Easy Target: Possible Analogies for Uncreated Triune Being

[YieldedOne]

This was originally on the "Immortal/Immortal" thread...but I figured, in the interest of not derailing that other one, I'd post this as a new thread. I called this thread "Easy Target" cause I figure these can be shot down somehow...;D Anyways, let's do it...

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Two Possible analogies for the One Uncreated "Tri-Hypostatic Subject"*, YHWH (God):

1)
God the Father: Speaker
God The Father's Self-Expressive Word: Spoken Word
God The Father's Spirit: Speaker's Breath/Voice

One cannot imagine an audibly heard speaker with no voice or no words. They would not then be "speakers". Equally, you couldn't conceive of hearing a spoken word with no voice or speaker. Equally, you couldn't conceive of the reality of "voice" without some USER of the voice or an expression of that voice, as in spoken words. The one act of speaking is actually TRIUNE...for all 3 aspects are needed for a person to AUTHENTICALLY be a speaker.


2)
God the Father: Subject (Conversation Intiator)
God the Father's Self-Image: Self (Conversation Receiver/Responder)
God The Father's Spirit: Subject/Self Relationship (Conversation Witness/Empowerer)

This is simply that ability to have inner dialogue within oneself. To relate oneself to oneself...and, in so relating, relate oneself to that relation. (This is how Soren Kierkegaard talked about it. Great guy.) In this, the one act of self-knowing and/or self-communication has 3 aspects that are necessary for it to authentically be called a RELATIONSHIP within the self. An aspect of self-other interaction that sentient consciousness itself is wired for as a "self." This is how personal integrity (or lack thereof) is experienced by self-relational beings.

Just throwin' those out there.

Are those coherently understandable? Just wanna know...

And just so it's understood, these analogies go exactly with HOW the trinitarian "movement" is understood in Christianity, I'd say. That is, God the Father is the "source/origin" of the one triune activity, and is NEVER WITHOUT his Self-Expressive Word and Self-Empowering Spirit in that activity. God, His Word, and His Spirit are all necessary aspects of the ONE uncreated, eternal activity of Divine Self-Knowledge and Self-Expression. And that's the thing: to KNOW God is to LOVE God. So his Eternal Self-Knowledge IS Eternal Loving Self-Communion.

*An Eastern Orthodox theologian I read used that term, and I've loved it ever since: God as "Tri-Hypostatic" Subject and Creator.

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Now, here are my questions...for anyone of any faith.

1) Are these analogies meaningful and coherent?

2) Are these analogical concepts logically viable within a simple monotheistic framework? (Note this is NOT asking what allowable for a particular religious context, Islamic or otherwise. This is asking about logical viability of the concepts given the belief in a singular, uncreated personal reality who originates Creation.)

 

[Ramadhan]

1) Are these analogies meaningful and coherent?

Your analogies are fallacies and they are neither meaningful nor coherent because you try to anthropomorphize God. I understand that it is not possible for you NOT to anthropomorphize God because the foundation of your creed is a God who incarnated as a human.

2) Are these analogical concepts logically viable within a simple monotheistic framework? (Note this is NOT asking what allowable for a particular religious context, Islamic or otherwise. This is asking about logical viability of the concepts given the belief in a singular, uncreated personal reality who originates Creation.)

Umm.. still no. We follow monotheism that has been revealed to us by God (SWT) in the Qur'an and it is a simple true monotheistic framework: God who has no need for anything.
Your "model" force God to require other uncreated beings to do His actions. Thats not monotheism.

Have you not learned anything, YO?
No matter how sly you are and how hard you try to divert us muslims from tawheed, it NEVER works, so you might as well give up on trying to convince us that there are other divine beings but Allah SWT.

And I don't know what brand of trinity you follow, but your model of trinity is certainly not shared by Grace Seeker or Sol Invictus, no matter how Sol has been trying to lie through his teeth to convince the rest of us that you guys have no disagreement on your brands of trinity. LOL.

 

[YieldedOne]

Thoughts:

1) If the One God is a self-relational being, then he can take 3 distinct perspectives within His own personal being, via his own inner self-relating communication.

Reposting from the other thread...

