Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 121
- 1
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
(I wrote a better version of this answer, but the web ate it when I accidentally reloaded the page. Oof.)
I saw what I now call Triessentialism first in a passage which many scholars say was not in the original manuscript but was added by a later hand due to tradition: the doxology of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6.
I had been pondering the make-up of man, what the heck the "spirit" and the "soul" are and how they're differentiated, and "where" they are in relation to each other in the body in a Christian ontology. I'd also been thinking the idea that emotion and logic are as fundamentally different from each other as are the material world and the immutable laws of logic. (You can't hold a "two" in your hand, nor burn a "deduction" to release warmth.)
It was while pondering the differences between the three ontological categories that I realized this distinction was also present in the doxology. My reasoning?
So I identified the power as belonging to God the Father, the glory to the Holy Spirit, and the kingdom to the Son. (Of course, all three Persons have power and glory, and God is rightfully sovereign over everything, so it's not a "this Person of the Godhead doesn't have X" heresy.)
Once I'd seen this pattern there, I started seeing it throughout Scripture. (I don't have the Bible where I highlighted them (highlit?) with me at the moment, and Google is being unhelpful as usual nowadays.)
So do I have more reason to identify Jesus the Son with logic, and not the Father or Spirit? Quite a lot. John described Jesus as both "the Logos"/"The Word" and "the Light." Jesus called Himself "The Way, the Truth, and the Light."
Early Christians said they were followers of "The Way," a word that means both paths and processes. Paths lead the sojourner from the origin to the destination. Processes turn intention into action. Logic is about processes and algorithms as much as it is about interactions of the descriptions of things.
In Chinese, "Tao" means "The Way" and implies "The Right Way". Logos was a Greek concept akin to the Tao: an inherent order and regulation underlying the universe. Heraclitus pioneered the concept and wrote about it in various ways, non-systematically and sometimes contradictorily as a universal consciousness or the mind of a supreme Being, but usually as a receptacle of truth. Other writers picked it up before John, but John identified the Logos as co-equal with God the Father.
Light has taken on a more fascinating meaning to me ever since I pondered waveforms as a carrier of the information of what impacted the wave's medium and holograms as a capture of that waveform. The unknown writer of the Letter to the Hebrews has some of the highest quality Greek prose in the New Testament, speaking with the precision of a programmer and the expression of a poet.
"He is the radiance (apaugasma) of the glory (doxa) of God and the exact imprint (charakter) of His nature (hypostasis)..." - English Standard Version
"He is the emittance of His majesty and the hologram of His person..." - my gloss
To perfectly describe God the infinite Being would take an infinitely precise Likeness, as flawless and divine as He. To measure God would take a standard as perfect and infinite as He.
In a way, the logical measurement is the "son" of that physical thing which is measured, existing with it even if the measurement has not been read out or recorded.
The Muslim writers sometimes speak of the Quran ("The Recitation") as God's uncreated word, not something created by humankind, the ultimate revelation, existing eternally with God.
Here, then, is that perfect formal logic which describes God: Jesus of Nazareth, who told the religious elites to love, and was killed for it. His resurrection is the proof of His correctness and their corruption.
More options
Context Copy link