Unitarian Christians- true or not true?

[schaeffer]

Am I correct to assume that you don’t believe Jesus is God?

Yes you are.

 

[Sy_Noe]

:banghead:

My patience is, unfortunately, not infinite.

Good luck on your faith journey, Sy.

Rather, look for the Church, the One Body, that Christ established, and then whatever that Church teaches, you should conform to.

Buh-bye. :sad_bye:

Mine neither. Thanks. Yes looking is good. But I will leave you with this. Catholics have looked and believe they’ve found the church Christ established. And Protestants have looked for it as well and have found the Church to be Christ’s entire Body of believers if I understand the Protestant interpretation of Church correctly. Even Unitarian Universalists look and seek truth even if they might not see it fully in any single religious tradition. Bye.

 

[Sy_Noe]

At any rate, good luck on your faith journey. Would that you had known the faith that you left, before you went searching elsewhere.

I wouldn’t necessarily assume as the above poster seemingly likes to do that someone didn’t know the faith they left just because they didn’t find the same thing in the faith as someone else did.

 

[Sy_Noe]

I think the problem is that you continue to confuse faith with proof.

I believe you hit the nail on the head. That is exactly the problem.

 

[frobert]

I believe you hit the nail on the head. That is exactly the problem.

Thank’s for your comment Sy,

Let’s hope that PR learns from her experience here that it is in no ones interest when a poster prods and goads other posters to pursue a dead end path.

 

[adrift]

Thank’s for your comment Sy,

Let’s hope that PR learns from her experience here that it is in no ones interest when a poster prods and goads other posters to pursue a dead end path.

I hope that it is understood that others see a different view? That they see what you describe as prods and goads as seeking to challenge.

It seems to me that the purpose of the exchanges was to provoke and attack rather than to learn. The post were picked apart without any effort to address the points in the thread
For example:
It was asked

God says _______ is wrong. You can fill the blank in with most all of God’s commandments.

Human creature says I don’t believe it is wrong.

Do you think that such a situation could occur?

Instead of answering the person picked at the initial comment that I thought it was splitting hairs than he went off on God could not be describe in human terms when the question asked did not address that. He says he will not participate anymore and I am sad because I would like to know how he can say anything about God including there is a God without using human terms?

Instead of answering, it was stated that all you had to do is reread the thread where of course there is no answer other than there are things we don’t understand. Yet when asked for these things no answer is given accept to attack the poster who has the audacity to keep asking unanswered questions.

If there are lessons to learn, I believe it is if you don’t like a poster do all you can to discredit as has been discussed let’s poison that well.

 

[PRmerger]

you asked for an example, I gave you and example, you said it’s a non sequitur

Right.

It didn’t answer my questions, at all.

That’s what a nonsequitur means.

For example, let’s say you are in a discussion with a person who has refused to immunize her children.

You say: can you show me some studies that have shown that it is bad to immunize children?

And this person says, “I believe that childbirth is one of the most beautiful, magnificent experiences any woman can ever go through!”

You would, rightly, say, “That is a non-sequitur, friend.”

And if this person says, “How dare you call my experiences giving birth non-sequiturs!”

you would understand that this person is not being reasonable. She did not answer your question, which was, “Can you show me some studies?”

Rather, she went off on a tangent that was…a non-sequitur.

And when you pointed that out, she responded as if you were dismissing her childbirth experience.

That’s the parallel to what has happened in our discussions.

 

[PRmerger]

Instead of answering the person picked at the initial comment that I thought it was splitting hairs than he went off on God could not be describe in human terms when the question asked did not address that. He says he will not participate anymore and I am sad because I would like to know how he can say anything about God including there is a God without using human terms?

Instead of answering, it was stated that all you had to do is reread the thread where of course there is no answer other than there are things we don’t understand. Yet when asked for these things no answer is given accept to attack the poster who has the audacity to keep asking unanswered questions.

If there are lessons to learn, I believe it is if you don’t like a poster do all you can to discredit as has been discussed let’s poison that well.

Yep.

Instead of answering.

Egg-zactly.

But I take comfort in knowing that by not answering, my point has been well understood.

 

[frobert]

I hope that it is understood that others see a different view? That they see what you describe as prods and goads as seeking to challenge.

It seems to me that the purpose of the exchanges was to provoke and attack rather than to learn. The post were picked apart without any effort to address the points in the thread
For example:
It was asked

Instead of answering the person picked at the initial comment that I thought it was splitting hairs than he went off on God could not be describe in human terms when the question asked did not address that. He says he will not participate anymore and I am sad because I would like to know how he can say anything about God including there is a God without using human terms?

