The Holy Ghost
Quoting Agent Smith
Of the Sancta Trinitas, I've seen (independent) threads and debates on the Son (Jesus) and the Father (God) but never on the Holy Ghost/Spirit. Why?
Comments (46)
The Trimurti then, is actually pretty straight forward about it's meaning: The three deities represent the three aspects of cosmic existence.
Brahman the Creator
Vishnu the Maintainer
Shiva the Destroyer
The Father as Brahman being the Creator is obvious.
The other two, we may have to elaborate a bit.
The word that is used for the Holy Spirit in greek is "Pneuma" which can be translated to "breath". Same goes for the latin word "spiritus" which lend it's name to the holy spirit. Pneuma for the stoics was essentially the force that drove life - "the breath of life" - air being believed to be the primal element from where everything else originated. This is also in alignment with hinduistic tradition, where control, monitoring and training of breath makes up an essential part of yogic practice. The act of breathing in itself could be said to be considered divine. Ultimately, we can equate the Holy Spirit to Vishnu - whose very role, like breath, is to maintain life.
Last but not least Shiva. In order to understand Shiva as the son, we must first understand what "destruction" signifies in Hinduism. The Hindus believe that everything is one great cosmic cycle - and Shiva, more than the idea of annihilation itself, represents the end of a cycle but also the beginning of a new one. Does that sound familiar in any way? It is the concept of rebirth that has been so prominently captured with the biblical son Jesus. The relation from father to son is one of succesion - the Father creates the world but finally relinquishes it to his son. The son in turn ushers in a new age, essentially creating the cycle of creation, life and death anew.
Much of the debate around Jesus (the Son) and God (the father) revolves around existence (did Jesus really exist and does God exist?). No such quarrel in re the Holy Spirit!
So, does the Holy Spirit exist/no? After all, the impression I get is that that's a cut-and-dried matter, an open-and-shut case as it were.
Well, the Holy Spirit is supposed to be God according to those who accept the Trinity. So, if God doesn't exist, the Holy Spirit doesn't exist; if God exists, the Holy Spirit does as well. The Holy Spirit is one of the three Persons which make up the One God--three Persons, who nonetheless are consubstantial, one in Being.
Much time and effort have been spent trying to explain the Trinity. Too much.
The Holy Spirit has functions, or primary functions, or is its own "mode" (I think that's the term), According to the Nicene Creed (as represented by the Catholic Credo), the Holy Spirit is "the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son" and spoke through the Prophets. Here's some Latin for you:
[i]Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem:
qui ex Patre Filioque procedit.
Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur:
qui locutus est per prophetas.[/i]
The Holy Spirit is, if you will, the Chatty Person of the One God, or at least evokes or inspires chattiness, speaking through the Prophets, getting all the apostles to run out and start speaking in tongues on Pentacost. But, it's also called the Paraclete--an advisor, advocate or counselor. So, I like to think of him as the Lawyer Person of the One God. A Deity made up of the Father, the Son and the Holy Lawyer.
The Father = (Master)Mind
Holy Spirit = Speech (breath)
The Son = Body (Physical manifestation)
Actually, if you remember, I did write a thread on the Holy Spirit really, because you wrote on it. The thread was about the idea of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which is considered to be the unpardonable sin according to the Gospels. I spoke of how I got into a bad state worrying about the passage in the Bible when I was 13. A few years later, I was relieved to read that both Jung and Kierkergaard had worried over what blasphemy against the Holy Spirit meant.
When I tried to think at some point when I was still going to church about the Trinity, the conclusion which I came to was as follows: God the father is the source, and the son, Christ, is the embodiment, with the Holy Spirit as being the force through which this is mediated, especially in the embodiment as Christ. The view which I came to about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit was the general attitude of hatred of good or love and compassion represented by Christ .
Nowadays, I do also think that other teachers, especially the Buddha come from a similar starting point. Rudolf Steiner also speaks of Christ consciousness, which seems related to the idea of the Holy Spirit. I am not sure how the idea of the Holy Spirit stands in relation to materialism. Also, it is questionable whether God the father is male, as it would make more sense to see God as androgynous, and beyond gender.
Magnifique! A sensible answer/post/reply.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Sorry, slipped my mind.
The Holy Spirit = The Force (Star wars)
Michael Servetus, b. 1509, was an early proponent of unitarianism. He was condemned by the Catholic Church as a heretic in France. He fled to Switzerland and was burned at the stake by the Calvinists, another bunch of heretics.
These days it is quite safe to be a unitarian, and eminently sensible.
