Partialism sounds like a dissociative disorder honestly. I kinda like the idea of a deity with DID/OSDD-1, but it does lead me to wonder what trauma hurt a young god such that their mind didn't form into one cohesive identity. Basically this is the most coherent vision of the christian god and also the one best for writing fanfic of.
I have a Christian friend who calls Kingdom Hearts stupid and Xeahnort being 13 different people at the same makes no sense yet the trinity gets a pass.🤷🏾♂️
At least Xehanort has an explanation for him being 13 people at once in his series rather than the fans having to make it up. If you're wondering: Some of the 13 are past and future versions of himself and the rest are people Xehanort transplanted part of his soul into
Trinitarianism was a regular topic in my catechism classes when I was an adolescent. The "it's a mystery" excuse was always the fall-back position. (And don't talk back to the nun!)
My 10 or 11 year old self once asked my priest that question and was told that it is a "Mystery of God" and not meant to be understood. If I could understand it, that would mean that I was God, and I obviously wasn't. Thus suitably reprimanded, I didn't ask that question again until I was 13, when I was labelled a "disruptive influence" and a "child of Satan" that needed an exorcism. My father didn't like that and so we left the church.
Brilliant! I have never before heard the objection, "you say god is the grounding of logic, and yet god himself (your whole idea of god) is illogical." That is awesome, I will definitely be using that in the future :)
Now this explanation of the trinity I can get behind. As long as we leave the athanation Creed I don't think there's any problem biblically with believing in a father Son and Holy Spirit
@@absintheminded8466What you are talking about is not a trinitarian concept but rather are thinking about God as a being who uses Jesus and the Holy spirit rather than being also them. Jesus the right arm? The holy spirit a tool from God during certain times? Bro a part of my body is not me as a whole, that's why the trinity doesn't make any sense, because it is not a concept based on even the simple division of godly bodies it is essentially a type of being who also is two other separated and different beings.
@@emenz910 inspiring philosophy is just another youtube pseudo intellectual: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VptVYd7zENs.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Iu2XbLPl_SY.html PS don't wanna use an ad hominem but is worth to mention that the guy believes that the story of noah was a literal historical event.
Let me know if this makes sense to you... God is everything, logic including, and I believe He follows the rules He Himself put in place. He made a promise to His creation (who He made in His image, as children, as "little gods") that He would lead them and such despite human error. But He needed an example, a corrector, and a way of having humanity understand that He knew what it was like to be human. The LAW was established because humans needed to know that sin leads to mental, spiritual, and bodily death. The SON was sent like an outreach program that showed the TRUTH of good and what living in the SPIRIT of the LAW meant. God came to earth THROUGH Jesus like an avatar. Jesus was flesh and divine like we can be. The Holy spirit came after Jesus as a helper, as reinforcement, and as God's intention to save humanity. When people call on the Holy Spirit they call on God. The Holy Spirit gets shit done. It can come like a wind and fill the space with a heavy fog or be as subtle as a whisper. God is a multidimensional mass of everything. Jesus is what God uses to bridge what we can comprehend to God Himself, like a right arm. The Holy Spirit is like the left arm, just as much of an extension of God but in a different format. With these two hands God pulls us into Himself. I think that's why people compare the Trinity to a three leaf clover.
Dude, that gave me a weird feeling of nostalgia when you showed a clip of the Lutheran Satire. I remember watching that a long time ago back when I was Christian and Lutheran. This was a fun and interesting video. Keep up the good work!
I took a religion course in college. When I learned about different types of deities being transcendent, Immanent, or residing within the person themselves (I don't remember the technical term)...I immediately thought to myself that the Trinity could be a way to represent a belief that Deity was all three...The Father being Transcendent, The Son Immanent, and the holy spirit residing within a person. I think this makes sense...that it's a way to articulate a larger idea...instead of a literal thing. But, I've long been a Pagan, so what do I know.
Well, yes and no. What I was going for was 100% heretical...but I didn't mean to imply partialism. I was saying that The Trinity could be used as a device to articulate how all encompassing and multifaceted Diety is. This is hindsight, as a wasn't a Pagan when I took that college course, but sort of like the Diamond analogy that is sometimes used...one thing with many facets. That the transcendent, immanent, and being inside a person are just different facets of the same thing. In other words, there are three different ways a person could interact with the exact same thing, and the Trinity is a way that can be used to describe it in a way people can understand. And, of course, since I'm saying that The Trinity is not a literal thing, but just a way to explain a complex idea...that is 100% heresy. But...I *am* a proud apostate whose favorite hobbies include heresy and schism (I wonder if I should put those as hobbies/interests on my dating profile...lol)
@@LilithEveRainI love your explanation! It is indeed heretic, but it does summarise the idea. To make it less heretical, but more crazy, we could say that a) these functions are linked to what we'd call personalities of faces, but b) God (the Godhead) being more powerful & way more strange than humans, these multiple personalities can interact with one another & they are different persons, who share the same being. And it might still be heretic, but ok.
Another interesting discussion is the status of Satan. Is he a god? A demi-god? Just an angle? Why does he get his own realm if not at least a demi-god? Actually one of the big issues that lead me away from Christianity.
I just wanted to say I just discovered your channel and I'm really enjoying it so far! I was raised Free Will Baptist and left the faith about 10 years ago. I've been pagan for about 6 and having a really hard time unpacking that suitcase Jesus. Your videos have really helped! Thank you for all the work you do!
I'm not a Christian, but here's a random thought I've had. I know that many polytheistic religions have a tendency to simply absorb foreign gods into their pantheon. Has any modern pagan attempted to absorb Christ, his father, or a pre-monotheistic Judaic or canannite Yahweh into their pantheon?
@@OceanKeltoi Yo, I love your channel and what you're about. Made me realize how much of the shit I love is Pagan. The original Japanese version if Yugioh is Pagan as fuck. As is one of my favorite all time games, Tales of Symphonia.
@@dahliawolf5315 Not in the wiccan way no, however in Gaelic (and though I'm less versed in it, I think General Celtic) paganism involves a Sanctity of trinity. Whilst this *could* be Christian influence the extent of it says otherwise. For example, Na MòrRighean in Gaelic paganism is seen as a triple deity and shapeshifter, usually seen as another name for three goddesses of war and usually for Macha, Badb & Nemain. Another example is the Goddess Brighid who, at least in parts of Scotland, was seen as a triple deity too, in the form of three sisters of the same name. Finally there's the obvious trinities of An Trì Naomh (Daoine Sìth, Sinnsearan agus Diathan) and An Trì Thìrean (Muir, Talam agus Nem) (Sources: tairis.co.uk , gaolnaofa.org ) So whilst the Maiden, Mother & Crone is a modern construction, Trinity is still a large part of a (relatively) large religious group within paganism (potentially more if mainland Celtic, such as Gaulish, pagans hold a similar idea to Gàidhealach Paganachd) *Note:* this is from a Gaelic Reconstructionist perspective
@@celticconlanger6401 .... You didn't really say anything I didn't already know. I'm very aware there are many pagan deities that are shape shifters and triple formed. I even said that in a comment above.
When I was a teenager we did a course that basically taught us how the trinity isn't any of the common heresies, and then appealed to mystery. But when trying to 'convert' people we basically explained it like modalism. Just if someone said we were modalists we would point to the verses of Jesus being baptised and be like, look that father, son and Holy Spirit (as a dove) are all there. ((Also, the Holy Spirit always gets the short end of the stick))
@@anunknownentity1637 No, the original name of the Jewish God was El (& his wife's name was Asherah). The Yahweh pronunciation comes from the Gematria (Jewish number/letter cypher mysticism) of YHWH, a secret coding for both breathing (which they, not knowing that air is molecular, thought was spiritual) & El. He has about dozen other "names", defining his attributes, but these were mostly reserved for the priesthood during rituals. All the Trinity beliefs weren't even a thing before about 300CE.
@@anunknownentity1637 My apologies if I was imprecise with the dates, however I was referring to when the *Trinity* (which admittedly had been suggested by Justin Martyr as early as *110CE)* finally became a part of the Christian Canon in the Council of Nicea in *325CE* (under the command of Roman Emperor, Constantine). Before this time, there were dozens of versions of the Christian faith (most being only verbal traditions) including the beliefs that: • *Yeshua ben Yosef* (Latinized as Jesus) was just a normal - if wise - man, who was crucified, but stayed dead. [ Redefined as heresy - for obvious reasons. ] • *Yeshua* was never human, instead being only a 'spiritual projection' of God (& therefore couldn't die). • *Yeshua* was a Holy Spirit wearing a human body like a suit. And many more variants of the stories, besides - including the Trinity. There were also 'bout *Fourteen Gospels* in total, which were eventually pared down to the current Four in earlier Councils, 'round *295CE.* Ref: • The development of the *Trinity* as Christian Doctrine: [ en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity ] • Other important dates in the Christian Timeline: [ www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-43/how-we-got-our-bible-christian-history-timeline.html ] • Constantine & his profound influence on Christianity: [ www.gotquestions.org/Constantine-Bible.html ]
My first thoughts after your opening statement: Are you saying that Eastern Orthodox is not Christian? My thought on the matter is that the Trinity was a solution to a major sticking point during the Consul of Nicaea concerning the specific form of Christ's divinity. Unable to agree or make progress, they came up with something that is intentionally "a mystery" with no correct interpretation. Anyone who claims to figure it out is wrong because there is no answer -- it is meant to be a mystery. And everyone at the meeting could pretend that their own belief was what it really meant.
Let me know if this makes sense to you... God is everything, logic including, and I believe He follows the rules He Himself put in place. He made a promise to His creation (who He made in His image, as children, as "little gods") that He would lead them and such despite human error. But He needed an example, a corrector, and a way of having humanity understand that He knew what it was like to be human. The LAW was established because humans needed to know that sin leads to mental, spiritual, and bodily death. The SON was sent like an outreach program that showed the TRUTH of good and what living in the SPIRIT of the LAW meant. God came to earth THROUGH Jesus like an avatar. Jesus was flesh and divine like we can be. The Holy spirit came after Jesus as a helper, as reinforcement, and as God's intention to save humanity. When people call on the Holy Spirit they call on God. The Holy Spirit gets shit done. It can come like a wind and fill the space with a heavy fog or be as subtle as a whisper. God is a multidimensional mass of everything. Jesus is what God uses to bridge what we can comprehend to God Himself, like a right arm. The Holy Spirit is like the left arm, just as much of an extension of God but in a different format. With these two hands God pulls us into Himself. I think that's why people compare the Trinity to a three leaf clover.
@@absintheminded8466 your interpretation is valid but not trinitarian. This is what usually happens when a christian tries to explain the trinity, they end up talking about a heresy like modalism
Enjoying your videos - the way you contrast the arguments of polytheists, Christians, and atheists makes me feel as a Jew like I get to sit over on the side with popcorn going “fight! fight! fight!”
I always had trouble with the trinity when I was a Christian and eventually ended up settling on something between the "Voltron" god and polytheism. By this point, though, I was already a fully confessed heretic (all be it in secret at the time.) The problem of evil was another issue I resolved with heresy, as I adopted a belief in a limited god. People who insist that there are no contradictions in the Bible and all extrapolated non-scriptural doctrines baffle me. You've addressed this issue very well; this is a simple, strait forward, but concise illustration of the trinity problem(s). Oh, and a quick side note: at 7:15 I think you meant the black lion. This is an understandable mistake, though, as sentai teams often assign red to the leader of a team. I guess in this sense, Voltron was a heresy too.
