A re-post first published on July 6, 2012
The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs....In fact, the Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), President of the United States
...
An unqualified monotheistic picture of God can only interpret the statement 'God is love' (1 John 4:8) as implying that from all eternity there has been within the divine nature itself an almost narcissistic state of self-regard. The Trinitarian picture of the eternal exchange of love between the divine Persons, whose communion of mutual openness constitutes the divine being, is a much more illuminating theological insight.
-John Polkinghorne (1930- ), theoretical physicist and theologian
No comments:
Post a Comment