/lit/ - Literature

>>18312238
First, thank you for your post.

>With the same logic, we can say that everything that "is X" is reducible to being. "There is a cat, lol there is so being is cat"

The cat is a part of existence (he is a being), not pure Being since he is limited. You can distinguish him from pure Being (ultimate Good, God). But in the case of the Trinity that some imagine, the pure blissfulness (not limited by definition, and also because it is assimilated to the Holy Spirit), can't be distinguished in the same manner. And bliss being "part of" the being, as anything that "is", it can't be distinguished from pure being, since it isn't limited in it's being like the cat.

>But he has internal relations that do not limit him in any way.
Their supposed relations, different from the traditional Trinity, imply the being is aside from consciousness and from bliss, as they are distinct. If they are not distinct, there is no possible relation.

>The whole in a single act, simple and unique, of God: but three distinct relations
If you can't distinguish a glass and a recipe if it is the same thing under different names, there can be no relation since you talk about the same thing.
Also pure actuality is different from an act, God doesn't need to be in relation within himself to consciousness, since he is pure consciousness.

>For there to be bliss, there must be a consciousness that perceives it. And it is necessary that this consciousness is.
This might be true for you, but it isn't for God. In other word you suppose a distinction in God, of bliss, consciousness and being that only apply to imperfect beings. In God these dualities doesn't apply neither the concept of act, that imply a change. God doesn't have to take consciousness, he is consciousness.

Remember I don't reject the traditional understanding of the Trinity. In the traditional one, distinctions are not that of aspects of the essence but of "levels of participation" (i.e. Image of the Father and Image of the Image).

>>18261291
>Such ideas in the west seem to be utterly absent in philosophy until the enlightenment and secular philosophers like the classic Desecrate argument, "I think therefore I am."
It was not. Read the church fathers of the east, pretty platonic and metaphysical. Cappadocian fathers, alexandrians, saint John Damascinos. And even in the West the nature of God is explained extensively with Meister Eckhart or the scolastic theology in general, continuing to a certain extent the philosophical and christian mysticism (saint denys the areopagite being very important).

Then of course God will not be presented as the self, because it's not how the christian metaphysics work. It is as metaphysics to say "I am not God" than "I am God", since denying the ego (humility) means acknowledging the Self. By denying what is not God you find God, by finding God you deny what is not God. The rhetoric is thus different. The christian puts the accent toward the transcendancy of God's essence, the fact it's above everything and the ego.
Then of course I tend to think christians have more bhaktic (devotional) tendancies, in accord with the nature of the people that have been christians.
But something aggravated it : the filioque heresy. Basically the division of christianity and their lost of metaphysics (the christian metaphysics being done through the dogma of the Trinity). After this, the christian west began being more sentimental and when they did metaphysics it was not the christian one.