08:32
@GratefulDisciple No. The correct narrative is that Christianity became corrupted when it became a state church and a worldly religion under the pagan Roman emperor Constantine, and this skewed the thinking of every intelligent person in the Christian Church from then on.
Consider what would happen if you took the most brilliant scientists of the past three centuries, and brainwashed them all so that they could not question the "truth" that the world is flat. Let those brilliant scientists loose on the physical world, and every conclusion they drew about cosmology would be false, or at least distorted, because they could not question that fundamental false axiom.
This is precisely what has happened in the Christian Church from the Council of Nicaea onward.
The theologians you mention were indeed brilliant. But because they were obliged to accept without question a fundamental premise about God that is unbiblical and false, everything they thought, and taught, based on that was also false. As the programmers say, "Garbage in, garbage out."
@GratefulDisciple Thinking that when the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are mentioned in the Bible, it refers to what the world knows as fathers, sons, and holy spirits is the materialism of the Trinity of Persons. Instead of understanding Father, Son, and Holy Spirit spiritually, it understands them materially, as three separate individuals, which it then tries, unsuccessfully, to call "one God."
@GratefulDisciple In the trinitarian conception, it is not God, but God the Son that "invades the bodily realm." In the trinitarian conception, all the fullness of the godhead does not dwell in him bodily. Only the Son dwells in him bodily. This is a fundamental error of the doctrine of the Trinity of Persons.
On every point that distinguishes it from other Christian doctrines about God, the Trinity of Persons fails the biblical test. Not only does the Bible never say that God is a Trinity of Persons, but it's statement about who God is denies what the doctrine of the Trinity of Persons teaches.
@GratefulDisciple If you think that Swedenborg reduces Christianity to the spiritual realm, then you have no idea at all what Swedenborg teaches. Read up on Swedenborg's doctrine of the divine humanity. If you understood that, you could not possibly make such a silly statement about Swedenborg's teaching on the Trinity.
Swedenborg lived during the Enlightenment, but his teachings are largely independent of any outside influences, both Christian and secular. Many have tried to tie him to one or another historical Christian heresy or contemporary philosophical influence. None have succeeded. He did draw on various ideas, both religious and secular, in the existing culture. But his own system was unique in history.
Lazy commentators who don't want to bother actually learning what he taught are happy to dismiss him by saying, "Oh, he was just this," or "Oh, he was just that." Every time I hear it, I know that the person making this statement is ignorant about Swedenborg.
If you don't want to spend the time learning what he taught, that's certainly your choice. But don't think you can just dismiss him by saying "He was just another Enlightenment philosopher." It only shows your ignorance.
Better just to admit that you don't actually know that Swedenborg taught about God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, Redemption, Salvation, Regeneration, and every other Christian and biblical topic.
At least then you don't look ignorant to people who actually know that Swedenborg taught.
