Comments on: XFiles Friday: Is versus Has

By: Deacon Duncan

Deacon Duncan — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:33:03 +0000

It's a good thought, but the one-person-three-forms idea has already been rejected by Trinitarians as being the "modalism heresy." Modalism is also referred to as being "Sabellianism," or at least overlapping with it. It has a number of theological problems, including the fact that it denies that Jesus was a real honest-to-goodness human being, thus denying his ability to meet an important prerequisite for being a high priest for his people. It also reduces the gospel to a mere puppet show, in which an immortal deity pretends to "die" a death that is actually just a pose portrayed in an artificial and external form.

By: melior

melior — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:22:21 +0000

Just to be charitable, perhaps consistency could be rescued by supposing the Trinity to be one “person” who can shape-shift among 3 different forms, like some sorta uber-Pokémon.

Think about it — has anyone ever claimed to have seen the Father, Son, and Holy ghost in the same room at the same time together — or even any two of them? Nope! Coincidence?! I think not!

This interpretation isn’t really compatible with Him being omnipotent, unfortunately, if He’s limited to only those 3 forms as morph targets. Even Aladdin’s djnni could take any form he wanted.

By: Swimmy

Swimmy — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 05:59:56 +0000

Furthermore, wave/particle duality can be reduced (yay reductionism!) to a wave-only view (that is, many worlds theory). The problem of the Trinity cannot be reduced by saying all people are categories, or that all categories are people. Down that road lies, yet again, polytheism. Or hippie mysticism. We are all gods, god is in all of us, yada yada yada.

By: Deacon Duncan

Deacon Duncan — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:59:38 +0000

The other difference is that the wave/particle nature of a photon is not a dogma, it’s a summary of real-world observations. The Trinity is not even a revelation, it’s a bunch of guys, a couple centuries or so after Jesus, trying to invent a way to reconcile Christianity’s various doctrines that say contradictory things. It only seems as complex as particle physics because of all the convolutions people go through to try and rationalize it all.

By: David Evans

David Evans — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:11:03 +0000

I get uneasy when logic is pushed to the extent that you are trying to do. Yes, the Trinity is self-contradictory. Couldn’t one just as easily say quantum mechanics is self-contradictory? After all, an electron is either a wave or it isn’t.

The difference, of course, is that quantum mechanics does a good job of explaining the real world.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:55:41 +0000

I wonder if G&T provide some kind of method for determining whether or not a thing is beyond reason, or contrary to it. How do they decide between the two? I’d love to ask them for their methodology.