T-Bone

you're not paranoid if someone really is spying on you

Maybe off-topic… …or possibly a seventh inning stretch…how about a thematic stretch? spiritual goals is a misnomer (or as wierwille would say in PFAL “the wrong misnomer” ), TWI-leadership have a tendency to slap the adjective “spiritual” on any objective so as to inspire religious fervor in its pursuit. Any goals that were more of a theoretical nature (such as grow in love or any other intangible) TWI-leadership would claim they are attainable by the means they suggested ( “speak in tongues more to get big and fat spiritually” or a way corps principle like acquire an in-depth spiritual perception and awareness ). Even though there was no way to measure such growth - TWI-leadership usually had no problem in pronouncing judgements on my lack of believing, poor spiritual perception, questioning authority…whatever. And all that was just a bunch of control tactics to corral my behavior within the protocols of their clandestine indoctrination initiative. Now combine pseudo-spiritual goals and the law of believing. Ah yes, roping unicorns with an invisible lasso. One of the reasons I went into the way corps program was I wanted to grow in my knowledge of the Bible and stuff like hermeneutics and systematic theology. Talk about a waste of time and my money / sponsorship money. And I didn’t even notice the thinly veiled hierarchy levels of achievement in TWI’s power structure…and I never really gave it much thought as to what a lifetime of Christian service meant to the cult-leaders. It’s more like indentured servitude . Chalk another one up for the school of hard knocks – I was young, naïve, and idealistic – and leave the rest up to malignant narcissistic cult-leaders to pigeonhole followers according to what their rinky-dink exploitative organization needs. One of the most annoyingly disappointing things about pseudo-spiritual goals / law of believing pairing is the utter frustration it brings. An unattainable goal has been set with an action plan of wishful thinking. One of the many bad things about a pseudo-spiritual goal imposed by TWI-leadership is that followers have no authority to negotiate or modify the goal or the action plan. There is no flexibility! According to Albert Einstein, the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." For 12 insane years in TWI, I endured umpteen-gazillion teachings on believing, sat through and/or slept through zzzzZZZZ ZZZZzzzzz hundreds of various segments of PFAL (video, audio and live) and can honestly say I NEVER REALIZED ANY of the promises/claims/benefits/spiritual goals listed on the back of the green PFAL sign-up card. I was rereading a self-improvement book Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life by Gary John Bishop and it got me thinking about this thread from another angle…the frustration and annoyance of marrying pseudo-spiritual goals to the efforts of wishful thinking. And maybe “marrying” is too wishy washy a word – how about cemented? There is no wiggle room…odd isn’t it? TWI-leadership dictated these pseudo-spiritual goals to us with the presupposition that the goals are achieved through pseudo-spiritual principles…I’ll take a double Kool-Aid and make it dirty…just kidding – I’ve been on the wagon for some 36 years now ever since I left cult-ville…now I set my own realistic goals…life ain’t static so I find myself revising my expectations and try to be more flexible…read a cool quote online: when you stumble make it look like part of the dance…which brings me to page 183 of Bishop’s book: EXPECTING NOTHING, ACCEPTING EVERYTHING None of this means you can’t plan, or that I’m telling you to walk through life aimlessly without direction or goals. But when you make a plan, what do you have to gain from being welded to the expectations inherent in it? Nothing. When you are free from its expectations you are “in a dance” with life where you can simply execute the plan, and deal with what happens. If it succeeds, you can celebrate. If it fails, you can recalibrate. Don’t expect victory of defeat. Plan for victory, learn from defeat. The expectation of people loving you or respecting you is a pointless exercise, too. Be free to love them the way they are and be loved the way that they love you. Free yourself from the burden and melodrama of expectation; let the chips fall where they may. Love the life you have, not the one you expected to have. End of excerpts ~ ~ ~ ~

follow up diagram for the above post; take note of the parallels of the Godhead in the verses at bottom right:

Yeah – I agree – fertile ground! Fast forward to ’82, I’m running a Twig in another state and one day another Twig Coordinator in our branch talks to me about getting into A.L. Williams. He knew I hated sales but kept bugging me it was not like regular sales because I’d be soft selling to a warm market i.e., everyone I already knew like family, friends, work associates and of course TWI-followers…but nope – I didn’t get into that one either. Here’s a few details from a quick internet looksee: A.L. Williams sold term life insurances; …After a series of events leading up to the change, A.L. Williams changed its name to Primerica in 1991. During the 2008 and following financial crisis years, the company underwent a loss and change; but the motivated Founder and coach, Art Williams, is back cheering the Primerica team on. As described on the Primerica Wikipedia page, the company uses a hybrid model of direct selling, franchising, and distribution… …According to their Earnings Disclosure, they paid out $509,227,149 to its sales force—averaging $5,513 per licensed representatives, for 2012. That’s the latest earning disclosure I found on their page. That’s not a lot. But as with most MLMs, there are several very successful people in the organization, but the majority not earning much at all… … This company is not a get rich quick scheme and Art Williams will quickly and proudly let you know that. But, even If you don’t get involved with the company for the business opportunity, you should still definitely listen to some of the speeches and motivational talks Art has to offer. His information is fire for getting motivated for any endeavor. The principals he mentioned are a solid foundation you could apply to any opportunity you chose to pursue. The business opportunity information on the site was scarce, mostly focusing on affiliate testimonials. But, I will say this: I like the concept of Primerica. I like the idea of creating a business that sells and provides information as part of its product line, that can truly help people. It seems like it would be a great ice-breaker of an opening. Telling people about options that could help with their financial situation, I think, would be a welcomed change. Even though, I don’t see how one could make a living on the average salary of $5,513 mentioned above; I do see how the information and processes could be valuable in other ways. You could accept the fact that this business opportunity might be financially limited at first, with the possibility of consistent growth in the future. Then, look at other opportunities that might be related. From: Its Vicky com: Primerica – is it a scam or opportunity? We Review ~ ~ ~ ~ While we’re on the subject of MLMs – there’s this bit of info: What is the difference between Pyramid Scheme and Multi-Level Marketing Company? Multi-level marketing companies (MLMs) are legitimate businesses with the goal of moving products to consumers. If new buyers aren’t already members of the MLM company, you can sign them up and earn a percentage of the income they generate. On the other hand, in a pyramid scheme, the income usually comes from recruiting new members who must pay an entrance fee or startup cost, which is used to recruit new members. At MLMs, there are benefits to recruiting new members, such as earning a commission of their sales. However, the main goal of the organization is still to move product. Some have suggested that all MLMs are pyramid schemes because of the structure and because most distributors end up buying the product rather than consumers. But the FTC has ruled that MLMs are legal business structures. And according to this website the top 10 Pyramid Schemes of All Time are: 1. Amway 2. Herbalife 3. Nu Skin Enterprises 4. Vemma 5. Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing 6. USANA Health Sciences 7. BurnLounge, Inc. 8. United Sciences of America 9. Business in Motion 10. Mary Kay Consulting From: Grad Schools com: top ten pyramid schemes

It’s been 36 years since my last ROA - so I can’t recall that detail. However, I don’t doubt that because in ‘77 a Twig Coordinator from a nearby town invited himself to our Twig with easel stand and charts and do a hard sell about joining Shaklee…one quote of his I still remember: “this program is so of God.” So it’s possible there were other TWI-folks tapped into the warm market i.e., sell product to HQ, ROA, etc. oh yeah - I remember another odd thing you can do with Basic H - add one or two drops to the water while cooking spaghetti and it won't stick together...we never bought into any Shaklee stuff

Several other solutions that you may have already thought of: 1.) have your administrative assistant keep an eye out for all new Grease Spot Cafe postings and then notify you immediately . 2.) set a periodic reminder on your smartphone - in 2 hour intervals (or shorter or longer intervals depending on your preferences) at which time you check Grease Spot for new postings. 3.) always have Grease Spot website pulled up wherever you are - except while driving or at the movies of course 4.) contract an IT professional who specializes in writing code for automation systems, to create a monitor-bot to observe GSC 24/7 and send you email and/or text alerts of new postings.

Hey Oldies, Not sure if this will fit the bill but you could try it and see: 1. Sign in and click on Notifications icon at top near the right side – it looks like a bell. 2. When the Notifications window opens up – click on the Notification settings at top right. 3. Look at the listing and choose the notifications you would like. good luck

That’s probably the best answer right there, Nathan! The term spiritual goals puts us in the often elusive, mysterious and downright puzzling metaphysical world. From several online definitions of metaphysical: a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being and that includes ontology, cosmology, and often epistemology; abstract philosophical studies : a study of what is outside objective experience; philosophy. concerned with abstract thought or subjects, as existence, causality, or truth; bodiless, discarnate, disembodied, immaterial, incorporeal, insubstantial, nonphysical, spiritual, unbodied, uncorporal, unsubstantial; of or coming from, or relating to forces or beings that exist outside the natural world; extramundane, extrasensory, miraculous, preternatural, superhuman, supernatural, superphysical, supersensible, transcendental, unearthly. Keeping in mind the fine-tuned question How are these spiritual goals measured and tracked? - in my opinion there seems to be only one answer: to make sense of anything, each of us will draw up a mental map of reality and by self-reference determine on our own self-authored metaphysical chart where we are and where we are going. ~ ~ ~ ~ On another thread - here - I referenced a Psychology Today article about 7 qualities of the true self . One of those qualities is spirituality - which many associate with religious beliefs – but I beg to differ – as I read the following excerpt I understand it to mean being openminded while plotting a course on a metaphysical map. The subtopic of spirituality of this article opens with a quote from Abraham Heschel a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century; he was a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was a leader in the civil rights movement – his quote is a strong indication that spirituality connotes a much broader meaning than being just a religious concern…anyway the excerpt on spirituality: “A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom…Wisdom comes from awe rather than shrewdness. It is evoked not in moments of calculation but in moments of being in rapport with the mystery of reality.” Abraham Heschel …You can experience God, but whether you subscribe to a particular religion, develop a personal understanding of spirit, or deny all divinities and are an atheist, there exists one certainty: things occur in life over which you have no control. You can attribute these things to fate, randomness, nature, physical reality, or God. I personally believe that it is the Spirit that provides the answers for us in all things. We find the Spirit when we discover and actively engage our True Self. When we connect to our Self, Others, and God, and hear the voices of our thoughts (our mind), our feelings (our heart), and our spirit (our soul), we both explain and understand our nature and how these connections bring us fulfillment. End of excerpt ~ ~ ~ ~ the misconceptions I had about being able to measure and track spiritual goals can be traced all the way back to my introduction into wierwille’s pseudo-spirituality of PFAL. My first Twig Coordinator showed me the benefits listed on the back of the PFAL green sign-up card and then asked me - if you could have one of those – which would it be? I picked enables you to separate truth from error. And thus began my long and arduous journey to nowhere special using some screwed up map drawn up by a cartographer who also happened to be a lazy-a$$ plagiarizing, lying, thieving, Drambuie drinking, chain-smoking sexual predator. Needless to say, I was all over the map – not to be confused with his bogus motto The Word over the world - rather it was wierwille’s word over - as in dominating my world. Thinking of other claims on the back of the green card…teaches you how to pray effectively…or was it effectually? Doesn’t matter. It was all bull$hit. How do you measure that? I remember wierwille saying speaking in tongues will make you grow big and fat spiritually. Really? How do you measure that? I think that was all junk food – and back then if they had a metaphysical scale where I could have weighed myself it would probably have tipped the scales way over into the pretentious, ludicrous, egotistical, and useless weight division of the universe.

