The difference between philosophy and religion

The original korean text: http://blog.naver.com/stevision/50025322264

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(donga.com's netizen forum, Jun. 22, 2004)

 

 

Philosophy is a study about wisdom. Philosophy itself means 'love of wisdom.' People explored the nature with wisdom. And they, using their wisdom, thought about the God. They thought with it about human relationships. The result of these thoughts is philosophy. People thought philosophically about gods and thought them to be the omnipotent, the being itself, the infinite wisdom, the Idea. But the god contrived philosophically like that was without exception an omnipotent god with one person. (Here a person is the subject of personality of a mental being.) The reason was that such a god was thought out with human wisdom. There were, of course, polytheistic philosophers. Polytheism as such ranks in somewhat lower religion, I think.

 

Then what kind of God in religion, especially in Christianity did people think out? The God of Christianity is not a God created by man's wisdom. In the Old Testament, generally the God of Christianity revealed himself as a monotheistic God of one person, that is a God of one subject, that is an ego. He was such a God as Judaists of present Israel believe in. But, ever since Jesus as the starting point, the God of the Old Testament has revealed himself as the God of Trinity! Therefore the doctrine of Trinity didn't come out of man's philosophical thought, but men, having met the God of eternal Trinity in actual history, named him Trinity in human language. This God is never a God who was invented by the thoughts of several theologians. But as it was, they experienced the true God, and the conclusion from the experience was that he was the God of Trinity! (The God of Trinity is the God who has three persons, or three divine subjects, namely the three owners of subjectivity. In the one God, unlike a human being, are three Is(I, the Father, I, the Son, and I, the Spirit), that is to say three divine egoes.) The true God revealed himself gradually from the monotheistic God to the Trinity. The reason was that the intelligence of man was limited and that it was convenient for Him to reveal Himself so by degrees, while saving the mankind.

 

Therefore philosophers who haven't met such God can not comprehend the Trinity. And they do not admit Jesus who is one of the three persons of Trinity to be the God. This is the fundamental difference between religion(Christianity) and philosophy as to the God-issue.