Posted on 05/24/2016 6:49:46 AM PDT by Salvation
Many of you know that I write the Question and Answer column for Our Sunday Visitor. Given the celebration of Trinity Sunday this past Sunday, I thought I might reproduce here on the blog a question/answer regarding the Trinity. It is a fairly common question; perhaps you have it, too. Remember that my answers in the column are required to be brief.
We read in a recent Sunday Gospel (May 1, 2016) that Jesus says that the Father is greater than He (Jn 14:28). Since we are all taught that each Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity fully possesses the nature of God, equally to be adored and glorified, what did Jesus mean by such a statement?” – Dick Smith, Carrolton, TX.
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.”
So although the members of the Trinity are all equal in dignity, there are processions in the Trinity, such that the Father is the source, the Son eternally proceeds from Him (Jn 8:42), and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one principal (Jn 15:26).
St Thomas speaks poetically of the Trinity as follows:
Genitori, Genitoque … Procedenti ab utroque … compar sit laudautio
(To the One Who Begets, and to the Begotton One, and to the One who proceeds from them both, be equal praise.)
The Athanasian Creed says the following regarding these processions:
The Father is made by none, neither created nor begotten.
The Son is of the Father alone, neither made nor created, but begotten.
The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son, not made, nor created, nor begotten, but he proceeds from them.
So although equal, processions do have an order. The Father is “greater” (as source), but is equal in dignity to Son and Holy Spirit.
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I was BORN an agnostic.
Then I learned better.
(Nice number BTW)
I’ll get your little dog; too!
The book that Rome assembled proves your statement to be wrong:
These WERE Catholic; right?
They WERE in error; Right??
Whosoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary shall receive signal graces.
Oooops!
Could be an artifact of the photographic process.
We've all seen wheels that appear to rotate backward in movies and on TV.
Notice the letters on the wing?
It’s an AIRBUS!
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Airbus+A400M+Atlas&FORM=IRBPRS&=0
Human being within the church make the decisions. Without people, there is no church.
Explain to me how an institution can exist without the people in it.
Is there a computer some where? Some kind of entity called Catholicism, which is sentient and makes those decisions without human involvement?
This is the key issue, and demonstrates how protesting against one holy catholic apostolic church misses the mark and fails.
The MARY supercomputer was conceived and built at the Italian IBM plant in Milano in the 3rd and 4th century.
It became fully operational on 15 August 600.
Once operational; it was moved to Rome.
The Multiply Accessed ReligionEngine - version Y has the most advanced error checking and correcting algorithms known to man.
It has never been proven to be wrong in any of it's calculations.
As proof of it's power, just one of it's subroutines can handle at least 139 data requests per second; while calculations indicate that this could go 100 times faster.
From time to time, new upgrades are installed that promise great and glorious things from MAR-Y.
The angel told John to 'protest' against seven Catholic churches in Asia.
Your conclusion does not flow from this promise.
The power to bind and loose refers to both formal judicial binding/loosing judgments as well as spiritual binding/loosing, and is nothing new (see below), and was not unique to Peter but was afforded to the other 11 apostles, as well as to the church and believers overall, as seen in Mt. 18:15-20.
Mt. 18:15-17 deals with formal judicial magisterial judgments in union with the church, and which contextually is about judicially settling personal disputes (though in principal it can extend beyond that). And which is nothing new, but which flows from the Old Testament, in which matters in judgment, "between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gates," that were too hard to be settled locally, were to be settled by the Levites and the sitting judge. (Deuteronomy 17:8-12) And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die: and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:12)
The power of binding and loosing is also provided for husbands as regards their wives: "Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void...But if he shall any ways make them void after that he hath heard them; then he shall bear her iniquity." (Numbers 30:13,16) And which likewise applies to fathers over unmarried daughters. (Num. 30:1-5)
Even secular authorities can be said to have binding and loosing power, judging one to be bound in his guilt or loosed from it and the penalty thereof. (Lk. 12:58,59; Rm. 13:1-7) Thus the Lord Jesus affirmed that Pilate had power from God to crucify Christ or to loose Him, (John 19:10) and enjoined conditional obedience to the Scribes and Pharisees who sat in the seat of Moses. (Mt. 23:2) However, this authority obviously did not require or infer that all that those who have the power to bind and loose possess ensured infallibility, so that what they bind/loose on earth results in the same in Heaven.
For the "Whatsoever" of "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth..." in Mt. 18;18 is subject to conformity with the word and will of God, as is the "any thing" in the binding/loosing promised in the next verse: "if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven." (Matthew 18:19) Likewise, And all things, "whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." (Matthew 21:22) As such must be consistent with Christ: "If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it." (John 14:14)
Therefore, rather than the autocratic power that the Roman magisterium uniquely presumes ensured infallibility (which some hold applies to papal elections, and such statements as consign all who dissent from Rome to the lake of fire), instead, both the validity of magisterial judgments and spiritual binding/loosing are subject to what Scripture teaches. However, consistent with this binding/loosing power Peter judged Ananias and Saphira as guilty of a capital crime: "How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out." (Acts 5:9)
And Paul, in union with a local church, bound an impenitent incestuous man: "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." (1 Corinthians 5:4-5)
And likewise exhorted the church to loose the man from his chastisement by dropping the charges: "Sufficient to such a man is this punishment, which was inflicted of many...So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow...To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also: for if I forgave any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ." (2 Corinthians 2:6,7,10) Moreover, in addition to formal judicial magisterial judgments in union with the church, (Mt. 18:15-17; 1Co. 5:4,5; 2 Cor. 2:7,10; cf. Dt. 17;8-13) there is also spiritual binding and loosing which is available to all believers.
For "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth.." goes with the next verse, "that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name," (Matthew 18:18-20) and which certainly is not restricted to the magisterium, but includes all such as have Elijah-type fervent faith and prayer, who bound the Heavens by his prayers for 3.5 years and loosed them. (James 5:14-18)
Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. (James 5:17-18)
And the proceeding context in which James states this was is in regards to obtaining forgiveness of sins, such as being delivered from chastisement for them via the intercession of elders (not called "priests"), but the only place in the NT which exhorts confession of sins is not toward a distinctive class of sacerdotal Catholic priests but is toward each other:
Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (James 5:16)
Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins. (James 5:19-20)
But as with other examples of binding/loosing this does not translate into promising that whatever the Catholic magisterium (uniquely) decrees will be God's word and will when doing so in accordance with her scope and subject-based criteria. That is what you must defend, which Mt 16+18 nor anything else simply does not teach.
Does that miss the mark?
Is that what catholicism teaches?
“How can this be? Chronologically children are younger than their parents.”
You’re making the mistake of anthropomorphizing a deity. You cannot assume rules that apply to humans apply to God. God exists outside of time, because time is a creation of His. Therefore, God is not bound by time in the way that we are, so we cannot make those kind of assumptions about Him.
I thought we were done with these threads. Sad.
You already had my take; I posted the Nicean Creed as the road map, to which you declined to assent. I trust that Verga assents to the Creed, as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is what the Catholic Church teaches.
And to be clear....what you posted was the creed from the First Council of Constantinople in 381 which was a considerable modification to the First Council of Nicea in 325.
Actually, verga is in opposition to the First Council of Nicea (325) when he posts "When God came into existence there was nothing else all was void." and "When the second being instantly became sentient there was no longer the void, There was only the "Father.""
From the Council of Nicea 325:
[But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance' or 'essence,' or 'The Son of God is created,' or 'changeable,' or 'alterable'— they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.]
No wonder he's been strangely quiet on this.
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