This is incorrect. In most Christian churches, Jesus is specifically not a demigod or a separate lesser entity from God. Jesus is God.
Holy trinity is literally one of the most central doctrines of Christianity.
Uneducated pagan mad this meme.
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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But if it's a Trinity, why are they listed separately if they're not separate? Why make the distinction if they're one and the same?
Who did God send down to die for our sins? Why does Jesus have a name if he just is god? Why not call him God?
If he is god, why is the resurrection so special? Wouldn't you expect God to be deathless anyway?
I'm half being difficult, half wondering what the real answers are.
that's their secret, shit doesn't have to make sense, and each branch can make up its own interpretation for the pesky details
Are Hannah Montanna and Miley Cyrus not the same person?
Are you the same person you were 15 years ago? Your name is the same. So is your social security number. But those were assigned to you by an external party.
You look different, feel different, act different. Are you the same person you were yesterday?
That's like the old ship problem. If I build a ship and then replace every part of it over time, is it still the same ship?
Ship of Theseus is the problem you’re thinking about
if I replace every part of the story is it still the same story though?
This is what I understood from the teachings of the Catholic Church:
There are sacred mysteries which are not explainable by rational or scientific reasoning and thus believing in these mysteries is the catholic faith.
So the Trinity means God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are separate and the same.
Resurrection is special because God lived as a human, died to cleanse the sins of all humans (dying is a punishment for the sins) and his resurrection means he is really God, he cannot die and doing so he defeated death itself. Which means all humans believing in God will be able to cheat death and live eternally in paradise.
God died for our sins because he loves humans and wants them to be free of sin.
Trying to understand this through reason is not possible. You need faith, this is the whole shtick.
Again this is my understanding, been a long time since I went to catechism.
Trying to understand this through reason is not possible. You need faith, this is the whole shtick.
This is why I'm not religious. I believe God would have a more elegant solution.
Growing up attending various Protestant churches, the basics re the Trinity was that God is the Father/Creator of everything, the Holy Spirit is essentially His spiritual form, and Jesus was His earthly human form. YMMV by denomination.
So…you’re saying it’s ineffable?
catechism
Wasn't that a World of Warcraft expansion?
My mistake its catechesis not catechism. English is not my first language.
No, you had the right word.
I was just making a joke because it sounds like "Cataclysm".
Its like voltron, 3 gods make 1 bigger god.
It's a secret identity. When trouble strikes, God ducks into a phone booth and becomes the Holy Spirit.
Calm down, silly. Did you forget that we're dealing with magic? Now that I've reminded you, everything should be fine.
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The best analogy I've heard so far is that god is like water and trinity is a bit like the aggregate states liquid, solid, gas. They are the same (water) but liquid water is obviously different from ice and steam.
More specifically, they are not one and same. Father is not Son is not Holy Spirit, but all of them are God.
Your questions are better answered by theologicians. I am not even a Christian, but even I know about concept of trinity. Perhaps everything about God is not meant to be comprehensible by humans. God is beyond humans after all.
For anyone wondering how this breaks down logically and where the error is:
The position as put here and elsewhere contains logical errors upon clarification. God has parts? Okay what makes the parts unique and discrete? If they aren’t, they aren’t parts of a whole and are equal to the whole.
For example: does the father have the same knowledge as the spirit? The same powers? If yes to these and similar questions, then they all are god and are not discrete. If no, then we don’t have one god at all, we have 3 gods. Also if no, the gods cannot be all knowing or all powerful individually.
I’ve never heard it put like this comment though. Instead I hear that they’re all god. As in, Jesus isn’t 1/3 of god, he is god. And so is the spirit/ghost and father. But if I ask if Jesus is the spirit, they’ll say no. This is an identity flaw. You’re saying that A=D and C=D but A!=C.
This is what you're describing and is a good pictograph for explaining why it's nonsense that cannot be presented in any accepted form of propositional logic.
OP commenter got mad at "pagans" for not describing something in terms of a contradictions, while accepting that contradiction on its own terms. Theist mad at accurate meme.
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Sort of. Trinitarianism vs Unitarianism is a whole thing.
Then the Unitarians partnered with the Universalists, which was super weird.
UUs are lovely though.
You're still consuming flesh of divinity, which is a pretty grisly, chthonic look.
Personally I'm more interested in the mores and policies of a religion, which Christian ministries generally and the Roman Catholic Church specifically have shown they will discard readily to preserve their wealth and power.
Create a religion in which the members actually practice mercy, kindness and compassion and I will tolerate all their ritual depravities. (Sacrifices of the living in effigy, please.)