I have to agree with Rocky and OldSkool about Skyrider’s posts being a great exposé on the pseudo-spirituality of The Way International and especially the way corps program. And I think OldSkool’s post has good answers to Nathan’s questions. ~ ~ ~ ~ I do want to add a few things on this question: How are these goals measured and tracked? My mind immediately went to corps evaluations – I forget the exact details on them (who cares anyway ) corps evals were conducted periodically at the end of each block in-residence - not sure. And they were done by the staff person over your job assignment. In a one-on-one private setting with the staff / corps student. If memory serves – it was at least a couple of pages – with leading questions and a blank space below that for the staff person to write stuff from the evaluation session of dialog. Trying to remember specific questions – but it’s been a long time – some 38 years ago. I’m thinking some were like typical HR questions – does the participant work well with others? this is what they did at Rome City anyway…can’t say if it was the same format at other campuses. It was a form of feedback from a work interview standpoint. but I don't think it had anything to do with spirituality...probably more about conformity and indoctrination gauges. I don’t have any big beefs about the corps evals – some of it kinda made sense to me from merely being good prep for entering the general work force…but to add more depth to the question How are these SPIRITUAL goals measured and tracked? I would have to say the corps evals, along with any other methods that leadership devised to make a judgement or assess were just about as accurate as a blind guy critiquing Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper: Hmmm yes this – what did you say this was? – oh right a painting. May I hold it and feel how heavy it is? my opinion because the TWI-mindset promoted by wierwille, LCM and others actually discouraged real mindfulness, cognitive skills become diminished and even atrophied. I don’t think wierwille could have recognized a spiritual goal if it was as big as an elephant stomping on his pack of Kool cigs. Read about his lazy-a$$ work ethic and plagiarism on Grease Spot – and yet he claimed he taught the corps how to work the Word AND a physical job…yeah right.

Part 2 of Subvert and Pervert “the self”: how do you recover? note this post is NOT a “how to recover” but simply asks “how do YOU go about doing that?” Grease Spotters, feel free to share your thoughts and what has helped you. I’ll remind you again at the end of this post. As promised, I’ve got another movie that goes along the same lines of subverting and perverting the self. In my opinion The Bourne Identity is a great action movie with fight scenes and car chases that exist in the amoral world of spy agencies and black ops. I use the word “amoral” because the story seems less concerned with an agenda being right or wrong and focuses more on everyone just doing their job. And that’s the rationale that drives this story forward. Jason Bourne becomes a target by his own agency because he failed at his job to assassinate an exiled African dictator. But Bourne doesn’t know that. As the story opens, he is adrift unconscious in the Mediterranean Sea and fishermen rescue him – noticing two gunshot wounds in his back. They tend to his wounds and find a laser projector embedded just under the skin in his hip. When he comes to, he has no memory of his identity, but he demonstrates advanced combat skills and fluency in several languages. The laser projector had cast the number of a safe deposit box in Zürich on the wall, and so he decides to go investigate – perhaps it holds the secret to who he is. All the thrilling fight scenes and chases along his journey to self-discovery are formidable obstacles to his quest. On Quora, someone mentioned the underlying theme of movie is the forgotten identity of the protagonist (Bourne). Bourne's identity is unknown to him. Also, in the case of the antagonists – the assassins who try to kill him, their identities & motives are completely unknown to Bourne. Others know who Bourne is but he does not! This is the central theme of the story. Bourne is trying to find his own identity while also trying to figure out his adversaries’. ( see Quora: what are the themes of The Bourne Identity? ) (If you’re a big fan of the Bourne series like I am, you also might enjoy checking out these links: Course Hero: The Bourne Identity – themes Wikipedia: the Bourne franchise Offscreen: The Bourne Analysis IGN com: The A-Z of The Bourne Movies ) ~ ~ ~ ~ Okay – where was I?...No, I didn’t forget the mission…hmmmm…Would you happen to be from Treadstone? Here’s why I ask…be advised the following info is on a NEED TO KNOW BASIS and if you’re following this thread, you need to know this …now here’s the top-secret-super-duper-PFAL party-pooper-classified-scoop-for-your-eyeballs-only: harmful and controlling cults. The following dossier allegorically links way corps training program to the fictitious Treadstone. Operation Treadstone…in the Jason Bourne series of novels and movies. It recruited only United States Service members to turn them into nearly superhuman assassins and was formed in direct response to the Congressional Act which banned the U.S. from partaking in any assassinations, as sometimes assassination is considered necessary to keep the United States safe. It used a behavior-modification program to break down the assassins' morality and make them effective nearly unstoppable living weapons. After the morality break down, presumably, the assassins received advanced training in all kinds of spy tradecraft. The last surviving member of Treadstone is Jason Bourne. From: Bourne Fandom Wiki: Operation Treadstone The indoctrination methods of TWI’s programs are various ways to subvert and pervert “the self”. But it’s not like in the story of Jason Bourne – when after some physical trauma he literally could not remember who he was before Treadstone...and it seems to me TWI has it's own version of an amoral world - - you needn't worry about what's right or wrong - just do what you're told - that's your job. ya gotta excuse me for going overboard on Bourne (overBourne ) but all that cloak and dagger stuff lends itself so easily to understanding the sneaky underhanded tactics of harmful and controlling cults. I think the intent of TWI’s programs is to get you to “forget” parts of your past - deliberately and selectively. Forget really means to stop thinking about it or talking about it. In way corps training I was often reminded that my past accomplishments, preferences, and any personal goals that didn’t involve the ministry’s agenda were not that important. There was often a big push to cut ties with the past - I remember several teachings that took verses to the extreme - like Philippians 3:13-14 But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. I got into some odd confabulation – to” rewrite” some memories…I would reinterpret incidents of my past as signposts pointing me to go in the way corps. To unravel this tangled mess of TWI-indoctrination I draw upon the wisdom, experiences, and inspiration from other Grease Spotters and on things I read – such as in the articles below. In article 1 , from Very Well Mind website where Rodgers says the ideal self is the person you want to be – I think of how I bought into wierwille’s sales promotion of becoming the perfect believer under his ministry – through classes and programs that he created. I believe the Scriptures encourage us to have an accurate and honest view of ourselves. Not any of that phony hypocritical pontificating stuff that cult-leaders model for their fans. I had a huge problem with low self-esteem when I was in TWI because I never felt like I was achieving what was expected of me. They kept moving the goal posts. I believe a healthy self-esteem takes into account the good and the bad - we work on self-improvement where we can and accept what we cannot change. I'm a recovering a$$hole with pain-in-the-neck tendencies - and I strive to be less of an a$$hole to my wife and kids...sometimes I can be nice for up to three days if I really push myself. Per article 2 from a Psychology Today, I continue to work on developing those intrinsic qualities of the true self. Stuff that remained dormant or became atrophied during my TWI-years, because I was led to believe it was mostly my “old man nature” - - and I always took that to mean what I was like before I took PFAL. I had some fuzzy notion that taking the PFAL class was one of the biggest life-changing moments thus far. How sad is that? And in article 3 also from Psychology Today, there’s something I can attest to – that valuing the true self gives me a greater sense of having meaning in my life. I know it sounds simple – but there's something satisfying...fulfilling even - being aware of the genuinely good things inside! Self-love has gotta be okay, when the 2nd great commandment says to love your neighbor as you love yourself. ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 The 3 components of self-concept Self-concept is how we perceive our behaviors, abilities, and unique characteristics.1 For example, beliefs such as "I am a good friend" or "I am a kind person" are part of an overall self-concept. Our self-perception is important because it affects our motivations, attitudes, and behaviors. It also affects how we feel about the person we think we are, including whether we are competent or if we have self-worth.2 Self-concept tends to be more malleable when we're younger and still going through the process of self-discovery and identity formation. As we age and learn who we are and what's important to us, these self-perceptions become much more detailed and organized… …psychologist Carl Rogers said that self-concept is made up of three different parts: Ideal self: The ideal self is the person you want to be. This person has the attributes or qualities you are either working toward or want to possess. It's who you envision yourself to be if you were exactly as you wanted. Self-image: Self-image refers to how you see yourself at this moment in time. Attributes like physical characteristics, personality traits, and social roles all play a role in your self-image. Self-esteem: How much you like, accept, and value yourself all contribute to your self-concept. Self-esteem can be affected by a number of factors—including how others see you, how you think you compare to others, and your role in society… Excerpts from: Very Well Mind com: The 3 components of self-concept ~ ~ ~ ~ 2 Seven Qualities of the True Self - The essence of human being: Human beings uniquely possess seven qualities that can guide them to a life filled with meaningful opportunities. A person who does not nurture the "seven qualities of the true self" will end up functioning at a level far lower than their potential. The seven qualities that can move human beings into their potential include spontaneity and love. "For that man whom your outward form reveals is not yourself; the spirit is the true self, not that physical figure which can be pointed out by your finger."—Marcus Tullius Cicero Our True Self is defined by seven intrinsic qualities. I initially identified these qualities during my study of Christian anthropology while in seminary. As I went on to study psychology and religion at Harvard, I found that these qualities are confirmed in the great religions of the world and in the modern scientific study of psychology as defining the unique nature of human being. These qualities are: Spontaneity Reasoning Creativity Free will Spirituality Discernment Love Human beings uniquely possess these qualities, and they are given to each of us. The true self is not reserved for those who have devoted their lives to becoming mystics. We are born with these resources which are available to all of us at any time. These seven gifts guide us from within and define our unique nature. We may nurture these qualities or we may take them for granted; if we choose the former course, our life will be opened and filled with meaningful opportunities. If we choose the latter, we will remain wanting and helpless, functioning at a level far lower than our potential. Nevertheless, even if we fail to utilize them, these qualities lie dormant, for we never lose them. They exist within us, waiting for us to awaken them. Here's a look at each one… Excerpts from: Psychology Today: Seven Qualities of the True Self - The essence of human being ~ ~ ~ ~ 3 The True Self: What does it mean to believe that there is a "true self" inside of everyone? … there are times when you believe that a person’s actions reflect the situation they are in or their current mental state. But, you also have times when you think that a person’s actions are a reflection of their true self. Psychologists have been interested in capturing the qualities that people think are part of someone’s true self and also in understanding how the idea of a true self affects people’s actions and their relationships with others. This research was summarized in a fascinating review by Nina Strohminger, Joshua Knobe, and George Newman in a paper in the July 2017 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science. Generally speaking, when people think about their true self or the true self of other people, what characteristics do they believe that it has? An interesting facet of the true self is that it seems to be a belief that is similar across cultures. That is, aspects of the true self have been explored in studies using many different populations around the world, and the beliefs tend to be quite similar. Two core beliefs are that the true self tends to be moral and good. So, when people make a change in their actions, they are more likely to be judged as doing something that reflects their true self when they change from doing something bad to something good than vice versa. This is why someone who stops abusing drugs or alcohol is often judged as allowing their true self to come through, while someone who starts abusing drugs or alcohol is judged as obscuring their true self. These beliefs also tend to lead people to assume that someone can change for the positive over time, even if many of their past actions have been bad. That is, we are reluctant to decide that someone is truly evil and prefer to believe that their true self has a moral spark that might someday lead them toward better actions in the future. An interesting facet of the true self is that our beliefs about our true self and other people’s true selves are similar. This belief differs from the way we often treat our motives versus those of people from a different group. Often, we assume that we and people from our group have purer motives than people from some outgroup. But, we also assume that deep down (in their true self) members of other groups are good and moral people. Why does the concept of the true self matter? For one, the belief in a true self affects people’s judgments about what actions give life meaning. A person might work hard at their job and also spend time with family. They might believe that their job is just something they do, but that the importance they place on family relationships is part of their true self. In that case, the effort they put into their family relationships will give them a greater sense that their life has had meaning than the effort they have put into their profession. In addition, the belief in true self can influence the treatments people will consider for mental illnesses. For example, many college students are willing to take medications for ADHD that allow them to focus on their work. Part of the reason why they take this medication so freely is that few people consider their ability or inability to concentrate as a central part of their true self. In contrast, many patients suffering from bipolar disorder are reluctant to take their medication, because they believe that their medication is changing aspects of their true self. Excerpts from: Psychology Today: The True Self - What does it mean to believe that there is a "true self" inside of everyone? ~ ~ ~ ~ The above articles are excerpts – you might get even more out of them if you click on the hyperlink and read the entire article. Grease Spotters, feel free to share about anything that has helped you in your journey.

