Monday, October 18, 2004

Voltaire on the Trinity

For my Cultural History of the Enlightenment class here at the University of Oregon I am mimicing Voltaire's style in "Philosophical Dictionary." Here is one of my entries.

Création: Creation
Many a well-founded, well-respected, theologian traces the latter third of our divided God, that is the Holy Spirit, back to the beginning of Creation. For it is written, “The wind of God was moving over the face of the waters.” That is, this xwr is “neither made nor created, but proceeding from the father and the son.” And so the Person of the Holy Spirit, the Wind of God, is expelled from the Person of the Father and the Person of the Son. Still greater theologians and metaphysician see this water as a clear sign to baptize, though those unworthy Anabaptists would disagree. Then this one Hebrew, come three Christian, God proceeds to make the world, lights (please note lights, not sun), vegetation, and various animals. Then comes the greatest animal of them all, Man.
Nicolas Fréret, or perhaps it is Mme Bourgnon, I know not, writes of Genesis 1:26 thus, “Though many think this phrase, ‘let us make man in our image, after our likeness,’ to be the use of a royal we, or likened to the Muhammidian single God, Allah, who is also known as We, there is a better reasoned response, God the Father, and the Son, in order to proceed the Holy Spirit together at the birthing of creation, were still connected together, like the hermaphrodite Adam.” Oh, listen to their reason, is it not brilliant! The well-established Christian fact of the trinity helps us to reason through the old muddle Jewish texts, steeped in confusion and presupposition.
Through these infallible texts comes reason to us. Is it not obvious that our very bodies are a tribute to this great religion. Each time a peasant drinks too much mead, or eats too many beans they call out a clear sign of the Spirit, as was done at the first creation. And how about those eunuchs, those hermaphrodites, are they not a clear sign of the unity of Father and Son? (do those so called Orthodox of the Czars not see that the Spirit proceeds from not one, but two in one) And when a man and a woman, or a father and a son for that matter, copulate (as long as they are not priests, for that right has been acknowledged from the very beginning of time) do they not affirm the unity of God?

No comments: