Iconodule

No... in the Trinity there is only one nature, shared by the three persons, so there doesn't seem to be any connection to the trinity from the Bahai concept. But while I think to some degree you are right, I also think to some degree you are wrong, we can express and define whom God was using language, God certaintly thought he could when he said he was all loving, when he said he is the creator, when he said he was the first and the last (eternal), when we are told what he expects of people and the Like. God is not a figure so remote that we cannot possibly hope to understand him, at least Christians have never seen it as such, probably because of the Incarnation in which God became man and showed that this world is not completely hopeless, but even before then with the prophets God is not a figure which is so remote he cannot be possibly understood. indeed we cannot comprehend God, but we can understand him and be in union with him, not forever divided or seperated from him, that was never the intent of God that we should as close as possible but still far away enough so as not to know him. Such a God is a deistic God which I don't accept.

LordOfGoblins

One nature shared by three persons... Lets not try to complicate things with such an understanding. The three persons are still three persons. What is the one nature? Isnt the son representative of the human aspect of the trinity?
I get the idea that there is a common thread in the whole trinity concept and that is the divine nature. But the very fact that you catagorise them into three presupposes they are different things.
Anyway arguing about the trinity is pointless. IF you think you have got it down pat then that is your opinion. We have already been around in circles about the trinity so I am not about to do it again.
The reason why I said that there was a similarity was because YOU brought that up. You said perhaps Bahai have their own trinity. Now you are backpeddling with "there is no accosiation to the Bahai trinity".
In fact the truth is that there is no "Bahai trinity", I was just going along with what you labled on us with earlier posts.
The Bahai understanding about God is this. We can understand Aspects of God like the fact he is loving. But that is only through the reflection of Man. You understand what love is because you are a man and you have it. But that does not mean you can understand Gods nature or essence. That is the point of the Bahai teaching that God is unkowable. This does not mean he is completely out of all discussions, it means that attempts to catagorise God by saying he is based of three things is futile.
Anyway If you are going to attempt word games like "No the trinity doesnt say he is based of three things it says he is three things in unison" or some such argument, then that shows something about your level of trying to discuss with the intent to advance understanding.

Iconodule

The One nature is the nature of divinity, the son is the person who became incarnate but his divine nature was not tampered with in anyway. After all God does not change, hence it seems impossible for the Divine nature to become human. Rather as Christians understand it, this was a Hypostatic union, the two natures remain distinct but are united in the one person of Jesus christ, Neither Co mingling or contaminating one another. This is the Christian idea.

Now if you mean by Presupposing they are different things, that they are different persons I would fully agree with you. Christians are not Modalists, we don't believe the father is the son and the son is the father and the father is the spirit and the spirit is the son and etc etc. They are three wholly distinct persons sharing the same divine nature.

Now I don't remember bringing up the Bahai having their own trinity... At least in this thread. Yes in the past I believe i have demonstrated the Bahai trinity is ultiamtely not a trinity, as the concept of Trinity had been defined eccumenically 1700 years ago and the bahai idea or rather attempted correction seems to take a term which never belonged to them and redefine in a false attempt to define trinity. So I don't know where that came from, in regards to this thread.

Now you have suggested if I understand you right, there are three aspects tot he manifestations, three natures in their persons, the spirit (their soul), the Logos (which is God in them) and the flesh which is disposed of as useless after they die. And comapred this to the trinity, I pointed out that this is not like the trinity at all, so its a fair observation I think. But then again I don't see any justification for saying the Logos is in all the manifestations, but not essentially apart of them. As I pointed out, John seems to have no idea of this, as he mentions the Logos became incarnate when Christ entered into this world, completely ignoring or not mentioning that in reality Moses and Abraham, and Krishna and Budha were the first logi (Lets pretend thats a plural of Logos please). John has no knowledge of the Logos actually coming before Christ and seems to be mistakened in saying the Logos became flesh not with Jesus, but actually became flesh with Abraham first which is where he should have begun his gospel. if the Bahai are correct.

BruceDLimber

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iconodule It seems to me the bahai need to . . .

As a matter of correct grammar (not to mention simple courtesy), the correct spelling is Baha'i, and the plural is Baha'is.

Please endeavor to refer to us properly.

Thank you.


Bruce

Sboyce

InvestigateTruth

Well, this is again can be seen as progressive nature of revelation of God. Every Manifestation teaches some more spiritual realities and mysteries. So Even if John didn't mention it explicitly, would not mean, that the Word did not become flash before Jesus.

To make things more clear regarding the Baha'i View. For example According to scriptures, God talked to Moses, and then Moses revealed the Will and Words of God for the people. The "ability" to bring the Word of God to humanity and express God's Will to people, is because of that Holy nature of the Manifestation. In the Baha'i view, God does not actually have a physical mouth to talk. So, when the Manifestations of God, reveals the Word of God, that's revealing the Words from His Own Holy reality, which is an intrinsic knowledge, not a learned. It's not like God told Moses, say this now, say that now. So, Moses and Jesus, Baha'u'llah brought the Word to humanity in exact way and mechanism.
The Soul of Manifestations of God, is created in a way, that has the Holy Reality of God and can express His Will.

arthra

The concept of Logos comes Greek philosophers and was borrowed by Philo Judaeus of Alexandria. The term Logos was developed further in Christian theology... but the Baha'i concept of Word of God is not identical with that of Christian theology either...

For a review of how the term developed see:

it became a technical term in philosophy, beginning with Heraclitus (ca. 535–475 BC), who used the term for a principle of order and knowledge.[3]

Ancient philosophers used the term in different ways. The sophists used the term to mean discourse, and Aristotle applied the term to refer to "reasoned discourse"[4] or "the argument" in the field of rhetoric.[5] The Stoic philosophers identified the term with the divine animating principle pervading the Universe.