I also believed in a limited God because of the problem of evil while I was a christian. Also rejected eternal hell in exchange from purgatory all the way down.
Yeah, I remember pointing this out to my father (I'm a missionary kid and he has an MDiv) and he said the water thing, I explained why that doesn't make sense. That was followed by an appeal to mystery. The appeal to mystery thing was really how I lost my faith because it just kept popping up for everything. My mom would always say "Here's the problem with your thought process, you're only thinking in terms that you can comprehend" I mean, what other choice do I have?
You make a good point, so please let me explain. God is everything, logic including, and I believe He follows the rules He Himself put in place. He made a promise to His creation (who He made in His image, as children, as "little gods") that He would lead them and such despite human error. But He needed an example, a corrector, and a way of having humanity understand that He knew what it was like to be human. The LAW was established because humans needed to know that sin leads to mental, spiritual, and bodily death. The SON was sent like an outreach program that showed the TRUTH of good and what living in the SPIRIT of the LAW meant. God came to earth THROUGH Jesus like an avatar. Jesus was flesh and divine like we can be. The Holy spirit came after Jesus as a helper, as reinforcement, and as God's intention to save humanity. When people call on the Holy Spirit they call on God. The Holy Spirit gets shit done. It can come like a wind and fill the space with a heavy fog or be as subtle as a whisper. God is a multidimensional mass of everything. Jesus is what God uses to bridge what we can comprehend to God Himself, like a right arm. The Holy Spirit is like the left arm, just as much of an extension of God but in a different format. With these two hands God pulls us into Himself. I think that's why people compare the Trinity to a three leaf clover.
Mysterianism - "Mysterianism is a meta-theory of the Trinity, that is, a theory about trinitarian theories, to the effect that an acceptable Trinity theory must, given our present epistemic limitations, to some degree lack understandable content."
While I am okay with Trinitarianism I am not okay with BELIEVE OR YOU GO TO HELL! which always struck me as a human affectation and attempt to expand human power rather than truly extolling the glory of God.
As a professional cook, the trinity is simple. Onions, carrots, celery for continental cuisine; onions, garlic, ginger for oriental cuisine; and meat, bread, and spread for a sandwich
When I was Christian I believed in a hybrid between voltronisim and Hinduism where there was god the mind, god the action, and god the omnipresent and I believed that they where aspects of a larger concept that we labeled as god rather than distinct entities that made up a shared consciousness. I’m atheist now btw. love your content!
Partialism sounds like a dissociative disorder not going to lie. I don't know what trauma god went through that caused the initial dissociative split, but that description of god just sounds like DID/OSDD-1
at some point in my leaving the faith, i had done some studying, and it occurred to me that part of the problem with the trinity is... it's hard to explain, but i'm gonna try. * in genesis, it says "in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth"...THIS is where the problem starts. the very first line in the bible. the word god, in hebrew, is "elohim". in hebrew, words that end in the suffix -im is a plural word (think: one cherub vs. all the cherubim). the singular word for a deity is "eloah". the plural is "elohim". therefore the very first line ACTUALLY reads "in the beginning, the gods created the heavens and the earth." elohim, therefore, is not an epithet of the deity, but rather, a statement of quantity. ...imma come back to this point later (we'll call this #1). * genesis 32:22-31 goes on about jacob wrestling with an angel. upon being beaten, the angel renames jacob as "israel" (means "wrestles with god"), and the place where it happened was called "peniel" (means "the face of god") for that is where jacob saw the face of god... likewise in genesis 12:8, abram was told to move his home near bethel (which means "house of god")... and in genesis 17:1. god quite literally goes to abram and says "i am God Almighty" ...we see the suffix "-el" everywhere in genesis, in names, and in places. * in exodus 6:3, we read "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself fully known to them." ...the phrase "God Almighty" is translated from hebrew as "El Shaddai". in this sense, "El" is not a suffix in a compound word, it is a proper name; "Shaddai" is not his name, it is an epithet, translated as "Almighty" in english... but there's a problem... * "almighty", in english, carries the connotation of being omnipotent: due to its origin as the root phrase "all mighty", it assumes that you can square a circle, successfully be a married bachelor, and all sorts of inane things, because, hell, anything's possible if you have all the power possible, right? in hebrew, it carries a completely different connotation: "shaddai" comes from the root word "shadad", which means "to destroy, to bring to ruin"... it carries the connotation of a rapist or a murderer having complete power over their victim, and the victim is helpless. * when the bible writes "the LORD" just like that, the word being translated is "YHVH", generally translated as god's personal name, Yahweh. * so this brings something interesting to light... "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as El the Destroyer, but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself fully known to them." * El was an Ugaritic sky deity and ruler of his own pantheon, not unlike greece's Zeus. El's wife was named Asherah, and his son was named Ba'al. their holy text is known as the Ba'al Cycle. ...i'll come back to this later, too (this is return #2). * biblcal context aside, Yahweh was a Canaanite war deity, not unlike rome's Mars. two completely different gods from two completely different areas that had ZERO contact with each other until about a century before Hezekiah's rule (around the 680's BC). there is pottery shards at kuntillet ajrud, in the NE sinai peninsula, from around the 800's-700's BCE that shows two men and a seated woman. the predominant writing on this is a blessing that reads, in part "Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah". (mind you, people try to say it's a picture of Bes, the egyptian dwarf god, because no real god would be drawn with his schlong out, and that an asherah is a log you cut down for war, but really those apologetics make zero sense in any context, real world or biblical) ... (we'll call this point return #3) * Asherah's epithets are "She Who Treads upon the Seas" and "The Tree of Life". Ba'al is a thunder god, not unlike Thor. * let's go back to #1. let's read the entire beginning in context... well, you can google the first and second chapters of genesis, i'll just quote the relevant shit here: "1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 1:2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.... 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness..." ... 