Robin Hood wrote: ↑February 7th, 2024, 4:59 am
spiritMan wrote: ↑February 6th, 2024, 6:08 pm
Robin Hood wrote: ↑February 6th, 2024, 2:24 pm
I don't believe in "three beings in one".
I believe in three persons, one God. There is a difference.
Don't you believe in the "most correct book"?
Yeap. that's he Nicene Creed.
No it isn't.
The Nicene Creed says the three are of one substance.
It actually says same essence.
Let's take an essential element like pure gold. There is an essence that makes gold, gold. There are certain properties that make gold, gold. It has 79 protons and 79 electrons.
I can take gold and I can make a gold statue out of it, or I can melt it and it turns to liquid, or I can make a gold bar out of it.
Each thing that I make is a different object but composed of the same essence. The properties of gold don't change just because it is a gold bar, vs. a gold statue, vs. a gold sheet. But a gold bar is a different thing than a gold statue.
God, Christ, the Holy Spirit are all of the same essence. They all have the same essential properties that make God, god. At the same time each one is a different person or different instantiation of that essence. And each one cannot be of the same essence without the other two.
That's the thing that is different.
LDS believe that each human being is of the same essence or stuff that God is.
The Nicene Creed (from which almost all other Christian groups derive from) fundamentally believe that human beings are of a different essence or different stuff than God.
That difference leads LDS to believe that God the Father has a physical body.
LDS believe that just intrinsically human beings can be elevated to the status of God b/c human beings are "gods in embryo".
Other Christians believe either a) it's impossible for human beings to be elevated to the status of God b/c human beings are made of a different essence or stuff... or b) that human beings CAN be elevated to being of the same essence or stuff of God, but only through God's grace, through Christ.
LDS believe the only real difference b/w you, I and other human beings and Christ is just that Christ had no sin and we do. So Christ only real role is to absolve us of the sin we have and poof we are now like God .... as long as we have demonstrated that we are "worthy" of it.
The Nicene Creed states, no Christ is made of fundamentally different stuff (or essence) than human beings .... while also having the fundamental stuff that makes human beings, human. If He didn't then he would effectively be an alien. He is not alien, He is both of the same stuff or essence as God while also being of the same stuff and essence that makes human beings human.
Several other ecumenical councils (of which the Nicene Creed was the first) were held to get everyone on the same page as to the balance of what the preceding paragraph means.
The Muslims went the wrong direction; they went to the opposite side of saying Christ was one of the greatest prophets, still born of a virgin (who was ever virgin even after giving birth and never had sexual relations in her entire life), but saying that Christ had no stuff within Him that made Him a part of the same stuff as God.
Other groups went the other way, saying there is the Jesus was just a man and always was a man and that when he was baptized there was this thing called the Christ that descended on Him and he was "divine" only while the Christ was on him-which ended after he was resurrected.
LDS have gone a different way in saying ALL human beings are of the same stuff as God; but this leads to other really bad theological offshoots. Like oh, well now we have to explain how God became God. So now there is some endless train of heritage of gods becoming gods. Which still leads to the exact same problem...how did it all begin? LDS say well there never was a time when there wasn't a train of gods that didn't exist. It just pushes the decision point further back.
The Nicene Creed state there never was a time without God, Christ, Holy Spirit. Christ was always begotten of God.
LDS come up with this weird thing that limits God. Like, God is only the God of this universe, or that God reigns this universe from a planet that orbits a star Kolob, that I guess is somewhere in the center of the Milky Way. Other "Gods" reign other universes. And one day human beings who make it to the Celestial Kingdom will rule their own universe. Of course, what happens if one God decides he wants to take over another Gods universe? I guess it can't happen b/c if it did that God would cease to be God....but then how can God cease to be God?
The LDS viewpoint of effectively the making of a god, attempts to take the unexplainable and condense it into an explainable model for the human brain...but ultimately runs into the same problem. It is ultimately unexplainable!
The Nicene Creed doesn't attempt to go this insane explanatory model of this universe, that universe, God that we worship here, but ultimately God worships another God (His Father).
It just states God created everything we see and interact with period. God is outside creation, outside time, outside space and therefore it doesn't need to be explained.
