[Serious] The Trinity

[John 6IX Breezy]

Did you think that the op was asking about something else, and haven't all of your own responses been revisions -to- that doctrine?

Five stated: "when Christians say, the son IS the Father, I don't know how to make the pieces fit." I must have missed the part where he specified Catholic doctrine.

[The Grand Nudger]

You do understand that it's a catholic doctrine, right? If you were unaware, I posted a whole bunch of info on it's history and development earlier in thread.

You, have revisions.

You, do not believe in what they believe.

Your metaphors' and analogies' setups violate the premise of the position, and additionally.. you believe that it's accessible to reason. Are your beliefs representative of the type of disputes referenced in the linked material, bolded in my response? Are your beliefs representative of a creedal trinitarianism which references anti-trinitarian positions, as is the case with much of contemporary christinity, even contemporary catholicism - and particularly american catholicism? Is it possible that you believe what you do because the trinitarians have died off?

[John 6IX Breezy]

I'm not Catholic. And with that statement alone I divorced any overlap of ideas from their origin. No different than Sam Harris divorcing spirituality from religion.

[The Grand Nudger]

You think that by being something other than catholic, your borrowed ladders origin is somehow altered? Does that work with science too? I want to be really clear at this point..you're not even arguing that your beliefs are the same beliefs, correct? So, if we wanted to make sure we didn't conflate them, might we need two terms to refer to the difference? Should we call their beliefs trinitarian, or yours? They seem to have an inarguable claim to the moniker. As it so happens, that's exactly how those beliefs are categorized. Trinitarian, functionally non trinitarian, and anti trinitarian. Now lets ask ourselves again...someone asked you to explain how something that you don't believe in made sense, and you explained how some other thing that you do believe in which rejects that belief makes sense as you see it? What part of this statement do you believe to be unrepresentative, or untrue?

Do you believe that you believe what you do (and/or believe what you do about or how you do) because most of the catholics died off? I suppose that would have to be a regional measure, right?

[John 6IX Breezy]

It makes no difference to me where ideas originate from. I am not endebted to any form of Islam by agreeing with algebra. Nor does modern algebra cease to be algebra if it differs in any way from it's original formulation.

[The Grand Nudger]

Another one of those insensible articles, right? Difference wouldn't make a difference. I don't think that's true...but again...to be clear.

You're not arguing that you believe in trinitarian doctrine, you're stating that you believe what you believe and where it came from or what those beliefs stated don't matter with respect to what you believe. I agree wholeheartedly - but then it becomes an inescapable fact that you contended to explain a belief and how it made sense that you didn't believe and don't believe makes sense by a means that reject that belief and deny it's sense.

Are we ever going to see any more info about this thing that you suggested..that progress can sometimes come from the other guys dying off? I've been teeing it up for you. If you hit the ball, I honestly think that you'd knock it out of the park. Trinitarians asserted that an impossible thing was true, and not just that, that the impossibility of this thing was a necesarry and meaningful component of it's truth that demonstrated by revealed theology just how different god was from anything we know or even can know.

You disagree - and were it not for the death, demographicly or regionally or literally, of the orthodoxy which asserted this ridiculous belief, it may still have been a lone and uncontested voice in christian dogma. Protestant oxygen to catholic phlogiston.

[John 6IX Breezy]

You're classifying every trinitarian denomination that isn't Catholic as anti-trinitarian. I won't hold a conversation under such terms.

[The Grand Nudger]

No.

I'm pointing out that there is such a thing and a studied phenomena as creedal trinitarians expressing what are very accurately categorized as anti-trinitarian positions - and that we've seen examples of this in thread. No christian -has- to offer an anti-trinitarian position...it's not like the sun rising or objects falling down - it's a choice. This was also the field of play when trinitarian beliefs were arrived at. After first having declared these things to be heresies, they successfully rooted them out and maintained their orthodoxy for quite some time. Now, though, we're back to something like what they faced in the first four centuries of christianity. A large concentration of this phenomena comes from the protestant reformation (which also influences catholics, especially in predominantly protestant regions), and the overriding modern push for analytic theology.

Do you think that this is related to the possibility you offered before? That trinitarian belief was a product of anti-trinitarians dying out, and that non trinitarian belief is a function of trinitarian belief dying out. It's not hard to see how the tightening of the ideological funnel at the middle stifled the creative enterprise of early christendom - or how that orthodoxy's loosening grip has produced so many new lines today. The extent to which those new beliefs and positions or people who advocate for them require a belief that, essentially, they're the "right version" of the old belief rather than a recognizably and categorically distinct belief of their own in order to communicate their christian continuity, is fascinating. Very much relevant to the subject of the thread as what we're seeing is very likely to be a similar process to whatever created the thing we call christianity today. Since we don't get to rewind time, this is as close as the social sciences get to an experiment on the subject.

You are, ofc, invited to point out where and why you don't feel that your stated explanations and beliefs are representative of that trend. That's part of the phenomena of functional non-trinitarianism as a product of a decline in religiosity, after all. If it helps, I think that your beliefs are an improvement...but that's very likely to be an effect of our shared commitment to and high valuation of rational thought. I would reform theology by reason also, rather than the reverse - which is what trinitarian beliefs are an archetypal expression of. Time place, other guys dying out, all that.

[John 6IX Breezy]

After first having declared these things to be heresies..

These things being what? Heretics claiming metaphors aid with comprehension lol? I doubt even the strictest Catholic agrees with your conclusion.

[The Grand Nudger]

All sorts of things, the list was long. I also think that many of the strictest catholics would disagree - and that's the phenomena of functional non trinitarianism as expressed by ecclesiastic authorities and studied by sociologists.

This is, ironically, the same type of objection the op made to trinitarian belief.

Trinity doesn't make sense? That's agreeing with trinitarian doctrine.
Catholics will voice superficial assent to the articles of their faith and then disagree with their own official beliefs? Yup.