14:04
@curiousdannii That is appreciated. However, I don't think you are fully grappling with what it means to hold, and say, that someone else's beliefs are false.
You presumably think that my beliefs about the Trinity are false. Perhaps you are too polite to say it, but this means you think that I am reading the Bible wrongly, so that I do not properly understand what I am reading in the Bible. It also means that you believe Swedenborg is a false teacher, since he taught the view of the Trinity that I hold to.
Now, if you think that I am reading the Bible wrongly, that means you believe that I am deceived. And if you believe I am following a false teacher, then that also means you believe I am deceived.
And what is it to be deceived?
It is to not see things correctly.
You will acknowledge that I hold to certain beliefs. You will acknowledge that those beliefs can be described objectively, whether or not they are true. But in holding that they are not true, you are saying something about my thinking mind. You are saying that I am operating based on ideas that are not true, and that therefore I am seeing things wrongly.
This is precisely what I am saying about people who believe in the Nicene Trinity of Persons. I acknowledge that they have certain beliefs that can be described objectively, whether or not they are true. But I believe that those beliefs are false. Another way of saying this is that those beliefs do not correctly describe or represent reality.
This means that just as from your point of view, I am walking around seeing God, spirit, and even this world incorrectly, I am saying the same about those who hold to the Nicene Trinity of Persons.
Further, if I am reading the Bible incorrectly, that means that the things I think I see are not what is actually there.
In other words, my mind is not correctly representing reality.
But, I think that my mind is correctly representing reality.
Therefore, this is not just some objective, external thing. In saying that my beliefs are false, Nicene Christians are saying that my mind is not functioning properly, because it is seeing things wrongly--things that aren't actually there as I think they are.
Further, because I think that I am seeing things rightly, saying that I believe something false is saying that I don't even see my own mind correctly. The falsity that I hold to skews my understanding of my own mind.
Perhaps you are too polite to say so, but this is what you are saying about me when you say that I am holding to false beliefs.
And that is precisely what I am saying about Nicene Christians. In my view, they are holding to a belief that is false, and this means that even their understanding of their own mind is faulty, because they think they are seeing the truth when in fact what they see as truth is falsity.
I'm just not polite enough not to say that. That's the only difference.
If, as I believe, Nicene Christians are holding to an unbiblical, non-Christian falsity, then they are seeing even their own minds wrongly, because that falsity pervades their mind, and causes them to see even their own thinking processes wrongly. This wrong perception of their own thinking processes is perfectly represented in the segment of the Athanasian Creed that I quoted earlier in this discussion:
> For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity; to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord; So are we forbidden by the Catholic religion; to say, There are three Gods, or three Lords.
Why would there be a need for the Catholic Church to forbid saying something that otherwise the writer, and readers, of the creed would say, based on the foregoing discussion?
The reason is that there is an inherent contradiction in the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity of Persons, which requires its adherents to think something, that Christian verity requires acknowledging every person by himself to be God and Lord--meaning that there are three Gods and Lords--but that the Catholic Church forbids saying this.
In saying that Nicene Christians do not even understand their own thought processes about the nature of God, I am simply saying what the Athanasian Creed itself says: that there is a requirement that one must not say what one thinks. One must think of each one of each Person by himself to be God and Lord, but one must not say that there are three Gods or three Lords.
In a nutshell: Nicene Christians acknowledge each one separately as God and Lord in their minds, but say that there is only one God. Or put plainly, the idea in their mind is of three gods, but the words on their lips are that there is one God.
This is how the Athanasian Creed requires Nicene Christians to operate, and this is how they in fact operate.
This is really no different than you saying that I am deceived in my own thought processes because I see things in the Bible that aren't there, and because I am following a false teacher whom I think is a true teacher. In thinking that I am seeing the truth when in fact what I see as truth is falsity, you are saying that I don't see my own mind correctly.
Once again, it's really no different. It's just that I'm not polite enough not to say it.
