Paul the Third Person of the Trinity

One grows up with the furniture of one’s Religion and even if it is not entirely comfortable or even suitable, one grows accustomed to it, and familiarity is its own consolation.

But once past the age of intellectual integrity then one must be willing to send off to the Heap anything that can’t justify itself as True Religion. The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity is one of those old familiar things that needs to be trashed.

But first, we should examine why it is that Theologians create questionable doctrines in the first place. Well, all such things occur on two levels. The first level of deception is when some seemingly inspired Founder of a New Sect or Religion spins out a new basic doctrine. The precise details are unimportant because the general picture is ordinarily enough to attract and convince the common people – such people are not particularly caught up in over-thinking things, or even in doing much thinking at all. But then afterward, sometimes long after the founder has gone to his Eternal Reward, the people who do worry over the details, the Scholars and Priests, discover that there are logical, theological, metaphysical and even reasonable discrepancies in the Basic Doctrine. More often than not they wish to support the Basic Doctrine, and not toss it out for being flawed. In most cases they are the Career Professionals of the Religion and have every interest in sustaining the Religion… in not ‘killing the goose that lays their Golden Egg’. They may even believe that their Religion might do some good if allowed to persist. And so they set out to fix everything. They come up with convoluted attachments to the Basic Doctrine that fill in the gaps and to reconcile the inconsistencies.

One is supposed to argue from Particulars to the General, to see how all the little things add up to One Big Thing. But the habit of Theologians, however, is to take the One Big Thing already handed to them and simply make up a lot of little things to fit with it. After the Fact has already been established by Tradition and Authority, they superimpose new sets of details and interpretations on the old stories and rewrite the literatures so it all seems as though it were solid from the very beginning.

In Christianity, Salvation was the Basic Doctrine. The Holy Trinity was the invention that was supposed to remove the difficulties.

You might ask, “what was the problem with Salvation?” Well, the problem is that if by killing one man the Entire World for All Eternity could get Salvation, well, then they would have killed somebody long before, wouldn’t they? Especially if sins are forgiven. The Killing itself might be wrong, but, then, if it is immediately forgiven… But it all simply doesn’t follow. There is no such power in any one man. Human Sacrifice had been used for particular and limited ends, for some temporary atonement or momentary appeasement, to relieve a famine or assure a victory, but nobody ever pretended that some Universal and Eternal Benefit could be accrued just by murdering one guy.

So, this is why we have the Second Person of the Holy Trinity – Jesus the Man was redrawn as Jesus the God. Jesus as a Divine Person suddenly had the power to be very useful if He were to be ‘Sacrificed’. Killing Jesus the God Man would be enough to plausibly argue for Salvation – Jesus a God would be a Worthy Sacrifice to God the Real God… the First God. Sorry, we can’t call Him the ‘only’ God anymore. Multiplying one’s Gods confuses things, doesn’t it? For instance, does one pray to Jesus, or simply in the name of Jesus? Is Jesus God or isn’t He? (How many Sunday School Teachers wish they could have replied to such a question, “Don’t worry about it. Its all just bullshit anyway”).

And it gets even harder. The Trinity also has a Third God. What is that about? Well, as the Theologians of the 2nd Century looked upon the Doctrines that came out of the First Century, they were troubled over the matter of credibility and credentials. Jesus, if He had not always been thought of as a God, at least started as a plausible candidate for Messiah, and worked great wonders, spoke with Wisdom, and had a lot of charisma. No one ever doubted that Jesus had been a Great and Powerful Man, not even His enemies. But all of the Big Doctrines, and especially the Doctrine of Salvation and the supporting Doctrine that Jesus was a God Man, all these doctrines came from Paul. Well, Paul had problems. His biggest problem was ‘who the heck is Paul’. He was not part of the original Team. We are not told that he even met Jesus, and if he had met Jesus, we are probably not told about it because Paul was probably one of those pesky Pharisee enemies of Jesus, and that would have been simply too difficult to explain away. Also, many from the original Team, the Real Apostles, went to print renouncing Paul and his Teachings. We see Paul in the light of the Greek Church that fell for his stories, but back in the Holy Land it was all quite different. Paul had many real enemies. The last chapters of the Book of Acts follow Paul around Jerusalem as first one Forum and then another of Jews and Christians bring Paul to trial for inciting riot and preaching heresy. Paul’s reputation was saved in part because absolutely all of the Second Century Reviewers were in fact Greeks who did not worry in the least about Semitic and Hebrew sensibilities, such as Monotheism and One Jealous God. But they did understand that Paul had huge credibility problems. While he was their most beloved Founder, he was also their worst embarrassment. It seems to be a problem with Religions of the Near East.

