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To: drstevej
Who proceeds from the Father and the Mother ????

Explain you reasoning for that question on a patriarch thead?

6 posted on 08/12/2002 8:50:53 PM PDT by restornu
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To: restornu; drstevej
DrStevej,

Based on Sola Scriptura, restornu's religion regarding the Trinity is correct:

The doctrine of the Trinity: Once a Christian has the doctrine of the Trinity, Scripture can be found to support it, but no verse or combination of verses in Scripture tells us that there is one God in Three Persons, each Person wholly and entirely God, all co-equal, co-eternal, and possessing the divine nature totally unto Himself, the Godhead having but one divine intellect and one divine will.

The Holy Spirit is one of the three Persons of the Trinity: Certainly Scripture can be found which tells us the Holy Spirit is God (e.g., Acts 5:3-4), but nowhere does it say that God consists of more than one Person. Numerous early heresies concerning the Holy Spirit arose both because the canon of Scripture was not yet fully defined and because those elements of Scripture that were recognized were simply not all that clear on how the Holy Spirit fit into the Godhead.

Jesus Christ as true God and true Man: Scripture is essentially silent on the true nature, or rather natures, of Christ. Scripture says Jesus Christ is God; Scripture says Jesus Christ is human; Scripture says Jesus Christ is like us in all things but sin. But nowhere does Scripture say how or when all of this fits together. Was He this way from the moment of conception, or did His divinity descend upon Him at the baptism by John?

The idea that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man, having the fullness of the divine nature and a complete human nature, was only finally settled by the Magisterium at the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. He was known to be God from the moment of conception because Ephesus (431 A.D.) declared Mary to be Mother of God in order to clarify that very point. The doctrine of Jesus’ dual natures was laid out at Chalcedon in 451 A.D.

Jesus Christ shares the same nature as God the Father: The Arian heresy, one of the toughest heresies the Church has ever faced, was fought over precisely this point. Arius had many passages of Scripture to support his position that Christ is the highest of all created beings, but not God, while his opponent, Athanasius, had an equally compelling case from Scripture asserting that Jesus Christ is truly God. As the debate progressed, the majority of bishops vacillated between the two sides.

The declaration that Jesus was consubstantial with the Father, not just of nature “like unto” the Father (as Arius asserted), but actually of the same substance as the Father, was only won after Athanasius appealed to apostolic Tradition to prove that his formula expressed the true faith handed down to the bishops from the apostles. As a result, the First Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) formulated what we now call the Nicene Creed, including in it the first unscriptural word ever used in a creed, “homoousious,” which means “of the same substance as” or “one in being with."...

...Yet we can only interpret Scripture properly by listening to the Church, our Mother and Teacher. We who are the children of God need the gentle “home-schooling” of our Mother, who instructs us with Jesus’ authority, if we are to learn the full truth of our Father’s saving plan.

9 posted on 08/12/2002 9:08:37 PM PDT by Polycarp
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