Thanks for the Evan post, WordWolf ! This thread has gotten into some overt and covert operations of TWI. In the spirit of spydom we probably should require readers have a higher security clearance to read the Evan “dossier” – because it gets into the ultra-clandestine operations of a “professional” plagiarist and pathological liar – wierwille the human Xerox.

Thanks for the recommendation, Rocky I read another book on why people fall into conspiracy theory rabbit hole Escaping the Rabbit Hole by Mick West and West also runs Metabunk website - and some members mentioned they’re currently reading a couple of McRaney’s books on a forum…After reading this blurb on Amazon about his book I’m definitely checking it out: When self-delusion expert and psychology nerd David McRaney began a book about how to change someone’s mind in one conversation, he never expected to change his own. But then a diehard 9/11 Truther’s conversion blew up his theories—inspiring him to ask not just how to persuade, but why we believe, from the eye of the beholder. Delving into the latest research of psychologists and neuroscientists, HOW MINDS CHANGE explores the limits of reasoning, the power of groupthink, and the effects of deep canvassing. Told with McRaney’s trademark sense of humor, compassion, and scientific curiosity, it’s an eye-opening journey among cult members, conspiracy theorists, and political activists, from Westboro Baptist Church picketers to LGBTQ campaigners in California—that ultimately challenges us to question our own motives and beliefs. In an age of dangerous conspiratorial thinking, can we rise to the occasion with empathy? An expansive, big-hearted journalistic narrative, HOW MINDS CHANGE reaches surprising and thought-provoking conclusions, to demonstrate the rare but transformative circumstances under which minds can change. From: Amazon book description of "How Minds Change" ~ ~ ~ ~ Thanks again Rocky – you’ve always got some good food for thought!

How to Subvert and Pervert “the self” part 1 Think about TWI’s operations that subverted our power of self-determination and perverted what it meant to be a Christian – and what it meant to be you. The processes varied some – depending on the classes, programs, day-to-day recurring activities whether on staff, on a field assignment - even down to the simple responsibilities of a seasoned PFAL grad taking on the role of Twig coordinator. I think in most operations there was a virulent strain of consequences to one’s true self. In a tightly controlled group setting – such as yearlong or longer programs of The Way International – one might describe them as a mass-production process of self-destruction. That’s got the makings of a plot for a sci-fi or thriller movie. Sci-fi and thriller genres are some of my favorite films. Relating to this thread there’s a few films that always come to mind because they have some themes about reshaping one’s identity. The Stepford Wives (1975) The Stepford Wives (2004) The original film version was released in 1975. It's an enticing premise and has some thought-provoking themes some of which are fear of feminism (for brevity’s sake, feminism gets into a whole a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes) and protecting the power of the patriarchy. ( see GradeSaver com: The Stepford Wives themes ) . It was more of a sci-fi horror story. The 2004 remake retells the story as more of a dark comedy. I like them both – and if you have a chance to catch them both as a rental or on a streaming platform, you might find some Grease-Spot-turn-the-tables-on-cult-leaders poetic justice if you think of the 1975 film as before Grease Spot / Waydale existence and the 2004 version as some justice served after Grease Spot / Waydale came online. I think there was a double whammy to the sexes in wierwille’s ideology. I knew women were generally viewed as more or less equals when it came to ordination and leadership roles. But there was still wierwille’s dogmatic fundamentalism that held to the patriarchy cultures represented in the Bible – and that was further twisted by his misogynistic attitude. I realize that now, thinking of all the times I’ve seen him while I was in-residence in casual settings and teaching us about counseling believers. If you think wierwille’s Christian Family & Sex class was matter-of-factly salacious – you ain’t seen nothing till you’ve seen him around the women in the way corps. Think Hugh Hefner touting a phony degree at a thinly disguised Playboy Mansion – only the unsuspecting women think it’s a Bible college…Reflecting on wierwille’s comments about women in books, magazines, and teachings to the general TWI-public it all seemed to serve as public appeasement…or more like a ruse…to throw anyone off the scent of a sexual predator. I got into that in an earlier post - here -where I said: To understand how TWI-followers get to the point of being unaware of wierwille’s licentious and malicious nature is to understand how a sexual predator can be hidden in plain sight. It is by masking his nature in the guise of a man of God, a teacher of the Bible. It all started with the PFAL class – which had vague and misleading directives like “as long as you follow the two great commandments you can do as you full well please” and the dubious justification of David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba saying “technically all the women of the kingdom belonged to the king”. when reading on GSC about wierwille, LCM and others sexually abusing women, I’m often hit with a poignant reminder that cult-leaders figured out a way – through psychological manipulation and the abuse of power - to approximate the 1975 Stepford Wives premise – create a sexually attractive and subservient woman who wants nothing but to please the man. Here’s the breakdown of the double whammy to the sexes in wierwille’s ideology. The ultra-authoritarian nature of TWI fostered a submissive attitude overall. The ideal believer is described as one who is compliant to the will of God. What is the will of God? Any PFAL grad will tell you the Word of God is the will of God. Where can one find the Word of God? Any devoted TWI-follower will tell you that The Way International has more of the rightly divided Word than any other group around. Now, the TWI-mindset is somewhat “adjustable” for men or women – of course other variables like upbringing, past experiences, psychological makeup and such also come into play - but to some degree there is a personality-changing effect in how the person with the TWI-mindset responds to a situation or interacts with others in TWI. Think about how much wierwille, LCM and others would dismiss - with GREAT disdain - logic (often labeled “worldly logic”) , emotions, and the five senses, and instead frequently encourage obedience, meekness, and subservience. While I was in TWI it never occurred to me those attributes of human nature / behavior could be subverted and perverted to approximate the robot-like behavior of The Stepford Wives. That’s all for now, folks… in part 2 I’ve got another more recent movie series that I think is a plausible explanation of how TWI programs can subvert and pervert “the self”.