A completely monadic view of God cannot self-relate or self-communicate sans Creation. The only way for God-as-monad to interrelate would be for a Creation to exist. On the other hand, if God is NOT an absolute monad, that God would be seen to have the capacity to relate Himself to His self-reflected self-understanding...and relate Himself to that relationship. In other words, God would be able to initiate communication and expression to Himself, listen and respond to His initiated communication, and also take a persepctive witnessing and empowering the whole "inner conversation" going on within Himself. As I've said before, this is analogous to what we see in human beings who has the ability for "conscience" (relating oneself to oneself in integrity) and engagement in inner conversation with themselves. This is how we are able to say that ONE person can take THREE personal perspectives via their own inner self-relating dialogue. (Subject, Self, Subject/Self Relationship) We don't say that the diversity of distinctions equal division or separateness...nor do we say that it eliminates the oneness of the being in whom the inner self-relating dialogue is taking place.



2) It appears allowable in monotheism to have a "diversity of distinction" within the unique, indivisible whole that is God. Primarily this diversity of distinction could deal with the necessary "attributes" needed for God to be a self-relational being. Unless a person wants to say that God eternally having self-relational communion with Himself is inherently some form of idolatry or improper association, I don't see how tri-hypostaticity in God--ala God's uncreated self-communication sans Creation--is a problem to the oneness of God.

 

[YieldedOne]

Naidamar:
Your analogies are fallacies and they are neither meaningful nor coherent because you try to anthropomorphize God.

Please show me EXACTLY how I am anthropomorphizing God. EXACTLY. All I'm claiming here is that God has to ability to be self-relational as personal being that is ANALOGOUS to what we see in ourselves. That is not the same thing as anthropomorphizing. Unless you are going to say that God is in no way a personal being who can know himself and express himself, his thoughts and desires as personal being, I don't see what you are talking about. The very fact that God created because he WANTED to intentionally...and willingly communicates with his Creation demonstrates his selfhood, don't you think? There's no anthropomophizing there.

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Naidamar:
Umm.. still no. We follow monotheism that has been revealed to us by God (SWT) in the Qur'an and it is a simple true monotheistic framework: God who has no need for anything.
Your "model" force God to require other uncreated beings to do His actions. Thats not monotheism.

I think you are mistaking things. My model doesn't "force" God to do anything. It merely postulates that God has the ability to self-relate with any Creation.

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Naidamar:
Have you not learned anything, YO?
No matter how sly you are and how hard you try to divert us muslims from tawheed, it NEVER works, so you might as well give up on trying to convince us that there are other divine beings but Allah SWT.

Sly. Right. ^o)

Anyways, Siam implied on the other thread that Tawhid was NOT monadic. I took this to mean that Tawhid DIDN'T eliminate the possibility of God eternally self-relating.


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Naidamar:
And I don't know what brand of trinity you follow, but your model of trinity is certainly not shared by Grace Seeker or Sol Invictus, no matter how Sol has been trying to lie through his teeth to convince the rest of us that you guys have no disagreement on your brands of trinity. LOL.


If you notice, I posed my analogies to EVERYONE, including GraceSeeker and Sol. Christian. Muslim. Jew. Buddhist. Hindu. I don't care. I'm looking for feedback from all.

Actually, I SPECIFICALLY asked GraceSeeker AND Woodrow what they thought. I'm still waiting for their responses.

 

[YieldedOne]

One thing that I keep hearing here is this: Allah does whatever he pleases and Allah "knows best."

For these statements to have ANY REAL MEANING AT ALL, we cannot say that God is absolutely IMpersonal. That wouldn't make any sense.

You can't have it both ways. Either Allah is a knowledgeable, intentional, speaking being (what we would term "personal" )...or not.

 

[Ramadhan]

Please show me EXACTLY how I am anthropomorphizing God. EXACTLY. All I'm claiming here is that God has to ability to be self-relational as personal being that is ANALOGOUS to what we see in ourselves. That is not the same thing as anthropomorphizing.

This:

One cannot imagine an audibly heard speaker with no voice or no words. They would not then be "speakers". Equally, you couldn't conceive of hearing a spoken word with no voice or speaker. Equally, you couldn't conceive of the reality of "voice" without some USER of the voice or an expression of that voice, as in spoken words. The one act of speaking is actually TRIUNE...for all 3 aspects are needed for a person to AUTHENTICALLY be a speaker.

Clearly you put conditions on the All Powerful God, that God needs spoken words and breath be able to function. Humans need breath to be able to speak, God does NOT. You already put the conditions that God needs other uncreated beings to do His actions.
And if you can't see that you are putting human conditions on God, that is your problem.

I think you are mistaking things. My model doesn't "force" God to do anything. It merely postulates that God has the ability to self-relate with any Creation.

