it polytheistic but now that I think about it I haven't read shinto writings on the subject so I don't know if most shinto practitioners experience it that way. Outside perspectives aren't completely invalid of course but they aren't as interesting to me as how believers experience their own religions.
Legislative, Executive, Judicial = Govt of US Strike 1, 2 and 3 = an out Mind, Body, soul = A person
I could list hundreds of these examples.
3=1 is a rule found all over reality. The easiest way to create something that will exist for awhile, as it has a sound foundation, is build the foundation in 3 parts that make the whole.
Almost all dichotomies have a hidden third aspect. The fight is over how obvious it was at the time - the church was scared people may discover the secret way to create like the divine, so they convoluted it until they couldn't understand it uniformly anymore.
I don't really think so. We're supposed to pray with Mary to God and everyone recognizes that all of creation came through Christ, not Mary or any other saint.
[1] however you want to interpret this.
* Catholics prayed _to_ Mary (eg asking to intercede on your behalf);
* This was speaking to the dead, and expecting a response, and thus a sin in some way I am not sure of.
I'm guessing you're Catholic from your response; would you mind explaining to this somewhat lost person how Catholics view these two topics please? (I've never heard a good explanation, and even praying "with" Mary is new to me.) I admire Catholicism and wish I felt more trust in it, which is something that comes from childhood indoctrination, I know. Things stick into adulthood even when you're consciously aware of their root. So I'm keen to hear countering views :)
Catholics believe that people in heaven are not dead, and can hear your prayers for intercession (this is the case with most protestants too). Jesus said, after all, that he is the God of the living not the God of the dead[1], and that those in heaven will be reborn in a new and everlasting life. Catholics further believe that the saints in heaven can pray on your behalf and are, in fact, excited to do so, and possibly better at it than anyone on earth.
Many more believe that only God (and Jesus if they don’t believe they are the same) can exist in heaven and the promise of Christianity is to make Earth like Heaven. Some of those groups believe that prayers to the dead, including to Mary or the saints, is therefore forbidden or an overt act of devil worship or paganism.
Even more controversial is the idea that the dead can intercede on your earthly behalf. That would be seen as pretty outside the view of many very mainline Protestant denominations.
People punish - Jesus loves. That's a super easy way to see the lies from the truth
2. "In fact, [God has not forbidden contact with the dead], because he at times has given it — for example, when he had Moses and Elijah appear with Christ to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3). What God has forbidden is the necromantic practice of conjuring up spirits. " Via https://www.catholic.com/tract/praying-to-the-saints
See:
> Marcion preached that the benevolent God of the Gospel who sent Jesus Christ into the world as the savior was the true Supreme Being, different and opposed to the malevolent Demiurge or creator god, identified with the Hebrew God of the Old Testament.[2][3][5]
Although the whole theology they cooked up around the “true god” reads like bad fan fiction usually.
Yeah that sounds like some weak Warhammer 40k fanfic.
"...what kind of God could outstrip the attractions of all other things? Could any unitary, single-person god do so? Hardly, or at least not for long. Single-person gods must, by definition, have spent eternity in absolute solitude. Before creation, having no other persons with whom they could commune, they must have been entirely alone.
Love for others, then, cannot go very deep in them if they can go for eternity without it. And so, not being essentially loving, such gods are inevitably less than lovely. They may demand our worship, but they cannot win our hearts. They must be served with gritted teeth.
How wonderfully different it is with the triune God. In John 17:24, Jesus speaks of how the Father loved Him even before the creation of the world. That is the triune, living God: a Father, whose very being has eternally been about loving His Son, pouring out the Spirit of love and life on Him. Here is a God who is love, who is so full of life and blessing that for eternity He has been overflowing with it..."
[1] https://www.unionpublishing.org/resource/delighting-in-the-t...
3 that equal 1.
It's a fundamental rule found everywhere - there is a softer voice within that will speak to of it but you have to ask it to tell you and then have ears to hear it.
"It's a fundamental rule found everywhere - there is a softer voice within that will speak to of it but you have to ask it to tell you and then have ears to hear it." But without experience and until you learn to discern the softer voice you must test it against scripture, to know whose it is.