Monsignor Pope Ping!
www.tinyurl.com/mindofthemaker
If Jesus says the Father is greater, shouldn’t we take Jesus at his word?
According to Pope (and I agree with this explanation) ;
"Theologically, Jesus means that the Father is the eternal source in the Trinity. All three persons of the Trinity are co-eternal, co-equal, and equally divine. But the Father is the Principium Deitatis (the Source in the Deity)."
" Hence, Jesus proceeds from the Father from all eternity. He is eternally begotten of the Father. In effect, Jesus is saying, “I delight that the Father is the eternal principle or source of my being, even though I have no origin in time.”
"Devotionally, Jesus is saying that He always does what pleases His Father. Jesus loves His Father; He’s crazy about Him. He is always talking about Him and pointing to Him. By calling the Father greater, He says (in effect), “I look to my Father for everything. I do what I see Him doing (Jn 5:19) and what I know pleases Him (Jn 5:30). His will and mine are one. What I will to do proceeds from Him. I do what I know accords with His will.”
In short ... it's a mystery mathematically unexplainable (OUR fallible minds cannot make one plus pne equal two with this divine mystery)
YOUR response should be (as mine IS .. ) ...
yup !
Too many people (watch this thread do it .. ) can't help but add; "In other words ... " .... words
Jn 14:28 Greater
Word: meizwn
Pronounce: mide’-zone
Strongs Number: G3187
Orig: irregular comparative of 3173; larger (literally or figuratively, specially, in age):—elder, greater(-est), more. G3173
Use: Adjective
Heb Strong:
1) greater, larger, elder, stronger
Good morning.
It’s no accident that water has three states of matter.
5.56mm
It’s because the “Trinity” is a non-biblical document that was in part coerced by an emperor and finally established by Government edict, jailing and murdering of dissadents, and the threat of capital punishment.
Hardly, the manner which Christ established his truths.
Any doctrine that was established by capital punishment/murder, and the continued threat of such was NOT established from/by Jesus Christ.
bump
Because humility and modesty are virtues, and the source of all virtue is...?
The Trinity is different states or forms of the same spiritual entity of greater than 3 dimensions that is able to evolve by a dialectical process into the different states or forms that look and act differnet when it enters our 3 dimensional space.
I also can see that the Bible is clear about the hierarchy of authority of the trinity (See Jesus with the Centurion)
Some words from “Isaiah”
43:10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.
43:11 I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.
Even God denies the existence of a “saviour”.
St. Augustine and the Seashell, by Dr. Marian Horvat
The great Doctor of the Church St. Augustine of Hippo spent over 30 years working on his treatise De Trinitate [about the Holy Trinity], endeavoring to conceive an intelligible explanation for the mystery of the Trinity.
St Augustine with the boy on the beach
Augustine meets a boy on the beach
He was walking by the seashore one day contemplating and trying to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity when he saw a small boy running back and forth from the water to a spot on the seashore. The boy was using a sea shell to carry the water from the ocean and place it into a small hole in the sand.
The Bishop of Hippo approached him and asked, “My boy, what are doing?”
“I am trying to bring all the sea into this hole,” the boy replied with a sweet smile.
“But that is impossible, my dear child, the hole cannot contain all that water” said Augustine.
The boy paused in his work, stood up, looked into the eyes of the Saint, and replied, “It is no more impossible than what you are trying to do – comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your small intelligence.”
The Saint was absorbed by such a keen response from that child, and turned his eyes from him for a short while. When he glanced down to ask him something else, the boy had vanished.
Some say that it was an Angel sent by God to teach Augustine a lesson on pride in learning. Others affirm it was the Christ Child Himself who appeared to the Saint to remind him of the limits of human understanding before the great mysteries of our Faith.
Through this story, the sea shell has become a symbol of St. Augustine and the study of theology.
great & comments
Our Spirit is in the Body of Jesus, in heaven instantly as we trust Jesus as Savior. The Holy Spirit takes the place of our Spirit to be our friend and teacher/comforter. Our soul is left here to be sanctified and our bodies will die to be replaced with an eternal glorified body. The fight for our soul should be our main goal on earth, but The Bible tells us He will finish the work He started either way. We will receive a new body upon entering the heavenly realm. There is much discussion about whether or not our bodies will be taken or left in the Rapture, but IMHO, our empty bodies will be left on the ground to be replaced with the glorified one leaving those left behind thinking there was mass death here on Earth.
There is but one God in multiple forms. God appeared to us as a burning bush, a cloud, pillar of fire, Melchizedek, the "Angel" left with Abraham at Sodom and Gomorrah, The "Angel" with Gideon, ect. "The Angel of the Lord" spoken of many times was always capitalized and in various subsequent verses referred to as "Lord". It was in fact God in angelic form. You can always tell God from an angel, as the angel always told the seer not to worship him. Jesus was God in the fleshly form. God is Spirit, but can be any form He chooses. Our final form will be to live in Heaven with God as the angels do now.
Is Satan an angel, an evil spirit, or a snake? In the final days, we will see a Beast, a false prophet, and an evil spirit as the counterfeit of the Holy Triune. It's all evil, and connected, however. Explaining Spiritual things to the flesh has always proven difficult. There have always been splits in the Body over some of these things. If a Muslim were to capture you, you should be able to explain that you worship one God, but if you insist on having 3, you will lose your head. John 17 makes it perfectly clear that Jesus and the Father are ONE. There is but one God, but in 3 forms. Please don't say we have 3 Gods. Just as we have ice, water, and steam, it's all H2O. If you ask a chemist what the symbol for ice is, it will still be H2O.
Jesus is God. But while walking the earth in flesh, He suffered being tempted. God the Father (Spirit) cannot be tempted and is therefore “greater” in that respect.
“Three realities pertain to God: essence, energy, and the triad of divine hypostases. As we have seen, those privileged to be united to God so as to become one spirit with Him - as St. Paul said, ‘He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit with Him’ (I Cor. 6:17) - are not united to God with respect to His essence, since all theologians testify that with respect to His essence God suffers no participation.
Moreover, the hypostatic union is fulfilled only in the case of the Logos, the God-man.
Thus those privileged to attain union with God are united to Him with respect to His energy; and the ‘spirit’, according to which they who cleave to God are one with Him, is and is called the uncreated energy of the Holy Spirit, but not the essence of God....” St. Gregory Palamas (Topics of Natural and Theological Science no. 75, The Philokalia
Your comments on this article, if you have time. Thanks.
Well; if you actually read the Book...
Philippians 2:7
"but emptied himself (ekenoosen), taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." RSV
on the other end of the Book; we find, "...you will be like gods..."