Except you didn't do that. You postulate that God cannot relate with creation unless He has the help of uncreated divine beings (ie. the son and the holy spirit, although here you call them "spoken word" and "breath" to make it palatable for us, which is laughable, no muslim would agree to believe that God needs words and breath, so you should just save yourself).

Why is it that christians always try to make their own theories about God, instead of relying on their own scripture?
Is it because there's very little Jesus' direct sayings in the bible and if they are there, they are contradictory and confusing that force christians to always come up with all these far out tehories about God?

 

[Ramadhan]

Allah "knows best."

The term " Allah knows best" because Allah SWT has ALL knowledge.

Although I understand that christians dislike the term and disagree that God has all knowledge, since Jesus didn't even know whether he was going to be saved or not.

 

[YieldedOne]

Naidamar:
Clearly you put conditions on the All Powerful God, that God needs spoken words and breath be able to function. Humans need breath to be able to speak, God does NOT. You already put the conditions that God needs other uncreated beings to do His actions.
And if you can't see that you are putting human conditions on God, that is your problem.

Wow. You really missed the point of that one. If you are thinking that the point of that particular analogy was to say that God needs to literally breathe to speak literal words, you are VERY way off. The point of that one is to describe how a single activity can be necessarily triune. In other words, the act of speaking necessarily has 3 aspects that have to be there for the ONE act to be what it is. Simply, it's an analogy that shows the coherency of the idea of a necessarily truine event/activity. That's what that one is centrally meant to convey.

Now, to be sure, the analogy does go right along with the Jewish ideas of God, His Word/Memra, and His Spirit. But that's just icing on the cake.


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Naidamar:
You postulate that God cannot relate with creation unless He has the help of uncreated divine beings (ie. the son and the holy spirit, although here you call them "spoken word" and "breath" to make it palatable for us, which is laughable, no muslim would agree to believe that God needs words and breath, so you should just save yourself).

No. I centrally postulate that it is MEANINGFUL to say that God can commune with Himself such that inner self-communication occurs. If we have reason to believe that God is a PERSONAL BEING, then this is not some unreasonable postulation.


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Naidamar:
Why is it that christians always try to make their own theories about God, instead of relying on their own scripture?


I could make a very scriptural case for the idea of the God's Word being eternally WITH God and being uncreated AS God. I could also make a scriptural case that God does all things by his Word and Spirit. But you won't accept any of it...so why bother?


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Naidamar:
Is it because there's very little Jesus' direct sayings in the bible and if they are there, they are contradictory and confusing that force christians to always come up with all these far out tehories about God?

Dude, can you just focus on the analogies and my questions? Again, we can't do this Scripturally because I'll do that...and then you'll just say something about tahrif...and there we go again.

 

[YieldedOne]

Naidamar:
The term " Allah knows best" because Allah SWT has ALL knowledge.
Although I understand that christians dislike the term and disagree that God has all knowledge, since Jesus didn't even know whether he was going to be saved or not.


You seem to be missing the point in spectacular form. Saying that Allah has ALL knowledge is to say that He is a KNOWER. God's knowledge is a PERSONAL affair. Why? Because God can USE his knowledge of all things to do INTENTIONAL activity in a teleological way. Only personal beings can do that.

Is God personal or IMpersonal? And please don't be silly and say "Neither". It makes sense to say that God is SUPRA-personal (transcending, yet including selfhood), but not IMpersonal (having no selfhood capability at all.)

AH! I've GOT it!!!

Is it true that God communicated his intentions with Abraham? Can an IMPERSONAL reality communicate intentions meaningfully with a person?

THAT should answer the question right there!

 

[Ramadhan]

Wow. You really missed the point of that one. If you are thinking that the point of that particular analogy was to say that God needs to literally breathe to speak literal words, you are VERY way off. The point of that one is to describe how a single activity can be necessarily triune. In other words, the act of speaking necessarily has 3 aspects that have to be there for the ONE act to be what it is. Simply, it's an analogy that shows the coherency of the idea of a necessarily truine event/activity. That's what that one is centrally meant to convey.

Were you describing a human activity?
if yes, then my answer yes of course it is possible.

However, you were describing GOD.

Hence I called you out on you anthropomorphizing God.

Now, to be sure, the analogy does go right along with the Jewish ideas of God, His Word/Memra, and His Spirit. But that's just icing on the cake.

You guys have created tons of analogies for triune God. Some are more hillarious than others, yours is a boring one, sorry to say.

And by the way, there's no knowledgeable jew in this forum, so we can't verify your theory about jewish ideas of God.

