dianavan - Since it is possible to look upon anything from 3 angles, why isn't it possible to look at God from 3 angles? Does this in any way interfere with the idea of one God. Not to me it doesn't. I can look at one thing from 3 angles...no problem.   It's simply 3 aspects of one God to speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Here is what it could very well mean: The Father as the original, Unmanifest, unseen power and intelligence behind all Creation. The Son as all manifested individual things in that Creation. And the Holy Spirit as the active energy that brings the Son into manifestation and sustains the Son at all times! Think about that for a minute.

Before the Big Bang there was only the Father (unmanifest). Through the action of the Holy Spirit the Big Bang occurs, bringing the Son (all perceivable phenomena and things) into visible, tactile, observable existence.

Now a statement such as: "God's Spirit moved upon the waters" doesn't necessarily have to mean the Holy Spirit in a specific sense (as a part of the official Christian Trinity). It could just as well mean that God's focused intention or God's creative energy or God's power or God's intelligence moved upon a field of possibilty...resulting in that field of possibility being changed.

Most of what is contained in ancient religious writing is highly allegorical, poetic, and symbolic. Those writings were put down by spiritual adepts to be understood by spiritual adepts in a time when most people couldn't read. The ordinary public was not expected to comprehend the mysteries contained in those texts, and they were instead given simple sets of rules and ceremonials to follow, while the people who devoted their lives to religious study (and who could read) got deeper into the symbols and hidden meanings.

That's why it's very misleading for modern people to interpret the Bible or the Baghavad Gita or other ancient texts of that kind in a bald and literal manner. You have to grasp the poetic symbols and see the meanings behind them. It's allegory, metaphor, parable, not a news report or a history lesson.

Fundamentalists don't get that, and on that basis they have historically gone around doing the most extraordinarily unspiritual things...like condemning and killing any people who don't happen to see it their way.

Atheists don't get it either, needless to say, because they don't even realize that there is anything there to get. They're busy counting beans and measuring physical distances.

- LH