Oh, where did all the Jews and Real Christians go? Why were the Greeks left in charge of Christianity. Well, remember the Book of Revelation and the Prophecies of Jesus that said the World would end and Jerusalem would be destroyed and the Church would be removed up into Heaven. It happened right on schedule. From 70 A.D. to 130 A.D. there had been three progressively severe Wars of Jewish Rebellion. The Jews would riot and murder some community of Greeks (over the years the Rebel Jews had murdered millions of Ethnic and Cultural Greeks) and then Rome would come in and re-establish order. Well, they found the only way to re-establish order was to kill them all… a lesson modern generals are reluctant to take heed to, supposing that the Roman Generals had never tried winning ‘hearts and minds’ which would have worked as well for them then as it has worked for us now. Anyway, Rome’s successful Final Solution for their Jewish Problem quite erased any influence that the Genuine Christian Church might have had on the Greek Counterfeit Church.

So, back to Paul’s credibility issues. From the 2nd Century perspective, Christian Doctrine seemed to come from an outsider – a man without miracles, charisma, or any particular destiny; a rough and ugly man. He sold a Religion to the Greeks, but that spoke as much toward Greek gullibility as to any special power he had to sway minds and persuade hearts. While Doctrines relied upon the say-so of this spotted personality, then there would be problems.

So the Theologians of the 2nd Century invented the notion that the Inspiration of the Holy Spirit could rank on the same footing as God Almighty Himself. Therefore, when pressed on the issue of just what gave Paul any credibility on matters of Religion, well, they could answer that Paul had been possessed by the Holy Spirit. It was not that they were believing Paul – ugly, stupid, ill-tempered Paul – it was that they were believing the Holy Spirit that was only using Paul as a vessel. Yes, that was it. They had their Story.

The issue would rise again in History. Catholic Civilization reigned for a Thousand Years, just as Christ had predicted, but then there was the invention of the printing press, and Bibles were printed out in ordinary language – vernaculars – English and French instead of just the Priest-Speak of Latin. The first Reformers and Fundamentalists began taking to the streets proclaiming that the Bible taught Free Sin, but they were answered that nobody important in the Bible spoke such Blasphemy. It was only Paul and only then in the last and least significant chapters, the back pages. You know, High Christian Civilization ( which our biased History calls the Dark and Middle Ages) had did its best to forget Paul had ever existed. Only the Bishops remembered Paul… Paul had been their Personal Secret that allowed them to live in all of their corruptions. Salvation was a Privilege enjoyed only by the Bishops and Popes. The Bishops still use Paul similarly – molesting children, insisting that if Salvation forgives Sins, then they might as well sin enough to put the doctrine to some good use. But the ordinary people and even the ordinary clergy and the Religious Orders had never heard of Paul. Or if they had, then Paul was dismissed as some crazy nut that survived in a dusty book that obviously suffered from too little intelligent editing when they had first put it all together.

So the Protestants of the 16th Century invented the doctrine of “Word of God” – that if the Bible says it, then it can be equated to God Almighty Himself. This Doctrine had been invented for the same reason that the Holy Spirit had originally been promoted up to God Status, and that was in order to make Paul equal to God. While the Whole Bible is supposed to be the Word of God, when we see how the Doctrine is actually applied, all the benefits fall to Paul. Jesus doesn’t need the help, and nobody else is ever quoted for anything. “Word of God” is used to effectively make Paul the Third God of the Holy Trinity.

Yeah, I know. Yuck! So that is why they still need the Idea of the Holy Spirit to stand in for Paul. But there would also be problems enough with just the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit was declared the Third Divine Person of the Holy Trinity, but It came from rather humble beginnings. The scriptures of the first century speak of the Holy Spirit, but the rendering is a bit confused. At Pentecost it seemed at first that Everybody had the Holy Spirit, but by the next day all seemed to return to normal and nobody had it. The Book of Acts speaks of a few select people known for having the Holy Spirit, but does not give their names. It seemed to be a rare gift even where it was acknowledged. No, Paul is not acknowledged as having had the Holy Spirit. The same passage in the Book of Acts that speaks of people having the Holy Spirit then goes on to speaking of Paul as being one of the others, who, by inference, obviously didn’t have It. Yes, Paul says he had it, but it is odd that the Real Christians at the time did not agree.