2:9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground-trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."" * let's re-read those verses stripped of dogma and put in what might've been the story told 4,000 years ago: "In the beginning, the gods created the heavens and the earth. 1:2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and Asherah was treading upon the seas.... 1:26 Then the gods said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness..." ... 2:9 Of the gods, Yahweh made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground-trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were Asherah's tree and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." * ...this poses a problem. the deity routinely calls himself "El" to people, but in the beginning, it was the name of a god that no hebrew had contact with? i smell monotheistic retconning. * let's go to point #2. in the Ba'al Cycle (f. V AB, section D, verses 37-39), there is a particular story that, quite literally, isaiah 27:1 copypasted, "In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." - bible... vs "Surely I lifted up the Dragon... I destroyed the Crooked Serpent, the Tyrant with the seven heads." - Ba'al cycle. ...note that the red dragon in the book of revelation has seven heads. * now... ALLLLL of that said... if you read the bible from cover to cover, you'll find out that the nation of israel had a MASSIVE problem with polytheism. i mean, that is the general theme of the old testament: god makes shit good for israel, they get complacent, they worship other gods, god punishes them, they repent and worship god alone, god makes shit good for israel, rinse and repeat. * let's go back to point #3... hezekiah was celebrated as being the greatest king israel ever had (in the sense of being head of the government, not a figurehead of faith like david or solomon were) because he purged israel of polytheism. ...barely a century after there was syncretism between El and Yahweh, hezekiah takes the stage and slaughters the polytheists. from this point forward in the bible, israel is wholly monotheistic. ...i smell monotheistic retconning and whitewashing. therefore, it is my personal opinion, based on what i'd learned over the years, that in israel's earliest days as a bunch of nomadic hebrews in the land of canaan, they were originally polytheists who worshipped El, Asherah, Ba'al, and the rest of the canaanite pantheon. the followers of El rose to power in an atmosphere of monolatry (see joshua 24:20, where god acknowledges there are "foreign gods" as opposed to "false gods"), but there was distinct religious infighting throughout the centuries, until hezekiah lays down the law, and introduces the name of his personal god, Yahweh, as being the god that was always worshipped. so, now we've laid the foundation as to WHY there needs to be a trinity... because there is perpetual wording throughout the old testament that implies things that could not exist without polytheism, so there is a ton of linguistic discrepancies and logical problems that point to other people apart from this "God" entity, who are now missing or need reattribution. Asherah? She Who Treads Upon The Seas became The Holy Spirit, El became Yahweh, and the Tree of Life became the up and coming messiah, Jesus. the battle between Ba'al and Lotan got rewritten as God and Leviathan. ...and the constant torture israel got was no longer a matter of them being lousy, warmongering, neighbors, or having been victims of political power struggles like the rest of the nations on earth, but rather a punishment for worshipping foreign, and then later false, gods. ...and it doesn't help when christians call "God" as an entity unto itself, instead of a "quality of being that is a direct result of shit not getting translated properly". "BUT! BUT! ELOHIM IS LIKE THE ROYAL WE!" christians whine... never realizing that the royal "we" wasn't invented until Henry II using it to mean "God and I" in regards to his personal divine right to act, nor realizing that nowhere in the new testament is it plural, but ALWAYS in the singular (one theos vs many theoi). ...i mean, a god that is eternal and never changes wouldn't use a plural word to describe himself in a polytheistic/monolatrist society then change to singular after all the polytheists were killed, right?
While I was in Seton, (a Catholic homeschool.) I always interpreted it as God can shapeshift and since he can transcend time that meant he could be all three at once. (Yes I know that makes no sense.)
It always falls back to some variation on "it's a mystery" I think the Trinity is almost directly responsible for most of the harm done by Christianity. Not only does it prevent the necessary reconciliation with Jewish people, it drives people out of the faith. And when one of the fundamental tenets of the religion is nonsense, it leads to a culture that either refuses to address questions or worse, encourages people to believe nonsense in other places. All that for something that Jesus repeatedly and explicitly denied many times!
I did a personal study on the trinity a few years ago and this is how I came to understand it personally.: (This will sound a lot like your description of Modalism, but I think the key is in the consciousness aspect.) I would think of God as a sphere of water where every single atom of the water contains all of God's consciousness and "brain" function. The water then splits into three sections which still all contain the same consciousness (as every atom does). One section then becomes steam, the other becomes ice. The consciousness as God is still completely in all three, as the atoms have not changed form, but there are now three distinct forms with boundaries imposed on them by the nature of what they are. For instance, I believe that physically humans will die if they are brought directly into the presence of God (the father), and so he is able to Nerf himself, wrapping himself in flesh (Yeshua) so that we can look at him, touch him, and NOT die. Additionally, a physical, human mind with a select number of neurons, cannot hold the entire knowledge and memories of the universe without exploding; It doesn't have that much space on the hard drive; so Jesus then has some of the "God tier" things toned down so that he doesn't break his human body. This would be akin to the ice avoiding heat so that it doesn't become water or steam again. It's him operating within the structures of science. In order for God to be Man, God must be "less" God, but not Not God. Maybe this is a bad analogy, haven't thought it fully through yet, but as a writer, I can write myself into my book, my written self is then in the constrains of the book, but my consciousness (Author; father) still wrote every word of my written self (created; son). Written self is a personal projection of Author, put into the constraints of the narrative lets say, to teach the reader and the other characters of the story who Author is; what his character is like, how he behaves. Does this make Written Self any Less self? That is a question I'll have to think on. Point is, to me the trinity is different nerfs of God, but consciousness remains unbroken throughout. Would love to hear thoughts on this!
Interesting thinking. I like the constraint idea. What about the universe just being God constraining itself through fragmentation to avoid the horror of omniscience. And who said omnipotence couldn't cancel itself?
