Was Jesus Himself an Actual "Feminist" in a way? Yes or no?

mkgal1

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Someone who "emphasizes the Father only" does not understand the Trinity.
I agree. The same goes for those that emphasize the Son or even the Holy Spirit. That's a large part of the beauty of the Trinity....the unity in distinction.

I don't know, offhand, of any actual Trinitarian doctrine that "emphasizes the Father only," but I perceive it as an anti-Christian feminist ploy to claim that the Trinity does that in order to pull women away from Christ.
I think any doctrine that has the belief that "God's order" is hierarchical [mis]using the Trinity as the model is emphasizing the Father. That's what patriarchy is (Father rules). Look back at post #344 Where "biblical patriarchy" is described: Was Jesus Himself an Actual "Feminist" in a way? Yes or no? for an example.

It's not the "Trinity that does that"......it's humans distorting the Trinity (which I agree.....is against Christ).
 
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ToBeLoved

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Knowing and understanding that God is perfect and the Trinity is in perfect union and works perfectly together to glorify God seems to be beyond the comprehension when a statement like ""Father Rules" is made.

It shows that the viewpoint is that God is in competition with Himself and to glorify one person of the Trinity is to obviously put the other members in a lesser position. I don't think you understand God.
 
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mkgal1

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Knowing and understanding that God is perfect and the Trinity is in perfect union and works perfectly together to glorify God seems to be beyond the comprehension when a statement like ""Father Rules" is made.
I agree. Patriarchy (the 'father rules' framework) is a distortion of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

ToBeLoved said:
It shows that the viewpoint is that God is in competition with Himself and to glorify one person of the Trinity is to obviously put the other members in a lesser position.
I think that's a great way of describing what's wrong with the patriarchial/hierarchical misconception of the Trinity. Well stated.

ToBeLoved said:
I don't think you understand God.
Umm.... I'm *disagreeing* with that framework. I don't think you're understanding me.

I'm confused as well, though....because earlier I could have sworn you were arguing in favor of an "obvious hierarchy" in the Trinity.
 
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mkgal1

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From The Power of Love

------------>I think it’s foolish to presume we can understand Jesus if we don’t first of all understand Trinity. We will continually misinterpret and misuse Jesus if we don’t first participate in the circle dance of mutuality and communion within which He participated. We instead make Jesus into “Christ the King,” a title he rejected in his lifetime (John 18:37), and we operate as if God’s interest in creation or humanity only began 2000 years ago.

Humans are more comfortable with a divine monarch at the top of pyramidal reality. So we quickly made the one who described himself as “meek and humble of heart” (Matthew 11:29) into an imperial God, both in western Rome and eastern Constantinople. This isn’t the naked, self-emptying Jesus on the cross. This isn’t a vulnerable, relational one, who knows how to be a brother to all creation. The Greek Zeus became the Latin Deus; and we no longer knew Jesus in any meaningful sense that the soul could naturally relate to (which was the main point of the Incarnation!).

Circles are much more threatening than pyramids are, at least to empires, the wealthy, or any patriarchal system. What if we actually surrendered to the inner Trinitarian flow and let it be our primary teacher? Even our notion of society, politics, and authority—which is still top-down and outside-in—would utterly change. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Corinthians 13:13) should be our circular and all-inclusive ecology. From the very beginning of creation we see this pattern: God the Father, Christ the Word, and the Holy Spirit as a mighty wind (see Genesis 1:1-3).
**************************
To my mind....I can think of God's power of Love (expressed in the Trinity) as tearing down the power structures that have been created by humanity like this:

 
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mkgal1

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My profile picture is based on the symbolism of the Trinity:




The Trinity (Russian: Троица, tr. Troitsa, also called The Hospitality of Abraham) is an icon created by Russian painter Andrei Rublev in the 15th century.[1] It is his most famous work[2] and the most famous of all Russian icons,[3] and it is regarded as one of the highest achievements of Russian art.[4][5] Scholars believe that is it one of only two works of art (the other being the Dormition Cathedral frescoes in Vladimir) that can be attributed to Rublev with any sort of certainty.[1]

The Trinity depicts the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (Genesis 18:1–8), but the painting is full of symbolism and is interpreted as an icon of the Holy Trinity. At the time of Rublev, the Holy Trinity was the embodiment of spiritual unity, peace, harmony, mutual love and humility.[6]

The figures of angels are arranged so that the lines of their bodies form a full circle~
Trinity (Andrei Rublev) - Wikipedia
 
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Paidiske

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A friend of mine gave me a Rublev Trinity icon for my confirmation.

One of the key things in the picture is the way there is an open space at the table facing the viewer; the invitation is to step into the picture, and participate in the life of the Trinity; which will inevitably impel you outwards into the world to do the work of the missio Dei, the mission of God.
 
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mkgal1

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I just love it (and the entire message). I first learned about it here:

Take Your Place
In Genesis we see the divine dance in an early enigmatic story (18:1-8). “The Lord” appears to Abraham as “three men.” Abraham and Sarah seem to see the Holy One in the presence of these three, and they bow before them and call them “my lord” (18:2-3 Jerusalem Bible). Their first instinct is one of invitation and hospitality—to create a space of food and drink for their guests. Here we have humanity feeding God; it will take a long time to turn that around in the human imagination. “Surely, we ourselves are not invited to this divine table,” the hosts presume.

This story inspired a piece of devotional religious art by iconographer Andrei Rublev in the fifteenth century: The Hospitality of Abraham, or simply The Trinity. As icons do, this painting attempts to point beyond itself, inviting a sense of both the beyond and the communion that exists in our midst.