Paul, in his letters, particularly Corinthians, speaks of the Holy Spirit, but defines it in ordinary non-spiritual non-miraculous terms. Why would Paul down play the Holy Spirit when he would benefit so much personally by the Doctrine? Well, you see, the Holy Spirit had first appeared among the Hebrews and the Jews in Jerusalem. Paul’s Greeks had heard of it and were complaining that Paul was not giving It to any of them. They were all paying Membership Fees and expected something, and Paul did not appear to be delivering. So Paul answered effectively that the Holy Spirit was really no big deal after all. Paul defined the Holy Spirit in ordinary terms so he could argue that his ordinary people already had plenty of It. And he diverted their attention to Faith and Salvation.

So we have a situation where the Holy Spirit is at first minimalized, and then when it is seen how useful it can be, it is suddenly ‘super-sized’ up again to being an Equal Person with God… a Third God. Well, this simply brought back the problem that Paul had tried to address – that people would have some great expectations of this Holy Spirit, and how could the Church be expected to deliver on such great expectations? With millions of Believers and NOBODY with any hint of the Holy Spirit, people would begin to get suspicious. Oh, but maybe the more serious problem would be from people who would insist, as Paul had, that they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and that they should be the New and Blue Religious Leaders.

This brings us to Gnosticism. People were not oblivious to the point that Paul had benefited from the Holy Ghost Doctrine to the extent of being treated like a Human God, even despite an altogether apparent lack of good looks, fine bearing or exemplary intelligence. If Paul could do it, well, anybody could. Everybody saw their chance. If they could only think of just one neat gimmick, then they could invoke the Holy Spirit just like Paul had. And many did. New Teachings and New Teachers were popping up in every district. Even honestly, without suspecting any of the usual deliberate and jaded scams, people could be seduced by such a Doctrine into supposing any wacky internal notion or delusion to be a Gift of the Spirit.

Oh, there was also the problem of people asserting their Moral Objections to the Free Sin Doctrine of Salvation, offering as their support and reason the Inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Well, this idea that the Holy Spirit could be used to support a standard of Righteousness and Purity, well, it had to be crushed! What would Christianity come to if we again permitted such moral judgments? Isn’t the teaching “Judge not and be not judged”? We will accept a complete world of the worst criminals because we might someday commit a misdemeanor. And we call that ‘Religion’. Anyway, it was the logic that appealed first to the Bishops and then and now to the Protestant Leaders of Everything.

So, anyway, finally the Church put its foot down and issued the pronouncement that the Holy Spirit had served its purpose and would now come to its end. It was the middle of the 4th Century. Christianity had just become the State Religion. God therefore no longer needed to talk through people. The Holy Spirit’s earthly career would be finished – exorcised! That would be that! The same Conference, the Council of Nicea, that had selected and sealed the Books of the Bible also issued the Death Certificate for the Holy Ghost.

Thank you, Holy Spirit. That will be all.

When you think about it, it is all rather sad. At Pentecost, the first celebration after the Death of Christ, the Promise of the New Religion had been summed up in the sanctity and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It would have been nice if that Promise had been pursued and developed. People could have nurtured their Spiritual Lives with such an open and unspecified Doctrine. Instead the idea of the Holy Spirit was materially exploited and then abandoned when it lead to some complications. It would be traded out for the Doctrine of Salvation, that Jesus had been murdered to Justify Free Sin. Hell is swapped for Heaven – where else, after all, can Sinners be received without Judgment? Whatever a Religious Doctrine says or doesn’t say, Heaven must absolutely and unequivocally be reserved for Spiritual Purity and Perfection – once any Darkness or Stench is allowed in, then it is no longer Heaven, is it? So don’t kid yourself, the ‘Heaven’ that Sinners are lining up for is just a pearly trap door over the abyss of Hell. It can be no other way while there is still a God in His Heaven. Satan cannot prevail, even if Satan ‘believes’, even if Satan has ‘Faith’ – as long as Satan still sins, he still belongs in Hell, just as do all sinners.

But our Religion mixes all of that up and nobody seems to be able to tell the difference.

I remember a Catholic Priest standing up at the pulpit and bragging that “Christianity” was the only Religion in the World that provides “Salvation”. He saw nothing wrong with that. Would he have preferred that the Entire World be allowed Free Sin? Yes, as a matter of fact, it would be more fair if the Rest of the World could equally drop the restraints of Morality and Ethics and be just as Free and easy going as Christians. Capitalism would work so much more smoothly if everybody could ignore their scruples.