Is Christianity a monotheistic religion?

[Someone here]

18 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

All Abrahamic religions are monotheistic religions.

 

Do you understand what "monotheistic " mean ? How can Christianity be monotheistic if it believes that God is three distinct persons?  Of course ghe absurd part is that they calim at the same time that the three persons are indeed one God.  That just doesn't compute In my mind .

[Preety_India]

Just now, Someone here said:

Do you understand what "monotheistic " mean ? How can Christianity be monotheistic if it believes that God is three distinct persons?  Of course ghe absurd part is that they calim at the same time that the three persons are indeed one God.  That just doesn't compute In my mind .

Christianity has one God. Trinity is irrelevant. 

Monotheism = one God. 

You're deliberately confusing yourself using the concept of Trinity. 

 

[Someone here]

16 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

Trinity is irrelevant

How exactly is it irrelevant?  It's the whole base of Christian theology.  The father, the son and the holy spirit. 

And Christians claim hat they are one God despite that the fact that they are clearly three persons. Its mind boggling.

And that's btw why there are so much Christian sects. Because they all disagree about the correct image of God

 

[Preety_India]

2 minutes ago, Someone here said:

How exactly is it irrelevant?  It's the whole base of Christian theology.  The father, the son and the holy spirit. 

And Christians claim hat they are one God despite that the fact that they are clearly three persons. Its mind boggling.

And that's btw why there are so much Christian sects. Because they all disagree about the correct image of God

 

Of course. Yet no Christian ever believes in more than one God. So you have no confusion. 

 

[Adamq8]

 

 

You can not limit the Christian God is what the trinity is saying, you can not say oh it is cosmic conciousness or a universal mind, nothing at all limits God.

The Father is the sole arche but creates through the Son in the Holy Spirit.

The Father is the ground cause, the Son is the operating cause and the Spirit is the perfecting cause.

The Father is not begotten but the Son is the first born, but he was begotten before the world was made and thats why he is co eternal and God as well.

Christianity is the only religion with this claim and do not have a similarity with Islam, atleast Eastern Orthodox.

God is absolutely transcendent in his essence but we can participate in his eternal energies, which is Goodness, Love, Power etc.

No one has ever seen the face of God and what God is is completely unknowable.

There is one essence and three persons. 

Christianity has more profound mystical writings then any other religion ive ever encountered.

The Living God has revealed himself through divine revelation and he has revealed that he is both multiplicity and oneness and also transcends categories.

I do enjoy other religions, but Christianity is the Absolute transformation of paganism and hellenism, it has been christinized, to call Christianity a pagan religion is totally absurd and shows they have no clue what they are talking about. 

God is the wholly other, radically transcendent but yet totally present, and the Son has two natures, both divine and human, and the one does not destroy the other, thats why Eastern Orthodox's salvation is Theosis, we become gods in participating in God's uncreated energies.

[RedLine]

I don´t understand the 2 reasons you give.

God is one in christinaty and equeal to Christ. The Holy Trinity is a theological idea that tries to explain the relationship between Absolute and relative but not a core point in faith.

However in catholicism there are a lot of virgins and saints, that are the evolution of ancient pagan cults, sometimes even more relevant to people that Jesus itself, some we could say catholicism is highly influenced by polytheism.

 

[Adamq8]

16 minutes ago, RedLine said:

I don´t understand the 2 reasons you give.

God is one in christinaty and equeal to Christ. The Holy Trinity is a theological idea that tries to explain the relationship between Absolute and relative but not a core point in faith.

However in catholicism there are a lot of virgins and saints, that are the evolution of ancient pagan cults, sometimes even more relevant to people that Jesus itself, some we could say catholicism is highly influenced by polytheism.

 

Not a core point in faith?

Trinity is Christianity in a nutshell, and God incarnated in the form of Jesus, that is what Christianity is.

God is one in essence but three persons, Jesus never becomes the Father and the Son never becomes the Spirit etc.

And the saints is the ones who follow Christs teachings and trying to actually embody Him and his teachings which is the hardest path that you can walk, Jesus says that the world will hate you and you have to pick up the cross and follow him.

He explicitly says go and preach to the nations in the name of the Father , Son and Holy Spirit.

 

 

 

[RedLine]

1 minute ago, Adamq8 said:

Not a core point in faith?

Trinity is Christianity in a nutshell, and God incarnated in the form of Jesus, that is what Christianity is.

God is one in essence but three persons, Jesus never becomes the Father and the Son never becomes the Spirit etc.

And the saints is the ones who follow Christs teachings and trying to actually embody Him and his teachings which is the hardest path that you can walk, Jesus says that the world will hate you and you have to pick up the cross and follow him.

He explicitly says go and preach to the nations in the name of the Father , Son and Holy Spirit.

