always had issue with certain religious words. Faith is a word I could never grasp. I understand belief, although more from an analytical point of view (I believe something is true as part of a process towards comprehension of ‘something’), and even then, belief I see as a kind of “agreement” with room for caveats.
But faith as a concept always left me empty — I could not really connect it as a concrete something.
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Faith-as-trust I can understand but I don’t like that connection because it brings to mind “Trust me!”, Used car sales people and a slap on the back, ‘Trust me friend, I won’t steer you wrong”.
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I see belief as part of a process in a relationship of trust.
You can start with belief: What is it to have a sense of certainty regarding a fact from a trusted authority? It is belief. You can proceed from believing to growing skepticism.
But I’m fine with a doubt to belief scale with a single moving feature of skepticism. That said, would not skepticism be the very doubt on the scale?
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There is an interesting methodology, uncommon but available, called Apophatic theology. In that method, one cannot say what God is, but only what God is not. It is not as easy as it might seem.
But in this way, it avoids the issue of incorrectly assigning qualities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology
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So you see skepticism as the default human position?
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Well, if you ever draw it in an illustration of some kind (doesn’t have to be fancy), I’d love to see it. I can kind of see where you’re coming from but I probably need a visual.
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Essence vs energies. Steps from out of time, enters the time stream the usual way (insomuch as an extradimensional being might consider it), human form fully both without confusion yet also together (similar to how one might imagine having one’s emotion and intellect functioning properly balanced… but different than that)…. I say I’m agnostic but as social lubricant – and won’t play the binary choosing game as it asks the wrong questions… anyway..it’s how my sci-fi brain reconciled triune as a boy (Methodist) and refined during my short stay with the Eastern Orthodox..
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The issue with 1+1+1 is the assumption of a separateness between unmoving objects rather than considering the relations as active processes.
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It was a treat to my eyes to read familiar names and concepts. My involvement started in 1994 (the last Christian group I hadn’t checked out – I very nearly went Catholic) and most of my connections were via online. [ORTHODOX mailing list mostly]. A year or so later had the annointing, learned a bit of Russian, even stayed at a monastary for a very short time to test out the lifestyle. Read each volume of the Philokalia as it was being translated into English. After 5/6 yrs, fell in love with Osho for a year then was Mr. Science for 10 and the last few years I… well, off topic here.
Yes I switched to christology as one can’t try to wrap one’s mind around the trinity without also having a sense of a christology as well.
Begotten is generated from. Not made means it’s not a creation “out of nothing”. It’s like sunlight. Sunlight is generated from the sun (begotten) but the sun doesn’t “make sunlight”. Sunlight is a product of the Sun that extends the reach of the sun itself yet shows differently than the “ball of fire” far away.
Can’t really separate Sun and sunlight. Can’t separate Father from Son from Spirit.
In short, while Jesus “showed up” in Mary’s womb suddenly from our perspective “in time”, Jesus would have always been with the Father. We weren’t aware – much like being in a dark room you can’t see the sunlight because it’s being blocked, but that doesn’t mean the sunlight isn’t there.
That said, I think there are things that are difficult to understand or know., but I can’t presume that there must be things that can NEVER be knowable, even if I know there are mechanical and cognitive limitations that seem to a part of being little creatures on a big planet in a gigantic Universe.
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ll that said, do I believe? I don’t know. Hence “agnostic”. But if I did, I’d consider Palamas’ viewpoint to be one I could work with and consider authentically Christian as it’s the only view I’ve seen which adequately brings one closer to a comprehension of a triune nature vs others I’d heard.
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