No. I centrally postulate that it is MEANINGFUL to say that God can commune with Himself such that inner self-communication occurs. If we have reason to believe that God is a PERSONAL BEING, then this is not some unreasonable postulation.

Your postulation of God sounds more and more like a schizophrenic God.
It is up to you to believe such thing if it appeals to your desire.

I could make a very scriptural case for the idea of the God's Word being eternally WITH God and being uncreated AS God. I could also make a scriptural case that God does all things by his Word and Spirit. But you won't accept any of it...so why bother?

And I will get you the many of Jesus own sayings in the gospels how he is not God. Do you christians accept only parts of your own scripture and reject others which do not appeal to your own models of God?

I said "models" in plural form because christians do not even agree what constitute God and some even reject triune God altogether,.

 

[Ramadhan]

You seem to be missing the point in spectacular form. Saying that Allah has ALL knowledge is to say that He is a KNOWER. God's knowledge is a PERSONAL affair. Why? Because God can USE his knowledge of all things to do INTENTIONAL activity in a teleological way. Only personal beings can do that.

I don't want to argue with you about what is personal and impersonal because my command of english is not that great and I'm concerned I will come to misunderstandings about what is personal and impersonal.
Interestingly, you are only interested in the legalities and twisting meaning of words and sidetepping the huge elephant staring at you in the eye:

that Christians do not believe in the God who is all knowing.

 

[Ramadhan]

In fact, it is one of the fundamental differences between Islam and christianity:

In Islam, we believe in God who is all-knowing, while christianity do not believe that all-knowing is an attribute of God.

 

[YieldedOne]

Naidamar:
Hence I called you out on you anthropomorphizing God.

You haven't described what you think "anthropomorphizing" even IS. How can you call me out on it?

Does it anthropomorphize God to say that God has thoughts and intentions that he communicates to others?

Does it anthropomorphize God to say that God knows Himself?

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Naidamar:
And by the way, there's no knowledgeable jew in this forum, so we can't verify your theory about jewish ideas of God.

WHERE'S BOAZ? He'll do just fine. He's Jewish and on this board. If you don't want to do that, then simply look around the Internet. All the info you need is there!

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Naidamar:
Your postulation of God sounds more and more like a schizophrenic God.


Do you even know what schizophrenic means? Seriously. Can you tell me WHAT it means? I'd really like to know what you say. Once we have that, THEN we will compare that definition to what it means to be self-relational.

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Naidamar:
And I will get you the many of Jesus own sayings in the gospels how he is not God. Do you christians accept only parts of your own scripture and reject others which do not appeal to your own models of God?

Oh, please. I'll show you WHY I don't even want to go there.

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

or...

"Before Abraham was, I am!"

Now, let's see if my theory about what you're gonna say is true...

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Naidamar:
I don't want to argue with you about what is personal and impersonal because my command of english is not that great and I'm concerned I will come to misunderstandings about what is personal and impersonal.Interestingly, you are only interested in the legalities and twisting meaning of words and sidetepping the huge elephant staring at you in the eye: that Christians do not believe in the God who is all knowing.


Um...you MUST be joking. You don't need a command of the english language to tell whether or not God actually communicated his intentions to Abraham. That's a simple question! You can use the words "schizophrenic" and "anthropomorphism" meaningfully in sentences, but CANNOT answer a simple question about whether of not God is IMpersonal????

Oh, come ON now...:hmm:

 

[YieldedOne]

Naidamar:
In Islam, we believe in God who is all-knowing, while christianity do not believe that all-knowing is an attribute of God.

Whatever, bro. One thing we should BOTH be able to agree upon is this: God knows Himself perfectly. Both Muslims AND Christians should be able to say that. Now, can an IMPERSONAL being have self-knowledge for the sake of self-expression??

This is SOOOOOOOOO not a hard question. Jeez.

 

[Ramadhan]

Does it anthropomorphize God to say that God has thoughts and intentions that he communicates to others? Does it anthropomorphize God to say that God knows Himself?

You know that this is not what you were saying, YO. Can't you just once be honest with yourself?

let me copy and paste from your first post again:

One cannot imagine an audibly heard speaker with no voice or no words. They would not then be "speakers". Equally, you couldn't conceive of hearing a spoken word with no voice or speaker. Equally, you couldn't conceive of the reality of "voice" without some USER of the voice or an expression of that voice, as in spoken words. The one act of speaking is actually TRIUNE...for all 3 aspects are needed for a person to AUTHENTICALLY be a speaker.

