God, one person, or three? (page 3)

aqwsed12345

I do disagree with you, I just pointed out that even IF it were so, it would not be an argument. The bottom line: the CONTENT of Catholic theology was not influenced by some kind of evil "philosophy", and you will not be able to attack it, based on the fact that the philosophical concepts used for the TERMINOLOGY for formulating the doctrines are also used.

Vanderhoven7

JWs have an unrelatable Jesus that you cannot come to and share your burdens with.p

Halcon

. The bottom line: the CONTENT of Catholic theology was not influenced by some kind of evil "philosophy", and you will not be able to attack it, based on the fact that the philosophical concepts used for the TERMINOLOGY for formulating the doctrines are also used

Are you truly sure about this?...

Plato lived between 420 and 340 BC... that's actually HUNDREDS of years before Christ was born, and the subsequent books by his apostles were written.

Further, someone like Augustine didn't come around til about another 300 years after Christ, and JUST after Plotinus expanded on Plato's philosophy.

But I don't "condemn" philosophy per se. I don't call it evil. It is amply accepted by historians and scholars that neoplatonism had an immense influence on Christianity and in fact PROPELLED it forward past the middle ages, whereas neoplatonism itself diminished in influence and recently has revived interest.

I simply point out the well established fact that these philosophers had a huge impact on the way the scriptures are interpreted when it comes to the Trinity doctrine. And that this influence is truly the source of so much of its confusion.

Jeffro

TonusOH:

I feel bad for the holy ghost. Jehovah and Jesus get all of the attention. He's like the Curly Howard of the group.

Nothing's changed. Acts 19:2:

and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

I guess that rules out it just being ‘God’s power’. See also 2 Corinthians 6:6-7.

Jeffro

Early Christians were making this stuff up as they went along, largely based on merging Greek concepts into Judaism. It’s much simpler if people stop pretending the Bible is consistent on the matter.

Jeffro

It is funny that ‘the one true religion’ has:

a god from a Canaanite pantheon
an exodus myth from ancient Ethiopians
cherubs from Assyrian mythology
creation and flood myths from Babylon
a devil from Persian mythology
beliefs in an afterlife and the ‘Word’ from Greek Gnosticism

Not to mention a whole catalogue of misinterpretations of their own books for their end times beliefs.

peacefulpete

It is amply accepted by historians and scholars that neoplatonism had an immense influence on Christianity

In fact, at its core, Christianity is deeply indebted to the Greek mind. Hellenized Jewish thinkers and theologians opened the door to ideas like God having to conform to the highest notions of unity and completeness. Before this Yahweh was the God of a certain time and place, having a personality that reflected that. It was not until the Greeks that God had become absolute in every sense. Omnipotent, omniscient, transcendent human understanding, hence mysterious.

The WT and many like them endorse a dumbed down version of Christianity. To casually read the texts and understand them was pretty much impossible, as writings themselves insist the mystery of God required "God's Spirit" to reveal it. Some of the texts appear ambivalent and confusing to casual readers who inevitably come away with a simplistic conceptualization of the God being described by the various writers, some clumsy harmonization emerges.

None of the writers shared an identical conception, but all of them meant for the reader to perceive what wasn't always expressly worded. This very way of thinking and discussing theology was the greatest Greek contribution to the birth and growth of Christianity in its various forms in the first few centuries.

aqwsed12345

@Halcon

"It is amply accteped by historians and scholars"

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority )

...more precisely, this is accepted by people like Dan Brown and other anti-Christian, anti-Catholic, atheist, often communist authors who want to prove at all costs that mainstream Christianity is just a collection of stupid legends, and these poor imbeciles couldn't come up with anything on their own.

Why don't you refer then to the Soviet magazine Bezbozhnik, whose ornamentation is very similar to the Watchtower, when it smears the Catholic Church?

Jeffro

Acts 19:2

Maybe the JW study Bible offers some brilliant pearls of wisdom about this ‘seeming discrepancy’ that there were disciples of John the Baptist who had supposedly never heard that ‘God’s active force’ was a thing… just kidding, they completely ignore the verse altogether.

Earnest

@aqwsed12345

Your lengthy discussion arguing that 'God' and 'Lord' are interchangeable belies the fact that Jesus was made Lord, and therefore there was a time when he was not Lord, just as there was a time when he was not Christ. As Acts 2:34-36 says :

For David did not ascend to the heavens, but he himself says, ‘Jehovah said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies as a stool for your feet.”’ Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for a certainty that God made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you executed on a stake.”

The importance of this new role as Lord is emphasized at Romans 10:9 :

For if you publicly declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and exercise faith in your heart that God raised him up from the dead, you will be saved.

which is why the identification of God as Father and Jesus as Lord (in 1 Corinthians 8:6) is necessarily so clear.

God, one person, or three?

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