S
Servant19
Guest
So its God the Father, Son, Holy Spirit AND the Spirit of Truth now???
Where does it say that the Spirit of Truth is the Eternal Godhead?
Thanks
.
- Status
Where does it say that the Spirit of Truth is the Eternal Godhead?
Thanks
.
P
PRmerger
Guest
Where there is One Person of the Trinity, there All Three are, Servant.So its God the Father, Son, Holy Spirit AND the Spirit of Truth now???
Where does it say that the Spirit of Truth is the Eternal Godhead?
Thanks
.
S
Servant19
Guest
P
PRmerger
Guest
I “just happen” to be reading, at this very moment, the Apostolic Exhortation from the Holy Father, the beloved and wonderful Pope Francis.
I “just happen” to have read this, which I happen to believe is meant for me to convey to you: " The heart of its message will always be the same".
That is, there is nothing more that is new that needs to be said.
And again, I “just happened” to have read this, which I think ought to be for your eyes, too:
Note all the references to the word “new”
Christ is the “eternal Gospel” (Rev 14:6); he “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8), yet his riches and beauty are inexhaustible. He is for ever young and a constant source of newness. The Church never fails to be amazed at “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God” (Rom 11:33). Saint John of the Cross says that “the thicket of God’s wisdom and knowledge is so deep and so broad that the soul, however much it has come to know of it, can always penetrate deeper within it”.[7] Or as Saint Irenaeus writes: “By his coming, Christ brought with him all newness”.[8] With this newness he is always able to renew our lives and our communities, and even if the Christian message has known periods of darkness and ecclesial weakness, it will never grow old. Jesus can also break through the dull categories with which we would enclose him and he constantly amazes us by his divine creativity. Whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world. Every form of authentic evangelization is always “new”.
P
PRmerger
Guest
LOL!
S
Servant19
Guest
B
benjohnson
Guest
The trinity is a mystery. While we can make rational descriptions that make analogous approximations to the mystery, but fundamentally we will not be able to understand God in this life.
S
Servant19
Guest
Beautiful!!!
So new truths are constantly being revealed. How so?
It is the APPLICATION of the eternal Truth that are being renewed.
I find it funny that you say “there is nothing more that is new that needs to be said.” only to follow it up with a quote reflecting “newness” and “creativity” in evangelization, “different forms of expression”
Baha’u’llah has not brought anything new at all…
“This is the changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future”
What He has brought is a “newness” of evangelization, a “newness” of expression, etc etc, except that there is one BIG difference…
The Pope is but a man
Baha’u’llah is the Father…
I take His Word on how to “apply” these eternal truths over the Pope. Why?
Because the Father has within His short time of establishing His teachings on the planet has united diverse communities, established the emblem of the “oneness of humanity” within hundreds of thousands of localities…something the Pope has yet been unable to do…
THAT is the SPIRIT which establishes Divinity…which is what you should be testing if you are true to 1John 4
.
S
Servant19
Guest
Dear friend, the entire “nature of God” is a mystery. Why would anyone wish to commit His nature into a worded “doctrine”
I personally show humility and say I really don’t know who God is and how He relates to His Prophets and what the nature of that relationship is…
But something I do see evidence of is that the Spirit of Truth is not one of the Persons of the Trinity, as PR has suggested. John 16 suggests otherwise…
.
T
tonyfish58
Guest
Can I make a comment here
You quoted “” The heart of its message will always be the same"
Baha’is would agree 100% with this
It is a fundamental teaching of Baha’u’llah IMHO!I would attempt an analogy on this point
There is one True Heart!
A would say that, that Heart pumps its message out into may Artery’s & Veins that feed and nourish the many other parts of the Body. Thus
The heart is Gods word, the blood the Holy Spirit the Artery’s & Veins are the many Messengers of God, all this supplying life to all the other parts of the body of mankind, the Apostles, the disciples, the Saints, the believers and mankind each in its given order
Yes the Core Truths of the Faith of God do not change
God Bless & Regards Tony
P
PRmerger
Guest
No. It is One Eternal Truth, given once for all to the Church.
I don’t know what you mean by this.
Sure. There is no dichotomy there.
