Monism and dualism

Faith & Science Conversation
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Where did that interpretation come from? I never said anything about our personalities causing sin. I said our personality causes duality (conflict) with the Spirit in us. Paul called it the old man. The old man is selfish and selfishness often leads to sin.

God has always taken responsibility for our ability to sin. He made us with that ability. I don’t blame Him, because what He made was for our good. He wants us to be responsible for our thoughts and actions like He is responsible for His.

In the vision of Paul, you used the body of Jesus to separate Him from Father. You cite more cases here separate Jesus from Father here because he had a body. What I am trying to say is the body of Jesus was made in the image of Man, which is not the image of God, our spirit is the image of God. Just because Jesus had a body does not mean He is a separate Spiritual entity.

Trinitarianism claims God is one then adds God is three. You have said this. Words like unity, agreement, and community are used to define how 3=1… But those kinds of words are not used to describe God in the Bible. The Spirit of Jesus and the Spirit of Father are more than partners, more than identical. There is no need for unity if they are the same entity.

In the Prayer of Jesus, he was answering how his friends should talk to God, not setting theology on the identity of God. I have spent several decades trying to understand Trinity. The basics are fairly simple, but everything else is complicated or contradictory. The basics are not spelled out in the Bible. The theology consists is bits of scripture tied together with bits of early Christian theologians in an attempt to be logical. All that is combined into a theology that is not really in the Bible.

I never said God had to be simple to be good. We really have different definitions on what simple and complex mean. In that last paragraph you start off saying God is not simple, then describe God as simple. God’s love is simple. He loves us where we are and wishes to guide us to be more like Him.

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@Jo_Helen_Cox

If the way we are created creates sin, then God is responsible, particularly if God creates us as a duality when God is a Simple. If God is Simple, as you say, then God has no choice but to be Good. While God is Good, and it is hard to imagine God as any other way but Good, if God can do whatever God chooses to do, and the Bible is most clear on this, God must have the ability to do what we can do, which is to make a mistake, to do what is wrong even inadvertently.

Can the Goodness of God be falsified? This means would we know if God were not good? Yes, because we know that God is Good. If God had not sent Jesus the divine Messiah to die for our sins and to be resurrected, then God would be less than Good. What I hear you saying is that the death and resurrection of Jesus brought confusion rather than salvation, and made humans worse off because it compromised the oneness of YHWH.

In the vision of Paul, you used the body of Jesus to separate Him from Father. You cite more cases here separate Jesus from Father here because he had a body.

You are confusing separation with differentiation. Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, is different from the Father, the First Person of the Trinity from the Beginning. There is nothing in the Bible that says that they were separate. In fact in the Bible we always see the Trinity acting in conjunction with each other, so there is differentiation, but no separation.

Now it is true that when you have differentiation, you usually have separation, but not always. Our body, mind, and spirit are different in that they play different roles and are differently constructed, but my body, mind, and spirit are all me. They are not separate or independent of me.

Theologically separation is the result of sin. Adam and Eve were different from YHWH, but were in unity with YHWH until the serpent convinced them that YHWH was lying to them about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They rebelled against YHWH separating themselves from YHWH by eating the fruit of the Tree.

Whi9le we do not necessarily need to have Adam and Eve as the first humans for that story to be true, we do need to have that story to understand what sin is, which is SEPARATION or alienation from God and from others, including the Creation. It is this separation from God and others that Jesus came to heal. That is why Jesus is different from the Father, but not separate from the Father.

Jesus is different from the Father because He was human with a physical body, because He lived as a human being with all the limitations that we have. If God is good then we so not have to be evil or sinful. We are not sinful by nature, by the fact that we have a human nature, but because we fail to trust in God.

What I am trying to say is the body of Jesus was made in the image of Man, which is not the image of God, our spirit is the image of God. Just because Jesus had a body does not mean He is a separate Spiritual entity.

You are saying that humans are dualistic entities. You are saying that our physically bodies are basically evil, while our spirits are God. There is no basis for this anthropology in the Bible. Jesus did not tell us to follow our spirits, but to follow Him. What He said is that humans are corrupt, because our spirits are selfish and corrupt, not because we have a physical body.

We humans are different and in some ways separate. I do not know you except through this discussion, We are different, even in theology, but we are one in that we are one in Jesus Christ I trust. It is not our bodies which separate us. Indeed if we did not have our bodies we could not communicate as we do. The internet is a wonderful invention.

Yet if we used the internet to belittle and tear down others as some people do we would truly be separated by sin. Jesus was united with the Father by the Spirit. Then Bible says that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God, because they are all One in Power, Wisdom, and Love. That is what Jesus means when He said the Father and I are One. Those who have seen Me, who know Me, know the Father. Hebrews says that Jesus is the visible exact image of the invisible God, not that Jesus and the Father are the same entity.

God’s love is simple. He loves us where we are and wishes to guide us to be more like Him.

Love is never simple, because one must be a person who is a complex/one to love, and simple love, one size fits all, does not work with humans who are also complex/one beings. Machines are (relatively) simple, humans with bodies, minds, and spirits are not. It does not make any logical sense to our God given minds that humans be more complex than God and that humans do not have a mind, but only a body and spirit.

I seems to me that we have gone as far we can go in this discussion on the internet, although a welcome a reply to this post. It seems that the best way forward if you are interested would be for you to read my book**, The GOD Who** RELATES. I will be glad to read whatever you recommend. Just send me your address by private email if you are interested.