@@anunknownentity1637 Where exactly? Many "references to Trinity" in the Bible were later additions. I don't say that Trinitarianism did not exist in early Christianity. It likely did, but probably until the Nicene and other early councils was perhaps a minority view.
@@ulfr-gunnarsson actually it was the majority view at the council of Nicea. Of the more than 200 bishops that attended less than ten denied trinitarianism. The council didn't create the doctrine but simply defined what had already been believed.
The idea of Christians being monotheistic is especially entertaining to me looking back at my childhood religion of Mormonism. They believe that we can all become gods, that the resurrection is our moment of evolution essentially. Also, that God was once a human, and has his own father. And so there are an infinite number of gods, and yet monotheism. I've heard Mormons argue that they are monotheistic because they only worship one God. But monotheism doesn't have to do with how many gods you worship, it has to do with how many gods you believe exist.
I love the "Jesus is an astral projection of YHVH" theory because it's fun to then explain to someone how an infinite being sacrificed exactly nothing if they did that - the experience of pain was so finite and minuscule that the "sacrifice" becomes ultimately meaningless. Honestly, any of these theories has that problem. If Jesus is infinite and eternal like YHVH and is also YHVH in any way, his sacrifice couldn't be a sacrifice. Which means all the fetishizing Christians do about it is also quite sad.
I think you might be a little biased. Agnostic here, but im really into Christianity. While Christianity just like most religions present multiple contradictions on their theological explanations, the point iv always seen of the trinity is that it represent diferent aspects of the same thing because they relate in different things in human nature. Christ is meant to represent the embodiment of divinity in man, represented by real actions made in the material world, the human world, and its the sacrifice what fulfills those actions, divinity is reached an exemplified in a way that is much more closer to the human experience. The human experience and the trascendance of its suffering. Its not something to be seen logically like A = B = C in fact i dont think anyone should look at Christianity in that way because it isnt about literal descriptions of the physical realm but alegorical ideas that relate directly to the human experience. Hope that makes any sense.
@Joseph LaGreca yeah you are right, here in Europe the arent many that take it literally in believing in Noah and stuff but still they kinda do, like they accept everything without questioning whats trully being sayed there. Why did Christ had to die to save us? What would be different if he didnt die? Most so called Christians dont know what to answer because they never really wondered in the first place. There are really weird parts in the bible. Jacob's fights and angel/God and thats supposed to be a good thing. Jesus is super chill but god in the old testament seems to be a little cruel. There is an obvious meaning behind all those contradictions but people just ignore them. Christianity has been reduced to "accepting Christ as your savior". Pisses me off cose i dont even believing in god amd i take the stuff more seriously than most Christians lol.
I've always thought the sacrifice was meaningless anyway, no matter how you choose to interpret the Trinity. Jesus knew he was the son of God and knew he would rise again and be taken into heaven to rejoin the father. So what then was the sacrifice? Was it the pain or the experience of death? It's nullified by him knowing for certain that it's impermanent and he will ascend to heaven as a divine being three days after the fact. Nothing was actually sacrificed. On the contrary, something was gained. It's all a fallacy.
@@crisis-cor why would it be nullified by knowing he would resurrect? Or why do you supose he knew he would resurrect in the first place? I don't get your argument, with all respect i think you dont get the point. When it comes to sacrifes its a common theme in many cultures enduring such sacrifice precisely because you know what the outcome of going through that will be, a voluntary sacrifice that is made in the pursuit of a desired goal, a fundamental part of the transformation of the self. I think its meaningful af lol.
@@francisco8345 Well for one, he says so several times. Mark 9:31 “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.” He knew he would resurrect. No offense, but you don't seem to know the theology you're defending very well if you didn't know Jesus predicted his death and resurrection. The act of sacrifice is typically thought of as giving something up (losing something). Jesus, however, gave up nothing. He was killed, yes, but he resurrected three days later. And he knew that was going to happen. Therefore.. what was the sacrifice? Nothing was lost. As stated before, afterwards, he rose to heaven as a divine being so if anything.. he actually gained something. Also, what transformation of self occurred here? Jesus was supposedly already the son of God.
I really appreciate your end tagline: Find a way or make one. It's so central to being human. And, as I emphasize to my young children often, problem solving skills serve you in every area of life. Use your mind and figure it out. That is what gets you through life.
My experience with this 'teaching' and the way my church rationalizes it is that since the Holy Spirit, descended on Mary and conceived Jesus, he is a part of God, and therefore not God. Gets confusing if you think about it too hard. The Holy Spirit and Jesus are parts of God, and God granted his Holiness to Jesus at his Baptism. Which is also strange since you would think being conceived by the Holy Spirit would automatically make him 'holy.'
The leg is the body, the arm is the body, the head is the body. The leg is NOT the arm, the arm is NOT the leg. Pieces of a thing can exist as part of a thing and not be the whole.
Your Voltron description o the trinity reminds me of a description I once heard of for Rama and his brothers. Sri Vishnu became, uhm, a bowl of pudding (for reasons, or because He wanted to; I don't remember) and it was divided up among a king's 3 wives, so each child born was a different fraction. One was 1/2 Vishnu, one was 1/4, and the last two were each 1/8, but, of course, one eighth of infinity is still infinity, so all 4 of the king's magically born sons were fully god, but two were noticeably more fully god than the other two. :P In Hinduism, we happily worship river rocks and basil plants. We're worried about poetry and bhakti, more than logic.
