Jun 9, 2012 -- 12:19PM, world citizen wrote:

Hello Seraphim ~

When a man's God is gratuitously attacked, you ought to expect some push back.

This statement implies that there is more than one God, which neither Baha'is nor Christians, nor certain other religions, accept.  It does, however, explicitly put forth the view that Jesus (who Baha'is do NOT and never will attack) is one with God.   The church, 300 years after His death, arbitrarily made Jesus a god.  Those bishops disagreeing with this interpretation refused to attend the Council at Nicea.  The average Christian seems to pray TO Jesus and not THROUGH Jesus to THE ONE GOD.  Does it seem logical that this was Christ's intent when He taught man to recite the Lord's Prayer:  "Our Father ..."

It was not arbitrary.  It is not like they flipped a coin.

Your understanding of the history of Nicaea is incorrect.  Arian bishops did attend.

The average Christian does pray to Jesus as He is God.  That is what makes them Christian.

Jun 9, 2012 -- 1:50AM, in_my_opinion wrote:

Have found reason itself, mainly to be a useful tool in paring away falsehood and illusion.

Logic, as a subset of reason in general, has the limitation of being based on premisses and definitions. The premises can be difficult to acquire and there is often little certainty as to their validity. (As anyone who is trying to by or rent domicile can attest!)

Definitions cannot logically be trusted on things that are undefinable such as various limitlessnesses, infinities and eternality.

Finally, formal logic itself is difficult; as, statistically over half the adult normal planetary population of humans never manage to use it with any coherence. The young except for a tiny one percent of those under fifteen, cannot even learn it until then.

Fortunately, I studied mathematics and had an interest in foundations and mathematical logic.  At one time I could reproduce Godel's incompleteness theorem.

And mathematicians have no difficulty defining limitlessness and infinities.  Cantor showed how.

Attachment to reason can definitely become an obstacle to truth, just as attachment to aesthetic inspiration or physical observation. Rationalism, intuitionism and empiricism have all failed as stand-alone standards of truth.

After a few rounds of theological arm-wrestling, let me express one parallel between our faiths.  A rather curious, maybe even significant, commonality between the Christian and the Bahá'í understandings ought to be mentioned. We both regard Jesus a Manifestation of divine attributes, including omnipotence, omniscience, creatorship, perfect love, eternity, etc. In other words, we attach equal power and greatness to Jesus. Our difference is that the Christians believe those qualities make Him God and there is nothing beyond those attributes. The Bahá'ís believe God is beyond even the most awe-inspiring attributes that we attribute to Him. They are called "attributes of God" out of His boundless grace simply for us to have something to praise Him by, and to emulate in our own humble way. I personally find God's beyondness in the veiled mystery of His Essence as the most beautiful, the most intuitive, the most illuminating, the most humbling, the most mystical and the most holy of all truths.

And if I proclaim Thee by the name of Him Who is the All-Compelling, I readily discover that He is but a suppliant fallen upon the dust, awe-stricken by Thy dreadful might, Thy sovereignty and power. And if I attempt to describe Thee by glorifying the oneness of Thy Being, I soon realize that such a conception is but a notion which mine own fancy hath woven, and that Thou hast ever been immeasurably exalted above the vain imaginations which the hearts of men have devised. (Bahá’u'lláh, Prayers and Meditations, LXXV)

The Bahá'í trinity is Man, Manifestation of God, and God. God is strictly one - in fact so single that even 'singleness' cannot properly capture Him. The Holy Spirit flows from God to man through the Manifestation. Holy Spirit is pure ideas and pure qualities. The following allegorical excerpt from a prayer really captures it all. In the allegory, the Manifestation of God is symbolized as the Pen:

The highest faculties which the learned have possessed, and whatsoever truths they, in their search after the gems of Thy knowledge, have discovered; the brightest realities with which the wise have been endowed, and whatever secrets they, in their attempts to fathom the mysteries of Thy wisdom, have unraveled, have all been created through the generative power of the Spirit that was breathed into the Pen which Thy hands have fashioned. How, then, can the thing which Thy Pen hath created be capable of comprehending those treasures of Thy Faith with which, as decreed by Thee, that Pen hath been invested? How can it ever know of the Fingers that grasp Thy Pen, and of Thy merciful favors with which it hath been endowed? How can it, already  unable to reach this station, be made aware of the existence of Thy Hand that controlleth the Fingers of Thy might? How can it attain unto the comprehension of the nature of Thy Will that animateth the movement of Thy Hand?