Instead of answering, it was stated that all you had to do is reread the thread where of course there is no answer other than there are things we don’t understand. Yet when asked for these things no answer is given accept to attack the poster who has the audacity to keep asking unanswered questions.

If there are lessons to learn, I believe it is if you don’t like a poster do all you can to discredit as has been discussed let’s poison that well.

People pick and choose what they respond to. The poster in question certainly does.

Whether the question was a challenge or prodding does not change the fact that a dead end should have been anticipated. In my case with the poster I asked her politely to stop the prodding but she insisted on continuing to goad until her she got angry enough at my responses. At the very least she was impolite. It does not poison the well to hope that someone learn from their experience especially when they do the some thing over and over with many posters.

When you challenged me earlier in this thread I was influenced by your challenge and it did lead to a productive end, at least for me.

 

[adrift]

sigh! O.K. I have enjoyed our exchanges my suggestion use the ignore.

 

[Estevao]

Non-trinitarians are not Christians. Thread title is misleading.

 

[Sy_Noe]

sigh! O.K. I have enjoyed our exchanges my suggestion use the ignore.

But if the person on ignore can still see posts of the person ignoring them, the problem with the ignore that I see is if the poster being ignored makes comments about my posts, I wouldn’t know what potential falsehoods they may be saying about me. Case in point I recently had someone going by Saint Someone uncharitably say he bets I have a strong relationship with Satan and blood of children on my hands.

 

[PRmerger]

I just happened to use this source in another thread, and I thought it apropos here:

From apologist Mark Shea:

The skeptic can quibble over whether all these claims are “interpolations” (that blessed word trotted out to wave away anything in the New Testament not to one’s liking). But the fact remains that this is what the documents have always recorded and (more significantly) they seem to bear out the actual record of what has occurred.

Because the Church has an uncanny habit of remaining what she is, of zigging where the culture demands she must inevitably zag, and of continuing her strange ability to sieve out of the most depraved societies, those truths that are essential while avoiding the broad way of destruction proposed to her even by the Best and the Brightest. It’s like she’s guided by God or something.

Borrowing from Mark, I say that the one who leaves the CC can quibble over whether all the teachings of the CC are “interpolations”–and this view gives permission to wave away anything the CC teaches THAT IS NOT TO ONE’S LIKING.

But, like the sceptic who dismisses anything in the NT that isn’t to his liking, the ex-Catholic is only re-creating a religion that comforts him and his own liking. Not a religion that is true.

He closes by saying:

The Jesus preached by and present in the Catholic Church is a perpetual smasher of the idols called “Jesus” that are erected by the ideologies, factions, and parties of the world to bless whatever insanity they propose or cling to.

Amen!

 

[Sy_Noe]

Non-trinitarians are not Christians. Thread title is misleading.

Yet the Catholic Encyclopedia starts by saying they are:

“A liberal Protestant sect which holds as it distinctive tenet the belief in a uni-personal instead of a tri-personal God. In its general sense the name designates all disbelievers in the Trinity, whether Christian or non-Christian; in its present specific use it is applied to that organized form of Christianity which lays emphasis on the unity of the personality of God.”

newadvent.org/cathen/15154b.htm

 

[adrift]

Yet the Catholic Encyclopedia starts by saying they are:

“A liberal Protestant sect which holds as it distinctive tenet the belief in a uni-personal instead of a tri-personal God. In its general sense the name designates all disbelievers in the Trinity, whether Christian or non-Christian; in its present specific use it is applied to that organized form of Christianity which lays emphasis on the unity of the personality of God.”

newadvent.org/cathen/15154b.htm

A liberal Protestant sect which holds as it distinctive tenet the belief in a uni-personal instead of a tri-personal God.
Name and doctrine
In its general sense the name designates all disbelievers in the Trinity, whether Christian or non-Christian; in its present specific use it is applied to that organized form of Christianity which lays emphasis on the unity of the personality of God…In short, present-day Unitarianism is hardly more than natural religion, and exhibits in some of its members a pronounced tendency towards Pantheistic speculation.

 

[Sy_Noe]

A liberal Protestant sect which holds as it distinctive tenet the belief in a uni-personal instead of a tri-personal God.
Name and doctrine
In its general sense the name designates all disbelievers in the Trinity, whether Christian or non-Christian; in its present specific use it is applied to that organized form of Christianity which lays emphasis on the unity of the personality of God…In short, present-day Unitarianism is hardly more than natural religion, and exhibits in some of its members a pronounced tendency towards Pantheistic speculation.