OK, so I know this is an old conversation to be joining, but I only recently found the channel and am enjoying it immensely. Here's my take: I've always assumed (and perhaps this is not logically consistent, but I'm open to examining that) that whatever I can do as a "mere mortal," God/a god must be able to do. And since I myself (call me "D" according to your equation) can be three things simultaneously (let's say that A = child; B = parent, though I personally do not have kids; and C = researcher) without any of those three contradicting or being mutually exclusive with each other at least in terms of plain beingness, the notion of the Trinity must at least be reasonable within its own context. Child, parent, and researcher are not the same as each other (A =/= B =/= C), but all of them are me (A = D, B = D, C = D.); furthermore, parent and researcher would be "begotten" in a sense -- coming later in time. I'm not nearly as well-read or -trained in philosophy as you and don't have the details of vocabulary, so which heresy am I committing here, other than not being Christian in the first place? I always love committing a good heresy. 🙂
I have subscribed to every person featured on Paulogia, except for one. (Unnamed didn't believe people have an electrical field and Crystals have a frequency response because crystal woo exists. Illogical.) You are every bit as good as is the rule on Paul's channel.
Again, a very well researched and well done video. I particularly appreciate your approach of using Christian heresies to point out the illogic inherent in the Christian conception of the Trinity. (It also serves to highlight that fact that many Christians, in their attempt to comprehend the Trinity for themselves and/or explain it to others, are courting heresy.) I feel that this logical incoherence is exactly what one would expect to see from the attempts of early Christian theologians to reconcile the ancient Jewish mythological texts with their own burgeoning mythology, and attempting to forge these disparate views into a single religious ideology. Since they are, in fact, two different religions, (albeit closely related) with two different conceptualizations of deity, there were bound to be incompatibilities. I believe that the Early Christians tried to paper these (sometimes-very-wide) cracks with an ‘all purpose cement’ that they called Trinitarianism. (“These ideas are incompatible and/or illogical? That’s ok… We’ll just call it a Mystery!”)
My dad teaches youth group and used an egg to explain the trinity, which I guess is like the water analogy except I had some issues with it because, for example, an eggshell is not an egg. With the water analogy, at least all 3 phases of water are H2O. I guess one could look at it as all 3 phases of H20 existing simultaneously on earth at once?? but yeah still confusing cuz of the trinity acting like 3 separate entities. good times
Is a correct way to understand the Trinity, is that it is a political and intellectual compromise of the church based on the assumption that the canonical books of the bible are all describing the same thing, when actually the different books describe different, incompatible Christian beliefs?
The problem of the Trinity is they try to make a, b, and c ACTUALLY EQUAL TO D, as opposed to just being a member of d (or, tri-theism, as you mentioned)
Full discretion, i am a former Christian (Protestant) turned polythiest pagan. I had a pretty not terrible experience with Christianity and left on a slightly sour note. Over all i had a great experience with it. I always learnt it as the trinity is 3 aspects of God/Yahweh. Meaning Jesus isn't Yahweh, the Father isn't Yahweh, the Holy Spirit isn't Yahweh, but the three of them make the title of Yahweh. As such, "God" or "Yahweh" is just a title to refer to all of them. Or at least thats how i was taught it, other's experiences may differ. In pagan terms, i would imagine it would be similar to epithets of a god
The trinity gave me a headache in religion class as a kid... The only way I can think of it is like a 4D shape, we see the 4D shape as illogical since we live in a 3D world, just like how a 2D drawing of a 3D shape looks like it overlaps, a 2D being seeing that would think it was illogical Im not sure if thats biblically consistant though, I have never read the whole book
I very much appreciate this video. It articulates very clearly the issues I had with the concept of "one God in three persons". The incoherence of the Trinity was part of my leaving mainstream Christianity and accepting more of an agnostic polytheistic view.
When I was Christian how I rationalized it was seeing God, in concept, as an amorphous blob encompassing all of humanity. Then Jesus would be some of this blob given form but still connected at the back of the neck like a chord. Jesus would be constructed of, and would be inseparable from, this blob, but is not the blob itself. Or maybe like a 3 headed dude with each head being a different aspect, but ultimately they share the same body. I still don't consider it to be especially troublesome to picture it like this as a pagan, though ofc without the belief in it the concept is funny. But at least I feel it is coherent
The best explanation I ever heard from a logical perspective required a deeper dive into how the begetting and the proceeding in the creeds takes place when all 3 persons of the Trinity are eternal. Essentially, imagine a stack of 3 books in a persons hands. The book on the bottom of the stack is the Father, the book in the Middle is the Son (Jesus) and the book on top is the Holy Spirit/Ghost. These three books collectively make up the stack, and this stack is for this illustration is God. It, the stack, is God only because all parts of the stack share that same quality. When acting together they act in complete unity, though in some ways they can be thought to act separately and build off each others actions (like the Hunger Games Series or something where each story is what it is in relation to the greater narrative that is Panem and all the stories are interrelated and co-dependent but different, but together they are still this trilogy only because of both their individual and their collective content). So the essence is interwoven between them all but they all have it independently. Any portion or any combination of portions is God, as they are both independent in many ways and interdependent in others. From that interdependence you can get to an explanation of begetting and proceeding. In the Western tradition the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, constantly being created out of the Father, and between the two of them, via their relationship and bond with one another the Holy Spirit is issued and proceeds from them. But this relationship is continuous and has always existed. back to the stack of books. put the books on the table. now, if you move the bottom book the other two fall out of place, they are both dependent on the Father. move the middle book (the son) and only the top one (the holy spirit) is effected and falls out of place too. hence the spirit proceeds/is issued by both and the son is created/begotten by the Father. but as these relationships exist outside of Time as well as inside it, from our perspective, and perhaps even from theirs, they have all existed in this united state. they are all God because they share this property of eternity and infinity, and they each have it independently, but infinityx3 is not 3infinity, it is still infinity, hence the unity is still just one God, not three Gods. it is convoluted to try to explain. I understand the reasoning only so far. like many other things Christians say, I know it more because I've experienced some small part of this firsthand. the relationship with each of them is different, subtly, but has the same force and effect. having the kind of deep, pentecostal style relationship with God I do is a lot like having one relationship, but in many others is like having 3 different ones.
