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Originally posted by Isurrender73
The mystery is the church can't fully explain it but they invested heavily into the ideology that stands in direct contradiction to what Jesus said about himself so they call it a mystery rather than try to explain it rationally.
originally posted by: Woodcarver
a reply to: Joecroft
The mystery is why do you believe this stuff?
originally posted by: Woodcarver
a reply to: Joecroft
The mystery is why do you believe this stuff?
Originally posted by ketsuko
It could also be that the mystery being revealed is experiential, and as such, it's like when someone tells you an anecdote that clearly evoked strong emotion for them (usually hilarity) but you are puzzled as to why. And they look at you most of the way through unable to understand why you don't get it, and finally say, "I guess you had to be there."
Some of us have had our experiences, and anything we try to do tell others about them, generally called witnessing, will pale in comparison to the sheer power and awe of the experience itself.
originally posted by: Joecroft
You didn’t answer the second question…
If it’s a mystery and not easy to understand as you say, then why do you accept a Trinitarian belief…?
originally posted by: DISRAELI
originally posted by: Joecroft
You didn’t answer the second question…
If it’s a mystery and not easy to understand as you say, then why do you accept a Trinitarian belief…?
I did really. I've read through the contentions in the early church, and that's how I came to understand that it follows on from the doctrine of the Incarnation. It was all about rejecting expressions of the relationship which undermined the Incarnation, and finding some way of putting it which did not. The result was the carefully belanced formula which became the official teaching. I accept that formula because I believe in the Incarnation.
originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: redletter
My belief in the Incarnation is scripture-based.
I'm not going to discuss it here, but I have threads on the subject;
The Word became flesh
originally posted by: redletter
Jesus was born as a human... He was a real human. He was not faking being a human.
originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: Joecroft
The mystery is the fact that it's not easy to understand, and indeed not fully within human comprehension.
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P.S. I'm not going to be drawn by anyone into arguing to justify the doctrine. In the arguments of the early church, it follows on from the doctrine of the Incarnation, and that doctrine has to be accepted before there is any point in trying to talk about the Trinity.
“What is a mystery? Generally speaking, a mystery is a truth that is naturally impossible to understand or prove. . . . What is a religious mystery? It is one of God’s truths that we are obliged to believe, although we can neither understand it nor prove it. What are the main religious mysteries? These are the mysteries of the most Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Redemption.”—Abrégé de l’exposition de la doctrine chrétienne, 1901 (Abridged Explanation of Christian Doctrine)
THE above is how a book written at the beginning of the 20th century summarized the view of the Roman Catholic Church regarding mysteries. Furthermore, the recently published Guide des difficultés de la foi catholique (Guide to Difficulties of the Catholic Faith, 1989) shows that such doctrinal points still are of interest by stating: “It is not just through a personal attraction for obscure realities that a Christian admits the existence of a certain number of mysteries in his religious Creed. If he believes in them, it is purely on the basis of God’s Word.” But what does “God’s Word” say? Is God a mystery?
Can We Know Everything About God?
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IN Christendom the bridge between God and man is called “Incarnation.” The sense of the word “incarnation” is that God took upon himself the nature of man in the person of Jesus Christ. He thereby became a God-man.
Although the idea of a God-man is not foreign to paganism, yet that the Logos should become flesh belongs to Christendom alone, say these religionists. They maintain that pagan religions teach an apotheosis or glorification of man, that they do not teach an incarnation of the true God. According to the English church historian Charles Hardwick, if we purge pagan incarnations from all the lewd and Bacchanalian adjuncts that disfigure and debase them, still they come definitely short of the doctrine of incarnation as taught in Christendom, despite the striking similarities.
But merely to deny the doctrine’s paganity does not establish the teaching of incarnation as being of Christianity. In his book The Creative Christ, E. Drown associates Christendom’s concept of incarnation with pagan Greek mythology. He says: “This idea of substance . . . found its way into Christian theology from Greek sources. The result was that the Incarnation was too often interpreted in physical instead of in moral terms.”
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That there should be conflicting opinions on this doctrine is not at all surprising, since the doctrine of incarnation finds no basis in the Bible, the only reliable authority for truth. (John 17:17) ... Neither the Bible nor faithful first-century Christians maintained the pagan concept that Jesus was a God-man. Therefore, when renegade Christians tried to sell the pagan God-man concept as Christian, they found the going rough. The doctrine itself was not crystalized until some three hundred years after Jesus’ day and not defined until A.D. 451 at the Council of Chalcedon. The noted American theologian, Henry P. Van Dusen, whose Presbyterian religion teaches that Jesus was a God-man, in his book World Christianity, page 75, calls Chalcedon’s definition of Christ’s nature “distilled nonsense.”
During the first two centuries there was considerable opposition to the doctrine of incarnation. The Ebionites, a Jewish Christian sect that began in the first century, maintained that Jesus had a natural birth, that he was not God incarnate. Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, who lived toward the beginning of the fourth century, taught that Jesus was neither coeternal nor coequal with God, that he was the head of all creation, but not “of one substance with the Father.” Docetists, a sect of Jewish Christians that flourished in the second century, believed that Jesus’ body was merely apparent, a vision, a delusion, not material. Gnosticism was a fusion of independent “Christian” beliefs. Its contention was that evil is inherent in matter and that for that reason Jesus’ body could not have been material. Valentinus, the most prominent leader of the Gnostic movement, taught that Jesus’ ethereal body passed through Mary but was not born of her. Others said Jesus had two wills, one human, the other divine, and so forth.
It was from this hodgepodge of conflicting opinions that Christendom has received her incarnation doctrine. Since some thought Jesus was man and others maintained he was God, the council at Nicaea A.D. 325 headed by a pagan political emperor, namely, Constantine, decided on a God-man to please both sides. This doctrine, though unfounded in Scripture, is generally believed by Protestants and Catholics to this day. The Catholic Encyclopedia states bluntly: “Christ is God.” A Presbyterian Church publication speaks of Jesus as “God and man.”
WAS JESUS A GOD-MAN?
Regardless of what any council or man has said about Jesus’ nature, the only reliable source of religious truth is the Bible. This Word reveals that Jesus is God’s Son and as such he was not and is not God. Jesus himself said: “I am God’s Son.” To Mary the angel Gabriel said: “What is born will be called holy, God’s Son.” Nothing is said of a God-man or a man-God. Nowhere in the Bible is Jesus called a “God-man” or “God incarnate.” Such assumptions are strictly human illusions tainted with paganism.—John 10:36; Luke 1:34, 35; 2:21.
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