Posted on 06/14/2006 8:05:55 AM PDT by NYer
We believe in the Blessed Trinity because we believe in Jesus, Who revealed the Trinity. God had prepared the Jews not only to welcome the Messiah, but to recognize through revelation what philosophers like Aristotle achieved through reason: that there is a God and there can only be one God.
Moses said to the Jews, “Acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other but to believe in God Who is the only God.” When the Messiah finally came, He revealed a huge mystery that went far beyond what the Jews were expecting: that the one God in Whom they believe is not solitary, but a unity, a communion of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that the Messiah is the Son.
He told them explicitly that the Father and He are one (Jn 10:30). He told them that He and the Father would send the Holy Spirit (Jn 14:26, Jn 15:26). And when He sent them out to baptize in the name of God, He didn’t give them instructions to baptize in the “names” of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit — as if they were three different gods — but in the “name,” for they are fundamentally a union of three persons. This is what the term Trinity means. It was devised by the early Church apologist Tertullian around the year 200 from the Latin words “unitas” and “trinus,” literally “unity” and “three.” It signifies that there is a unity of three persons in one God.
Since the beginning of the Church, theologians have spent their lives trying to penetrate this mystery and explain it to others. St. Patrick used the image of a three-leaf clover. St. Augustine used the image of the mind, with memory, reason and will. More recent minds have used the image of H20, which can exist as ice, water, or steam. But none of these analogies — though interesting and somewhat helpful — do justice to the reality of the mystery of how three persons can exist in the one God.
When St. Augustine was in the middle of his voluminous and classic study of the Blessed Trinity, he took a walk along the beach in northern Africa to try to clear his head and pray. He saw a young girl repeatedly filling a scallop shell with sea water and emptying it into a hole she had dug in the sand. “What are you doing?” Augustine tenderly asked. “I'm trying to empty the sea into this hole,” the child replied. “How do you think that with a little shell,” Augustine retorted, “you can possibly empty this immense ocean into a tiny hole?” The little girl countered, “And how do you, with your small head, think you can comprehend the immensity of God?” As soon as the girl said this, she disappeared, convincing Augustine that she had been an angel sent to teach him an important lesson: No matter how gifted God had made him, he would never be able to comprehend fully the mystery of the Trinity.
This, of course, does not mean we cannot understand anything. If we want to get to the heart of the mystery of the Trinity, we can turn to the most theological of the Apostles, who meditated deeply on all that Jesus had revealed and, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said simply and synthetically, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:16). For God to be love, He has to love someone. None of us can love in a vacuum; there must always be an object of our love. Who is the object of God’s love? It cannot be man, or the created world, or the universe, because all of these existed in time and God is eternal and therefore existed before time.
It’s also impossible to say that God merely loved Himself in a solitary way, because this would not really be love but a form of egotism and narcissism. For God to be love, there needed to be an eternal relationship of love, with one who loves, one who is loved, and the love that unites them. This is what exists in the Blessed Trinity: The Father loved His image, the Son, so much that their mutual and eternal love “spirated” or “generated” the Holy Spirit. They exist in a communion of love. The three persons of the Blessed Trinity are united in absolutely everything except, as the early Church councils said, their “relations of origin,” what it means to be Father, what it means to be Son of the Father, and what it means to proceed from the Father and the Son.
These theological insights about the blessed Trinity may seem theoretical, but they become highly practical when we reflect on the fact that we have been made in the image and likeness of God and called to communion with God. To be in the image and likeness of God means to be created in the image and likeness of a communion of persons in love. Our belief in the Trinity — the central teaching of the Catholic faith — has given the Church the deepest understanding available to human beings of the nature of man, the meaning of human life, and what it means to love.
Marker, just a place marker
There are four requirements for an infallible teaching:
What about your "traditions and philosophers"??
Just yesterday I saw a post from you effusively praising some article someone had posted by Erich someone or other. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that Erich individual wasn't an Apostle, didn't write under inspiration, and none of his writings appear in Scripture.