I read this, and while I think it's a coherent explanation, it's also partialism and not the Trinity. So good on you for putting forward a coherent explanation, but you're unfortunately a heretic.
@@OceanKeltoi is it? I mean, I can see how it can be read that way, certainly. but if it is it is a distinction without a difference, in any practical and relational sense. and I'm not even certain you can avoid at least some instance of partialism or that it is inherently untrinitarian to do so. you can be partialist, by this generous definition, and affirm all the points in the Nicene creed (a low bar for orthodoxy, I grant but the only one I'm comfortable asking of another). your voltron analogy was good as far as it goes, but it only matches the case made so far--it would be like if any of the parts of voltron could become voltron or if they all or any combination came together they could, but that there could never be multiple voltrons at once. in the end, I think the analogy fall through due to a human inability to understand eternity and infinity, not due to any property of God as such. much respect, Ocean. good to finally find your channel after not seeing you around for a year since that big roundtable on Nonseq.
@@tnorthrup1986 It falls prey to the idea that Jesus is not 100% of God. It's the issue with the trinity as stated by the Church. Partialism, however, is coherent. It's just not what's been historically expressed as the Trinity. And it means that while Jesus was on earth, God was not whole. I'm glad to have been starting a channel. That big debate on NonSeq is where I met Suris, and he and I have been good friends ever since.
@@OceanKeltoi I guess I would then ask which church, because there are so many hundreds and/or thousands of denominations and divisions that to say "the church" believes any one thing is a bit of a nonseq itself. i've got a secular degree in philosophy specializing in the philosophy of religion and ethics. and I must have missed that point in your video or I'd have taken it head-on earlier because I don't know of any evidence to support the historicity of "each person in the Godhead must be all of God" my reading has always been "each person of the Godhead must be all God" and I'd also think that as stated here that the doctrine of the incarnation would directly contradict the doctrine of the trinity. God is definitely severable, and if the gospel accounts are historically accurate in any general sense you have events like the Transfiguration or the Baptism or the Crucifixion where God made it pretty darn clear there was more to God than Jesus
@@tnorthrup1986 I'm referencing the Catholic Church, obviously. But the Trinity was developed long before the split between Catholics and Protestants, and the vast majority of protestants and Christian offshoots to this day retain the doctrine established by the early Church.
For anyone actually interested, catholic answers has several very good articles explaining the Trinity in detail. It is also worth noting that the mystery of the Trinity is literally the central mystery of Christian life, and as such it will be very difficult to understand.
I like the *idea* of divine mysteries, of things that are essentially simple but that you your can keep digging deeper into, of things that you can feel profound revelation about but then feel that you might be just as far from grasping. However... The mysteries of orthodox Christian theology, seem no more than hollow contradictions. However, philosophical/scientific questions like "why do we pectoral time to flow", "why do we have a sense of personal agency or free will", "what is truth", "what is mathematics" and many other things, do have this character for me.
It seems to me to be. But since Christians want to call themselves monotheist and wanna name call hinduism as polytheism they will not admit it. Also, because why stop at three, right?
"It's a mystery" in theory it's suppose to be a mystical ponderance that leads to some deeper wisdom but the church as basically a whole has become so scared of "mysticism" that now it's just a problem where you're told "STOP ASKING QUESTIONS!" Also, historically, the Trinity was just an explanation of how jesus and the father are both god "but we're not polytheists!" And the spirit got added in later
What I heard from Aquinas is that one can distinguish between mind-independent / objective distinctions and mind-dependent / subjective distinctions and it so happens that the distinction between God and any of the persons of the Trinity is subjective but the distinction between the persons of the Trinity is objective. This makes sense with a philosophical background and fits the diagram.
Fun fact (according with the bible) The account of God given by the man known as Jesus the Christ was not a trinity but one spiritual entity he called the father and the only true God. This would mean that the God of mainstream Christianity is actually different to the one Christ himself called his God.
Nowhere did he address any view of the trinity defended by Christian theologians. He could've consulted the fathers, the scholastics, the reformers, or any major 20th century theologian. But he didn't. He set up examples he knew were heresies and then just claimed Christianity is incoherent. This man isn't a Christian, doesn't understand Christianity, then he goes into a video making fun of it. This man claims to believe in a religion which posits the seasons are caused by a grieving mother looking for her child whilst she's in the underworld, and that humans were made from gold but now they age because they're made of iron. I find this man laughable.
My thought is approaching it from the idea of something like Internal Family Systems. (Basically it’s an idea where you have your “self” as a confident directing entity in your mind, but there are parts that come up in response to trauma and development. The most common forms these parts take are Managers- Parts that are meant to keep away unwarranted, uncomfortable emotions and take over when the self is compromised or unconfident. Exiles- Parts that hold repressed emotions and take the fall/abuse. and Firefighters- Parts that shut the exile down at all cost even if it means putting the manager out of commission as well. This usually comes up as substance abuse or behavioral addictions) Let’s say God is one entity. Who took the fall? Who took on the thoughts and actions that God was trying to get rid of? The Son. He’s the exile Who’s arguably the most present in our modern society based on the beliefs of modern Christians, regulating the will of God while both the father and the son have left the earth? The Holy Spirit. He’s the manager. Who’s the one that steps in when people are fucking angels and making giant babies, or getting their parents drunk and having their way with them? Who goes scorched earth or just straight up floods the world when things get out of hand? That’d be the father. He’s the firefighter.
Even if the technical term for these concepts are “parts”, they’re still very much a part of a person’s identity and can even overshadow your sense of self, like circles moving in and out of eachother in a venn trigram. Your self isn’t the combination of these parts, but it’s each of those parts, or all of them, or one of them, or two of them, or none of them.
