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.
I beg to differ. Jesus had a brother named James. The epistle James is the same. See Galatians 1:19.
Arrowhead>>>----->
Nowhere in his epistle does James identify himself as a brother of our Lord, or the son of Mary or Joseph.
It is interesting to note that in his epistle, Jude identifies himself as the brother of James.
The term brother and sister was used very loosely in Jewish culture, that is why for formal recognition, the term "son of" (bar) was always used and no person other than our Lord is called the son of Mary or Joseph.
Adam and Eve had free will before the Fall, they just never exercised it. So, yes, Mary had free will, but she never acted upon it. And the Lord did save her from sin, at the moment of her conception, that's what the term Immaculate Conception means.
Please note that the genealogy says: "Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Messiah."
Exactly. Which meant that in order for Jesus to be heir to the throne of David he had to be the firstborn son of Joseph. And if Joseph had any other children after that, then Mary had to have been their mother. So the conclusion is that if Jesus had any brothers or sisters (as the scriptures clearly state he did) then unless they were all immaculately conceived, then Mary obviously was not a perpetual virgin.
Except that it all get a little tricky when you consider the unquestionable fact that Jesus was not actually the son of Joseph.
then unless they were all immaculately conceived, then Mary obviously was not a perpetual virgin.
I meant to add that the term Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with Mary being conceived in a nonsexual matter.
Also, please show me where any person in the Bible other than Jesus is called a son or daughter of Mary or Joseph, or any person who calls themself a brother of Jesus. And why does Jude call himself a brother of James?
Speculation again. Note if you go through the genealogy, you see that all are the father of so-and-so or became the father of so-and-so. Except with Jesus. The genealogy only says "of her was born Jesus who is called the Messiah".
A woman without brothers can inherit forever if I believe a curse was placed on the line from David Y'shua will inherit David's throne only through Miriam
b"shem Y'shua
based on the exception made for daughters of Zelophehad.
see Numbers 27. Joseph was of the house of David
she marries a man from the same tribe as her own.
through Joseph.
Is not in the Holy Word of G-d!
b'shem Y'shua
Legally he was. Matthew's gospel presents Jesus as King. His birthright for that position came through the line of Joseph.
Since the dawn of time there has been a conclusive presumption that any child born during a marriage is the legitimate and rightful son of the Husband (whether he actually is or not).
Matthew's geneaolgy establishes Jesus' legal and legitimate right to the throne of David. If Joseph was a widower and had children from a prior marriage, then Jesus would not have been the rightful heir to the throne of David and hence he could not be the legitimate Messiah of Israel.
There are some who suggest that Joseph was not actually married to Mary at the time of Jesus birth (that they were only engaged). That would have made Jesus an illegitimate child and thus would have made him ineligible to ascend to the throne of David. Jesus was the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary. Joseph could not have had any children before that or they would have owned the birthright to Christ's position on the Throne of David.
Can you locate for me the posts where Catholics (or Orthodox) have put forth this notion that sex is "icky" and that's why Mary is a perpetual virgin?
Building strawmen and then knocking them down doesn't make of one a great scholar.
SD
You should study Catholicism sometime.
Joseph is often lauded for his chastity.
SD
Because James was also Jesus' brother.
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. (Mark 6:3 KJV)
Neither are any of these terms:
Trinity
Dispensationalism
Rapture
Sola Fide
Sola Scriptura
Is it not chastity to have no sex outside of marriage. Is it not chaste to only have sexual relations with your wife? Is not the marriage bed undefiled?
So you acknowledge that nowhere in scripture is anyone other than Jesus referred to as the son of either Mary or Joseph.
Further you acknowledge that two men who you claim were brothers of Jesus and later wrote epistles never said that they were brothers of Jesus.
And why is it that Jesus at the Crucifixion chose to dishonor his "brothers" by entrusting His Mother to the care of John?
Why don't you try answering the more serious phrasing I used in post #219:
Incidentally, the same Platonism that says that having sex within marriage would degrade Mary also gave rise to the various Gnostic heresies that said that Yeshua couldn't be fully God and fully Man all at once, for surely God, being a pure Spirit, would never degrade Himself enough to become flesh!Or post #197:
I don't deny her her due. She was the most blessed of women as the mother of the Messiah, of God Incarnate. A Roman Catholic, bound to the Platonism of his faith, might think that having normal marital relations with her proper husband is somehow a stain on Miryam's reputation, but the Jewish mind is under no such delusion. On the contrary, that she brought forth other children, brothers (like Ya'akov [James] and Y'hudah [Jude]) and sisters to the Messiah Yeshua who were righteous and honorable men and who, in fact, ran the Jerusalem Church for over a century is not a stain on her reputation, but a very great honor, second only to the honor of having given birth to the King Himself!When you can manage to come up with a serious counter-argument--like, say, providing the historical sources to prove that "virgin marriages" were a first-century Jewish convention, per my request in post #197, or explaining why even Roman Catholicism recognizes the incomplete status of a marriage without consumation in response to my argument in post #176--give me a ping. But don't waste my time or yours with such vain straining out a gnat of a logical fallacy in an instance where I'm obviously being purposefully trite while you swallow the camel of a Jewish marriage not involving sex.
If you have something that says "the other sons and daughters of Mary" or "the other sons and daughters of Joseph" I would be very interested in seeing it. The Church, both East and West, those that spoke Greek and even those that spoke Aramaic, continuously have taught that Mary was ever-virgin.
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