I'm reading this book on philosophy.
I was under the (false) impression that Chrstianity owed much of what it is, doctrinally speaking, to sound, well-crafted argumentation.
Alas, to my disappointment, this isn't true; no, not by a long shot.
I distinctly remember 3 Councils were held: one at Nicaea, one in Carthage, the other in Ephesus. Christian tenets/creeds, as it turns out, were set down with bribes, threats, violence, basically and mostly devious methods. So much for Christianity! I'm sure the same goes for other religions as well.
It's pointless to argue when no argument was made to begin with.
"Everybody, tune in to the morning show! Life from heaven, God Himself, voiced by the upcoming talent JC! Second time around, ain't you JC?" "Yaman! Mama was f$#$%d twice!"
And not only for religions...
:up:
An uninformed person might think that. Christianity came together out of a melange of wildly varying beliefs. There were periodic efforts to rationalize the whole shooting match, and some of the efforts were, maybe, well-crafted argumentation.
"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made" said Kant.
Information is expensive, literally and figuratively.
I've thought about attending a unitarian meeting, or whatever they call the equivalent of a mass. But from what I read, it's too similar to a mass. Readings and singing, though the readings and songs are different, of course. I hate it when people sing and it's expected you should sing with them, with some exceptions. Perhaps a Quaker meeting would be best, as it seems nobody says, or sings, anything, unless they want to "testify" I think it is the word. I could always leave when someone decides to speak. Who knows? Maybe they would say something worth hearing.
If you're looking for something resembling argument, I'm sure you could find some supporting the Trinity.
You could try Augustine's De Trinitate, but there are other works as well. Google "Triune God" and you'll find a bunch of stuff about it. I once listened to a priest compare the Trinity to a ham sandwich. I don't think he ever published his insight, though.
Christians have always had much to try to explain about their religion, Christianity being a curious hodgepodge of religions and cults which sometimes fit together only very awkwardly.
"The concept of ethical monotheism, which holds that morality stems from God alone and that its laws are unchanging, first occurred in Judaism, but is now a core tenet of most modern monotheistic religions, including Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Bahá?í Faith."
Is all monotheism to be traced back to the replacement of the old Greek gods by one? It seems monotheism is a western concept as is the concept of a one and only true reality.
I don't think unitarians have any doctrine, nor do they support any particular version of a deity. They seem more in the way of deists. But I'm uncertain.
What a shame. Just when he was about to crack the problem - the way to a man's heart is through his stomach! :lol:
Ain't the belief in one god a doctrine? Like the belief in one physical reality in science? I don't think doctrines have an inherent value. A ham sandwich though...
I don't like my link but it was the only one I could find that crossed the many different ways it was adopted.
I was brought up Catholic, and associate "doctrine" with its endlessly complicated beliefs and rules. The doctrine involving God as Ham Sandwich is only one of many devised by it over nearly 2,000 years.
We can only pray that his idea will serve to inspire someone to finish his work of interpretation and explanation.
IIRC, even before my apostasy :halo: I had interpreted the Catholic doctrine of the "Holy Trinity" as
[quote=90 Proof]1. the sacred ("Father")
2. the sacrificed ("Son")
3. the sacraments ("Holy Spirit")[/quote]
replay
:smile:
[quote=George Orwell]There is not one who is righteous. No, not one.[/quote]
That's quite good.
A good question. Ultimately, though,whatever a "person" is, those three persons are supposed to be in essence a single God.
The early Church faced a problem. It made claim to the God of the Old Testament. However, it wanted Jesus to be God. Since Jesus wasn't around while God was parting seas, hiding in burning bushes, talking to Moses, etc., there were those who thought, quite reasonably I think, that Jesus came into being later. But that might mean Jesus was created by God, and therefore subordinate to him in some sense, as a human or as a lesser God. That wouldn't do, since there was supposed to be only one God, and Jesus was God. So the God of the Old Testament had to be Jesus somehow. The Spirit of God is also mention with some frequency in both the Old and New Testament.
So the Church wanted one God but had to explain why Jesus showed up when he did and how that took place, and the separate references to the Spirit had to be explained as well. I think the Trinity is the rather clumsy, somewhat tortured, solution to the problem of reconciling the desire to have a single God but account for Jesus and the Spirit as described in the Scriptures without being seen to worship more than one God.
The three Persons all have the same substance, was the answer. I think of the Persons as being expressive of the different functions or purposes of the single God as interpreted through Scripture. It makes no sense to me.
That's okay. I'm not interested in the Holy Ghost.