Everything I've watched from you today has helped me put into words, everything I've wanted to say. Honestly I've thought so so many things about christianity were illogical, but I've seen so many people cover their eyes and open their wallets in hopes of getting to "heaven". It baffles me. I also really love how polite you were to those others at the end lol
What people don't understand is that trinity exists in all pagan religions because it is a topological description of the moment creation begins. The Christian church adopted this due to hermeticists hiding in the church and coding their language. The trinity is not part of monotheism. Joseph Farrell talks about this topological description in his books. The way to understand what this description is mapping is thus: Imagine an infinite ocean of sameness. It has no distinguishing features of any kind. In this state it is a NO-thing. Things require distinctions to describe their attributes. We are talking about the void, pure potential, totally unrealized. Now to simplify the next step, imagine an infinite sheet of paper. Now draw a distinction of any kind (a line or a circle). When you do this you create 3. 1. Section A 2. Section B (or not A) 3. The Common surface between the two (the paper than contains all distinctions that will ever be made).
I want to start by saying that I'm not a trinitarian, nor am I particularly concerned with the Arian controversy or its resolution. The Trinity was born after a brawl at the behest of an emperor to resolve an issue in his fancy new church that was annoying him. While the characters were all there in Jesus' day, they were arranged into a trinity a fair spot later for the purpose of political convenience. That being said, I don't think it's actually as unfathomable of a concept as you are making it out to be, and I think polytheists probably encounter the issue at its core when interacting with their own Gods as well, the fact that religions change over time as different people and cultures experience their gods in different ways. The trinity starts to make more sense when you look at it in terms of relationships people can have with God, rather than separate individuals or holy puzzle pieces. Let's imagine God as a person. We'll call him Joe. Well how do we understand who Joe is? There is Joe the father, Joe the husband, Joe the loyal friend, Joe the pediatric nurse, Joe the leftist, and so on. Some of these categories may overlap but the majority of them are mutually exclusive. Joe's wife and his best friend probably interact with him differently, and would probably describe him differently, but they know him equally well. No one of these aspects contains any more or less "Joeness" than any of the others, and it would be possible for a person who had a close relationship with Joe through any of these avenues to know and understand Joe, even though different relationships would include features that others wouldn't. An academic who wanted to build a "full picture" of Joe may opt to look at Joe from each of these different angles, interviewing many different people from Joe's life to build a coherent picture that fits all these different Joes together, but in doing that wouldn't actually build a relationship with Joe through any of these avenues, and would be sacrificing an experiential understanding of one of these aspects for an intellectual understanding the "full picture". With regards to his personal relationship with Joe, he does only interact through one aspect, Joe the subject. One thing that has to be considered when looking at the trinity is the primacy in most Christian traditions of some sort of relationship with God. What this relationship is and how it is maintained varies from group to group but everything tends to get looked at through this lens. Taken from this perspective, the trinity basically describes three distinct types of UPG that Christians experience when they experience God: The distant, unfathomable father/creator deity who is primarily concerned with things like ritual purity and correct behavior (the father), a being full of mercy and love who is primarily concerned with humans and easing their suffering (the son), or a transcendental divine gnosis that fills humans with inspiration, epiphany, and divine revelation (the holy spirit). The assertion being made with the trinity is that God can be understood, by those who are seeking a relationship with him, via any of these pathways. Many Hindu traditions (though by no means all or even the majority) understand their own deities in this way, as a single divine being viewed from different angles. There are pagans out there who do the same for their own deities, who would view Woden and Odin as different aspects of the same God for instance (not all, but, again, some). It isn't actually all that alien or all that unique to Christianity.
@@anselravenhart4753 Well humans don't pray to other humans so that's kind of a false equivalency. Given that the primary feature of Jesus that separates him from his father is the experience of becoming human, and humans do pray to gods, I don't see how this is an issue. To be human is to experience time and reality in a different way. Jesus, being fully human, existed within his cultural context, and had beliefs that developed within the context of first century Judea and only made sense in the context of first century Judea. He doubted himself in the garden and doubted God on the cross. Jesus was human, and he was a first century apocalyptic Jew. No matter how you square that with his divine identity that's the fact of the matter, and so, in this human state, he prayed to God just like all other first century Jews did. I use the concept of avatars in Hindu traditions as a touchpoint there at the end, and you see exactly the same stuff there. Rama prays to Vishnu, for instance.
@@anselravenhart4753 I also want to re-iterate that I'm not defending this idea, just pushing back on the idea that it's either incomprehensible or completely unique to Christianity. It's neither of those, but that doesn't mean it's right either.
I get the Father/Son being (a) god, individually and collectively, they are BOTH "entities". What exactly is the "Holy Spirit"? Is it also an entity like the other two, or just a manifestation or attribute? AND Why is it an unforgivable Sin to deny the "Holy Spirit" but not unforgivable when one denies God or the Son? Is the "Holy Spirit" actually God? If so, then God the Father and God the Son are not true gods but the manifestations of the "Holy Spirit", which would be the god to be worshiped. This creates the conundrum of worshiping the creation, rather than the creator.
As subscribing to the Biblical Unitarian view there exists a God that does not confuse His children and answers; have been, are, and will be given. Jesus has a Father and God. The trinity is an incoherent twisted form of modalism challenging God's aseity.
To argue the complexity of it: Why would it need to be simple? The material world for example is also infinitely complex. Truth is rarely simple. Saying that something isn't true because it's difficult to understand is not a very good argument.
Yep. Some people twisted it up real badly. Modalism makes sense when also transcending time I guess but is wierd. Separate and one in purpose all the way.
Super late but God is the Orz from Star Control: each individual Orz is an individual in Real Space, but in the Below, the Orz is a single entity whose "fingers" interact with Real Space in an individual yet unified manner. Could also think of Flatland. If a Flatlander saw us put individual fingertips into flatland, they would see multiple individuals despite being one person in reality. Each fingertip would seemingly act as an individual to the Flatlander, but they are all actually one person. I don't know. The Trinity never seemed that hard to figure out to me.
