The divine beings Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as portrayed in the New Testament are wonderfully, oddly personal and have been subjected to and strait jacketed into philosophies. and theologies by Procrustean reasonings. Jesus as the Lamb of God and the Lion of the Tribe of Judah post ascension comes across like a totemic helpful spirit animal Lakota Indians would meet on a vision quest. In 1 Corinthians it sounds like the Corinthian Christians were experiencing the Holy Spirit like a group of voodoo practitioners being ridden by their deities. Seen all of this in action in the present day. Read the Book The Heavenly Man to see some of this action in modern China. The book The Little Woman about Gladys Aylward has more of the same. I beg to differ about the abstract propositional nature of Christianity. The Holy Ghost is clearly presented in the New Testament as an experiential tangible in your body reality.
And Christianity is based on a ritual human sacrifice performed by God. Romans 3:25 and so on. Again not a God of philosophy, abstract propositions. A man tacked up on a piece of wood is primally wyrdly, strangely wonderfully joy giving. It is finished! I read of a former voodoo priestess who said, “ I once worshipped gods with the blood of goats and chickens now I worship God with the blood of Jesus”. In John 6 this worship, the imbibing of the blood and flesh of Jesus is portrayed as being done by the soul through belief and trust not by placing stuff in your mouth. It says Jesus embraced the cross for the joy set before him, as do we as we follow him. “You shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace” You all are too serious.
A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry into Polytheism by John Michael Greer, made me realize despite my own experience of the Trinity as ultimate, intellectually I can only defensibly say I practice monolatry. Greer’s point that pushed me there was his argument was yes you met something very big, very ultimate, but it could be just little you encountering something much greater than you. He is not a perennialist however
i enjoy the odd Greer essay from time to time. i like that he is an outside the box thinker, and i agree with the statement as well, though i come to it from a rather different perspective, which is usually called 'infinite regression', as above so below gone insane, so to speak. to sum it up: like Jesus is God and has a Father, to whom he prays, and since he says he's only doing what he saw his Father do, i believe the Father is also a son and has a father himself (which is usually the case for Fathers), and so on.
I see the logic, but it seems to me the Father, and Grand Fathers of the Father and so on aren’t accessible to experiential confirmation unlike what I have encountered in the Three Persons of the New Testament record. One translation of Yahweh I have seen is “He Who Is” I am because of my parents. I think the Living God just is. But, again I may think that because whom I met is just a lot bigger and older. Or I have a a rather beneficent case of schizophrenic delusions. In any case the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have the taste of reality and I can’t make it stop. I tried one time.
The divine beings Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as portrayed in the New Testament are wonderfully, oddly personal and have been subjected to and strait jacketed into philosophies. and theologies by Procrustean reasonings. Jesus as the Lamb of God and the Lion of the Tribe of Judah post ascension comes across like a totemic helpful spirit animal Lakota Indians would meet on a vision quest. In 1 Corinthians it sounds like the Corinthian Christians were experiencing the Holy Spirit like a group of voodoo practitioners being ridden by their deities. Seen all of this in action in the present day. Read the Book The Heavenly Man to see some of this action in modern China. The book The Little Woman about Gladys Aylward has more of the same. I beg to differ about the abstract propositional nature of Christianity. The Holy Ghost is clearly presented in the New Testament as an experiential tangible in your body reality.
And Christianity is based on a ritual human sacrifice performed by God. Romans 3:25 and so on. Again not a God of philosophy, abstract propositions. A man tacked up on a piece of wood is primally wyrdly, strangely wonderfully joy giving. It is finished! I read of a former voodoo priestess who said, “ I once worshipped gods with the blood of goats and chickens now I worship God with the blood of Jesus”. In John 6 this worship, the imbibing of the blood and flesh of Jesus is portrayed as being done by the soul through belief and trust not by placing stuff in your mouth. It says Jesus embraced the cross for the joy set before him, as do we as we follow him. “You shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace” You all are too serious.
unfortunately i think we do not share enough of a worldview to even start to disagree.
The multiverse is real! Greetings from mine.
i am a pluralist, so on that we do kind of agree.
A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry into Polytheism by John Michael Greer, made me realize despite my own experience of the Trinity as ultimate, intellectually I can only defensibly say I practice monolatry. Greer’s point that pushed me there was his argument was yes you met something very big, very ultimate, but it could be just little you encountering something much greater than you. He is not a perennialist however
i enjoy the odd Greer essay from time to time. i like that he is an outside the box thinker, and i agree with the statement as well, though i come to it from a rather different perspective, which is usually called 'infinite regression', as above so below gone insane, so to speak. to sum it up: like Jesus is God and has a Father, to whom he prays, and since he says he's only doing what he saw his Father do, i believe the Father is also a son and has a father himself (which is usually the case for Fathers), and so on.
I see the logic, but it seems to me the Father, and Grand Fathers of the Father and so on aren’t accessible to experiential confirmation unlike what I have encountered in the Three Persons of the New Testament record. One translation of Yahweh I have seen is “He Who Is” I am because of my parents. I think the Living God just is. But, again I may think that because whom I met is just a lot bigger and older. Or I have a a rather beneficent case of schizophrenic delusions. In any case the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have the taste of reality and I can’t make it stop. I tried one time.
I'm going to imitate this format. Are you doing this weekly, on some kind of schedule? or ad hoc?
ad hoc.