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TRINITY I THEMATICS Deities in the set of three occur in the most pagan religions. Numerologically, the number three is supposed to reveal: - A pair of opposites - A unity which reconciles and transcends the opposites In Hegelian jargon, thesis and anti-thesis resolve into synthesis. Dialectics move and sustain phenomenology of spirit. In the Marxist model capital and labor ascend to dictatorship of the proletarat and, ultimate emergence of a classless society. Egyptian scheme centers around Osiris, Isis and Horus. The Trimurthy of Hinduism consists of Brahma (creator), Vishnu (sustainer) and Shiva (destroyer). Trinity is the most primitive of human dogmas. One God but three phases; one God but also three. Christology comprises tritheistic implication of positing three persons – God, Son, Holy Spirit – In God. God is one-nature, three persons == MIA OUSIA, TREIS HUPOSTASEIS. Godhead is a triad. Christ is one person and two natures. God takes on flash in Christ and, God dwells within Christ as spirit. Christ had preexisted in Father’s (God’s) mind and then became incarnate in time. God has chosen not to be God apart from mankind. Christian God cannot be conceived expect as Trinity. EGRO, He cannot be conceived apart from Humanity. The etiology engenders creeds, doxologies, liturgy, ritual and soteriology consistent with hupostasis, ousia, substantia, subsistentia and ultimately, persona. Thematically, Focus is on the CROSS. God is with us in our suffering. Father and son are separated in the dialectic of crucifixion. This separation is negated by the Holy Spirit, which reunites Father and Son in the resurrection of Christ. Thus, Christ has become one with all mankind in the perennial incarnation. II EVOLUTION Arius (320 AD) contradicted trinity with conviction that Christ the Son was not fully divine like Father the God. He was not same substance: he was not Homoousios. Father alone is ungenerate – source without source, self-existent, utterly immaterial, indivisible and thus, cannot be communicated. Whatever has come into being is necessarily created, in time, and this does not preclude the Son. St. Augustine, (354-450 Algeria) was the follower of Mani, the Persian religious reformer over Zarathushst, founder of Manichaeism – dichotomy of spiritual forces of good (light) and evil (darkness). Mani denied EX NIHILIO principle on groups that doctrine of creation from nothing contains no sufficient explanation of why God should create at any given moment in time rather than any other. Also, he wondered as to what God was doing before he created the world. Not satisfied, St. Augustine converted to Christianity in 387, advocating that God created the world from nothing. And, Time itself is creation. A single divine substance is share by all three persons, analogically, memory, intellect, will or lover beloved, love. This was in sharp contrast to Aristotle who theorized that God and Matter are eternal and co-existent. God did not create Matter; he merely shaped it. Averroes (Ibnrushed 1126-1198) re-established Aristotelian epistemology. He posited one active intellect for all mankind. By implication, he denied individual souls’ immortality, also entire range of eschatology. In retrospect, Hinduism posits a single universal soul into which all souls are ultimately absorbed. As reaction to Averros, Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) attempted to reconcile Christianity with Aristotelian notion of an unmoved prime mover, distant and removed, unapproachable. He advocated individual intellect since that alone warrants personal immortality. III CRITIQUE Strictly, God is not revealed as trinity in OT or NT. Pauline epistles refer to that triad: Spirit, Lord, God. Synoptic gospels, Matthew alone mentions Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The catechism statement – In God there are three persons and one nature: In Jesus Christ there is one person and two natures – is sharp contrast to Shema (OT) and Shahada (Q). Both doctrine establish that God is ineffable, thus, totally foreign to human concept, ontology or teleology. Three persons, by tritheistic definition, imply three individual, mutually exclusive, concentric levels of consciousness, engendering ceaseless epistemological polarities. Since Christian God cannot be posited except as trinity, he cannot be perceived distinct from humanity, the thesis entirely compromised God’s freedom in choosing to become man imbibing crass anthropolomorphism. Trinitarian doctrine is both analogical and christomonistic. As a result, it excludes world religious orders by withholding salvation since it cannot surrender or even preclude cursorily, its cardinal conviction that God is fully present in Christ. God chooses not to be God apart from mankind; if so, Jesus is not a preexistent logos but merely a hypostasis along side the father. Thus, Jesus occurs only as a dialectic in world history. The dogma totally ignores the “God question” vis-à-vis existentialist atheism, secular humanism or epistemological pluralism (say, the ten incarnations of Vishnu). Since, Nature of Christian God is to love and since love must always seek an object (if love) God needs world as a partner in love. Ergo, world is co-eternal with God. (Hence, no Qiama, no resurrection no judgment, no hell). The masculine connotation curiously circumvents Mariology as if, no vehicle or medium permeates transposition of the Holy Ghost. All opinions expressed are my own and these opinions are legally protected by the First Amendment of the constitution of the United States of America. 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