The only response I received was a tangential response about "flat land" and a personal attack saying I should not be asking" where did the son come from?
I amended my query to: So where did the Son come from? What is the origin of the Son If we accept the necessity of a highest power why was/ is there a need for a second equal power and certainly why the need for a third co-equal power? How and why did these second and third powers come to be?
I was told that I had a nasty tone by the original poster of the thread. I was also told by another poster that I had a closed mind.
You express a faulty premise. It is not necessary to understand something in order to believe it.
The problem with that line of reasoning is that people that don't understand economics believe Bernie Sanders and are being led down a false path.
As I have stated from the beginning I am an agnostic seeking answers. Sadly instead of answers I finding personal attacks and insults.
No man can really understand the eternal or immortal.
Again, we can’t even understand each other.
For example, (guessing that maybe you’re a man) do you understand women?
Does a man not pursue a relationship with a woman because he can’t understand women? What man DOES understand women?
What woman understands men?
If a man can’t even understand a woman with whom he’s on an equal plain, how can he expect or even feel like he can demand to understand God?
Man is body, soul, and spirit. God is the Father, the Son (Incarnate, having a body here on this earth) and the Holy Spirit.
Any attempt to explain that will fall short but here’s a try.
Some people use that example of the human. Others have used the example of an egg, or water. All are composed of three parts each of which make up the whole.
Some people state that it’s one being manifesting in three persons, but that leads to charges of modalism. My understanding is that modalism in its most extreme form claims that when God is acting as Jesus, He cannot act as the Father or the Holy Spirit, but I don’t see that that concept requires it. So just as I am a wife to my husband, a mother to my children, and a daughter to my parents, it’s all me simply relating to others in three roles. (FWIW)
BTW, science is incapable if even beginning to explain many of the theories its put forth about the beginnings of the universe and physics and stuff like string theory and dark matter. Do you reject any or all science that you can’t understand, too?
Well, I don’t know how to answer you completely. I will try with my very limited understanding of an incomprehensible God, but I warn you that it will not be scholarly ‘cause scholarly is not what I is. ;-)
God is Almighty. The Son is the exact representation of God in body/person and did whatever the Father (God) showed Him. All power (of God) has been given to the Son who led a perfectly sinless life. The Holy Spirit is the spirit issuing forth from God. His active agent in this world granted to those who believe in the Son. The Son’s death on the cross being the means of reconciliation between man and God, as we have no way to pay for our own sins to God who is completely holy. It took the perfect (sinless) blood of Jesus, which was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. God cannot reside with sin; the blood of Jesus covers our sin and puts us in a right relationship with the Father for now and eternity.
That perhaps is too simple an explanation and I’m sure I badly mangled it, but there you go. I did the best with my limited understanding (and having a 5-year old near). I can’t fully comprehend God, as I am His creation and not His equal.
This I do know, however, that when I cried out to Him in my darkest hour He came and saved me and changed me completely.
His word tells me all I can comprehend of Him, and I’m barely able to grasp some of it. So, anything beyond what’s in the word would only be lost on those who have no way to understand another realm (such as myself).
I hope this helps.
Best regards,
SC
One issue I see in your setup of the problem is that by definition, the persons of the Trinity are co-eternal. There is no “origin” in the temporal sense.
Structurally, the presence of three persons in one being is not a byproduct of reasoning that said structure is necessary, but is a response to divine revelation. We do not understand the mechanism of gravity, for example, but we have a body of evidence that such a force exists, though in full understanding of it we would describe it differently than we do now.
As for the analogy to blind acceptance of political theories, I think it is a defective analogy. By definition, purveyors of socialism and other political junk science are accountable to the scrutiny of their peers, us. By contrast, God, being infinitely above us and not accountable to us, has no obligation to conform to the limits of our rational capacity.
Nevertheless, the posit sometimes offered is this, that in God we have much more than mere power. God is love. God is therefore, inherent to His nature, about relationships, and that interior relational model in the three persons sets up God as the ultimate archetype of love.
I don’t have time for more right now. Just some thoughts.
Peace,
SR
Let's try the classical Christian answer: Given the proviso that you accept that a universal highest power exists according to the Thomist view God is the un-created, first moving necessary being. He lives outside of time and space. So technically the terms before and after having no bearing on the origin of the Son.
Gods first thought was of Himself and that thought was so powerful and perfect that it resulted in the Son. Not as a created being, but rather as a reflection of the Father with all of His divinity. Since the Father already existed the Son's first thought was of Him This first thought was of the perfect love He had for the Father. The Father also immediately had a perfect love for the Son. This love resulted in the third person was the Holy Spirit.
I hope this answers your question.