Do they???
You all -- fundamentalist Protestants in general -- must take us Catholics for blind fools, because when you talk to us, it's "the Bible, the Bible, I only follow the Bible" but when you think our backs our turned, you follow the words of men you think are "godly" just as much as we do!
The difference is that our tradition comes from Christ and the Apostles, and your tradition is one you picked because you liked it better.
Their explanation is that their traditions are actually from the Holy Spirit which prevents them from doctrinal error, so no further discussion is meaningful.
I do not acknowledge your "traditions" or fabricated "apostolic tradition" since it too is unBiblical.
I disagree. I think Sola Scriptura is unBiblical, and Sola Fide is AGAINST the Bible.
No, I am NOT Catholic by any stretch of the imagination. It would be impossible for me to be Catholic. My beliefs are from the Bible. Catholic beliefs pick and chose from the Bible and add to it.
You are Catholic and you don't realize it, to the degree that we share common beliefs, such as Jesus Christ is our Savior, a Catholic belief...
Regards
Matthew 1:25 "But he (Joseph) had no union with her UNTIL she gave birth to a son."
Come on now. Why is it so hard to believe that Joseph and Mary enjoyed lots and lots of lawfully wedded SEX (after Jesus was born) and bore other children. For the life of me I cannot figure out why the RCC is so hung up about sex to begin with. Because Augustine mistakenly associated it with the curse the RCC has had to invent a fairy tale revolving around Mary's perpetual virginity and assumption. Oh but wait, we can't question it because it's "official" teaching and therefore undeniable. Something as important as this nonesense STILL being passed off as divine truth would not have been missed by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, or even Paul. Of course, one could say the same thing about a whole host of other uniquely Roman doctrines which require one to suspend reason and sound judgment.
The Roman Catholic Church isn't the only church that believes in Mary's perpetual virginity. The Eastern Orthodox Churches believe it as well. So you can't say it's a "uniquely Roman doctrine" (in fact, some of the Orthodox would consider that to be an insult). And the teaching has less to do with sex, than it does with Mary being the New Ark of the Covenant.
[34] Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
And nothing about Mary being a perpetual virgin here! Mary is questioning HOW she could be pregnant since she has NOT had sex with a man. She conceived with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is absolutely NOTHING about being a perpetual virgin stated here or even HINTED AT. NOTHING. It's rather straight forward what's going on here.
She took NO VOWS of VIRGINITY. No where does she state that or is it required by anyone. You have been fooled. Simply READ what she stated. There are NO hidden innuendos here. Her question makes perfect sense when she has NOT slept with a man. If I were her, I'd be asking too - how can I conceive when I haven't had sex with a man.
Funny how the advocates of "straight forward" and "common sense" reading of Scripture can't even see the ridiculousness of the arguments they put forth.
Riddle me this: If you were a regular young lady two weeks from her wedding night, and an angel said "you will conceive a child" would you be befuddled as to how this could happen?
Either Mary has no knowledge whatsoever about where babies come from and what actions make a girl conceive, or something else is going on.
Think for just a minute about this exchange.
In all the history of the world not one person had ever been born without engaging in sexual relations. People do this after they are married. God had foretold the birth of babies before. He told Abraham and Sarah they would have a son. Sarah didn't say "but how can this be?"
She knew how this be.
So, was Mary so ignorant of human reproduction that she was bedazzled by the idea that after she got married she might have a baby? Or is something else going on?
The facile, glossed over Protestant "nothing going on here" interpretation does not make any sense. Maybe the writer of Sacred Scripture left out the part where the angel explained the birds and the bees to Mary?
SD
Riddle me this: If you were a regular young lady two weeks from her wedding night, and an angel said "you will conceive a child" would you be befuddled as to how this could happen?
Was Mary 'two weeks' from her wedding night ?
Were there even any wedding plans in the works ?
Jewish betrothals can last a long time ... even years.
Timeframe is irrelevant. Utterly.
