{"id":137,"date":"2009-01-13T09:19:28","date_gmt":"2009-01-13T09:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-day-16.html"},"modified":"2009-01-13T09:19:28","modified_gmt":"2009-01-13T09:19:28","slug":"comment-of-the-day-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-day-16.html","title":{"rendered":"Comment of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Glover continues the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-weekend-3.html\">discussion of the Trinity<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>First I just want to say that I&#8217;m not arguing for or against the<br \/>\ntraditional understanding of the trinity in this post, I just merely<br \/>\nwant to engage the applicability of the aforementioned rule, that if<br \/>\n&#8220;X&#8221; cant exist in the mind then &#8220;X&#8221; cannot be believed, to biblical<br \/>\nbelief in any doctrine.<\/p>\n<p>Steve previously said:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To believe something, one must first think it; if something cannot exist in the mind, it is incapable of being believed.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Steve, I see where you go with your argument but I don&#8217;t find it<br \/>\nconvincing. Your telling me that as long as something can exist in my<br \/>\n&#8220;MIND&#8221;, that is the only way it can be believed? what does that mean<br \/>\nexactly? To what extent do I have to understand to believe? Can I even<br \/>\nreally believe in God at all then? Even though &#8220;I Believe&#8221; what the<br \/>\nbible says about him I cannot at all conceive of where he is right now<br \/>\nor that he is Omnipresent, Omniscient ect. If I thought about so much<br \/>\nof that long enough and applied your logic then up in the air go both<br \/>\nmy hands with the concept of God at all. <\/p>\n<p>what about a new christian who has hardly any concept of who God is<br \/>\nin greater detail but yet they still believe? I think your definition<br \/>\nof what constitutes belief seems to fit better with non-biblical belief<br \/>\nin non-biblical items. I don&#8217;t think this same logic should be applied<br \/>\nto holy writ.<\/p>\n<p>The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, right? why is it that<br \/>\nI cannot convince a non-regenerate to believe and persevere to the end<br \/>\nwith my &#8220;own&#8221; words of wisdom? That&#8217;s because God alone is the only one<br \/>\nthat can truly change a heart, not me. Without the Holy Spirits<br \/>\nministry in the process of salvation we would not be able to come at<br \/>\nall because our minds are still darkened in their understandings (Eph<br \/>\n4:18). I understand that the prior post wasn&#8217;t intended to be<br \/>\nexplaining in detail salvific belief, I just don&#8217;t feel that belief in<br \/>\nanything biblical can be put on the same shelf with &#8220;HOW&#8221; we believe<br \/>\nanything else. <\/p>\n<p>Steve, I fundamentally struggle with the idea that something in the<br \/>\n&#8220;BIBLE&#8221; has to be conceptualized intellectually before belief of it can<br \/>\nbe true.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;More to follow&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>In Christ we stand!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Glover continues the discussion of the Trinity: First I just want to say that I&#8217;m not arguing for or against the traditional understanding of the trinity in this post, I just merely want to engage the applicability of the aforementioned rule, that if &#8220;X&#8221; cant exist in the mind then &#8220;X&#8221; cannot be believed,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment-of-the-day","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Comment of the Day - The New Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-day-16.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Comment of the Day - The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Eric Glover continues the discussion of the Trinity: First I just want to say that I&#8217;m not arguing for or against the traditional understanding of the trinity in this post, I just merely want to engage the applicability of the aforementioned rule, that if &#8220;X&#8221; cant exist in the mind then &#8220;X&#8221; cannot be believed,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-day-16.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-13T09:19:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tony Jones\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Comment of the Day - The New Christians","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-day-16.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Comment of the Day - The New Christians","og_description":"Eric Glover continues the discussion of the Trinity: First I just want to say that I&#8217;m not arguing for or against the traditional understanding of the trinity in this post, I just merely want to engage the applicability of the aforementioned rule, that if &#8220;X&#8221; cant exist in the mind then &#8220;X&#8221; cannot be believed,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-day-16.html","og_site_name":"The New Christians","article_published_time":"2009-01-13T09:19:28+00:00","author":"Tony Jones","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-day-16.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-day-16.html","name":"Comment of the Day - The New Christians","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-01-13T09:19:28+00:00","dateModified":"2009-01-13T09:19:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-day-16.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-day-16.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/comment-of-the-day-16.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Comment of the Day"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/","name":"The New Christians","description":"Tony Jones on Christianity and the Emerging Church","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074","name":"Tony Jones","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","caption":"Tony Jones"},"description":"Tony Jones is the author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier and several other books on Christianity and prayer.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/author\/tjones"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}