 

 

 

God= Christ

Holy Trinity is a theological tool that tries to explain the paradox of how God can be one and at the same time encarnate in Jesus. But it is something intelectual. In practice catholics don´t know much about Holy Trinity nor care about it. They believe in God, who at the same time is represented by Christ, end.

 

 

[Someone here]

@Adamq8 so help me to understand..

the father is not the son and the son is not the father....

YET..the father is the son and the son is the father .

That's like saying A=/=B and yet A=B.  

How does that work ..?

Also do you subscribe to orthodox Christianity?  I thought you are into Pantheism and non-duality and you don't treat God as separate from oneself. 

[Mulky]

If Christianity  is monotheistic, according to most of the Christians I have met, Jesus is God.  However, in my multitude of conversations with Christians trying to save me, me saying that I believe and have faith in god is not enough.  Jesus is God, they're 1 being, supposedly, Jesus is like a form or extension of god  or something (really we all are, but I'm entertaining the Christian perspective).  So if my love, trust, faith in god is not enough, and I also have to have some sort of relationship or whatever with Jesus to, doesn't that make Jesus a separate being in the view of the person holding that belief.  Cause if they were the same being, me loving, trusting, having faith in God would already be doing all of those things for that 1 being they are saying Jesus and God both are.

@Adamq8

As I'm trying to explain to Christians the Infinite and beyond all words, Absolutely free and limitless nature of God. They have always wanted me to think about God in a particular way Read a certain book, you get the idea.  It's like me saying I directly experience God in non conceptual formless way has never ever worked.  They always wanted me to shrink it and make it into a thing.  I have always said I knew it without the word , and they're like no, you need the word.  They think God is specifically in the word, and that's the only way to connect, doesn't sound to limitless to me.  They want to remove innocence from me and then offer me a way to get it back.  They want to interrupt my peace and then offer their way of having peace.  I'm sure not all Christians are like that but most that I have met are.

It's like someone coming to know God in a way not through Jesus is just an impossibility in their eyes, it's not valid.  That is a pretty big limit on God.

Edited May 20, 2022 by Mulky
fun

[Arthogaan]

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

so help me to understand..

the father is not the son and the son is not the father....

YET..the father is the son and the son is the father .

That's like saying A=/=B and yet A=B.  

How does that work ..?

It is so simple that you overlook it. There is one God. It can have many forms. You. Me. Cat. Tree. But for christians the most important forms/facets of God are God himself (the masculine, fatherly principle), Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But it is known that they are just forms of the one.

How is Jesus a God? How is Atman the Brahman?

[Mulky]

Here is the fundamental misunderstanding everyone with polytheistic views has, and why almost every time anyone  uses the word god, it doesn't truly mean anything at all.  The term god is almost always used to describe a being of greater Power, level of magnitude, of a higher order, a higher reality, a more real reality, higher understanding etc. This doesn't mean anything or matter at all, here is why.  Size, power, orders of magnitude, levels of reality, or anything  like that, they are all on a scale that goes up and down forever.

By that definition you(the human) are a god to an infinite number of things.  Smaller things, lower dimensional things, less real things, and so on.  There are an infinite number of things that would be like gods to you by that definition.  More significant things, more powerful things, higher dimensional things. Because this scale goes up and down forever, every being that has ever existed might as well exist right smack dab in the middle.  Because they all have an infinite number of beings that fit this weak meaningless definition of god people use, above and below them on a scale.  The most powerful being you could ever know about is just a spec of dust from another perspective.  This whole things is relative.

God doesn't have anything to do with any of that, it has to be all of reality, all of infinity.  It's the fact of there not really being individuals at all or entities, just 1 overall being.

I just watched a documentary on Cargo Cults, very interesting.  Primitive people that worship an American they met just before World War 2, because he heralded the coming of A bunch of Americans with all of Our Airplanes and magical technology.  They were so taken by this technology that they worshiped This Jon guy as a God.  We are still actually like this, it's just we don't encounter those things that would blow our mind so much we end up thinking of them religiously.  But we could.  Cause it wouldn't be something like more advanced technology, it would be something we don't understand at all.  Unless we get this thing about higher and lower powers going on forever and just being different forms, we can easily get taken by Something beyond our understanding as being like the ultimate truth of life when it's literally just another thing.

Edited May 20, 2022 by Mulky

[Fernanda]

@Someone here Christ is the representation of a higher level consciousness. GOD is one. When you reach higher levels you become one with God, and Christ serves as a reflection of that. To "follow" Christ is to aim at such realization.

[Someone here]

With all due respect to everyone who commented here..I must say that I find everything about Christianity absurd. 

Think about it ..

Christianity: The religious belief that God impregnated a 13-year-old married virgin girl, causing her to give birth to God, so that humans could kill God’s son God, so that people won't go to hell, provided they believe in this story . Isn't that a silly story that makes zero sense ?

 

According to Christians Jesus was both man and God. That in itself is absurd.

