richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

T H E G O D H Y P O T II E S I S 33
Tax-free! Roberts himself is still going strong, as is 'Oral Roberts
University' of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Its buildings, valued at $250 million,
were directly commissioned by God himself in these words:
'Raise up your students to hear My voice, to go where My light is
dim, where My voice is heard small, and My healing power is not
known, even to the uttermost bounds of the Earth. Their work will
exceed yours, and in this I am well pleased.'
On reflection, my imagined Hindu litigator would have been as
likely to play the 'If you can't beat them join them' card. His
polytheism isn't really polytheism but monotheism in disguise.
There is only one God - Lord Brahma the creator, Lord Vishnu the
preserver, Lord Shiva the destroyer, the goddesses Saraswati, Laxmi
and Parvati (wives of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva), Lord Ganesh the
elephant god, and hundreds of others, all are just different manifestations
or incarnations of the one God.
Christians should warm to such sophistry. Rivers of medieval
ink, not to mention blood, have been squandered over the 'mystery'
of the Trinity, and in suppressing deviations such as the Arian
heresy. Arius of Alexandria, in the fourth century AD, denied that
Jesus was consubstantial (i.e. of the same substance or essence) with
God. What on earth could that possibly mean, you are probably
asking? Substance? What 'substance'? What exactly do you mean
by 'essence'? 'Very little' seems the only reasonable reply. Yet the
controversy split Christendom down the middle for a century, and
the Emperor Constantine ordered that all copies of Arius's book
should be burned. Splitting Christendom by splitting hairs - such
has ever been the way of theology.
Do we have one God in three parts, or three Gods in one? The
Catholic Encyclopedia clears up the matter for us, in a masterpiece
of theological close reasoning:
In the unity of the Godhead there are three Persons, the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons
being truly distinct one from another. Thus, in the words
of the Athanasian Creed: 'the Father is God, the Son is
God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not
three Gods but one God.'