WHERE'S BOAZ? He'll do just fine. He's Jewish and on this board. If you don't want to do that, then simply look around the Internet. All the info you need is there!

So you think I can also ask Hiroshi about christianity creed/theology? He's christian and he's on this board.
What say you, YO?
All the info we need about christianity is with Hiroshi.

Oh by the way, if you have not acquainted or introduced with Hiroshi yet, he reads NWT bible

Do you even know what schizophrenic means? Seriously. Can you tell me WHAT it means? I'd really like to know what you say. Once we have that, THEN we will compare that definition to what it means to be self-relational.

You postulate a God who commune and talk with Himself and have three personalities. That's schizophrenic.

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

Before we start to dissect this particular verse, can you please give me the actual words of Jesus (in first century aramaic, most likely) because I am concerned that something was lost in translation.

"Before Abraham was, I am!"

Before we start to dissect this particular verse, can you please give me the actual words of Jesus (in first century aramaic, most likely) because I am concerned that something was lost in translation.

 

[Ramadhan]

Whatever, bro. One thing we should BOTH be able to agree upon is this: God knows Himself perfectly.

God knows Himself perfectly but he doesn't know own his creation? how come?

is this a tenet from christianity?

I find that christianity theology is becoming more and more interesting.

 

[YieldedOne]

Naidamar:
You postulate a God who commune and talk with Himself and have three personalities. That's schizophrenic.

1) Yeah. That's exactly what I thought. HERE's a genuine definition of schizophrenia.

2) Psychology Today on "Self-Talk"


According to Thomas Brinthaupt, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Middle Tennessee State University, almost everybody talks to themselves. And no--we are not all crazy. It is unusual not to talk to yourself.

Dude, get informed.


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Naidamar:
Before we start to dissect this particular verse, can you please give me the actual words of Jesus (in first century aramaic, most likely) because I am concerned that something was lost in translation.

Ugh. So, here you play the "you don't have the original Aramaic 'Q' source...so how do we know about the Greek in the original texts" card. This is so cheezy.

If that's what you are going to do (basically throwing up ANY Greek form of Jesus' statements to utter ambiguity unnecessarily)...then don't use ANY of Jesus' attributed statements or words at all for your anti-Christian contentions. Be consistent. Don't try to use Jesus' words to make your case and then deny them when they don't. Especially when you don't even have the academic wherewithal to even try to tell the helpful from non-helpful.

Be consistent, for goodness sakes. :heated:

 

[YieldedOne]

Naidamar:
God knows Himself perfectly but he doesn't know own his creation? how come?

I'm really trying to take you seriously, man. But you are seriously making it difficult. You won't answer my questions and keep bringing in all kinds of red herrings. The idea that both Muslims and Christians say that God perfectly knows himself. Stay on task!

 

[Ramadhan]

According to Thomas Brinthaupt, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Middle Tennessee State University, almost everybody talks to themselves. And no--we are not all crazy. It is unusual not to talk to yourself. Dude, get informed.

I underlined your important sentence.
If you think that God is like "almost everybody", then it is your choice, dude.

Muslims believe in God who is not "almost everybody".

And this is the latest example how you keep attributing human personalities to God.

Ugh. So, here you play the "you don't have the original Aramaic 'Q' source...so how do we know about the Greek in the original texts" card. This is so cheezy.

So christians do not think that knowing the ACTUAL words of Jesus (or God, in your case) is important?

Ah, that explains how the outright fabrication of pericope adulterae passage in the gospel of John is accepted, just because "that passage fit into the personality of God", regardless of the complete fabrication.

If that's what you are going to do (basically throwing up ANY Greek form of Jesus' statements to utter ambiguity unnecessarily)...then don't use ANY of Jesus' attributed statements or words at all for your anti-Christian contentions. Be consistent. Don't try to use Jesus' words to make your case and then deny them when they don't. Especially when you don't even have the academic wherewithal to even try to tell the helpful from non-helpful.

As I may have told you, the verses that you come up with seem contradictory and vague, and so it is best that we read the original/actual words, do you not agree?

 

[Ramadhan]

I'm really trying to take you seriously, man. But you are seriously making it difficult. You won't answer my questions and keep bringing in all kinds of red herrings. The idea that both Muslims and Christians say that God perfectly knows himself. Stay on task!

I am afraid you are the one who keeps grabbing on the strawmen.

Muslims believe in God who is all knowing.

Christians do not believe in God who is all knowing.

very clear, right?

Now, my question to you:

Why do christians think that God does not know his own creation?

Please stay on the question, YO.