You will easily find panentheism in the verses of Acts chapter 17 verses 18-28. It can also be seen in the gospel of John chapter 14 verses 8-13. That John passage is one that Christians see as supporting the Trinitarian doctrine and that I see as the Unitarian doctrine. There's a theological term called Modalism that I subscribe to as opposed to the Trinitarian doctrine. It says that Yeshua came as a mode of God's communications in the world. It's a heresy according to CARM (see also Wikipedia's info). The error that I see with what they say there is that Modalism teaches that the three modes never exist all at one time. But I don't know about that. I'd say that of course they existed all at the same time. They did so in eternity.

That's an important distinction to me, too. :-)

28'For in him we live and move and have our being

That says to me that the universe really is a part of God and not something wholly separate from God.

even if it makes no logical sense like 1+1+1=1.

There are complaints from Muslims in islam that there are Christian missionaries trying to take the gospel to them by means of sophistry. Islam's prime complaint with Christianity can be seen in the quotation taken from soulfulwriter above. Given this, I point Christians to 1 Corinthians 8:4-13. Christians make a habit of taking verse 13 and using it to preach that Jesus and Paul declared pigflesh and shrimp clean (though I argue otherwise). But the full context of Paul's words in verses 4-13 shows that Paul is exhorting the Gentiles to refrain from doing things that will wound the weak conscience of the Jews in the synagogues (particularly eating meat sacrificed to idols which was expressly forbidden in Acts chapter 15). Corinth was a predominately pagan city surrounded by idols and pagan forms of worship. Taking Judaism to the pagans like Paul did had to have been quite an interesting career for a Jewish rabbi!

But in order to understand the full context of my rhetoric against trinitarian doctrines, we have to go to 1 Timothy 4:6, 6:1 (in particular as it relates to Zechariah 14:9 which Paul would've been familiar with in the first century) as well as 2 Timothy 3:16. Now given that Paul said that it is one God we serve (Romans 3:30), which is confirmed by scripture (read: 2 Timothy 3:16) in Deuteronomy 6:4 and Mark 12:29 (though it's arguable that the gospels weren't considered scripture in the first century), I would say that a three-in-one God is contradictory to what scripture says about God being one (for what it's worth, Jews and others through the centuries have seen the Tree of Life diagram with the Ten Sephiroth as being polytheistic). With this and the stumbling block of which Paul warned against creating in 1 Corinthians in mind, I say that the trinitarian doctrines that Christians try to take to Jews and Muslims do nothing but cause a stumbling block for them to understand the Jewish scriptures from a Jewish perspective.

Hrm, and I gather that the Council of Nicaea called that a cop-out?
(I'm really asking, as I don't see this as a crucial doctrinal issue, but it apparently has implications I haven't sought to understand.)

If by cop-out you mean damnable heresy, perhaps. ;-) Hopefully what's written above will shed some light on the implications of certain doctrines.

but how does Modalism reconcile the mutex assertion with Gethsemane?

In Matthew 26:64, Jesus asserted that He'd be sitting at the right hand of power, which means that He was given authority by the Father. The gospels say that the Father is greater than the Son (John 10:25-30, 14:28). Paul picks up on this when Paul says in Philippians 2:5-11 that God the Father receives all the glory through Jesus the Messiah. We say that the fullness of the Godhead rested in Jesus (Colossians 2:9), but that the Father is greater than Him.

But ultimately I agree with you. I don't see such bickerings over doctrines like this to be crucial to anyone's faith. The big problem that I see is that it causes those with "weak consciences" to stumble and reject the Messiah.

The Jedi philosophy is very pantheistic, George admits this. He took bits from this and that to create it.

Creeds are just that...creeds. Statements of faith and prayers. Not necessarily what all the "believers" hold to, but something they all agree on.

I have to admit I'm think of things like the Apostolic creed and the Nicene creed. Which is logical because George admits to stealing things from Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism and just about any other ism out there with a good dollop of Joseph Campbell added in for flavor. :-)

" The distinction between pantheism (Eä == Eru, i.e., the Universe is God) and panentheism (i.e., God is the Cosmic All-in-All tha subsumes and pervades the Universe, surrounding and binding all its members) is very important to the Jedi."
Gadd, I wish you'd wax eloquent on /that/ for a bit! Not that it's been recurrent thought recently, but I've pondered it more than once without resolution.

Correct me if I'm seriously in error here: isn't a major part of Manichaeanism an absolute view of "good" and "evil"?

"According to the Manichaeans, the universe is pervaded by a hidden Light"
Beyond "rang-tong" (emptiness of self) there is "shen-tong" (emptiness of other). So we're left with a "very full emptiness" ... the nature of ultimate reality is emptiness, and its characteristic is luminosity.

*Next? grin*

1) "Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) Learning" is a lovely and timely meme; I was on my way from coffee pondering Wittgenstein et al, and their work on Principia, pondering the consequences of techne that dehumanizes ... dehumanizes how? by imposing simplistic decision procedures. Simplistic how? by the fact of their being ignorantly reduced? Ignorant how? Hubristically [??!!!], that is, with impunity.
A theory of technique and technology that is "fuzzy", I was thinking, might "feel" more human and might produce more humane results by involving the ... the ?what? ... the partial products that are so much a part of person-hood, i.e. we move from tenative plausibility to tentative plausibility (unless we're geniuses. but even then it's likely that we do something like reality testing ala praxis).
Next thing I know, "Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) Learning" ... you're a wizard, bill.

BTW, I really really really dislike citeseer ... it's a lovely service, but it too often swamps google.
see Computational Learning Theory (PDF) for my first usable hit on PAC theory. ("Pattern Classification is the textbook for that course.)

2)"... the question there is whether there is an external adversary[...] or whether being Eruhini and as such part of the body of the godhead ..."
Humbly I contend that neither is the case; there /is/ "try", and (as Martin Luther King Jr. put it) peace is not so much the goal as the means and method of attaining it ...
... to collapse ambiguity is, no doubt, fruitful. But, staying with this theme, I find it to be a Faustian proposition, i.e. the unanticipated consequences of the distributed middle give rise to situations which seem to command further reduction.

So saying: I have established connection, however tenuous, from the campus of Dalhousie University ... but it's unsafe and I am (very technically) in breach of etiquette; I /gotta/ get either a LAN account or a laptop!

nice to exchange notes with you
more to follow

CANA includes this:

"[Anakin]is told to trust his feelings,''you will be invincible''."

How sad ... much finer, methinks, the samurai who achieved the same end IRL knowing himself to be already dead. This talk of invincability is, for me, the stuff of cults, spoken only by cynical manipulators.
What heroism is there in battling with the certain knowledge of invicibality? this is the stuff of madness.

---

What is evil about Satan except what drives him to choose "ruling in Hell rather than serving in Heaven"? Spitefully immature, I'd call him!

"That's at least consonant with the Sith creed, and what I was getting at above."
Aha, I see.
I was just thinking ... if one /did/ conceive of oneself as invincible, that would almost invariably corrupt.

---

"Well, ultimate Evil has something of the ultimate in spiteful immaturity about it, IMO."
Yes ... just so ... something of hurt bewilderment in it, the 3-year old's tantrum on having its will countermanded, as though its world was falling apart.
We shouldn't underestimate the stress placed on the wicked by a requirement to do the good ... like sunshine to a vampire.

---

"Watashi mekusukyusu gozaimasu."
You honor me.

_{*}_

(Is this a bad moment to ask about RAM? *grin*)

p.s. I found your writing on pan/en/theism in Jedi. thanks.

mmmmnmnmnmn ... me forgets