This is incorrect. In most Christian churches, Jesus is specifically not a demigod or a separate lesser entity from God. Jesus is God.
Holy trinity is literally one of the most central doctrines of Christianity.
Uneducated pagan mad this meme.
But if it’s a Trinity, why are they listed separately if they’re not separate? Why make the distinction if they’re one and the same?
Who did God send down to die for our sins? Why does Jesus have a name if he just is god? Why not call him God?
If he is god, why is the resurrection so special? Wouldn’t you expect God to be deathless anyway?
I’m half being difficult, half wondering what the real answers are.
Are you the same person you were 15 years ago? Your name is the same. So is your social security number. But those were assigned to you by an external party.
You look different, feel different, act different. Are you the same person you were yesterday?
This is what I understood from the teachings of the Catholic Church:
There are sacred mysteries which are not explainable by rational or scientific reasoning and thus believing in these mysteries is the catholic faith.
So the Trinity means God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are separate and the same.
Resurrection is special because God lived as a human, died to cleanse the sins of all humans (dying is a punishment for the sins) and his resurrection means he is really God, he cannot die and doing so he defeated death itself. Which means all humans believing in God will be able to cheat death and live eternally in paradise.
God died for our sins because he loves humans and wants them to be free of sin.
Trying to understand this through reason is not possible. You need faith, this is the whole shtick.
Again this is my understanding, been a long time since I went to catechism.
Calm down, silly. Did you forget that we’re dealing with magic? Now that I’ve reminded you, everything should be fine.
Reminds me of this Simpsons clip:
More specifically, they are not one and same. Father is not Son is not Holy Spirit, but all of them are God.
Your questions are better answered by theologicians. I am not even a Christian, but even I know about concept of trinity. Perhaps everything about God is not meant to be comprehensible by humans. God is beyond humans after all.
For anyone wondering how this breaks down logically and where the error is:
The position as put here and elsewhere contains logical errors upon clarification. God has parts? Okay what makes the parts unique and discrete? If they aren’t, they aren’t parts of a whole and are equal to the whole.
For example: does the father have the same knowledge as the spirit? The same powers? If yes to these and similar questions, then they all are god and are not discrete. If no, then we don’t have one god at all, we have 3 gods. Also if no, the gods cannot be all knowing or all powerful individually.
I’ve never heard it put like this comment though. Instead I hear that they’re all god. As in, Jesus isn’t 1/3 of god, he is god. And so is the spirit/ghost and father. But if I ask if Jesus is the spirit, they’ll say no. This is an identity flaw. You’re saying that A=D and C=D but A!=C.
And don’t even get me started on all the theatrics in the Bible. I mean, why did God even bother to sneak temptation into the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve? Why put all his shady stuff on Satan’s to-do list? And let’s not forget about flooding the entire planet! To me, the Bible seems more like another epic science fiction novel, complete with a variety of plot twists and mystery elements. Really, it’s more ‘Star Trek’ than holy scripture in my eyes.
You’re still consuming flesh of divinity, which is a pretty grisly, chthonic look.
Personally I’m more interested in the mores and policies of a religion, which Christian ministries generally and the Roman Catholic Church specifically have shown they will discard readily to preserve their wealth and power.
Create a religion in which the members actually practice mercy, kindness and compassion and I will tolerate all their ritual depravities. (Sacrifices of the living in effigy, please.)
Well depending on the denomination, it is either seen as literally or figuratively his flesh and blood. Figurative makes a lot more sense: “…do this in the remembrance of me”
As much as I completely agree with your interpretation, Catholic ministers and politicians alike have gotten a bit weird about trans-substantiated wafers, asserting that it has become the real literal flesh of Jesus (though it’s grossly offensive if we were to subject a trans-substantiated wafer to scientific tests to see if it’s changed from the control).
It reminds me in the late 1980s. In response to the fatwa levied against Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses, there was movement to demonstrate Catholic resilience in the face of offense or mockery, and for a while the Catholic community expressed a casual stoicism we attribute to European Jews. It didn’t last, and evaporated entirely after the 9/11 attacks.
hmmm – Sure smells like Polytheism to me.
One of my favorite early Christian sects is the Marcions – They thought with how mean and angry OT God is and how nice and forgiving NT God is, and with God being eternal and all, that they must be DIFFERENT GODS with NT God now being in charge.
Of course, they were swiftly excommunicated for this.
This just compressed a good several hundred years of religious schisms and theological debate that was sometimes very bloody in sorting itself out. There is also nothing to say if what became popular was actually the correct interpretation as what became “correct” was determined by political power as the religion consolidated often based more on merit of what city the bishop came from and the ecconomic flow of power. Had things gone just a little differently we would be talking about how Jesus is God’s direct subordinate or how he is effectively a unique being who is one half human mixed with one half God because he was born of Mary making him half made up of her humanity which would make him a… Demigod.
Also most Christian churches believe a lot of stuff that was somebody’s random fad at some point. Like Catholicism and the seven deadly sins. That was ONE guy who started something of a spiritual wellness cult, quit all the sins he made up and died because he ruined his body following his own made up doctrine. It would be like if you let a severe anorexic write the nutritional standards on packaging.
Naw bro the “pagan” in the room ain’t the uneducated one. You’re just carrying around a couple of millennia of political baggage and refuse to acknowledge how a bit of hubris in the generational game of telephone might have warped your sensibilities. Those first 300 years of power struggle could have hosted some very big misinterpretations since Jesus wasn’t very focused on explaining his own lore so much as setting an example in how humanity should behave so flipping out about the trinity and deeming anybody a heretic seems to be kind of missing the point.
There is also nothing to say if what became popular was actually the correct interpretation as what became “correct” was determined by political power as the religion consolidated often based more on merit of what city the bishop came from and the ecconomic flow of power.
There is no correct interpretation with religion.
Naw bro the “pagan” in the room ain’t the uneducated one.
You wrote a long comment about the history of it which I am well aware of, but it doesn’t change the fact that Holy Trinity is the core belief of all of Christian world today and it has been so for almost thousand years.
How can you “there is no correct interpretation” in one sentence and then the next go “but the popular one is the correct one” and not see the dissonance? Those dots are close enough together how can you not draw the line?
It’s actually a fairly confused point theologically and Christians tend to draw these pictures in smeared pastels and charcoal sketches as opposed to pen and ink blueprints because it was and is still a developing idea. There’s a whole complicated history where the literary Jesus transformed from prophet to a divine being in his own right to being a literal aspect of god is complex. I consider Christianity to be semi-polytheistic for the same reason that Hinduism is polytheistic unless you consider each of the gods to be an aspect of a single god.
But it’s more meaningfully and directly polytheistic when you considerate the literary aspects of the bible where the vengeful and violent El amalgamated god is transformed into the lawgiver and transactional god and then into the loving caregiver described by Jesus, and they’re all invoked depending on which is best at the moment. Then you can throw in Jesus, and the Holy Spirit which is probably derived at least in part from Ashera (the mother of Yahweh), and you’ve got a pantheon.
Michael, Gabriel, Azrael, and the rest of the powerful angels would be considered demigods in any other religion, as would ideas like saints (including the Marian cults).
If they want to drink wine and eat crackers while chanting, I ain’t gonna kink shame. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s being controlling and treating people like shit that’s the real problem.
You forgot while young boys ring bells.
*while pretending to eat flesh and drink blood while sipping wine and eating miniature dry rice crackers.
Jesus is an inverse zombie. Living people eat his dead flesh.