That explains why there are few discussions/threads on the Holy Ghost! The Holy Ghost is a minor figure in the Sancta Trinitas.
In case you missed it:
The Holy Ghost!
Actually, the Holy Ghost is the most immediately pertinent for the people, and thus should be discussed the most, for it is the Holy Ghost that grants people faith in God (or withholds it).
For people, matters of God begin and end with the Holy Ghost.
It's a shame that so often, he gets so little credit.
The Holy Ghost = Hard-luck Scheele (moniker, kind courtesy of Isaac Asimov)
The Son = Jesus (an actual person whol lived in Judea). :ok:
The Holy Ghost = ? NOT :ok:
Is this Oedipus doing time travel? The son, travels back in time, meets his wife (his mother) and has a child (himself) i.e. Jesus is his own father and his mother is his wife. :chin:
The expressions on the Holy Ghost's face :roll: :scream:
Also, why does the Sancta Trinitas collapse into the Father (God) Matryoshka doll like? :chin:
I wrote once a scathing humor-piece about the Trinity, in which the Holy Spirit was the mother. It is so wild, the short story, that it's completely unpublishable.
I got a piece of information, I don't know from where: My uncle, the devout RC could have told me, or I read it in some random place, that at one point the Vatican decreed that it was the Holy Ghost who put the whatever into Mary that gave her the immaculate conception. I am not sure how it was worded, which is unfortunate, because of the utmost importance of the wording, especially when one considers that the Vatican in general is not very big on explicit descriptions of reproductive sexuality. According to this version, all three manifestations of gods in Christianity are males.
It seems easier to believe in God if it is female. The RCC says God is without gender although they portray it as male
Thanks, i'll try that variation a few times and see how it fits my world view.
Heureka!! PAMELA LEE ANDERSON!!! Of course. You can believe in a god, too, if you choose the image carefully.
In the original Hebrew and Aramaic, the word for Spirit "Rhua" or Wisdom "Chakemah" is feminine.
When translated into Greek, the word for Spirit "Pneuma" is neuter.
And, lastly, when translated into Latin the word for Spirit "Spiritus" is masculine.
So, in harmony with original gender references to the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, there is good reason to believe that the Holy Spirit ought to have been characterized as feminine, rather than as neuter or masculine, by the Church Fathers when discussing the Holy Trinity.
I submit that acceptance of the feminine gender of the Holy Spirit would have had profound implications for the Church Fathers' interpretation of the Holy Trinity. For example, certain Gnostic Christians, who accepted the feminine nature of the Holy Spirit, characterized the Holy Trinity as follows:
The absolutely perfect, self-engendered source of divine life, reflecting upon itself, engenders eternally within its divine nature an absolutely perfect companion-image of itself. The latter is the eternal product of the former's thinking, its Wisdom, its perfect eternal self-knowledge, and the will of the latter is always in accord with the will of the former. The one has never been without the other.
The only difference between the two is that the former is the eternal self-engendered source of divine life, while the latter is the eternal other-engendered recipient of divine life.
Both the bestower and the recipient of divine life are unutterably perfect and exquisitely beautiful in themselves and to one another. They are eternally and irresistibly drawn to one another. For them there is no difference between love of self and love of the other. In other words, love of the other is self-love and self-love is love of the other.
An eternal, absolutely perfect divine love weds one to the other. And this reciprocal divine love between the giver and receiver of divine life is, in essence, an Eternal Spiritual Marriage (the Gnostic sacrament of the Bride Chamber).
As a result of this eternal spiritual marriage, the bestower of divine life causes the recipient of divine life to conceive a third divinity within the divine nature (the Gnostic Immaculate Conception). This third divinity is their eternal offspring. These three have never been without each other.
The divine offspring has perfect knowledge of and perfect love for both the bestower and the recipient of divine life (the Gnostic Divine Parent) and is the eternally generated perfect synthesis, embodiment, and expression of them, their divine will, and their perfect reciprocal love.
The bestower of divine life is the Person of God the Father, the male aspect of the One divine nature.
The recipient of divine life, who proceeds from the Father, is the Person of God the Mother, the female
aspect of the One divine nature, also called Wisdom, Holy Spirit, Barbelo.
And the divine offspring, who is generated by the Father and conceived by the Holy Spirit, is the Person of God the Son.
This, then, is a brief example of a Gnostic Christian interpretation of the Divine Holy Trinity or the Divine Holy Family: God the Father, God the Mother, and God the Son.
The Father, The Son, Plain as the nose on your face, The (Mother) Holy Spirit!!!