Superman is not Clark Kent. — T Clark

He's not?

“The image of homo religiosus is that of a man who craves to flee from the concrete, empirical world and escape into the realm of eternal being.” — Hanover

This got me wondering if I'm homo religiosus or not. In my case, it's not that I crave to flee from the concrete, it's more that my homebase is in timelessness, but you can't live that way. You have to tune your psychic radio to the practical.

Are you homo religiosus?

Because unless it was asked with a humble spirit and the open mind of someone who is truly curious — Fire Ologist

I betcha I know more about Christianity than you do. Let's quiz each other and you have to answer without looking it up. You first.

But “self” is a mystery, no? Any discussion of this mystery is going to be full of contradictions, (because the concept of self-identity is perilous if not illusory and really not coherent and not a conversation about any “thing”.) — Fire Ologist

Yes. Kierkegaard said that faith is like floating in water that is 70,000 fathoms deep. Sometimes having faith in yourself defies all logic.

That wasn't very Christian, Timothy.

You cannot prove such a God since you cannot discuss it! — MoK

That would make it more difficult, yes. :razz:

According to Aquinas, God's essence is ineffable — MoK

It's ineffable, but it's totally logical?

What does?

So Augustine claims the Trinity is beyond human understanding. Which part did he think was incomprehensible?

Deep in our hearts, the light of God is shining
On a soundless sea with no shore
---- Rumi

Whoever wants to be saved should above all cling to the catholic faith. Whoever does not guard it whole and inviolable will doubtless perish eternally. Now this is the catholic faith: We worship one God in trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the divine being. For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Spirit is still another. But the deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, equal in glory, coeternal in majesty. What the Father is, the Son is, and so is the Holy Spirit. Uncreated… infinite… eternal… And yet there are not three eternal beings, but one who is eternal… Almighty is the Father… And yet there are not three almighty beings, but one who is almighty. Thus the Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God: And yet there are not three gods, but one God….not three lords, but one Lord. As Christian truth compels us to acknowledge each distinct person as God and Lord, so catholic religion forbids us to say that there are three gods or lords. The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten; the Son was neither made nor created, but was alone begotten of the Father; the Spirit was neither made nor created, but is proceeding from the Father and the Son. Thus there is one Father, not three fathers; one Son, not three sons; one Holy Spirit, not three spirits. And in this Trinity, no one is before or after, greater or less than the other; but all three persons are in themselves, coeternal and coequal; and so we must worship the Trinity in unity and the one God in three persons. Whoever wants to be saved should think thus about the Trinity. (Anonymous Athanasian) — Athanasian Creed

You are falsely representing the Catholic Church by claiming that the Catholic Church holds that the doctrine of the Trinity is illogical. You have been misrepresenting the Catholic Church over and over throughout this thread, beginning with the very first post. — Leontiskos

I disagree.

I don't believe Augustine thought of the Trinity as something humans can understand.

Augustine’s goal is not so much to understand the Trinity and communicate this to others, but rather to say some things that will deliver a small shred of understanding, which may entice the reader to pursue the experience of God (434–7 [XV.6.50–1]). Because of this dim view of what humans are equipped to understand, much of the book is actually about how to talk about the Trinity, rather than about the Trinity itself. We may at least confess the correct doctrine, even if only later we come to understand what we’ve been saying. — SEP

Augustine suggests that the standard creedal term “person” (Greek: hypostasis or prosopon; Latin: persona) is adopted simply so that something may be said in answer to the question “What is God three of?” (224–30 [VII.3], 241 [VIII.1.1], 398 [XV.1.5]) The term “person”, he thinks, signifies a genus, but it is one for which we can provide no species. In contrast, “divine essence” names neither a genus nor a species, and functions somewhat like a mass-term. It is supposed to be one in the items which share it, and to make them, in some sense, numerically one (Cross 2007). — SEP

In other words, the tools used to deny contradiction, person and essence, didn't mean anything to Augustine, other than to draw the triangular schematic in words. It doesn't make sense to say it's three persons and one essence, and Augustine knew that.

So consider taking the Catholic Church at its word, and accepting that the Trinity is beyond comprehension. It's not logical. Does that really mean we have to rule it out? Think about it. — frank

Does anybody want to take a shot at this question? If it's illogical, does that mean it's impossible? Or would limiting the world to my own concepts be a kind of idealism?

I believe that what is logically impossible is impossible. — Leontiskos

That's what I thought. This is why you think drawing attention to the logic of the Trinity is an attack on Christianity: because you think if God is a trinity, and trinity is illogical, then God is impossible.