After Judaism came under Hellenistic influence, Philo (ca. 20 BC–AD 50) adopted the term into Jewish philosophy.[6] The Gospel of John identifies the Logos, through which all things are made, as divine (theos),[7] and further identifies Jesus as the incarnation of the Logos.

Although the term "Logos" is widely used in this Christian sense, in academic circles it often refers to the various ancient Greek uses, or to post-Christian uses within contemporary philosophy, Sufism, and the analytical psychology of Carl Jung.

Logos - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Baha'is need not be concerned about the doctrinal issues troubling Christianity.

Fadl

Hey Bruce,

Not wanting to take Iconodule's side when he is wishing to show discourtesy to us by doing this, which he surely shouldn't do, but you are not completely correct. The name of any religion should be capitalized in English, but as for spelling, there is really nothing wrong with Bahai. I will explain why.

The most common convention of spelling our faith in the languages using Latin script is as seen at the top of the forum: Bahá'í. The reason for this strange looking convention is that it uses a system of transliteration, where each Latin character corresponds with an Arabic character. This way, someone acquainted with the system (even if they don't know Arabic well) can understand how it is pronounced and how it is written in Arabic which is: بهائي . You may notice that when written as: Bahá'í that some vowels have an accent mark over them and some don't. This is because in Arabic, only long vowels have full characters to represent them. Short vowels are not written. Therefore, the first letter 'a' which has no accent mark, is a short 'a' sound and has no character representing it in Arabic. The second 'a' which has the accent mark á is written so because it is a long 'a' and is represented by the Arabic character 'alef.' So if one wants to write the name of our faith in full transliteration to represent it's Arabic form, it should really be written Bahá'í.

As for the other common convention used especially on the internet for sake of simplicity where we often use Baha'i , this is actually only a defective transliteration. The apostrophe seen in Baha'i represents the Arabic letter 'hamza' which has no English equivalent, accept for some Londoners when being very colloquial, and is not technically an apostrophe, in the sense that it is not being used as an apostrophe but rather to represent the Arabic letter hamza.

I hope you don't feel I am being nit-picky with you, I just thought I would take the opportunity to give a behind the scenes explanation of why we have this strange writing convention about many words and names in our faith in the first place.

Even though Iconodule's spelling is not actually a problem, albeit it is not the conventional way it is written in English (but I believe in some languages it is written so), and even though it is impossible to capitalize the name of our faith in Arabic or Persian, his lack of capitalization either shows his ignorance about the English convention of capitalizing proper nouns, or a deliberate attempt to show that he feels the name of our faith is unworthy of being a treated as a proper noun according to English norms. Either way, it doesn't bother me at least not in the sense that I get hurt by it or feel that my faith is being harmed, but it does bother me in the sense that by showing disrespect to us on a public forum he is harming the reputation of his own faith community. For this reason and this reason only, I wish he would capitalize it and show common courtesy, since I don't wish him to make his community seem mean or discourteous when it is actually a wonderful faith worthy of respect and honor.

Iconodule

Well the Logos is no problem for Christians, in fact the gospel of John is probably the most perfect explanation of God as far as I am concerned. but as for grammur, i dunt pirticurlarly fink id iz impotent wene dizcuzzingh fings uf feology.

Herpa derp.

Sboyce

eyes can has lolcats speaks? iconwude. me thinks dat u is be trolling. and i is thinking dat u doesnt even want learn do stuff. i fink u accidentally whole bottle of coke.
herpaderpderpderp

BruceDLimber

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fadl [W]here we often use Baha'i , this is actually only a defective transliteration.

I'm well aware of that--all the more so given that I'm constantly proofreading Baha'i books and preparing them for online release (indeed, I returned a file just yesterday)!

And yes, I know the fully correct form is Bahá'í.

I can also assure you that I'm well aware of the hamza.

But the point holds that we should encourage both capitalization and the use of the correct plural, something you didn't mention. (If he doesn't want to bother with the apostrophe, I can live with that even though it's technically wrong.)

BTW a worst-case example is ḥadíth, which has an underdot AND an accent AND an underscore!

Peace, :-)

Bruce

Fadl

I usually go with Baha'i just like everyone else, even though I think it is actually silly to insist on including an apostrophe to represent hamza, while disregarding the transliteration of everything else. To me, Bahai seems more logical than Baha'i, but what can I say, I'm a conformist I guess.

MichaelAW

Bahaullah did not create the universe, Jesus did not create the universe either, what is called God, which is an unknowable, unfathomable, something, created the universe.

Bahaullah and Jesus were flesh and blood mortals used by the Creator to spread guidance, teachings, laws.

Fadl

Hey Michael!

I just wanted to point out that you are mixing apples and oranges like iconodule. You said: "Baha'u'llah" and Jesus" which is mixing up two different things, since Baha'u'llah is actually the station and title of Mirza Husayn Ali (not his given name) and Jesus is the given name of the one whose title was Christ. It makes more sense to speak of Christ and Baha'u'llah, or Mirza Husayn Ali and Jesus. The former is speaking of their station and spiritual reality, the later is speaking of their physical station and reality.

If one were to say that Jesus or Mirza Husayn Ali created the world, then I agree with you, they did not, and could not. They were physical beings, as you suggest, and therefore were not present before the Universe as physical beings. How could they physically be there? What is being physical at all if there is not universe to be physically a part of?

Now if you are to say that Christ or Baha'u'llah created the universe then I would say that perhaps this is true because now we are speaking of their spiritual reality which is the logos.

But If you were to say the Christ or Baha'u'llah created the world, I would give a resounding yes, for each was the promulgator and creator of the new world in which they ushered in to existence.

Yeshua

A very wise and thought provoking reply brother Fadl