We, as Catholics, do not see our Trinitarian God as a "replacement" for the God of Judiasm but rather a further revelation from God himself about his nature. We also believe that our Trinitarian God is, in fact, one God...not 3 Gods.
This is again a demonstration of the objective division between what you believe and what others believe. See my response to Lifer. By tweaking you on trinitarianism, I'm merely pointing out that your doctrine, while valid to you, is indefensible outside your faith -- you may paste bits of a catechism, and if I were of a mind to, I could paste learned opinions from other faiths about monotheism and trinitarianism. Within Judaism, there is one God. Not three-in-one. One. God's not gathering himself up into one human form, begetting special "sons" (except in the sense that we are all children of God,) etc.
Shema Yisroel, Adonoi Elohanu, Adonoi Ehud. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. See? All I have to do is forthrightly state my faith, and yours goes "poof!" Yay! I can do it too.
I understand that you believe that you are a monotheist. In my faith, you're a trinitarian, but very close to monotheism.
And guess what? We're both clinging to our distinctions, vocabulary, and schedule of characterizations. Like Francis, I believe that if your heart is loving and your actions show that truth of the heart, you're doing
something right, and that our arguments about our divisions, while entertaining, mean very little if anything.
As for your example of a doctrine being influenced by the Romans......just as I thought
Celebrating the birthday of Jesus is not a doctrine. It is a practice or a devotion. The church is influenced in its practices and devotions (as well as disciplines) by empires, countries, other religions, movements, and even individuals all the time. The church is not going to contradict the deposit of faith (dogmas/defined doctrines) given to it by the Apostles.
So going forward, if you can't point to a specific doctrine that was contradicted by the church due to Roman influence then you might want to change what you say to the Roman Empire affected the church in its practices which is actually accurate and of no consequence to the defined doctrine and dogma taught by the church.
Oh don't roll your eyes, RI. Your Christmas has been demonstrated for the nth time to be in great part a pagan celebration. Shall I go after some other aspect of Christianity borrowed from paganism? Hell, I could go after Judaism, and kill two birds with one stone (three counting Islam.) After all, if Christianity is "fulfilling" Judaism and Judaism is borrowing, Christianity is transitively "fulfilling" paganism. I could run this play every day of the week and twice on Sunday, whether regarding the fractional body of knowledge/doctrine that's original since first century Judaism, or the larger body of knowledge/doctrine that preceded Christianity. I honestly have no desire to, but let me know if you insist. Your religion's like all other religions. It borrows from the cultures around it, and it's influenced by the political powers of the day.
Yes, I have chosen to believe because God has revealed himself to me through his grace. So it is not simply an intellectual exercise but also a "pair bonding" where my God resides in my soul as long as I allow him to stay.
How have you come to your belief in God?
When I was a child, I believed what those who came before me believed. Then I became a man, and I put away childish things.
I began to study other religions as well, but not as "rivals" to my own or to "test the waters." More because I wanted to understand the claims that they made -- most vociferously, the claims of Christians around me, but also the others. I found something to admire in just about every religion I looked at. I'm not some encyclopedia of religion or anything. But the more I studied them, the more I found that they had commonalities as well as differences. I found more and more that the differences tended to align with the petty needs of a human bureaucracy. The commonalities tended, to my point of view, to partake of spiritual truth.
The trouble with such observations is that it opens two paths: One is intellectual vanity, which I enjoy very much.
It is the understanding of what
isn't, and it has a culling effect. It becomes simpler to see errors -- both one's own and others -- but does not help one in embracing what one
does feel moved to embrace.
Embracing and engaging in the core spirituality of religion, to me, comes by choice. It can be as concentrated as a state of ongoing meditation -- whatever your meditational practice -- and it can be as simple as embodying as best one can one's religious principles.
I came by these viewpoints through study and practice. I still engage in study, and no longer pursue any spiritual practice other than attempting to live life so as not to do unto the other what is hateful to myself, and loving God -- not the mountains of words or the name of God but what I've realized God to be, in my own personal and admittedly subjective exploration.
You have your lie. I have mine.
I say it this way because when we talk of God we by nature diminish him to an object of discussion and of language. We by nature lie. That includes the lies of your catechism and the lies of the Torah, the lies of the Quran and the lies of the tent revival meeting, the lies of the
shema and the lies of the apostles' creed.
If it is spoken in language and it is about God, it is less than the "object" which it purports to discuss. It is insufficient and it by nature leads to the diminishing of God himself.
In moments of another sort of "grace," I believe myself to have directly experienced God.
In states of mind where I ask myself if my own experience could be described using some other reasoning or vocabulary -- for example, phenomenology of mind -- I must admit that I can.
In that sense, I choose to believe: I choose to embrace that my faith is an expression of a spiritual reality.
And I find that this purely subjective realization cannot be gainsaid by any skeptic, and has no need to gainsay any skeptic.
I believe this spirit is available to all whose hearts seek it in truth - one of the most beautiful and compelling lies about it (in the sense I discuss above) is in Corinithians -
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
While not part of "my" canon, it seems obvious that it's written by someone who's spiritually close to my own understanding -- this is a good approximation of what we'd expect to see of ourselves, if we're indeed steeped in the thing itself, rather than the words and the dogma surrounding it. I don't say that I constantly dwell in consciousness and communion to the godhead or that I'm anywhere close to perfect in my understanding or my own demeanor. I only say that what one subjectively encounters in true pursuit of spiritual truth, as the quote above maintains, has no need to "boast," to disprove the other, to categorize, or to belittle.
Another who may have been dwelling in a similar state of "grace" wrote this
Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
And here we are, tediously exchanging quotes and proofs and catechisms. You know your spirit and your dogma and your practice; I know mine. If they have any value at all, "objectively," it is that it would bring us all closer in the spirit Francis has so eloquently propounded.
I hope you have enjoyed my lies; I have enjoyed yours.
PFnV