Well depending on the denomination, it is either seen as literally or figuratively his flesh and blood. Figurative makes a lot more sense: "...do this in the remembrance of me"
As much as I completely agree with your interpretation, Catholic ministers and politicians alike have gotten a bit weird about trans-substantiated wafers, asserting that it has become the real literal flesh of Jesus (though it's grossly offensive if we were to subject a trans-substantiated wafer to scientific tests to see if it's changed from the control).
It reminds me in the late 1980s. In response to the fatwa levied against Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses, there was movement to demonstrate Catholic resilience in the face of offense or mockery, and for a while the Catholic community expressed a casual stoicism we attribute to European Jews. It didn't last, and evaporated entirely after the 9/11 attacks.
it’s grossly offensive if we were to subject a trans-substantiated wafer to scientific tests to see if it’s changed from the control
Which is funny because the obvious answer is that it instantly transubstantiates back into a cracker if you don't have faith -- which is implied by attempting to test it in any way.
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hmmm -- Sure smells like Polytheism to me.
One of my favorite early Christian sects is the Marcions -- They thought with how mean and angry OT God is and how nice and forgiving NT God is, and with God being eternal and all, that they must be DIFFERENT GODS with NT God now being in charge.
Of course, they were swiftly excommunicated for this.
This just compressed a good several hundred years of religious schisms and theological debate that was sometimes very bloody in sorting itself out. There is also nothing to say if what became popular was actually the correct interpretation as what became "correct" was determined by political power as the religion consolidated often based more on merit of what city the bishop came from and the ecconomic flow of power. Had things gone just a little differently we would be talking about how Jesus is God's direct subordinate or how he is effectively a unique being who is one half human mixed with one half God because he was born of Mary making him half made up of her humanity which would make him a... Demigod.
Also most Christian churches believe a lot of stuff that was somebody's random fad at some point. Like Catholicism and the seven deadly sins. That was ONE guy who started something of a spiritual wellness cult, quit all the sins he made up and died because he ruined his body following his own made up doctrine. It would be like if you let a severe anorexic write the nutritional standards on packaging.
Naw bro the "pagan" in the room ain't the uneducated one. You're just carrying around a couple of millennia of political baggage and refuse to acknowledge how a bit of hubris in the generational game of telephone might have warped your sensibilities. Those first 300 years of power struggle could have hosted some very big misinterpretations since Jesus wasn't very focused on explaining his own lore so much as setting an example in how humanity should behave so flipping out about the trinity and deeming anybody a heretic seems to be kind of missing the point.
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If they want to drink wine and eat crackers while chanting, I ain't gonna kink shame. I don't have a problem with that. It's being controlling and treating people like shit that's the real problem.
There's the real "think of the children" moment...
You forgot while young boys ring bells.
I brought the incense. We can proceed.
Also, balls.
Alright, they do that one after mass...
*while pretending to eat flesh and drink blood while sipping wine and eating miniature dry rice crackers.
Catholics use rice crackers?? That sounds so much worse.
Not always, but for a gluten-free option yes
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Jesus is an inverse zombie. Living people eat his dead flesh.
Isn't this how meat consumption usually is?
Yeah Jesus is the main course. Jesus L'Orange is a fuckin delicacy in Spain
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teaboot
Okay, new rule: if you regularly consume the blood and flesh of a demigod in a room full of chanting elders you're not allowed to call other religions primitive and evil
candidlyautistic
This is oddly specific and leaves some very interesting questions unanswered.
uirgiliana
Catholicism sure does sound weird when you put it that way.
The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood and telepathically tell them that you accept him as your master so he can remove an evil force from your body that is present in humanity because a woman made of a rib was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical apple tree. And this Jew’s father (who magically impregnated a virgin so she stayed a virgin all without her consent) planned all of this while living in nothingness for eternity and one day got bored of living in nothingness and decided to set this into motion- and hates transgenders.
And if you do not believe all of this without question, he has a special place full of fire, smoke and torture where he will send you to be gangraped through the ass with red-hot spikes by horned red creatures for eternity until the universe’s heat death. But he still loves you, and wants to save you from what he will do to you if you don’t believe in him despite, for a good 2000 years, appearing only in clouds and on toast and allowing his “chosen people” to almost get wiped out by a country-sized murder cult (not to mention everything they went through before that).
Makes perfect sense.
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Dont forget human/child sacrifice, an essential element.
But yes they adapted all of that from the other, "evil" primitive Mesopotamian religions.
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