Glorified, glorified be Thou, O my God! How can I ever hope to ascend into the heaven of Thy most holy will, or gain admittance into the tabernacle of Thy Divine knowledge, knowing as I do that the minds of the wise and learned are impotent to fathom the secrets of Thy handiwork—a handiwork which is itself but a creation of Thy will? 

(Bahá'u'lláh, Prayers and Meditations, LVIII)

Kind regards,

Wabbit

Jun 4, 2012 -- 4:31AM, Lilwabbit wrote:

I've always found it curious that belief in the Trinity originates from Augustine of Hippo who post-dated Jesus by some four brief centuries, and whose thoughts were influenced by Athanasius of Alexandria who lived a century before St. Augustine. The writer of the Gospel of John, in turn, who seemed to imply a whole different kind of trinity than either Augustine or Athanasius, modeled his Logos-theology almost verbatim after the philosophy of the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria.

Trinity seems to have very little basis in the early gospels and the sayings attributed to Jesus in those gospels.

The Bahá'í view is of course one of strict monotheism. Having said that, 'Abdu'l-Bahá explains that the Holy Spirit is an emanation (rather than a person) from God which can be likened to the rays of the sun. The reflection of the sun can be seen in the perfect mirror that Christ (and every other Manifestation of God) is and hence, in a sense, the sun is "in the Son" while in reality remaining in its own distant heaven. The sun never literally enters the mirror, but reflects in it through its rays (Holy Spirit). Hence, our belief bears some similarities with the Orthodox Christian notion, except that God Himself is unfathomable and inaccessible whilst the Orthodox Christians believe in theosis (union with the Godhead).

I've always found the Emblem of the Greatest Name (Bahá) very illustrating in this respect.

The upper horizontal line represents God, the middle line His Manifestation (Messenger) and the lower line represents man. The vertical line represents the Holy Spirit which originates from God and touches man. Yet it does so always through God's Manifestation, or more specifically, the Word of God revealed through Him.

As 'Abdu'l-Bahá puts it, Manifestations of God manifest God's attributes in a form which man can understand. These attributes are the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, the Rays of the Sun of Reality, and not God Himself (the Orb of the Sun). The Manifestations of God are not God incarnates (i.e. manifestations of God's Essence). God's true nature is beyond all attributes, whether corporeal or spiritual, according to the explicit teachings of Bahá'u'lláh. The earth, or even the perfect mirror, could never withstand the Orb of the Sun Itself "descending" into it. Only its rays and even those from a carefully measured distance.

Feel free to share your views on the matter.

Kind regards,

LilWabbit

Theosis is not about knowing God in his essence.  Orthodox Christians are in agreement with Baha'i's that God is completely unknowable, but it is only through his energies that He is made known to us.  The energy-essence distinction was made famous with St. Gregory Palamas. 

Dear Andrew, did you know that the phoenix is a symbol for a revelation? The origin is in ancient Egypt. (The Greeks adopted it for themselves and as with several of the civilizing influences they received therefrom, geometry most well known among them, they credited the Pharaonic lands. Sadly the Romans would not in turn follow on, but only gave praise to the Greeks as their forebears.

To this day, many dictionaries stop the word's etymology incorrectly with the Greek. At least Etymonline gets it right by identifying it with "Phoenician" which linguistically makes it belong to the Semitic subfamily of languages!

Among the things associated with that mythic bird is the lifespan which is variously given as 500 or a 1,000 years, or as a range in between. Other concepts such as rising from its own ashes match closely to how Christianity arose from the ashes of God's previous revelation. The wildfire spread of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam in historical and geographical terms is also a motif of God's Word. The first arose out of Hinduism to spread over the world's largest continent, going east into the Pacific and south into southeast Asia. The second went westwards and north into the Baltic and beyond, then came south to to evangelize Russia and the Balkans then to fulfill its mission and the prophecy, by being preached to all nations by 1844. The third went slightly north then spread west and east and south into Africa; staying mainly south of Europe except a few centuries in the Iberian peninsula which ended in 1492 and with the Turks in the Balkans where there is still one European Muslim country.

Revelations have a dawn, noontime and sunset ending in the ashes of a nighttime. But the Sun, or phoenix, is the rising of the New Day with the Glad Tidings of the Light. But in order to see the Light, wakefulness is necessary.

The Gospel says it ... well you can find it at 1 Thessalonians 5:2 and 2 Peter3:10.