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MAKING SENSE OF THE GOD CONCEPT IN ZOROASTRIAN CHRISTIANITY I've long had a problem with the Christian concept of God that doesn't seem to distinguish between God as the all-powerful being, and God as the all-good being. However finding a better God-concept has proved difficult. As Zorochristians we want to reform Christianity, but still it will be a problem if the Zorochristian God is completely incompatible with the God worshipped by existing Christians, or as understood by the best Christian theologians. Recently I have been proposing to call God, Agathon - the Good, which arguably is the God that Zoroaster taught about, the ideal that Plato wrote about and the best candidate for Jesus' 'Father in Heaven'. However the problem I am finding with the Agathon-concept is that it is too abstract. Some Christians talk about God as the foundation of reality, something that encompasses us all, and 'Goodness' doesn't seem a broad enough concept to include this. GODLY TRINITY In short I want to try out a new three-fold conception of God. These three concepts are: 1. ZURVAN who is GOD FUNDAMENTAL. Zurvan is the 'Ground of Being' - the stuff that our whole existence swims in. 2. AGATHON who is GOD TRANSCENDENT. Agathon is 'the Good' - the ideal which we strive towards like we reach towards the sun and which brings us life when it comes down to us and patterns our world. 3. ASHURA who is GOD IMMANENT. The Ashura is the 'Righteous Activity of God' acting within the world. So the proposed doctrine is that Zorochristians accept all three concepts as attributes of 'God'. However they are left with a choice as to whether to take a 'Unitary' approach and argue that they are three names for a God who is essentially one. Alternatively they can take a 'Complex' approach and argue that although they are all aspects of God, there is some distinction between them and that for instance Zurvan as the Ground of Being, is not just the same thing as Agathon the Good. Anyway I will play with this for a while and see if it seems to work. Marcus Zartianus ----- Comment: (BE) "This makes sense. Zurvan is the divine substratum of all things. Agathon is the Platonic Form of the Good, the ideal and formal realm beyond the constraints and contingencies of physical actuality. And Ashura is the cosmic impetus and never-ending endeavor to instantiate or incarnate the ideal in the actual, the teleological energy of life." |