The bible teaches that no man can carry the sins of another so Jesus, as a man, cannot “take away the sins of the world”. If the answer to that is that he was also God, he was still a man!!! Did he change his state from man to God at will?Absurdity stacked upon absurdity.

The notion that God would become part of his creation…absurd. If I cut myself while baking a cake and some of me ends up in the cake (whether a little blood, or my whole finger), I’m still not IN the cake! Absurdity again. The notion that a person would be granted paradise simply for believing that Jesus was God …also absurd.

The first commandment, God is ONE! A few thousand years later, now he’s three? Absurd.

I could go on. I didn’t even mention some of the absurd examples (like the one comparing the trinity to an egg) that Christians have used to explain this. Like I said, absurdity stacked upon absurdity.

It is also, to a believer, very disrespectful to the creator to say that God was somehow bound by his limitations and need for blood. Yes, a Christian, (actually a few Christians) have offered this as an explanation.

Like I said, the whole idea of a trinity is absurd.

[PedroCedro]

@Someone here You are missing the bigger picture, you need a higher prespective, you have a lot of inner work to do

[Someone here]

2 minutes ago, PedroCedro said:

@Someone here You are missing the bigger picture, you need a higher prespective, you have a lot of inner work to do

Maybe 

Welcome to the forum btw 

[PedroCedro]

@Someone here Thanks

[RedLine]

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

With all due respect to everyone who commented here..I must say that I find everything about Christianity absurd. 

Think about it ..

Christianity: The religious belief that God impregnated a 13-year-old married virgin girl, causing her to give birth to God, so that humans could kill God’s son God, so that people won't go to hell, provided they believe in this story . Isn't that a silly story that makes zero sense ?

 

According to Christians Jesus was both man and God. That in itself is absurd.

The bible teaches that no man can carry the sins of another so Jesus, as a man, cannot “take away the sins of the world”. If the answer to that is that he was also God, he was still a man!!! Did he change his state from man to God at will?Absurdity stacked upon absurdity.

The notion that God would become part of his creation…absurd. If I cut myself while baking a cake and some of me ends up in the cake (whether a little blood, or my whole finger), I’m still not IN the cake! Absurdity again. The notion that a person would be granted paradise simply for believing that Jesus was God …also absurd.

The first commandment, God is ONE! A few thousand years later, now he’s three? Absurd.

I could go on. I didn’t even mention some of the absurd examples (like the one comparing the trinity to an egg) that Christians have used to explain this. Like I said, absurdity stacked upon absurdity.

It is also, to a believer, very disrespectful to the creator to say that God was somehow bound by his limitations and need for blood. Yes, a Christian, (actually a few Christians) have offered this as an explanation.

Like I said, the whole idea of a trinity is absurd.

Man do you even know what a myth is? In the past there was not that differece between "objective reality", in this case history and "subjective/pschysical experience" that´s why religion made sense. Religion does not make sense anymore since the xviii century because civlization made a distions there between objective reality aka science and subjective stuff.

 

For me nor the science nor the religion is true but I have to choose a frame to understand reality, chistianism is the better that current scienctific worldviews.

Edited May 20, 2022 by RedLine

[Someone here]

20 minutes ago, RedLine said:

Man do you even know what a myth is? In the past there was not that differece between "objective reality", in this case history and "subjective/pschysical experience" that´s why religion made sense. Religion does not make sense anymore since the xviii century because civlization made a distions there between objective reality aka science and subjective stuff.

 

For me nor the science nor the religion is true but I have to choose a frame to understand reality, chistianism is the better that current scienctific worldviews.

Some say that Christianity is a monotheistic religion because of..

The  source of authority for their beliefs The Bible, tells us there is only one God, and it refers to him as being The Father.

But that same Bible also tells us that Jesus is God too, and that the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit is a person.

The doctrine of the trinity is the result of reconciling all of these truths. Therefore we conclude that there is only one God (monotheism) — that he is a spiritual Being, and the Being of God is comprised of three co-equal and co-eternal persons.

Isnt that the same thing as polytheism? 

 The doctrine of the trinity is one of the hardest Christian doctrines to understand and to explain.

[RedLine]

7 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Some say that Christianity is a monotheistic religion because of..

The  source of authority for their beliefs The Bible, tells us there is only one God, and it refers to him as being The Father.

But that same Bible also tells us that Jesus is God too, and that the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit is a person.

The doctrine of the trinity is the result of reconciling all of these truths. Therefore we conclude that there is only one God (monotheism) — that he is a spiritual Being, and the Being of God is comprised of three co-equal and co-eternal persons.

Isnt that the same thing as polytheism? 

 The doctrine of the trinity is one of the hardest Christian doctrines to understand and to explain.

Isn´t is the same that people say in this forum? that Reality is God which is One or not separated (on an Asolute level) but at the same time they refer, at Relevative level, separe thing: me, you, it, etc.