Folks around here routinely dismiss the law of non-contradiction, and therefore I don't see how they are going to manage to disprove the religious doctrine du jour with some firm and unchanging truth. — Leontiskos

I'm pretty sure @Banno doesn't care about disproving any religious doctrine. He's interested in the methods theologians use to reach their conclusions, but even that isn't a very strong interest for him. For the most part, @Banno couldn't care less. He's just good at creating interesting discussions.

So consider taking the Catholic Church at its word, and accepting that the Trinity is beyond comprehension. It's not logical. Does that really mean we have to rule it out? Think about it. :smile:

hasa diga eebowai! — flannel jesus

:lol:

The trinity is three entirely seperate personages, not a single entity. They have a common purpose, and they're referred to as the godhead. Such is true Christian theology. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/article/do-latter-day-saints-believe-in-the-trinity

When you say "the Christian narrative" and then start going on about the Nicene Creed which was arrived at 325 years after Jesus' death, you're just taking about your peculiar brand of modified Christianity. — Hanover

This is me and Hanover riding around trying to convert people to Mormonism.

Is it really so odd to think that in the Source of all created being there is a reality that transcends the distinctions commonly found within created being? — Leontiskos

Do you believe that anything that defies logic is impossible?

This isn't an attack, it's setting out dogma, in it's original sense, and instead of saying "this is what you ought believe", asking "why ought you believe this?" — Banno

Right. There were versions of Christianity that didn't hold Jesus to be God, but they didn't survive.

As @Count Timothy von Icarus pointed out, it's heresy to suggest that God is a category that the three hypostases belong to, as dogs, cats, and mice belong to the category of mammals, rather, each hypostasis is fully God. They're separate, but they're One. The origin of this scheme is Neoplatonism, and it's mystical. It defies logic, and this has been recognized for the last 1600 years.

The doctrine of the Trinity was articulated by the church fathers in the councils of Nicea (AD 325) and Constantinople (AD 381), which penned the Nicene Creed. We will see that Nicene Trinitarianism teaches the Trinity is three hypostases and one ousia, terms often translated as three persons and one essence, substance, or being. These terms, in their ancient Greek context, indicate that the Trinity is three subjects who share a single nature. However, this formulation naturally raises the question whether Nicene Trinitarianism is monotheistic. In affirmation of Nicea’s monotheism, we will see that all three uses of the word “God” in Christian theology are singular, despite the Trinitarian plurality of subjects. Hence, Nicene Trinitarianism is rightly labeled monotheistic, even though it is a unique type of monotheism. We will then look at three important differences between God and creatures that must be kept in mind for a proper understanding of Nicene Trinitarianism. These are (1) the divine subjects are not spatially or materially separated the way created individuals are; (2) the divine subjects, unlike created individuals, are distinguished by their relations to one another and not by material accidents of size, color, or location; and (3) because the divine subjects are differentiated by their relations, they, unlike created individuals, have no autonomous existence apart from one another. — CRI

What's odd is that you think the crazy shit you're whipping up is a straightforward account of Catholic doctrine, but this has already been pointed out to you quite a few times. — Leontiskos

Set me straight then.

It's odd that you think a straightforward account of Catholic doctrine is an attack on Christianity. smh

frank said so. How could it not be true? — Leontiskos

Well, it is true.

Where are these premises coming from? I don't know of any Catholic theology which says, "Father = God and Son = God..." — Leontiskos

That's the Trinity, dude.

If the trinity is a mystery, then leave it as such, without trying to make it fit into this or that logical frame. It just doesn't fit. — Banno

I'm curious how far some will go trying to make sense of it. :grin:

Oh I see! Thanks for explaining that.

Someone told me Russian speech pervasively pictures properties as external things, impinging on the subject, where in German, the speaker owns the properties, so instead of the cold is upon me, it's I have cold. Do you think that influences the respective philosophies? Germanic languages conjure a huge inner landscape.

The Trinity is a mystery. It's three persons, each of which is fully God. I think you're trying to waffle on whether it's a contradiction or not. I'm not sure why you would want to do that. That it's contradictory is what makes it a mystery.

I may be mistaken, but I dont think Christian neoplatonists were big on revolution. — Joshs

Freemasons were. Their belief system was Neoplatonic. As you may know, many of the founders of the USA were Freemasons.