Uh huh so while they are “hardly more” and “some of its members” exhibit a tendency, I guess the parts about them being Protestants and an organized form of Christianity like it says, were just put in there for window dressing or to take up space.

 

[Estevao]

Yet the Catholic Encyclopedia starts by saying they are:

“A liberal Protestant sect which holds as it distinctive tenet the belief in a uni-personal instead of a tri-personal God. In its general sense the name designates all disbelievers in the Trinity, whether Christian or non-Christian; in its present specific use it is applied to that organized form of Christianity which lays emphasis on the unity of the personality of God.”

newadvent.org/cathen/15154b.htm

The Christ/messiah was prophesied to be a divine figure in the Old Testament. People who deny this are not Christians, and in calling themselves Christians they blaspheme. It would be like calling myself a “muslim” but then not submitting to Allah. I just negate the meaning of the word. (A pretty common thing to do these days, at least when it comes to marriage)

 

[frobert]

I think that this apropos to this thread

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis - Patheos

“Lewis says that he will not discuss the differences in doctrine between the various Christian sects for two reasons: the first is that he does not feel qualified to write about the arcane points of theology that separate one denomination from another. But the second reason, he says, is this:”

“And secondly, I think we must admit that the discussion of these disputed points has no tendency at all to bring an outsider into the Christian fold. So long as we write and talk about them we are much more likely to deter him from entering any Christian communion than to draw him into our own. Our divisions should never be discussed except in the presence of those who have already come to believe that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is His only Son” (p.vi).​

 

[schaeffer]

Right.

It didn’t answer my questions, at all.

That’s what a nonsequitur means.

For example, let’s say you are in a discussion with a person who has refused to immunize her children.

You say: can you show me some studies that have shown that it is bad to immunize children?

And this person says, “I believe that childbirth is one of the most beautiful, magnificent experiences any woman can ever go through!”

You would, rightly, say, “That is a non-sequitur, friend.”

And if this person says, “How dare you call my experiences giving birth non-sequiturs!”

you would understand that this person is not being reasonable. She did not answer your question, which was, “Can you show me some studies?”

Rather, she went off on a tangent that was…a non-sequitur.

And when you pointed that out, she responded as if you were dismissing her childbirth experience.

That’s the parallel to what has happened in our discussions.

You asked for an example of where I conformed to my faith even when I did not “believe” (your term, in my faith we use the term “understand”) it, and I gave the example. That I conform to not using human traits when discussion God, even though it’s easier and more convenient because my faith teaches that God does not have human traits and it is wrong to speak of God that way.

That was an example, it was not a non sequitur.

Though you (and perhaps your faith as well) believe that God has human traits and that we should be able to discuss God in that way, and you contend that we can’t discuss God any other way, still and all, it IS what my faith teaches, it IS an example and it IS pertinent to the discussion.

If you were in discussion with someone who did not understand or respect the teaching of Real Presence, yet they wanted you to use the term “cracker” to refer to the consecrated host, I think you could use that as an example where you conform to your faith by not referring the the consecrated host as a cracker, no matter whether or not that was easier for the other person or more condusive to discussion.

That would be an example such as what you were seeking from me.

I gave an example of how I conform to my faith, even when I don’t fully understand a teaching. It was in no way off topic or not a response to your question.

As I said, it appears that no example I offer will be sufficient for you. Perhaps it is because I cannot fill in the blank with the terminology you use. So, if that is the challenge, no, I cannot meet it.

I expect that if someone posed the fill in the blank “We worship the cracker when_____” you would not fill in the blank, no matter how many times they kept asking you, because you would not concede to referring to the consecrated host as a cracker.

Perhaps you will think this too is a non sequitur or that I am splitting hairs. Perhaps someone disrespectful of your faith, or ignorant of transubstantiation would think not calling the consecrated host a cracker was splitting hairs as well.

 

[frobert]

A liberal Protestant sect which holds as it distinctive tenet the belief in a uni-personal instead of a tri-personal God.
Name and doctrine
In its general sense the name designates all disbelievers in the Trinity, whether Christian or non-Christian; in its present specific use it is applied to that organized form of Christianity which lays emphasis on the unity of the personality of God…In short, present-day Unitarianism is hardly more than natural religion, and exhibits in some of its members a pronounced tendency towards Pantheistic speculation.

Sy,

Thank you for the reference. It clears up some confusion that I have been struggling with for a long time.