Quick question...

[lennka]

After a year of trying to coax revleft into sending me a new password for my account that actually works... i have finally decided to create a new one (should have done that earlier.... man am i stupid)!

Anyway, I have a question concerning Jesus' relationship to God.

In the New Testament it says Jesus and God are one. A hard-core evangelical girl I know, tells me that that is completely wrong and that Jesus is the son of God and not God's incarnation of himself into a man.

So whats true? And what do the catholics think about this??

Thanks in advance for answering my questions (as i know you always will revlefters, thats why i love you so much :))

[apathy maybe]

The Catholic Church teaches of the Holy Trinity of, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. They are all the same being, but different aspects (as it were).

I don't know what other folks teach or believe. But one thing is true, it doesn't actually matter at all, because it is all bullshit ... ;)

And because it is bullshit, and because the Bible is so open to interpretation, that is why you get so many different answers depending on which person you ask.

Oh, and it is perfectly possible that you and this other person have a different Bible, there must be thousands of versions of the Bible, and that in English only. Next time someone says something about it being in the Bible (or using the Bible as the basis for their belief system), ask them which version.

[Holden Caulfield]

what! you mean the bible contradicts itself?!?

[Demogorgon]

The trinity is one of these theological notions that no one can really explain because the theory ties multiple knots in itself.

Essentially the trinity says that there are three parts (God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit) that are nonetheless a single indivisible God (there is something dialectical about that now I think about it, must summon Rosa...;))

To me that is pretty problematic, but nonetheless is the Christian position (I have obviously greatly simplified it). The hardcore evangelical girl you refer to is exactly the example of bible thumper I can not stand. The kind that trumpet on and on about how their religion is exactly right, but don't have the first clue about it themselves. According to Christianity Jesus is the Son of God AND the manifestation of the one true God on earth.

Anyway I think going too deeply into the theology of it is going to be a fruitless effort. To me this is perhaps where Christianity is at its weakest philosophically speaking and the issue itself causes untold headaches for Christian theologians. Nonetheless that is as best as I can explain it.

[Dean]

The trinity is one of these theological notions that no one can really explain because the theory ties multiple knots in itself.

Essentially the trinity says that there are three parts (God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit) that are nonetheless a single indivisible God (there is something dialectical about that now I think about it, must summon Rosa...;))

"Among the more important theology-philosophy correlates are theology’s three-part Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) and philosophy’s three-part dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis): “It must be stated with great emphasis that Trinitarian thinking is dialectical” (Tillich, 1957a, p. 90), because “the trinity is based on God’s going out and returning back to himself” (Tillich, 1968, p. 202). This is Hegelian dialectical separation and return, or Yes-No-Yes. Both the trinity and a dialectic symbolize the previously described “divine” life” of separation and return–thinking that moves from Yes to No to a higher Yes that unites the original Yes (to God) and the No (to supernaturalism) to produce a Yes to the nonsupernatural God, humanity. Tillich can therefore write, “The doctrine of the Trinity does not affirm the logical nonsense that three is one and one is three; it describes in dialectical terms the inner movement of the divine life as an eternal separation from itself and return to itself” (Tillich, 1951, p. 56)."