There are three primary colors in Rublev’s icon, each illustrating a facet of the Holy One:

Gold: “the Father”—perfection, fullness, wholeness, the ultimate Source

Blue: “the Incarnate Christ”—both sea and sky mirroring one another (In the icon, Christ wears blue and holds up two fingers, telling us he has put spirit and matter, divinity and humanity, together within himself. The blue of creation is brilliantly undergirded with the necessary red of suffering.)

Green: “the Spirit”—the divine photosynthesis that grows everything from within by transforming light into itself (Hildegard of Bingen called this viriditas, or the greening of all things.)

The icon shows the Holy One in the form of Three, eating and drinking, in infinite hospitality and utter enjoyment between themselves. If we take the depiction of God in The Trinity seriously, we have to say, “In the beginning was the Relationship. The gaze between the Three shows the deep respect between them as they all share from a common bowl. Notice the Spirit’s hand points toward the open and fourth place at the table. Is the Holy Spirit inviting, offering, and clearing space? I think so! And if so, for what, and for whom?

At the front of the table there appears to be a little rectangular hole. Most people pass right over it, but some art historians believe the remaining glue on the original icon indicates that there was perhaps once a mirror glued to the front of the table. It’s stunning when you think about it—there was room at this table for a fourth.

The observer.

You!

Yes, you—and all of creation—are invited to sit at the divine table. You are called “to consciously participate in the divine dance of loving and being loved,” as Wm Paul Young, the best selling author of The Shack, writes. [1]

The mirror seems to have been lost over the centuries, both in the icon and in our on-the-ground understanding of who God is—and, therefore, who we are too!
 
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RDKirk

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I misspoke. I should have said: "Someone who 'emphasizes the Father only' does not understand the doctrine of the Trinity."

None of us actually comprehends how the supernatural entities designed by scripture as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit really operate.
 
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SolomonVII

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Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all referred to as masculine. The error is in referring to God the Mother.

This is not an error in metaphor. This is an error theology.
Who 'Father' is and who 'Mother' is refers to more than just words and symbols. These are concepts that have been written into our very psyches through millions of years of evolution. Religions that worship God the Mother change everything about God. Ultimately, those religions become about worship of Nature and fertility rites, and even sacred prostitution. The become involved with Magik and the manipulation of nature to the neglect of morality.

Motherhood is not really a moral choice after all. For nine months, mother and child are one biological unit. Childhood is imbued into the nature of the feminine.
To be a father though, involves the moral choice of choosing to stay with the mother and child for those nine months and beyond, and to chose to lead the family.

Thinking about it from an evolutionary point of view, what we might infer from the idea that our physiologies developed specialized sperm cells to be killer cells of other males sperm in utero is that being a provider and a protector of the family unit of mother and child is not nature's choice for us. Being a father, being a Patriarch of the family, goes beyond the way that our physiologies have evolved. Our physiology is that of breeders, but not fathers.

Feminism describes the Patriarchy in the most negative and incendiary of terms, as if it involves the exercise of raw power of the man over the woman. God, who is Trinity, describes the patriarchy in a way that is totally opposite of this. Patriarchy is not about aggrandizement of power, but of submission to love. Patriarchy is not power; it is love. Patriarchy is fatherhood. Fatherhood involves choosing to be a father, to assume the role of father, ando provide for one's family rather than choosing to maximize one's pleasure and move on, as is the nature of the beast.

It is no coincidence that the advent of feminism has corresponded to the rise in hook-up culture, and the demise of fathers in the family unit. Really, where else could a movement that denigrates patriarchy lead to?

It Is God in all three persons who serves as our example of what fatherhood means.
Of course it is not about Spirit being imbued with male genitals. Further, atonement, the at-one-ment of God becoming man so that man may become God, is as inclusive of women as it is of men. Before Adam and Eve became separate they were together, and it was only sin that estranges man from woman.
But none of that means that recognizing God as Father father and not mother is mere metaphor and word play.
There is no error in describing God as Father, and if father then patriarch, which is synonymous with Father.
And who has seen the Son has seen the Father. The mystery of God is that God is One, Father, Son and Holy Spirit too.
 
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mkgal1

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You've certainly added your own spin to:
The Holy Trinity
Patriarchy
Feminism

.....there's a lot there to untangle.
 
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yeshuaslavejeff

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You've certainly added your own spin to:
The Holy Trinity
Patriarchy
Feminism

.....there's a lot there to untangle.
Yes, so simplify. Stick to what is clear in Scripture (not in man's thinking or ways).

Now, let's find out, which of those three is clearly in Scripture, directly (not implied nor inferred, but plain and simple).

By believing YHWH , what He Says, Simply, there is great peace and no confusion.
 
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SolomonVII

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mkgal1

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I don't know how else one can take, "Father Rules"?

The Trinity cannot be compared to patriarchy as that's neglecting the deity of the Son and Holy Spirit. In the Athanasian Creed that distinction is made here:



The Shield of the Trinity, a visual representation of the doctrine of the Trinity, derived from the Athanasian Creed. The Latin reads: "The Father is God, The Son is God, The Holy Spirit is God; God is the Father, God is the Son, God is the Holy Spirit; The Father is not the Son, The Son is not the Father, The Father is not the Holy Spirit, The Holy Spirit is not the Father, The Son is not the Holy Spirit, The Holy Spirit is not the Son."

The Athanasian creed also states:

"And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal."
 
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yeshuaslavejeff

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The Trinity cannot be compared to patriarchy as that's neglecting the deity of the Son and Holy Spirit.
In Creation, In YHWH, In Yeshua, In Reality, in the Ruach HaKodesh, in the BIBLE,
patriarchy is in perfect harmony with all.

Some of the creation - come creatures, don't like that. (because primarily they don't understand that).

The problems that creatures blame on the patriarchy of YHWH'S Plan and Purpose and Salvation in Jesus
are problems that come from the enemy of Christ, society, false teachings, and false prophets.
 
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