From: george murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Fri Nov 22 2002 - 09:32:02 EST
Dick Fischer wrote:
> George Murphy wrote:
>
> > > Our concept of the Godhead has no parallel that I know of.
>And even if the
> > > Accadians had a similar belief, I don't know how they would express that
> > > with rudimentary writing skills. I'm not sure that we Christians all
> > > understand how God can be in three persons either.
> > >
> > > But all the other cultures are not the Accadian culture. They
>appear to be
> > > the historic equivalent of the Adamic race which history books
> > > ignore. Since Hebrew derived from the Accadian language, and
>the Accadians
> > > wrote a flood account, and worshipped three gods from the
>beginning until
> > > the Sumerians corrupted them, it certainly is not a reach to
>posit that the
> > > Semitic race derived from the Accadians, and that they may have had a
> > > primitive knowledge of the spiritual realm as we believe it exists.
> > >
> > > To a primitive culture, the idea of three gods could be a preamble to
> > > accepting a multitude of gods when another culture is so
>pervasive as were
> > > the Sumerians to the Accadians. Certainly beginning with Abraham,
> > > monotheism is in vogue. But did we Christians learn of three
>Gods from the
> > > NT, or did we re-learn it? If God is in three persons, why
>would God (the
> > > father) have kept that a secret from His people - if the Accadians and
> > > Adamites are one and the same?
> >
> > Christians never did learn of "three Gods" - the doctrine of the
> > Trinity isn't
> >tritheism. & there is nothing in the OT, read on its own terms, that
> >states a 3-fold
> >character of God. On one wall of my study is a little reproduction of
> >Rubelev's icon of
> >the Trinity - Abraham's three visitors in Genesis 18! But again, that
> >interpretation
> >comes from reading the OT account in light of the NT.
> > Your final question is equivalent to "Why did God wait until ~4
> > B.C. to become
> >incarnate"?" I don't know.
>
> Nor do any of us. What I am suggesting, though, is the possibility that
> Christ may have been known in spirit form as Ea before His incarnation at
> Bethlehem.
Belief in the activity of the pre-incarnate Logos in _all_ people
has strong
support in the Christian tradition. I think that this can be affirmed if it is
dealt with carefully. It is connected with the belief that the Logos
was the agent
of creation and the source of human rationality. But it goes beyond
this to say
that the Logos was known under some specific name, as if a particular
deity of some
people could be identified distinctively as the 2d Person of the
Trinity. & this
traditional idea would not restrict the activity of the Logos to the
Accadians or
any other people.
Shalom,
George
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