Why don’t you make a TikTok of that…sort of a TikTok within a TikTok kind of a thing…you could start something…like take the PFAL TikTok Challenge – contestants have the PFAL TikTok playing in the background – have a stopwatch in the lower left of the screen – the contest is to find the person who stands at the beginning of the PFAL TikTok and then falls asleep the quickest… what? How do you know people aren’t going to fake it – you ask…Doesn’t matter – you know wierwille is faking it! And I guarandamntee it a lot of new students and grads faked staying awake in the ridiculously long and plagiarized full-blown PFAL class…bear with me on this brainstorming session…I get excited just thinking about the possibilities of a PFAL TikTo zzzzzzZZZZZZZ ZZZZZzzzzzzzzz

And if you scrub all the plagiarized stuff, it would be the perfect length for a TikTok and there’d be no concern over inappropriate content, psychological effects, censorship or user... uhm...I mean student privacy

Part 4 the practical side of the Trinity The Practicality of the Doctrine of the Trinity When we ask about whether something is practical, we must always ask what we mean by practical and for whom it is practical. In the 1960s it was popular to dismiss issues and viewpoints as “irrelevant,” without asking, “irrelevant for whom?” I used to employ as an example, the expression “irrelevant as the anatomy of a penguin,” until a biologist pointed out to me that the anatomy of a penguin is very relevant to a penguin. Thus, hidden within unqualified statements about relevance or irrelevance or practicality or impracticality are frequently tacitly assumed one’s own viewpoint or perspective. The statement, “That’s not practical,” may mean nothing more nor less than, “That does not fit my tastes or preferences.” The statement “that is practical,” or “that works,” is therefore a relative statement… …Typically, Christian beliefs and practices are evaluated by whether and the degree to which they enable believers to fulfill Christian values, those revealed by God… …many persons, some even non-Christians, quote Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” They then, however, are angry and resentful when unpleasant and even seemingly disastrous things happen to them – illness, loss of a job, loss of a loved one, or the like. Note, however that they are setting their own standards of the good, namely, what is pleasant and comfortable for them, and evaluating what God does by the extent to which it contributes to the realization of such goals in their lives. Yet, examined in context, we can ask what “the good” is. That is seen in verse 29: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.” This, then, is the criterion of practicality: whether it contributes to the realization of this goal, the conforming of believers to the likeness of Christ, rather than whether it contributes to the success, happiness, comfort, or whatever, of such persons. From pages 329&FF of God in Three Persons: A Contemporary Interpretation of the Trinity by Millard J. Erickson End of excerpts ~ ~ ~ ~ This thread title asked: the Trinity: asset, or liability? That’s another way of asking if it has any practical value or not. It seems to me that folks who are steeped in wierwille’s Anti-Trinitarian rhetoric succumb to the egotistical idea that they are absolutely right, and Trinitarians are totally wrong. In that regard “Trinity-talk” seems like more of a polemical tool to divide and conquer…I find that’s extremely weird…unsettling since that attitude goes against what Christ said about the feelings we should have toward each other: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34,35 Besides exploring the history of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity again – this time around I tried to think more about what the application would look like…to be honest – for me personally – the doctrine of the Trinity is neither here nor there. And I think when I had those wierwille-colored-glasses on back in my TWI-daze, I was blind to many passages having a part of the Triadic formula that held promise. For instance, backtracking to another verse in Romans 8, we find a passage that not only wierwille, but a lot of charismatic groups interpret as being a reference to speaking in tongues: In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. Romans 8:26 NIVRomans 8:26 NIV Be my guest and click on the above hyperlink for Rom. 8:26 and you’ll see parallel versions – but overall the same idea is conveyed – the Holy Spirit negotiates on our behalf WITHOUT THE USE OF LANGUAGE…there is nothing in that passage to even suggest it’s about speaking in tongues – in fact – it negates the idea by stating the Holy Spirit DOES NOT USE WORDS! ~ ~ ~ ~ There’s a significant Triadic reference that is very familiar to PFAL grads: 4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. 6 There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. 7 But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills. I Corinthians 12:4-11 NASB ~ ~ ~ ~ Quoting again from Millard’s book, on page 185 he makes these remarks of I Cor. 12: …This is part of the letter in which one of the major themes is the unity of the church, which is threatened by a party within the church. Paul reminds his readers of the oneness that the Spirit brings about, not conflict or separation. Then he relates this step by step to each member of the Godhead: “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.” There seems to be a definite parallelism here. As is customary in Hebrew poetry, with which Paul was familiar, gifts, service, and working are very similar if not synonymous. Then it must appear here as if “Spirit,” “Lord,” and “God” are virtually synonymous as well. In any event, there is a closeness and an intimacy of connection among these three persons that is worthy of note. End of excerpts ~ ~ ~ ~ I try not to get hung up in a mental construct of “the Trinity” – I think it’s a human estimation of a divine reality that defies articulation – and as such “the Trinity” is only a concept and not real. There are numerous Triadic formulas in the New Testament, and if words have any meaning, then there is some relationship being communicated when we find references to “God”, “Jesus Christ” and “Spirit” in close proximity in a certain passage. For most of my working career I’ve been a technician – and circuits, security systems, audio/video components, convergence and system integration are my specialty. One of my earliest memories of learning about circuits was a mentor telling me how electrical circuits are analogous to water circuits – in other words electrical power running through a wire is like water flowing through a pipe or hose. Similar but not the same. You accidentally cut into a garden hose - you’ve got a watery mess - but no great harm done to yourself. You unknowingly cut into a live electrical line, and you might be injured or killed. To me, the doctrine of the Trinity is trying to explain something indefinable through words and concepts. ~ ~ ~ ~ That’s all for now, Grease Spotters

yes Mark you made me laugh !

Rocky, to make yourself vulnerable like that says a lot about an inner strength you must now have…I’ve read that when a broken bone is set properly, it will tend to heal so thoroughly it will become stronger than it was before the fracture. You, like so many other Grease Spotters have a powerful secret weapon that the enemy (a harmful and controlling cult) usually doesn’t see coming and doesn’t know how to counter it. it’s a triple “threat” of honesty, humility, and love. When we love, it is a big risk. We open ourselves up to potential harm – the other person could take advantage of that…and in a worst-case scenario they could break our heart. I can relate to a lot of the things you said as I reflect on how I treated my family during my 12 years of TWI involvement. By nature, I am a workaholic anyway. when that’s combined with having any kind of leadership role in TWI (which was for most of that 12 years) I had very little energy and time leftover for my family. I subscribed to TWI’s familial-wrecking-machination Put God, The Word, The Ministry first and everything else will take care of itself. It’s taken me some 36 years to reprioritize stuff in my life that has to do with family, friends, and goals – I’m still working on it. But at least I’ve got a bead on what’s truly important.

But you know…looking back…some folks who have crossed my path…even now I’m not sure if they had a white heart or a black heart…maybe they were heartless…but…no sense in dwelling on the past…it’s weird though…some of the most callous people I have ever met were in TWI…good thing I left when I did…given enough time - the TWI-mindset can do a number on your capacity to sympathize and be compassionate…it tends to petrify humanity…you become stony-hearted.

Fantastic excerpt, Mark! I referenced the same link in part 3 post above Great minds think alike

Thanks…instead of remaining combative over the initial mention of the Trinity and the book of Revelation – I thought I’d be a little more openminded and explore the topics using resources other than the typical PFAL / TWI-mindset. I think it would be cool if you start a thread on wierwille’s bull$hit - it’s a target rich environment – and always useful for newcomers …and helps old-timers review …I’m thinking if it’s mostly about exposing wierwille’s nonsense then it probably belongs in About the Way forum…if it’s more corrective – offering options to counteract his logical fallacies and Scripture twisting than you might want to start it in Doctrinal…in either forum it should be fun for all since you have a knack for getting folks to focus on the core issues.

Nathan, that’s a great observation! And I like your insertion of PFAL in that wierwille quote… ...yeah …let’s look at that quote again – after which I’ll quote from The Way: Living in Love book... ...just going by his fantastic claims one can safely deduce wierwille expected his followers to adhere to his PFAL ideology as though it were divine revelation – because he led everyone to believe it was…so what if it was all plagiarized stuff…through the miracle of malignant narcissism he probably felt entitled because his imaginary god (grandiosity) told him so. It’s the great unprincipled ego: the inflated-self fears rejection and failure and becomes manifested in the senses realm as he acts to undermine and dehumanize others…and for 12 years of my life I believed all of wierwille’s bull$hit. Since that time the “God-in-three-persons” doctrine has been adhered to as though it were divine revelation – wierwille’s concluding statement at the end of chapter 1 THE ORIGIN OF THE THREE-IN-ONE GOD in JCING. on page 178 of “The Way Living in Love” wierwille stated “I was praying. And I told Father outright that He could have the whole thing, unless there were real genuine answers that I wouldn't ever have to back up on. And that's when He spoke to me audibly, just like I'm talking to you now. He said He would teach me the Word as it had not been known since the first century if I would teach it to others. Well, I nearly flew off my chair. I couldn't believe that God would talk to me.” On page 209 of Whiteside’s book wierwille comments on the content of what he teaches: “Lots of the stuff I teach is not original. Putting it all together so that it fit – that was the original work. I learned wherever I could, and then worked that with the Scriptures. What was right on with the Scriptures, I kept; but what wasn’t, I dropped.”