Except when he says things which are just plain wrong. Such as that the Resurrection wasn’t a physical one.
Finally, you get something right about what the Catholic Church teaches!
P
PRmerger
Guest
What is doctrine except words proclaiming truth?
And if you cannot know truth, then you are not a human who is using his mind.
That is, I think, the saddest thing you’ve ever written here. :sad_yes:
P
PRmerger
Guest
Except when your guy says that the Resurrection wasn’t a physical one–that’s a completely different message than that which was proclaimed for 2000 years.Can I make a comment here
You quoted “” The heart of its message will always be the same"
Baha’is would agree 100% with this
V
Vouthon
Guest
Just as all monotheistic religions do when they define the hidden being of God as One". That is a doctrinal statement, since God as He is in Himself is surely above any numeric value or limitation, yet for the sake of man we say that He is “One” since our concept of a single number is the closest approximation to the divine truth that we can make, or rather that revelation can make on our behalf.
And yet the Baha’i writings do make analogies to explain the relationship between God and His prophets, such as the Sun and the mirror reflecting its light onto human beings as an intermediary.
Also, God’s “attributes”, separate from his unknowable essence, are they not “revealed” through the Manifestations? Indeed does not Baha’u’llah say that all creation expresses in its different elements the various attributes of God?
E
eddie_too
Guest
a few comments about john 16:
it is also more than a touch crazy to interpret the passage to mean that the rest of the truth promised by Jesus would be given to someone outside of the institution Jesus had personally created to ensure that His graces would be present to all mankind unto the end of the world. Seriously, what possible logic exists in interpreting John 16 to mean that Jesus would destroy His Church, prove all that it had taught for the previous 19+ centuries was wrong and try to start all over organizing the presence of God among His people?
whatever the nature of the messenger, it is clear the messenger would contradict nothing Jesus had done, said and taught. for example, no matter how the promise of additional information is interpreted, it can not logicallly or sanely be interpreted to mean that the messenger would contradict everything Jesus had done, said and taught.
when Jesus said “This is My Body” and This is My Blood" and His apostles (those, who by the Lord’s own decisions, were closest to Him) took those words literally, and rightly took them literally, since Jesus knew how they understood the words and could have easily corrected any misunderstanding; we can logically, reasonably and correctly conclude that whoever or however Jesus intended to provide clarification and completion to the teachings He had given the apostles (and that they were completely cognizant of) through the three years of His public ministry would never change the teachings given by Jesus to the Twelve and which they completely understood.
in a nutshell, however John 16 might be interpreted, it is a total absurdity to interpret it to mean that what Jesus initially taught would be changed.
sorry for the length of this, but it is a very important to understand, at least minimally, what John 16 does not mean.
- Jesus is speaking to His twelve apostles. He is telling the twelve what to expect in the future. This completes nullifies interpreting John 16 as telling the apostles that the one who will reveal the rest of the gospel to them will come from outside of the Church. that is because the one to come will be informing them – the apostles.
- Jesus had spent three years constantly teaching and training the apostles. yet, at some point in that three years Jesus told them they were not prepared to hear all that Jesus knew. consequently, at a later point in time, Jesus promised that they would be prepared to hear what they were not prepared to hear while Jesus was with them.
it is also more than a touch crazy to interpret the passage to mean that the rest of the truth promised by Jesus would be given to someone outside of the institution Jesus had personally created to ensure that His graces would be present to all mankind unto the end of the world. Seriously, what possible logic exists in interpreting John 16 to mean that Jesus would destroy His Church, prove all that it had taught for the previous 19+ centuries was wrong and try to start all over organizing the presence of God among His people?