Argue to the point, please. A woman expecting to be married should not express shock and awe at being told she will conceive a child. The angel speaks in the future tense.
Had the angel said "Girl, you are pregnant now" one might expect the "how can this be?" response.
But that's not how Scripture is written. The angel tells a girl who, according to Protestant lore, is a normal girl getting ready to be married and have 8 kids, that she will conceive a child.
In what way does her response make any sense in this context? Any sense. Please explain. Had an angel told my wife before our wedding that she would conceive a child, she wouldn't be confused and perplexed about how this could happen.
SD
On the first, we can and do work together. The problem is that the issues that separated us way back have not been addressed (or can't be addressed), and that we no longer speak the same theological language our forefathers did. Hence we have threads like these, where everyone chases each other round and round and never really gets down to the basic assumptions that cause us problems.
On the second point, you are right. Cicero said that no society has ever rescued itself from decline after the decline started. Things are only going to get worse, and the best we can hope is to preserve some part of the culture for the next generation.
Why is it so difficult for some to comprehend how incredibly ABNORMAL the Holy Family was? When you are entrusted with the earthly care of God, the norms of culture are probably the furthest thing from your mind.
Every translation of the Bible contains Mary's prounouncement, "All generations shall call me Blessed." However, this is totally ignored by those who claim "sola scriptura" as their guide. They refuse to refer to the Holy Mother as Blessed and instead diminish her importance to being nothing more than a "normal" Jewish girl.
If the sola scriptura crowd is to be believed, the fact that Jesus was specifically called rabbi then he must have been married as all "normal" rabbis were and are. But of course they don't believe this because this cannot be used to condemn Catholicism.
Was Mary 'two weeks' from her wedding night ? Were there even any wedding plans in the works ? Jewish betrothals can last a long time ... even years.
Timeframe is irrelevant. Utterly.
Of course timeframe is relevant.
Was she weeks away from marriage ... or ... who knows when ?
If Joseph had not yet initiated the actual wedding preparation (which, of itself, could be a year-long process), ... then Mary would have no reason to expect to be married soon ... or to bear a child.
It could be that something about the angel's delivery caused Mary to expect a sooner, rather than a later, fulfillment.
In any case, any of these explanations make more sense than the Catholic one ...... that both Mary and Joseph took vows of celibacy (nowhere recorded in the scripture) ... but were betrothed to be married anyway.
Every translation of the Bible contains Mary's prounouncement, "All generations shall call me Blessed."
And Mary was blessed ... to bear the Saviour of mankind.
Noone denies this.
Okay, you picked up a Bible all by yourself and figured out the Trinity when the word isn't even in the Bible.
I think a more likely scenario is that a pastor, from whatever denomination you adhere to, explained it to you and you used the Bible to back up what the man said.
Deny it all you want, it is the Catholic Church that called it the Trinity, helped to define it so it is better understood.
If it is so easily discerned as you claim, then you better toss out the story of Philip and the Eunuch.
"And Philip running thither, heard him reading the prophet Isaias. And he said: Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou readest?
"Who said: And how can I, unless some man shew me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.
Sorry, but it's not relevant. How many years did God take to give Sarah a child? Yet she knew that He meant the child would come about through marital relations. She didn't ask "how can this be?"
The time frame does not matter. The facts are Mary was betrothed and any normal girl in that situation would not question how a baby could come to be conceived in her.
It could be that something about the angel's delivery caused Mary to expect a sooner, rather than a later, fulfillment.
That's a possible, sensible answer. But it still doesn't explain Mary's answer that she "knows not" man. She doesn't say she has not known a man (past tense), but that she does not (present and continuing).
"I have not eaten meat" is different from "I do not eat meat."
SD
Because Father, Son and Spirit are in The Bible Genesis to Revelation . . .
And because The Son has revealed and introduced The Father, Himself and His Spirit, to us as we have sought Him first and foremost.
The perpetual virginity? A sinless Mary?
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Scripture vs traditions and doctrines of men is no contest with me.
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