But that’s not to say some philosophical Christians did not synthesize concepts from outside sources. When dealing with the abstract…metaphysical ideas and theories it’s helpful to use mental constructs . Many branches of science depend on such cerebral activity. A construct derives its name from the fact that it is a mental construction, derived from scientific process: observing natural phenomena, inferring the common features of those observations, and constructing a label for the commonality or the underlying cause. A construct derives its scientific value from the shared meaning it represents for different people. If a construct is clearly articulated and the phenomena it encompasses are clearly defined, it becomes a useful conceptual tool that facilitates communication. From Wikipedia: construct in psychology Part 3 development of the doctrine of the Trinity We find something of this nature when Paul was preaching at the Areopagus - northwest of the city of Athens, Greece…it’s a small hill covered in stone seats. This area was once used as a forum for the rulers of Athens to hold trials, debate, and discuss important matters. (see Got Questions Org: Areopagus ) …note Paul makes good use of being familiar with popular culture – finding common ground that his audience can relate to: 16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.) 22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” 32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. Acts 17:16-34 ~ ~ ~ ~ Historians, archaeologists, mainline and liberal theologians generally believe that the authors of books in the Bible simply accepted the contemporary Pagan beliefs taught in neighboring countries about the shape of the earth, and the layout of the universe. That involved a flat Earth with the Sun, Moon and Stars revolving around the Earth… …Many conservative Christians believe that God inspired the authors of the Bible to write inerrant, text. That is, writings that are totally free of error. Interpreting those biblical passages which discuss cosmology causes a problem, When the passages are interpreted literally, they conflict with scientific beliefs that have been in place for centuries. The latter describe an earth that is approximates a sphere in shape, around which the Moon revolves, with the Earth and Moon revolving around the Sun. The Sun, in turn, is located in one of the arms of a spiral galaxy composed of 100 to 400 billion stars. The Earth is very definitely not the center of the Solar System, the Milky Way, or the universe. from: Religious Tolerance Org: The Bible and Cosmology John H. Walton a professor of The Old Testament at Wheaton College said the Bible delivers its meaning less like an encyclopedia – a repository of facts – and more like a conversation – and proposes that the Bible was written FOR us, but not TO us. The people to whom it was written meaningfully are the ancient peoples who spoke the Hebrew and Greek languages in which the documents were written and who were immersed in the culture that provides the context that gives the words of those languages meaning. The cosmological remarks in Genesis 1 are merely common references – not scientific affirmations. It was information that the ancient audience ALREADY KNEW as accepted cosmology. The literary intent of the Genesis 1 cosmic hymn is to depict the world as having been originally established as a place of order. In our culture, our concept of existence usually involves physical material – something tangible – it has mass – takes up space or experiences – like love, the passage of time…living from hand to mouth defines a meager existence. By contrast, in the ancient world something existed when it had a function – a role to play. In the ancient world people were much more inclined to think of creation not so much as to produce the physical cosmos but to establish order and making it functional. The cosmos was not seen as complicated machinery or systems but more like an assortment of kingdoms - realms regarded as being under the control of a particular being. Therefore, it was important to know who governed a particular domain. The way my pea brain understands it – it’s like explaining to someone that all the big businesses in town that they thought were independent are actually run by one parent company. Some of what I shared is from these books: Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible by John H. Walton Demons and Spirits in Biblical Theology: Reading the Biblical Text in Its Cultural and Literary Context by John H. Walton & J Harvey Walton The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate (The Lost World Series, Volume 1) by John H. Walton NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture ~ ~ ~ ~ Concerning the development of religion, I think sometimes there might be a tension between the tendency to syncretism and the purist’s insistence on absolute adherence to traditional rules or structures…well…enough on a promo for keeping an open mind…let’s look at several sources for the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. ~ ~ ~ ~ While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, the New Testament possesses a triadic understanding of God and contains a number of Trinitarian formulas. The doctrine of the Trinity was first formulated among the early Christians and fathers of the Church as they attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions. Though the Trinity is mainly a Christian concept, Judaism has had paralleling views, especially among writings from the kabballah tradition… …While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, the New Testament contains a number of Trinitarian formulas, including Matthew 28:19, 2 Corinthians 13:14, 1 Corinthians 12:4–5, Ephesians 4:4–6, 1 Peter 1:2, and Revelation 1:4–5. Reflection by early Christians on passages such as the Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" and Paul the Apostle's blessing: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all", leading theologians across history in attempting to articulate the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Eventually, the diverse references to God, Jesus, and the Spirit found in the New Testament were brought together to form the doctrine of the Trinity—one Godhead subsisting in three persons and one substance. The doctrine of the Trinity was used to oppose alternative views of how the three are related and to defend the church against charges of worshiping two or three gods… …In the Pauline epistles, the public, collective devotional patterns towards Jesus in the early Christian community are reflective of Paul's perspective on the divine status of Jesus in what scholars have termed a "binitarian" pattern or shape of devotional practice (worship) in the New Testament, in which "God" and Jesus are thematized and invoked.[ Jesus receives prayer (1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 12:8–9), the presence of Jesus is confessionally invoked by believers (1 Corinthians 16:22; Romans 10:9-13; Philippians 2:10-11), people are baptized in Jesus' name (1 Corinthians 6:11; Romans 6:3), Jesus is the reference in Christian fellowship for a religious ritual meal (the Lord's Supper; 1 Corinthians 11:17-34). Jesus is described as "existing in the very form of God" (Philippians 2:6), and having the "fullness of the Deity [living] in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). Jesus is also in some verses directly called God (Rom 9:5,Titus 2:13, 2 Peter 1:1)… …Jesus also receives προσκύνησις (proskynesis) in the aftermath of the resurrection, a Greek term that either expresses the contemporary social gesture of bowing to a superior, either on one's knees or in full prostration (in Matthew 18:26 a slave performs προσκύνησις to his master so that he would not be sold after being unable to pay his debts). The term can also refer to the religious act of devotion towards a deity. While Jesus receives προσκύνησις a number of times in the synoptic Gospels, only a few can be said to refer to divine worship. This includes Matthew 28:16–20, an account of the resurrected Jesus receiving worship from his disciples after proclaiming he has been given authority over the cosmos and his ever-continuing presence with the disciples (forming an inclusio with the beginning of the Gospel, where Jesus is given the name Emmanuel/"God with us", a name that alludes to the God of Israel's continuing presence with his followers throughout the Old Testament (Genesis 28:15; Deuteronomy 20:1) and used in reference to Jesus in the resurrection account). Whereas some have argued that Matthew 28:19 was an interpolation on account of its absence from the first few centuries of early Christian quotations, scholars largely accept the passage as authentic due to its supporting manuscript evidence and that it does appear to be either quoted in the Didache (7:1–3)or at least reflected in the Didache as part of a common tradition from which both Matthew and the Didache emerged. Jesus receiving divine worship in the post-resurrection accounts is further mirrored in Luke 24:52.[37][38][37] Acts depicts the early Christian movement as a public cult centered around Jesus in several passages. In Acts, it is common for individual Christians to "call" upon the name of Jesus (9:14, 21; 22:16), an idea precedented in the Old Testament descriptions of calling on the name of YHWH as a form of prayer. The story of Stephen depicts Stephen invoking and crying out to Jesus in the final moments of his life to receive his spirit (7:59–60). Acts further describes a common ritual practice inducting new members into the early Jesus sect by baptizing them in Jesus' name (2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5). According to Dale Allison, Acts depicts the appearances of Jesus to Paul as a divine theophany, styled on and identified with the God responsible for the theophany of Ezekiel in the Old Testament… …Some have suggested that John presents a hierarchy[45][46] when he quotes Jesus as saying, "The Father is greater than I", a statement which was appealed to by nontrinitarian groups such as Arianism.However, Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas argued this statement was to be understood as Jesus speaking about his human nature… Holy Spirit in the New Testament Prior Jewish theology held that the Spirit is merely the divine presence of God himself,[50] whereas orthodox Christian theology holds that the Holy Spirit is a distinct person of God himself. This development begins early in the New Testament, as the Spirit of God receives much more emphasis and description comparably than it had in earlier Jewish writing. Whereas there are 75 references to the Spirit within the Old Testament and 35 identified in the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, despite its significantly shorter length, mentions the Spirit 275 times. In addition to its larger emphasis and importance placed on the Spirit in the New Testament, the Spirit is also described in much more personalized and individualized terms than earlier.[51] Larry Hurtado writes; Moreover, the New Testament references often portray actions that seem to give the Spirit an intensely personal quality, probably more so than in Old Testament or ancient Jewish texts. So, for example, the Spirit "drove" Jesus into the wilderness (Mk 1:12; compare "led" in Mt. 4:1/Lk 4:1), and Paul refers to the Spirit interceding for believers (Rom 8:26–27) and witnessing to believers about their filial status with God (Rom 8:14–16). To cite other examples of this, in Acts the Spirit alerts Peter to the arrival of visitors from Cornelius (10:19), directs the church in Antioch to send forth Barnabas and Saul (13:2–4), guides the Jerusalem council to a decision about Gentile converts (15:28), at one point forbids Paul to missionize in Asia (16:6), and at another point warns Paul (via prophetic oracles) of trouble ahead in Jerusalem (21:11). The Holy Spirit is described as God in the book of the Acts of the Apostles But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.” Acts 5:3-4 …Peter first says Annias is lying to the Holy Spirit, he then says he is lying to God. In the New Testament, the Spirit is not portrayed as the recipient of cultic devotion, which instead, is typically offered to God the Father and to the risen/glorified Jesus. Although what became mainstream Christianity subsequently affirmed the propriety of including the Spirit as the recipient of worship as reflected in the developed form of the Nicene Creed, perhaps the closest to this in the New Testament is in Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 which describe the Spirit as the subject of religious ritual. Holy Spirit in later Christian theology As the Arian controversy was dissipating, the debate moved from the deity of Jesus Christ to the equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and Son. On one hand, the Pneumatomachi sect declared that the Holy Spirit was an inferior person to the Father and Son. On the other hand, the Cappadocian Fathers argued that the Holy Spirit was equal to the Father and Son in nature or substance. Although the main text used in defense of the deity of the Holy Spirit was Matthew 28:19, Cappadocian Fathers such as Basil the Great argued from other verses such as "But Peter said, 'Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.'" (Acts 5:3–4). Before the Council of Nicaea Detail of the earliest known artwork of the Trinity, the Dogmatic or Trinity Sarcophagus, c. 350 (Vatican Museums): Three similar figures, representing the Trinity, are involved in the creation of Eve, whose much smaller figure is cut off at lower right; to her right, Adam lies on the ground While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, it was first formulated as early Christians attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions. An early reference to the three “persons” of later Trinitarian doctrines appears towards the end of the first century, where Clement of Rome rhetorically asks in his epistle as to why corruption exists among some in the Christian community; "Do we not have one God, and one Christ, and one gracious Spirit that has been poured out upon us, and one calling in Christ?" (1 Clement 46:6). A similar example is found in the first century Didache, which directs Christians to "baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". Ignatius of Antioch similarly refers to all three persons around AD 110, exhorting obedience to "Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit".[60] Though all of these early sources do reference the three persons of the Trinity, none articulate full divinity, equal status, or shared being as elaborated by Trinitarians in later centuries. The pseudonymous Ascension of Isaiah, written sometime between the end of the first century and the beginning of the third century, possesses a "proto-trinitarian" view, such as in its narrative of how the inhabitants of the sixth heaven sing praises to "the primal Father and his Beloved Christ, and the Holy Spirit". Justin Martyr (AD 100 – c. 165) also writes, "in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit". Justin Martyr is the first to use much of the terminology that would later become widespread in codified Trinitarian theology. For example, he describes that the Son and Father are the same "being" (ousia) and yet are also distinct faces (prosopa), anticipating the three persons (hypostases) that come with Tertullian and later authors. Justin describes how Jesus, the Son, is distinguishable from the Father but also derives from the Father, using the analogy of a fire (representing the Son) that is lit from its source, a torch (representing the Father).[63] At another point, Justin Martyr wrote that "we worship him [Jesus Christ] with reason, since we have learned that he is the Son of the living God himself, and believe him to be in second place and the prophetic Spirit in the third" (1 Apology 13, cf. ch. 60). The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Dürer (1511): from top to bottom: Holy Spirit (dove), God the Father and the crucified Christ The first of the early Church Fathers to be recorded using the word "Trinity" was Theophilus of Antioch writing in the late 2nd century. He defines the Trinity as God, his Word (Logos) and his Wisdom (Sophia)[64] in the context of a discussion of the first three days of creation, following the early Christian practice of identifying the Holy Spirit as the Wisdom of God. The first defense of the doctrine of the Trinity was by Tertullian, who was born around 150–160 AD, explicitly "defined" the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and defended his theology against Praxeas, although he noted that the majority of the believers in his day found issue with his doctrine. The "Heavenly Trinity" joined to the "Earthly Trinity" through the Incarnation of the Son – The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities by Murillo (c. 1677). St. Justin and Clement of Alexandria referenced all three persons of the Trinity in their doxologies and St. Basil likewise, in the evening lighting of lamps. Origen of Alexandria (AD 185 – c. 253) has often been interpreted as Subordinationist — believing in shared divinity of the three persons but not in co-equality. (Some modern researchers have argued that Origen might have actually been anti-Subordinationist and that his own Trinitarian theology inspired the Trinitarian theology of the later Cappadocian Fathers.) The concept of the Trinity can be seen as developing significantly during the first four centuries by the Church Fathers in reaction to theological interpretations known as Adoptionism, Sabellianism, and Arianism. Adoptionism was the belief that Jesus was an ordinary man, born of Joseph and Mary, who became the Christ and Son of God at his baptism. In 269, the Synods of Antioch condemned Paul of Samosata for his Adoptionist theology, and also condemned the term homoousios (ὁμοούσιος, "of the same being") in the modalist sense in which he used it. Among the nontrinitarian beliefs, the Sabellianism taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are essentially one and the same, the difference being simply verbal, describing different aspects or roles of a single being. For this view Sabellius was excommunicated for heresy in Rome c. 220… …Some Kabbalist writings have a kind of a Trinitarian view of God, speaking of "stages of God's being, aspects of the divine personality", Zohar in 1286 B.C. additionally says that "God is they, and they are it". Another kabbalistic writing speaks of God being "three hidden lights, which constitute one essence and one root". Some Jewish philosophers additionally saw God as a "thinker, thinking and thought", taking from some Augustinian Trinitarian analogies. Philo the Jew recognized a threefold character of God, but had many differences from the Christian view of the Trinity. John William Colenso argued that the Book of Enoch implies a kind of a trinitarian view of God, seeing the "Lord of the spirits", the "Elected one" and the "Divine power" each partaking of the name of God. Judaism traditionally maintains a tradition of monotheism that excludes the possibility of a Trinity. In Judaism, God is understood to be the absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable being who is the ultimate cause of all existence…. From: Wikipedia: The Trinity End of excerpts ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ The Trinity is Christianity’s most unique, defining, incomprehensible, and awesome mystery. It is the revelation of who our Almighty Creator actually is—not just a god, but an infinite Being existing in eternity as three co-equal, infinite Persons, consubstantial yet distinct. The origin of the doctrine of the Trinity is the Bible, although the word Trinity is not used in the Bible. As all orthodox Christians agree, the doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is one essence but three Persons; God has one nature, but three centers of consciousness; God is only one What, but three Whos. Some unbelievers mistakenly call this a contradiction. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery revealed by God in His Word. A contradiction would be to claim that God has only one nature but also three natures, or that He is only one Person but also three Persons. From the very beginning of the church, Christians have understood the mystery of the Trinity, even before they began using the term Trinity. For example, the first Christians knew the Son was the Creator (John 1:1–2), the “I Am” of the Old Testament (Exodus 3:14; John 8:58), equal to the Father (John 14:9), and the Judge of all the earth (Genesis 18:25; John 5:22), who is to be worshiped as only God is allowed to be (Deuteronomy 6:13; Luke 4:8; Matthew 14:33). The first Christians knew the Holy Spirit was a separate Person with His own thoughts and will (John 16:13), who intercedes for us with God (Romans 8:27), proving He is a distinct Person from God the Father—since intercession requires at least two parties (no one intercedes with himself). Furthermore, a human can be forgiven for blaspheming God the Son, but not for blaspheming God the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:32). New Testament writers mention all three Persons of the Trinity together numerous times (e.g., Romans 1:4; 15:30; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Ephesians 1:13–14; 1 Thessalonians 1:3–6). The early believers knew that the Father and the Son sent the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit—“another counselor”—to live in our hearts (John 14:16–17, 26; 16:7). These mysteries were accepted fully by the early church as revealed truth, yet without the label of “the Holy Trinity.” The Old Testament gave glimpses of the Trinity, and no passage of Scripture contradicts the doctrine. For example, in Genesis 1:26 God says in the plural, “Let us make mankind in our image.” God declares that He was completely alone when He created everything, stretching out the heavens and spreading out the earth “by myself” (Isaiah 44:24). Yet Jesus was the instrument of God’s creation (John 1:1–3; Colossians 1:16), in the company of the Holy Spirit who was hovering over the primordial waters (Genesis 1:2). Only the doctrine of the Trinity can explain it all. The Torah hinted at the idea of God existing in multiple Persons and predicted His coming in the flesh. The Old Testament is filled with references to a coming world ruler (Genesis 49:10) to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), who was not only God’s Son (Isaiah 9:6) but a Messiah who would be God in the flesh (Isaiah 7:14; Zechariah 2:8–11). But the Jews were looking for—and, under Roman occupation, desperately hoping for—a triumphant, conquering Messiah, not a lowly, suffering Servant (Isaiah 53). Israel failed to recognize the Son of God due to His ordinariness (Isaiah 53:2; Matthew 13:54–58; John 10:33), and they killed Him (Zechariah 12:10; Acts 2:36). In the years after the death of the last apostle, John, there were many attempts by Christian theologians to define and explain God to the church. Explanations of spiritual reality to earthly beings will always fall short; some teachers’ explanations were a bit off, while others sank into heresy. The errors put forward in post-apostolic times ranged from Jesus being all God and only appearing to be human (Docetism), to His being created rather than eternal (Adoptionism, Arianism, and others), to there being three separate gods in the same family (Tritheism), to the one God playing three different roles at different times (Modalism, Monarchianism). As no religion can exist without knowing who or what its followers worship, there was a great need to define God in a way that all followers of Christianity would agree upon as “official” or orthodox doctrine. And, if Jesus were not God, all Christians were heretics for worshiping a created being. It seems that the church father Tertullian (AD 160–225) was the first to apply the term Trinity to God. Tertullian uses the term in Against Praxeus, written in 213 to explain and defend the Trinity against the teaching of his contemporary Praxeus, who espoused the Monarchian heresy. From there, we can jump forward over a century of church discussion, schisms, and debate to the Council of Nicea in 325, when the Trinity was finally confirmed as official church doctrine. A final observation. Theology is the attempt by flawed humans to understand the words of the Bible, just as science is the attempt by flawed humans to understand the facts of nature. All the facts of nature are true, just as all the original words of the Bible are true. But humans are limited and make lots of mistakes, as history continually shows. So, where there is error or disagreement in science or theology, both disciplines have methods of correction. The history of the early church reveals that many sincere Christian believers “got it wrong” when it came to defining God’s nature (a great lesson on the need for humility). But, through a careful study of God’s Word, the church was finally able to articulate what the Bible clearly teaches and what they knew to be true—God exists as an eternal Trinity. From: Got Questions Org: origin of the Trinity end of excerpts ~ ~ ~ ~ This supplementary document discusses the history of Trinity theories. Although early Christian theologians speculated in many ways on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, no one clearly and fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity as explained at the top of the main entry until around the end of the so-called Arian Controversy. (See 3.2 below and section 3.1 of the supplementary document on unitarianism.) Nonetheless, proponents of such theories always claim them to be in some sense founded on, or at least illustrated by, biblical texts. Sometimes popular antitrinitarian literature paints “the” doctrine as strongly influenced by, or even illicitly poached from some non-Christian religious or philosophical tradition. Divine threesomes abound in the religious writings and art of ancient Europe, Egypt, the near east, and Asia. These include various threesomes of male deities, of female deities, of Father-Mother-Son groups, or of one body with three heads, or three faces on one head (Griffiths 1996). However, similarity alone doesn’t prove Christian copying or even indirect influence, and many of these examples are, because of their time and place, unlikely to have influenced the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. A direct influence on second century Christian theology is the Jewish philosopher and theologian Philo of Alexandria (a.k.a. Philo Judaeus) (ca. 20 BCE–ca. 50 CE), the product of Alexandrian Middle Platonism (with elements of Stoicism and Pythagoreanism). Inspired by the Timaeus of Plato, Philo read the Jewish Bible as teaching that God created the cosmos by his Word (logos), the first-born son of God. Alternately, or via further emanation from this Word, God creates by means of his creative power and his royal power, conceived of both as his powers, and yet as agents distinct from him, giving him, as it were, metaphysical distance from the material world (Philo Works; Dillon 1996, 139–83; Morgan 1853, 63–148; Norton 1859, 332–74; Wolfson 1973, 60–97). Another influence may have been the Neopythagorean Middle Platonist Numenius (fl. 150), who posited a triad of gods, calling them, alternately, “Father, creator and creature; fore-father, offspring and descendant; and Father, maker and made” (Guthrie 1917, 125), or on one ancient report, Grandfather, Father, and Son (Dillon 1996, 367). Moderatus taught a similar triad somewhat earlier (Stead 1985, 583). Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165) describes the origin of the logos (= the pre-human Jesus) from God using three metaphors (light from the sun, fire from fire, speaker and his speech), each of which is found in either Philo or Numenius (Gaston 2007, 53). Accepting the Philonic thesis that Plato and other Greek philosophers received their wisdom from Moses, he holds that Plato in his dialogue Timaeus discussed the Son (logos), as, Justin says, “the power next to the first God”. And in Plato’s second letter, Justin finds a mention of a third, the Holy Spirit (Justin, First Apology, 60). As with the Middle Platonists, Justin’s triad is hierarchical or ordered. And Justin’s scheme is not, properly, trinitarian. The one God is not the three, but rather one of them and the primary one, the ultimate source of the second and third… The Arian Controversy It was only in response to the controversy sparked by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius (ca. 256–336) that a critical mass of bishops rallied around what eventually became standard language about the Trinity. This controversy was complex, and has been much illuminated by recent historians (Ayres 2004; Freeman 2008; Hanson 1988; Pelikan 1971; Rubenstein 1999; Williams 2001). It can be briefly summarized as follows. Arius taught, in accordance with an earlier subordinationist theological tradition, that the Son of God was a creature, made by God from nothing a finite time ago. Some time around 318–21 a controversy broke out, with Arius’ teaching opposed initially by his bishop Alexander of Alexandria (d. 326). Alexander examined and excommunicated Arius. Numerous churchmen, adhering to subordinationist traditions about the Son rallied to Arius’ side, while others, favoring theologies holding to the eternal existence of the Son and his (in some sense) ontological equality with the Father, joined his opponents. The dispute threatened to split the church, and a series of councils ensued, variously excommunicating and vindicating Arius and his defenders, or their opponents. Each side successively tried to win the favor of the then-current emperor, trying to manipulate imperial power to crush its opposition. From the standpoint of later catholic orthodoxy, a key episode in this series occurred in 325, when a council of bishops convened by the Emperor Constantine (ca. 280–337) decreed that the Father and Son were homoousios (same substance or essence). Arius and his party were excommunicated. The intended meaning of ousia here was far from clear, given the term’s complex history and use, and the failure of the council to disambiguate it (Stead 1994, 160–72). They most likely settled on the term because it was disagreeable to the party siding with Arius. This new and ambiguous formula fanned the flames of controversy, as subordinationists and anti-subordinationists understood the phrase differently when signing on to it, and later argued for conflicting interpretations of it. By the time of the council of Constantinople (381 CE), an anti-subordinationist reading, vigorously championed by Alexandrian bishop Athanasius (d. 373) had the upper hand; homoousios was understood as asserting the Father and Son to not merely be similar beings, but in some sense one being. While it stopped short of saying that the Holy Spirit was homoousios with the Father and Son, the council did say that the Holy Spirit “is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and the Son”, and added in a letter accompanying their creed that the three share “a single Godhead and power and substance” (Leith 1982, 33; Tanner 1990, 24, 28). Over the ensuing period the same sorts of arguments used to promote the divinity of the Son, were reapplied to the Holy Spirit, and eventually inhibitions to applying homoousios to the Holy Spirit evaporated. Athanasius and others in the prevailing party argued that the salvation of humans requires the Son and Holy Spirit to be equally divine with the Father. This kind of argument depends on various controversial models of salvation, such as the one on which salvation involves the “deification” or “divinization” of humans, which can only be accomplished by one who is himself divine (Rusch 1980, 22–23). Despite shifting convictions about what salvation is and how God accomplishes it, this basic sort of argument remains popular—that if Christ and/or the Holy Spirit were not in some sense “fully divine”, then humanity couldn’t be saved by their actions. (For an influential medieval argument, see Anselm Cur.) Perhaps the most currently popular such argument is that our forgiveness by God, an infinitely valuable being, requires an atoning sacrifice of infinite value. Hence, Christ has to be fully divine, as only a fully divine being has infinite value… From: Plato Stanford Edu: history of the Trinity End of excerpts ~ ~ ~ ~ The basis for the doctrine of the Trinity The central Christian affirmations about God are condensed and focused in the classic doctrine of the Trinity, which has its ultimate foundation in the special religious experience of the Christians in the first communities. This basis of experience is older than the doctrine of the Trinity. It consisted of the fact that God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, as revealed in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the figure of Jesus Christ, lived among human beings and was present in their midst as the “Resurrected One”; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the power of the new life, the miraculous potency of the kingdom of God. The question as to how to reconcile the encounter with God in this threefold figure with faith in the oneness of God, which was the Jews’ and Christians’ characteristic mark of distinction from paganism, agitated the piety of ancient Christendom in the deepest way. In the course of history, it also provided the strongest impetus for a speculative theology, which inspired Western metaphysics for many centuries. In the first two centuries of the Christian Era, however, a series of different answers to this question developed. The diversity in interpretation of the Trinity was conditioned especially through the understanding of the figure of Jesus Christ. According to the theology of the Gospel According to John, the divinity of Jesus Christ constituted the departure point for understanding his person and efficacy. The Gospel According to Mark, however, did not proceed from a theology of incarnation but instead understood the baptism of Jesus Christ as the adoption of the man Jesus Christ into the Sonship of God, accomplished through the descent of the Holy Spirit. The situation became further aggravated by the conceptions of the special personal character of the manifestation of God developed by way of the historical figure of Jesus Christ; the Holy Spirit was viewed not as a personal figure but rather as a power and appeared graphically only in the form of the dove and thus receded, to a large extent, in the Trinitarian speculation. Introduction of Neoplatonic themes The Johannine literature in the Bible provides the first traces of the concept of Christ as the Logos, the “word” or “principle” that issues from eternity. Under the influence of subsequent Neoplatonic philosophy, this tradition became central in speculative theology. There was interest in the relationship of the “oneness” of God to the “triplicity” of divine manifestations. This question was answered through the Neoplatonic metaphysics of being. The transcendent God, who is beyond all being, all rationality, and all conceptuality, is divested of divine transcendence. In a first act of becoming self-conscious the Logos recognizes itself as the divine mind (Greek: nous), or divine world reason, which was characterized by the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus as the “Son” who goes forth from the Father. The next step by which the transcendent God becomes self-conscious consists in the appearance in the divine nous of the divine world, the idea of the world in its individual forms as the content of the divine consciousness. In Neoplatonic philosophy both the nous and the idea of the world are designated the hypostases of the transcendent God. Christian theology took the Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance as well as its doctrine of hypostases as the departure point for interpreting the relationship of the “Father” to the “Son.” This process stands in direct relationship with a speculative interpretation of Christology in connection with Neoplatonic Logos speculation. In transferring the Neoplatonic hypostases doctrine to the Christian interpretation of the Trinity there existed the danger that the different manifestations of God—as known by the Christian experience of faith: Father, Son, Holy Spirit—would be transformed into a hierarchy of gods graduated among themselves and thus into a polytheism. Though this danger was consciously avoided and, proceeding from a Logos Christology, the complete sameness of essence of the three manifestations of God was emphasized, there arose the danger of a relapse into a triplicity of equally ranked gods, which would displace the idea of the oneness of God. Attempts to define the Trinity By the 3rd century it was already apparent that all attempts to systematize the mystery of the divine Trinity with the theories of Neoplatonic hypostases metaphysics were unsatisfying and led to a series of new conflicts. The high point of these conflicts was the so-called Arian controversy. In his interpretation of the idea of God, Arius sought to maintain a formal understanding of the oneness of God. In defense of that oneness, he was obliged to dispute the sameness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, as stressed by other theologians of his day. From the outset, the controversy between both parties took place upon the common basis of the Neoplatonic concept of substance, which was foreign to the New Testament itself. It is no wonder that the continuation of the dispute on the basis of the metaphysics of substance likewise led to concepts that have no foundation in the New Testament—such as the question of the sameness of essence (homoousia) or similarity of essence (homoiousia) of the divine persons. The basic concern of Arius was and remained disputing the oneness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, in order to preserve the oneness of God. The Son, thus, became a “second God, under God the Father”—i.e., he is a divine figure begotten by God. The Son is not himself God, a creature that was willed by God, made like God by divine grace, and sent as a mediator between God and humankind. Arius’s teaching was intended to defend the idea of the oneness of the Christian concept of God against all reproaches that Christianity introduces a new, more sublime form of polytheism. This attempt to save the oneness of God led, however, to an awkward consequence. For Jesus Christ, as the divine Logos become human, moves thereby to the side of the creatures—i.e., to the side of the created world that needs redemption. How, then, should such a Christ, himself a part of the creation, be able to achieve the redemption of the world? On the whole, the Christian church rejected, as an unhappy attack upon the reality of redemption, such a formal attempt at saving the oneness of God as was undertaken by Arius. Arius’s main rival was St. Athanasius of Alexandria, for whom the point of departure was not a philosophical-speculative principle but rather the reality of redemption, the certainty of salvation. The redemption of humanity from sin and death is only then guaranteed if Christ is total God and total human being, if the complete essence of God penetrates human nature right into the deepest layer of its carnal corporeality. Only if God in the full meaning of divine essence became human in Jesus Christ is deification of man in terms of overcoming sin and death guaranteed as the resurrection of the flesh. The Athanasian view was accepted at the Council of Nicaea (325) and became orthodox Christian doctrine. St. Augustine, of decisive importance for the development of the Trinitarian doctrine in Western theology and metaphysics, coupled the doctrine of the Trinity with anthropology. Proceeding from the idea that humans are created by God according to the divine image, he attempted to explain the mystery of the Trinity by uncovering traces of the Trinity in the human personality. He went from analysis of the Trinitarian structure of the simple act of cognition to ascertainment of the Trinitarian structure both of human self-consciousness and of the act of religious contemplation in which people recognize themselves as the image of God. A second model of Trinitarian doctrine—suspected of heresy from the outset—which had effects not only in theology but also in the social metaphysics of the West as well, emanated from Joachim of Fiore. He understood the course of the history of salvation as the successive realization of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in three consecutive periods. This interpretation of the Trinity became effective as a “theology of revolution,” inasmuch as it was regarded as the theological justification of the endeavour to accelerate the arrival of the third state of the Holy Spirit through revolutionary initiative. The final dogmatic formulation of the Trinitarian doctrine in the so-called Athanasian Creed (c. 500), una substantia—tres personae (“one substance—three persons”), reached back to the formulation of Tertullian. In practical terms it meant a compromise in that it held fast to both basic ideas of Christian revelation—the oneness of God and divine self-revelation in the figures of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—without rationalizing the mystery itself. In the final analysis the point of view thereby remained definitive that the fundamental assumptions of the reality of salvation and redemption are to be retained and not sacrificed to the concern of a rational monotheism. Characteristically, in all periods of the later history of Christianity, anti-Trinitarian currents emerged when a rationalistic philosophy questioned the role of the Trinity in the history of salvation. The ideas of Arius were revived by many critics, including the so-called anti-Trinitarians of the Italian Renaissance and the humanists of the 16th century. Researchers into the life of Jesus in the 18th century, such as Hermann Reimarus and Carl Bahrdt, who portrayed Jesus as the agent of a secret enlightenment order that had set itself the goal of spreading the religion of reason in the world, were at the same time anti-Trinitarians and pioneers of the radical rationalistic criticism of dogma. The Kantian critique of the proofs of God contributed further to a devaluation of Trinitarian doctrine. In German idealism, Hegel, in the framework of his attempt to raise Christian dogma into the sphere of the conceptual, took the Trinitarian doctrine as the basis for his system of philosophy and, above all, for his interpretation of history as the absolute spirit’s becoming self-conscious. In subsequent theological work, at least in the accusations of some of its critics, the school of dialectical theology in Europe and the United States tended to reduce the doctrine of the Trinity and supplant it with a monochristism—the teaching that the figure of the Son in the life of faith will overshadow the figure of the Father and thus cause it to disappear and that the figure of the Creator and Sustainer of the world will recede behind the figure of the Redeemer. In a brief but well-publicized episode in the mid-1960s in the United States, a number of celebrated Protestant theologians engaged in cultural criticism observed or announced “the death of God.” The theology of the death of God downplayed any notion of divine transcendence and invested its whole claim to be Christian in its accent on Jesus of Nazareth. Christian dogma was reinterpreted and reduced to norms of human sociality and freedom. Before long, however, the majority of theologians confronted this small school with the demands of classic Christian dogma, which insisted on confronting divine transcendence in any assertions about Jesus Christ. The transcendence of God has been rediscovered by science and sociology; theology in the closing decades of the 20th century endeavoured to overcome the purely anthropological interpretation of religion and once more to discover anew its transcendent ground. Theology has consequently been confronted with the problem of Trinity in a new form, which, in view of the Christian experience of God as an experience of the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, cannot be eliminated. From: Britannica: The Holy Trinity End of excerpts ~ ~ ~ ~ That’s all for now… Could there be a part 4 ? mmmmm I’m thinking about it