- John 16 says that the truth that remained to be revealed would come from Jesus through Jesus’ messenger. it is, yet again, more than a little touched to interpret John 16 to mean that the truth the messenger possessed that came from Jesus was that the messenger was greater than Jesus and that the messenger’s information would be completely different from Jesus’ message.
whatever the nature of the messenger, it is clear the messenger would contradict nothing Jesus had done, said and taught. for example, no matter how the promise of additional information is interpreted, it can not logicallly or sanely be interpreted to mean that the messenger would contradict everything Jesus had done, said and taught.
when Jesus said “This is My Body” and This is My Blood" and His apostles (those, who by the Lord’s own decisions, were closest to Him) took those words literally, and rightly took them literally, since Jesus knew how they understood the words and could have easily corrected any misunderstanding; we can logically, reasonably and correctly conclude that whoever or however Jesus intended to provide clarification and completion to the teachings He had given the apostles (and that they were completely cognizant of) through the three years of His public ministry would never change the teachings given by Jesus to the Twelve and which they completely understood.
in a nutshell, however John 16 might be interpreted, it is a total absurdity to interpret it to mean that what Jesus initially taught would be changed.
sorry for the length of this, but it is a very important to understand, at least minimally, what John 16 does not mean.
P
PRmerger
Guest
More astonishingly *apropos-to-this-discussion *words from the great Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation:
At the same time, today’s vast and rapid cultural changes demand that we constantly seek ways of expressing unchanging truths in a language which brings out their abiding newness. “The deposit of the faith is one thing… the way it is expressed is another”.There are times when the faithful, in listening to completely orthodox language, take away something alien to the authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ, because that language is alien to their own way of speaking to and understanding one another. With the holy intent of communicating the truth about God and humanity, we sometimes give them a false god or a human ideal which is not really Christian. In this way, we hold fast to a formulation while failing to convey its substance. This is the greatest danger. Let us never forget that “the expression of truth can take different forms. The renewal of these forms of expression becomes necessary for the sake of transmitting to the people of today the Gospel message in its unchanging meaning”.
Much of what he proclaims is “alien to the authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ”. He is a false god “which is not really Christian”.
S
SteveVH
Guest
Thank you for this, PR. What is striking to me, aside from the insightful content of Pope Francis’ message, is the clarity, eloquence and authenticity of his words. I can’t wait to read the entire exhortation.
Contrast this with the written words of Baha’u’llah, in which one must carry a machete in order to hack one’s way through pages of flowery words in search of any true meaning. The truth that exists in his writings has been embraced by Christians since the beginning and therefore is nothing new. The errors in his writings, however (Baha’u’llah is God the Father; Christ did not rise physically from the grave, etc.) are proof enough that he is no prophet, and certainly no god.
It is not surprising to me that members of this faith can make a statement such as:
And I agree with you that it is a sad statement to make. To believe that God the Father has incarnated as Baha’u’llah and yet claim that one does not know who God is or how he relates to his prophets or what the nature of that relationship is makes one wonder what the point of his coming was to begin with…
Anyway, Pope Francis’ words could not be more applicable. Thanks again.
P
PRmerger
Guest
:tiphat:Thank you for this, PR. What is striking to me, aside from the insightful content of Pope Francis’ message, is the clarity, eloquence and authenticity of his words. I can’t wait to read the entire exhortation.
Contrast this with the written words of Baha’u’llah, in which one must carry a machete in order to hack one’s way through pages of flowery words in search of any true meaning. The truth that exists in his writings has been embraced by Christians since the beginning and therefore is nothing new. The errors in his writings, however (Baha’u’llah is God the Father; Christ did not rise physically from the grave, etc.) are proof enough that he is no prophet, and certainly no god.
It is not surprising to me that members of this faith can make a statement such as:
And I agree with you that it is a sad statement to make. To believe that God the Father has incarnated as Baha’u’llah and yet claim that one does not know who God is or how he relates to his prophets or what the nature of that relationship is makes one wonder what the point of his coming was to begin with…
Anyway, Pope Francis’ words could not be more applicable. Thanks again.
B
benjohnson
Guest
Excellent question!
Doctrine is typically developed only against harmful incorrect teaching that leads people astray and away from God.
If you look carefully at the doctrines and dogmas of the church about the Holy Trinity, they are minimally descriptive as to counter past heresies and don’t encroach on the mystery of God.
(You may have noticed I’m Lutheran, and while we Lutherans feel that the Catholic church has gone too far in some of the more recent dogmas, we understand why they did and respectfully disagree)
E
eddie_too
Guest
the writings of bahaullah bring to my mind the old (maybe not so old?) saying, “if you cannot dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with …”.
supopsedly, bahaullah wrote tens of thousands of pages.
supopsedly, bahaullah wrote tens of thousands of pages.
- Status