Hawaiilawyer,

What about the cruelty of the Insect World?

Sells,

Thank you for your contrubutions. But you could do better an engaging in debate on points opposed to your own. Do you not realise that there are histological, cultural and familial factors involved, when one chooses a particular god, or choose to believe at all?

It is you that has chosen to write an article to Forum. Do you not understand the Confucian quote, I shared? To understand, you need to standback, test for alternative explanations

Sells, once again you disappoint with your inability to engage in open debate. What caused this outburst?

>>There is an arrogance in Pericles and Oliver who would dismiss nearly two thousand years of theological deliberation in favor of some scatty ideas<<

It is not arrogant to continue to ask questions. It is arrogant to assume that your own view has greater weight than that of others.

Your summary of Nice is, to say the least, a little self-serving.

>>This was a case in which the Holy Spirit moved in the hearts of men to bring about the right result. Any other result would have been disastrous for the Church<<

This surely is classic post hoc, ergo propter hoc. If the Arians had prevailed, as you point out, the question of a Trinity would be non-existent. Given that history is written by the victor, it is obvious that credit has to be given to "the Holy Spirit [moving] in the hearts of men".

Interestingly, many religions exist without the need for this trinitarian construct which - the more you examine it - is the result of political faction-fighting resulting in a compromise, than a lay-down certainty. It is not biblically supported, so is an entirely man-made concept, designed - it would appear from Nice - to plug a potentially fatal flaw in the Jesus story.

>>Of course people were excommunicated, theology was very serious matter<<

It would appear that the preferred method of discourse has changed little over the centuries. If someone disagrees, disqualify them from the argument. Much, it has to be said, as the method you, Sells, continue to practise to this day.

>>It was not a case of the individual choosing the spirituality that appealed to them but a quest for the truth.<<

And the best way to conduct a quest for the truth is, it would appear, to silence opposition by excommunication.

It brings to mind a picture of someone with their hands over their ears saying "La la la la I can't hear you I can't hear you"

Pericles
My apologies for my little outburst, my patience does wear thin at times. It is just that in the realm of theology everyone is an expert no matter what their training. If I wrote something about auditory physiology you would give me credence but as soon as we start on theology we are confronted with a weird democracy in which anyone’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s.

I am all for free enquiry and debate. However any real enquiry requires one to relax ones suspicion towards the subject. It is this constant suspicion that drives me nuts on this page.

A large part of the problem is the eclipse of the study of theology that has taken place over the last couple hundred years. This leaves theologians on the back foot trying to catch up and do justice to a rich and varied tradition and the lay person even more on the back foot. My articles in OLO are a small attempt to redress this.

The fact that you hang in with the discussion means that you find theology fascinating even if that is a negative fascination. For my part it is the most interesting game in town and one on which much hangs.

The reason for our lack of faith is exactly that...Reason. Most religions present the concept of god as a way to close people's minds and open their purses. Some few do good in a charatable way, but the people they use to do the good are living with closed minds, good hearts, but closed minds.
My family live with a system of ethics which considers honesty, charity, decency, fairness, love, kindness and helpfulness to be the way to live. Religion of any sort does not enter into the equation and believe me, we all have open minds and happy lives. When trouble comes we support each other, we do not look for support from someone else's concept of a god, no matter how old that concept is. We have backbones and we help ourselves.

In order to understand theological thinking we must first apprehend its construct. To borrow from Wittgenstein 's metaphor in the language game we can extend this. All human meaning issues emanate not from individual minds, but from relationship. One person alone cannot create meaning; a language cannot 'mean' anything if it is a private possession. It takes coordination among people to generate anything meaningful – more often borne of a love generating honesty, charity, decency and fairness.

In the religio-cultural world of Biblical times, O.T. Yahwism was perhaps the only religion that did not have both the masculine and the feminine principle represented in deity - and often presented in customarily in explicitly sexual pairings. Ancient references to God (or Yahweh) expressed this authoritarian, domineering and often cruel relationship. The religions that included both male and female deities within their pantheons, which impacted on biblical thought, were: the Sumerian, the Egyptian, the Canaanite, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Persian, the Greek (including the mystery cults), and the Roman. A ‘softening’ of Judaic thought arrived before the advent of Christ. Jesus himself acknowledged the endearing Arabic term “Abba” – best translated as “daddy” or “poppa”. “Daddy” is the main figurehead in the “Trinity”.

It was only when the early Church began to be populated by Greek-speaking and Greek-thinking people did a vocabulary and method of logical thinking arise that would lead to the doctrine of Trinity and of periochoresis.

The Greeks could draw on a fairly sophisticated philosophy of emanations or intermediary creatures that somehow "emerged" from the "One" or the uncreated source of the universe in order to have the terminology and conceptions to "understand" Jesus. But still there was a raging debate concerning whether this Jesus was lesser than God or fully equal with the One. That was a debate that came to a head in the 4th century, when the "winners" decided that Christ would be fully equal with God.

But remember, theology as with philosophy, is a world of metaphor. It often uses analogy with underlying “truth”. Literalists confuse this concern with a merely two dimensional view.

How can you say that the Word of God is metaphor, rather than news reportage without news reporters? Were you there?

Consider the multitude of witnesses who claim they saw Jesus walking about, after he had died on the cross?

Confusing? But were you there or not? You weren't, but some were, and they wrote what they saw down, or told others what they saw, and these others wrote it down.

What gives you the right to call their eye-witness testimony "metaphor"?

What theory of history do you use to test the veracity of historical witnesses? Simply proclaiming God's word "metaphor" doesn't make it metaphor.

If you find it unbelievable that a creator could turn water into wine, missing the seed, vine, grape stages, then what is your definition of "creator"?

Why should it be "unbelievable" that Jesus is of the same substance as God, and is God (with God, and is God)? Because it defies your definition of "logic" or "reality"? And where did you get those definitions? How were they tested?

If you yourself saw someone change water into wine, and then you drank some of it, then told someone about it, and that someone wrote it down, and ten years hence, someone says you are a liar, or at least speaking "metaphorically" -- does that make what they say the "truth" or what you said?

Finitude....consider its meaning, but you can only consider its meaning only so far, because you have a finite mind.