Part 2: Development of doctrine Every religion has a history of doctrine that is more than a replication of the deposit of faith. Doctrine, as a mode of pedagogy, is conservative of its tradition; as a mode of inquiry, it may be innovative, generating new insights that alter the rhetoric of conventional teaching and, sometimes, its substance as well. There are, of course, wide variations. The persistent continuities between ancient Zoroastrianism and its modern form, Parsiism, or in Jainism, are clearer than those between primitive Hinduism and modern Vedanta (a Hindu philosophical system). All forms and sects of Buddhism appeal jointly to the Three Jewels (the Buddha; the dharma, or law; and the sangha, or monastic order) but are irreconcilable in their differences of interpretation and practice. In each case, the question as to what constitutes legitimate development (e.g., the rival claims of Theravada, or “Way of the Elders,” and Mahayana, or “Greater Vehicle,” in Buddhism) is left undetermined. All Jews profess devotion to Torah, even in their disagreements over its authentic observance. Christians profess a common loyalty to the Bible and a common acceptance of the twin dogmas of the Trinity (that the one God is three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and the God-Manhood of Jesus (that Christ is both divine and human) but then divide in their doctrinal systems as they have developed historically. Later dogmas (e.g., transubstantiation, the teaching that the substance of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper is changed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, with the properties of the bread and wine remaining unchanged) were defined by the Latin Church without concurrence from Eastern Orthodoxy; the modern dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, the bodily assumption into heaven of the Virgin Mary, and papal infallibility) were defined in separation from both the Eastern and the Protestant consensus. Protestantism has continued an emphasis on its distinctive dogmas of “grace alone” (sola gratia), “faith alone” (sola fide), and “scripture alone” (sola scriptura) but has nevertheless undergone immense change and proliferation… … The process of doctrinal development has been explained variously as a process of logical unfolding or of organic growth, or else as a process of purgations of error and restorations of the original deposit. The notion of a logical unfolding assumes that all that has developed in a religious tradition over the course of its history was already implicit in its original foundation and subsequently had only to become more fully understood. In the case of the doctrine of the Trinity in Christianity, for example, it is argued that the abundant references in the New Testament and the earliest liturgies to God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit required the development of a dogma that would make explicit the essential Christian trinitarian conviction. Similarly, the dogma on the nature of Christ is understood as the logical outcome of sustained reflection on the testimony about Jesus as the Christ in the Bible and in the apostolic tradition. In the notion of logical unfolding, even in its continual development, truth remains forever unchanged… … Theories of organic development stress the fact that the history of doctrine includes more than explicit formulation of implicit revelation. Such theories take into account the ways in which religious thought is affected by “contemporary” science, philosophy, and historical crises (e.g., the “Copernican revolution” in astronomy, the Renaissance, and other such events). The holders of this view are convinced, however, that all such historical supplementations have been integrated into the original deposit and thus exhibit the power of the religious organization (e.g., the church) to grow and change without substantial alteration of its identity. Thus, the 19th-century Roman Catholic cardinal John Henry Newman, in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), argued that the highest and most wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once for all by inspired teachers could not be comprehended all at once by the recipients, but,…have required only the longer time and deeper thought for their full elucidation. Newman also believed that this process was safeguarded by the authority of the teaching that would even allow for revisions and occasional corrections of antecedent… …Protestants, by and large, have been more impressed by the lapses and deviations they see in church history and doctrine and thus have tended to construe authentic “development” in terms of a perennial recourse to scripture and apostolic tradition. Such a view takes historical flux for granted and is less sensitive to the problem of historical continuity… …In all traditions, the course of doctrinal development is crucially affected by the occasional emergence of profound and powerful thinkers who have gathered up scattered elements in their various traditions in freshly relevant syntheses, altering thereby the subsequent history of that tradition. This can be seen, for example, in the North African theologian Augustine’s contributions to the making of Latin Christianity and in the matching services of St. John of Damascus in Eastern Orthodoxy. Such also was the role and contribution of Moses Maimonides in medieval Judaism (e.g., the Thirteen Articles of Faith in his commentary on the Mishna) and of St. Thomas Aquinas in medieval Christianity (e.g., Summa theologiae). The 16th-century reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin gave Protestantism its classical form, to be followed by yet other and different system builders (e.g., Friedrich Schleiermacher in the 19th century and Karl Barth in the 20th century)… … Each theory of development has had its own distinctive prescription for doctrinal stability and doctrinal change. In Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy locates its authority in “Holy Tradition,” which is fixed and guided by the dogmas proclaimed by the ecumenical councils. Roman Catholicism relies on the magisterium (teaching authority) of the church, which is directed by the bishops as a “college” (collegium episcoporum) and supremely by the bishop of Rome as their collegial head. Protestantism has sought to bind both tradition and the church to the authority of holy scripture, with the resulting problem of specifying what is to be regarded as truly authoritative interpretations of scripture… The relation of faith, reason, and religious insight to doctrine and dogma Insofar as doctrines and dogmas represent conceptualizations of the human encounter with the divine mystery, they are bound to reflect the interplay of faith and reason in religious experience and to imply some notion of levels and stages in the progress of believers as they move from the threshold of faith toward its fulfillment. Doctrine is concerned with communication and consensus, with the exposure of the religious vision to rational probes and queries. There is, therefore, a tension in all religions between mystical intuition and logical articulation, between insight and dialogue. Most traditions agree that perfect understanding is a goal that lies beyond a “simple faith” and the routine observance of rites and duties. Most of them also agree that the utmost pinnacle of religious insight is ineffable. One mode of differentiation between doctrinal traditions, therefore, is their relative openness or resistance to the auxiliary services of philosophy and science of faith’s fulfillment… … In Christianity, the dialectic between faith and reason has ranged from the fideism (emphasis on faith) of the 2nd-century North African theologian Tertullian to the intellectualism of Thomas Aquinas. An ancient distinction between faith as bare assent to orthodox doctrine (fides informis) and faith as existential trust in God’s grace (fides formata) gave rise to the further distinction between faith as a set of doctrines to be believed (fides quae creditur) and faith as personal involvement (fides qua creditur). Philipp Melanchthon, a 16th-century Lutheran reformer, stressed the point that even the devils are “orthodox” (having “dead faith”) but to no avail, since only those who have embraced God’s reconciling love (fiducia) receive the benefits of salvation (“living faith”). In general, this distinction has become standard in Protestantism… Changing conceptions In all the great religious traditions, and between them, the clash of doctrines and dogmas has, more often than not, been polemical. The odium theologorum (“bitterness of the theologians”) of which Melanchthon once complained so plaintively has been notorious. Within the several traditions, doctrinal disputes have sometimes led to division or else have accompanied divisions caused otherwise. In relationships between the great world religions, dogmas and doctrines have usually been regarded as mutually exclusive. There are, however, significant signs of change in this attitude. The rise and spread of the ecumenical movement in the 20th century and notable advances in the comparative study of world religions reflect an enlarged commitment to the widest possible community of mutual religious interests. The “Decree on Ecumenism” and its “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions” of the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council (1962–65) are signal instances of this disposition. From: Britannica: doctrine development End of excerpts ~~ ~~ And here’s a nifty visual aid on timeline of Christianity - which you can click on in case the gif below doesn’t work…a handy overview of issues and key events at a glance that's all for now...Ta-ta ...more to come in part 3

marked and avoided = dishonorable discharge