Speaking of Alabama’s abortion law, well, Jesus and Mo are speaking of it in their new strip (“life”). This strip is a good one!
There was an earlier cartoon based on a related law; the email about this strip added this: ”
The South Dakotans caused a similar comic twelve years ago.
Story here.
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The humor helps me get through the horror.
Living in Alabama must be like having Jesus and Mo for your government.
Jesus and Mo, but no barmaid. That must be tough 🙁
Why did the Christian theologians formulate the doctrine of the Trinity?
More specifically, why call him Father and Son? Either Father or Son would have done for the Christians. Plonking both in their theology has put rather a strain on the intellectual equipment of the simple masses — not to mention the burden on the semantics of language.
I can understand their wanting Jesus to be more than a prophet. That way they put their chap ahead of the other chaps who just had God speak to them. However, calling him Son of God would have given him an advantage over the prophets; calling him God would have done the job as well. Why use both?
Even with modern educational aids like fidget spinners, some people still don’t quite get it.
https://www.christiantoday.com/article/toying-with-the-trinity-can-fidget-spinners-point-us-to-god/109960.htm
In no small part because the competition were also claiming their deity to be the son of a god, frequently re-born in some way. To attract attention in the crowded theological bazaars of the Roman Levant, you needed a selling point.
Maybe that’s how the Hindus came up with a zoo of Gods and their relations. They were trying to outdo the Bindus who had a more conventional menagerie on offer in the bazaar. Never heard of Binduism? Correct. It went extinct trying to compete with Gods with more heads and arms.
Both the Roman, Greek and Hindu pantheons did a lot of syncretism in their growth. If I thought the subject were important enough, I might pay history of religion more attention.
And of course Christianity as well. Dying-and-rising gods were two-a-penny in the 1st-century Near East. Pretty well all of Christian dogma and doctrine can be traced back to something else, not just the Old Testament (or the ‘Hebrew Scriptures’, as the CofE insists on calling it these days), but also the Egyptians, the Stoics and even Buddhism (for which see, eg, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_influences_on_Christianity).
As somebody once said, truly there is little new under the sun.
There are non-canonical gospels where the Divine Mother is the third member of the trinity. (I.e., the three persons are Father, Mother and Son.) These are not exactly trinitarian in the sense we have today, though: Mother and Son are sort of lesser gods. (Created by the Father, not somehow the same thing as.)
I don’t know exactly how this fits in, but it is part of the puzzle.
Fidget spinners?
Ohmigods, there’s something amusingly pathetic (or pathetically amusing, one or the other) about the sight of religion trying to be modern, hip, with-it, kewl, or whatever is the current adjective. It’s a bit like watching an elephant trying to dance.
The writer of the article did have a momentary flash of revelation – “There’s something a little cheesy about Christians always pointing to culture’s latest fad”
Amen, brother.
cr
I’d forgotten how much the Jesus & Mo characters had matured over the years — especially Jesus, and here I thought the Good Lord was immutable.
Oh, that is good.