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Your summation of my statements adds to and distorts what I said and what I mean. It is based on your understanding of the metaphysical definitions of the word simple, which I already said I disagree with. God knows good from evil. That knowledge is not complex. Complexity comes with justification of doing wrong. Can God make mistakes? The Bible said he regretted making humans a couple times. Is that a mistake or the frustration of creating creatures with free will? I believe the latter is true.

The way we were created allowed sin, it does not create sin. Transgression of Law creates sin. God is responsible for Law. He is responsible for creating people capable of sin, and allowing sin to continue to exist. If God is omniscient then He knew sin was going to happen before He created anything. Letting us sin was the plan.

Not saying that at all. The Oneness of YHWH is not compromised by the Messiah. Sending the Messiah was good, but does not prove God is good all the time, even though I have faith that God is good all the time.

The death and resurrection of Jesus brought salvation, redemption, and lots of other good things. We are better off because of His sacrifice. However, Jesus did bring confusion also. He knew people would trip over His existence and message.

Okay, semantics problems again. The body of Jesus makes a distinction between how we perceive Father and Son. That does not require a distinction before Jesus was born.

In the New Testament, yes. In the Old Testament, no. The Jews only had ONE God. The Spirit was the Spirit of God. The Messiah to come was to act in conjunction, but He was not an acting entity in the Old Testament. Theologians have distorted verses or word meanings to insert Jesus into the Old Testament as a separate entity.

Agree with this, however most people who talk about this subject and the Trinity often end up with three selves to match a Tritheistic or almost Tritheistic view of God. The concept’s logical progression ends in polytheism. One God does not. One self does not. Your last sentence above attests to that and contradicts your general tendency of separation into three.

Roughly agree with most of the garden story as you summarized until this statement. If the Israelites had followed the covenant with God, Jesus would not have needed to come. They would have been priest to the nations right off the bat. The nations would have seen God’s blessings and followed their beliefs. The coming of the Messiah did not heal separation, it redeemed us from certain spiritual death. God was always close to those who obeyed. He is the one who knocks and beggs repeatedly for repentance. Humans separate themselves from God by their deviations from God’s ways. God never separated Himself from humanity.

I would reword to say, the only difference between Jesus and Father is the human body needed for life and death. God became a human and limited Himself within that humanness. This does not make the Spirit of Jesus different from the Spirit that is Father.

I believe that our attempts at oneness with God is hindered by our selfish humanness. Paul bluntly said the same. Actually the idea that our selfishness keeps us away from doing God’s will is throughout the Psalms, Proverbs, and prophets. Joining with God is a form of dualism, His will vs. our will. Everyone who strives for perfection battles such urges. Following Jesus is following the Spirit of God. Our spirit is subject to our thoughts, which means it does not always follow God’s Spirit.

I do not say our bodies are evil. I do not say humans are intrinsically evil or intrinsically sinful. That is Gnosticism, which is not supported biblically. I do say that we have a selfish nature and that nature can lead to sin and evil. So we agree on this.

I like this paragraph. I will add that Jesus prayed for unity between His followers. Humans need unity, but our unity is hindered by our humanness. God made us that way so that we would strive for oneness through unity. We can only have oneness through God, and that only fully happens after death.

Between conception and death, the human Jesus was united with the Father by the Spirit. After resurrection Jesus and the Spirit were one. After ascension, Jesus was one entity with the Father, even with the body that was kept. Only in this world is there separation and distinction because we are limited within time and space. Heaven is not limited.

Like all Trinitarians, you start with the biblical statement that Father, Son, and Spirit are all God. Then, you have to qualify that to mean they are not as one and one means. Is does not really mean is and one does not really mean one. This required complication to satisfy theology boggles my mind.

This is the semantics problem again. God’s love fits all people. It does not need complex theology to fit, God simply loves. We do not comprehend that kind of simple love because we complicate love with justifications to not love.

What makes sense to our minds and what is reality are two different things. How can we define an entity that cannot be wholly defined within time and space buy the words simple and complex? Yet, theology insists it can. By doing so it segregates attributes of God making Him appear complex. The Bible says God’s ways are not complicated. Theology complicates that too.

Again, semantics. I do not separate body/soul/spirit from the entity that is me. I do not think I would be a whole person without one of these. You do separate them, then you you say you don’t. That inconsistency is confusing. Philosophy and theology loves to separate and segregate such things. They pin attributes to one particular part as if only one part is responsible instead of the whole.

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Humans are made in the Image of God or we are not. God gave us a mind that enables to fellowship with God or God did not. Jesus is the Logos, the Rational Word of God, or He is not. Jesus is the exact mage of God or He is not.

Life and people are complex, but are not necessarily complicated. Life becomes “complicated” when people, beginning with Adam and Eve don’t follow the rules. The rules say serve God and not ourselves. The rules say that sex is good, but only with your spouse. God’s ways are complex because it demands that people make decisions, often between two choices which both seem good.

Again, semantics. I do not separate body/soul/spirit from the entity that is me. I do not think I would be a whole person without one of these. You do separate them, then you you say you don’t. That inconsistency is confusing. Philosophy and theology loves to separate and segregate such things. They pin attributes to one particular part as if only one part is responsible instead of the whole.

God is not a God of confusion.(1 Cor 14:33) To understand one needs to properly identify what is what. What is important and what is not. We need to put first things first, which requires us to differentiate, which does not to separate in any negative way.

To separate the wheat form the chaff is right and not wrong. To identify what spiritual, what is mental, and what is physical is not separation, but a simple mental process required to help solve life’s problems. We need to use the right tool for the right problem.

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