Hegel radically historicized the platonic absolute. — Joshs

When you talked about shifting foundations, I thought you were talking about dialectics. Becoming analyses out to Being and Non-Being, and that brings us to Heidegger's What is Metaphysics, one of my favorites. :grin:

Western philosophy after Hegel shifted its attention away from unchanging foundations and towards a discourse of evolution, revolution and becoming in which foundations become relative, contingent and impermanent — Joshs

Hegel's roots were Neoplatonic, which is the philosophy Christianity is built on. Maybe he was instrumental in bringing it back to the academic scene, but it had been around for centuries.

. If a triadic structure is taken to be essential for a meaningful cosmos, this can be used for a transcendental argument vis-á-vis the threeness of God. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe. Likewise, the four gospels correspond to the four elements. Matthew is earth, Mark is fire, Luke is air, and John is water. This, multiplied by the three states: mutable, fixed, and cardinal, equals the number of apostles, the number of the tribes of Israel, and of course, months of the year. There are numbers all over the place, such as the birthmark on my scalp: 666. :grin:

It might not really be that relevant here though because the idea isn't that the sign relation, nor any of the other triads, are perfect models of the Trinity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

They aren't models of the Trinity period. It may be that Pierce read Augustine, but the notion that his philosophy should be understood in the context of Christian theology is incorrect.

I spoke about as a general property of philosophical discourse, where even attempts to talk about becoming remain within the framework of the substantialist habit. — Astorre

I think you're saying phenomenology is a kind of fraud. I think it is in some cases, but ontology is an empty building in my mind. Nobody lives there, and it's fairly important to me that it stay that way.

Let’s talk about identity. What is the role of time for you in the determination of identity? In my way of thinking, identity requires temporal repetition. The first time, the emergence into unconcealment of something, is a difference. To emerge is to address a past within the moment of appearance. Think of a line or hinge. It subsists in a contrast, a before and after, an outside and inside, a then and a now. This is one moment of time. Wouldn’t there have to be a second moment in which that which emerges as a divide or hinge reproduces itself as itself? A=A implies temporal repetition,. — Joshs

So the world is like a movie. Notice that there is no motion in a movie. It's just one picture after another. X only seems to move from place to place. But poor X is obliterated in the junctions between the pictures. It's not moving because there is no static background against which to mov(ie). :gasp:

And even when Joshs spoke about Heidegger, who, as he correctly noted, grounded "is" in the event of "unfolding," this was, in essence, an effort to find that very first principle, that "root" of our being. — Astorre

For Heidegger, the phenomenology of Being starts with recognizing the psyche's response to the concept of nothingness, which he describes as a dread.

It's in this same phenomenological spirit that Heidegger turns to the nature of Being. He's not doing cosmology. He's not trying to find the root of Being as if we could send out a drone and document that.

All we're doing with Heidegger is coloring inside the lines of phenomenology. Straying outside those lines will result in nonsense.

I agree that Parmenides, the philosopher is a philosopher in all possible worlds where Parmenides is a philosopher. — RussellA

Right. That would help explain how a person could talk about profession as if it's an essential property. This contrasts with transient states like coldness or hunger. On the one hand, they may realize that Parmenides could have been a sailor, but they still speak of his profession as if it's necessary to the object they have in mind. I think you have to pay attention to context to discern what properties are essential. Doing that is more valuable (to me) than laying open metaphysical possibility.

If I refer to Parmenides, the philosopher, then my reference will only pick out people who are philosophers. Parmenides, the philosopher is a philosopher in all possible worlds in which that object exists.

I don't see how that works, though. Augustine explains in De Trinitate, that the sum of the Son and the Father is not greater than the Holy Spirit. In other words, it's one thing with three faces. In semiotics, the sign, object, and interpretant are clearly distinct things. We aren't supposed to imagine them as one. So it's not really the same thing, is it?

What this means is that "is a philosopher" has changed from being an essence of Parmenides to being a description.

Being born in Elea, Magna Graecia is not a necessary truth of Parmenides but a contingent truth. Parmenides could have been born in Constantinople, he may not have written the poem dactylic hexameter and he may have been a statesman rather than a philosopher

In the expression, "Parmenides is a philosopher", the copula "is" is not establishing "philosopher" as a fixed and static essence of Parmenides, but rather describing a contingent rather than necessary truth. — RussellA

Philosopher isn't metaphysically necessary to Parmenides, but if I refer to Parmenides, the philosopher, it would appear that anyone who isn't a philosopher is not the person I'm talking about. So I can turn philosopher into an essential feature by way of my intention. Kripke introduced the idea of possible worlds as a tool for talking about that kind of essence.