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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Yes, thank you! After all, belief in logic as “truth” can be considered heresy in itself. That is rationalism, not Christianity. ‘Cogito ergo sum’ is not the motto of a Christian! Nor is Jeffersonian democracy a principle of the Faith.
The Kindergarten Katholicism of Msgr Pope (and scores of blog and konference priests like him) dumbs down the faith when it erroneously asserts the “equality” of the Trinity in a misleading effort to simplify; does revelation fit into a catchy 2000-word blog post that resembles paint-by-numbers more than theology? Or is that degradation justified for the sake of a palatable pastoral lollipop to people who cannot hope to understand Aquinas, Kierkegaard or von Balthasar?
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
In what sense did we come from heaven?
Would it be accurate to say that you do not believe Christ is God; you don’t believe in the divinity of Christ?
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No, it would be inaccurate to make the statement you made in your question above. You apparently haven’t read the rest of my comments in this post, I thought I made myself clear but for you I’ll try again. God The Father who with His Son created Heaven and Earth has a name, it is Elohim. His Son who is also God has a name it is Jesus Christ, there is a third member of this group of gods that we call The Holy Ghost, we have no other revealed name for Him.
The three mentioned above are Gods, but there is one God we pray to, His name is Elohim, we worship and praise all three members of the Godhead but there is one of those members who is the leader and the others are subject to Him and do His will. God, The Father of our souls is God. God Jesus Christ is the very Son of God The Father and was begotten of The Father so that He is in fact The Son of God.
The God Jesus Christ has now inherited all the powers and dominions of His Father, there is nothing that His Father has that He doesn’t have, He is God.
God Jesus Christ agreed to come to earth, partake of what mortal life was, agreed to be subject to temptations, illness, pain and suffering. He did that but although subject to all those things resisted those things so that He was perfect. His literal Father of His flesh was Elohim, my God, your God and His God. Because He did as His Father asked, because He did not succumb to temptation He was perfect in mortality. Because He was the literal Son of God in The Flesh He was not killed but gave up His life, He gave up His spirit to His Father who gave it.
Because He was perfect even though He suffered all the pains and agony of every soul on earth He can offer to take the punishment that all the rest of us deserve.
One day we will all stand before the judgment seat of God The Father, even Elohim and He will judge us. It won’t be The Holy Ghost or even Christ Jesus we stand before but The very Eternal Father. When we are judged we will be found to be imperfect. Only perfection can abide with The Father, the punishment for imperfection is death and separation from God. Because many have tried to follow Christ, they have loved Him and considered themselves His, because of this and because He loves us He will stand before God the Father and say “You have already punished me, I stood in for him, he is mine”, and we will be His forever in the same place He is. More than that He says we will inherit everything that He has inherited.
Just as a prince inherits the throne of his father Christ inherits the throne of His Father. Christ has not had that throne forever but has inherited it, He has made that very clear, you don’t inherit something you already have.
The only name ever given us to gain salvation is Jesus Christ, we must love Him and follow Him to partake of that salvation. That salvation will not come by uttering a few words such as “I believe Christ is God”. It is not our belief that makes us acceptable to Christ for even Satan knows Christ is God the Son of God and it does him no good.
I try to follow Him to the best of my ability, I love Him and hopefully my actions and all that I do show that. Still I am far from perfection. I will need His grace that he has so unselfishly offered to me and others in order to live with Him and be His forever. I will be His like He is God The Fathers.
All that I have said is easy to find reference to in the Holy Bible, there are no stretches of the imagination to make the above words work, they are plain if you will read them.
It is hard to be succinct and brief, I hope I have succeeded.
In what sense did we come from heaven?
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We are all sons and daughters of God, that is our spirits came, issued forth from God The Father. God knew us before he formed us in mortality and we knew Him.
” 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.”
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I would take issue with that in that Jesus is subject to The Father, they are then not co-equal. Elohim is the greater of the three. He commands and They obey His will. Even when Christ didn't want to obey The Fathers will He did. Because of Nicea there have been many contortions of doctrines to try to make the definition of The Trinity as expressed by Nicea 325 fit with scripture but it still doesn't. Nearly all if not all the laborious definitions of the Trinity come after Nicea 325. Christ Himself never makes these contorted definitions. He made sure that even the simplest of peoples could understand what He was talking about. Christ is divine, He is eternal but He was begotten and has inherited what He now has. While we call Him eternal He Himself expresses it a little differently, calling Himself the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. There is no beginning of eternal so that itself could be a subject of much conjecture.
Where does the bible use terminology like "Man comes from heaven", Or "we knew God before He formed us"?
Dear One, Mormons are taught to reject the Trinitarian definition of God. Because they cannot find the word in The Word, they are unable to believe the Bible teaching. In fact, because Mormonism is s cult, Christianity wannabe, they discount the Bible with this sort of thinking and thus make room for faux scriptures, like The Book of Mormon.
Yup
Jeremiah 1:5
You stumble forth with, “Water, steam (vapor), ice. That’s good except when water becomes steam it is no longer water it is steam. When water or steam become ice it is no longer water but ice.” In all three states it is still H2O, two atoms of Hydrogen and one atom of Oxygen. Mormons are good at straining at gnats in order to choke on the camel.
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You are totally missing what I was saying. Yes, I completely agree with you that there are three states of H20 my point is that wherever the H20 is in which state it is in it is only in one state at a time.
At the baptism of Jesus Christ by John we are led to believe via scripture that John was baptizing Christ and at the same time the voice of God The Father was heard from heaven saying He was pleased in His Son and at the same time the Holy Ghost was descending from Heaven in the form of a dove.
It matters not to me the three states, what matters is that at least in this example there were three different beings in three different places at the same point in time. In this example anyway God The Father did not turn Himself into Christ The Son or into The Holy Ghost unless He split Himself up 3 ways but then He would not shout from Heaven that He was pleased with His son, He would have said He was pleased with Himself.
I am a keen reader. I even noticed your mormonesque phrasing of ‘gods’. I would explain the Trinity to you in a way you have not read before, perhaps, but I do not cast the things God has shown me, to the heretical naybobs.
Wrong direction, where does the Word say we knew Him before we were formed?
Your comments on this article, if you have time. Thanks.
JAKraig:
Arian doctrine originated in the East, not West. And there was very little Arian theology in the West. Arius was taught in Antioch and then went to Alexandria, where he began positing the Arian doctrine of the Trinity.
The formula Consubstantial with the Father, which was direct rejection of Arianism was the Western Term that was translated Homoousious in Greek was from the Western Church, and was voiced by Bishop Hosius of Cordova (Spain) and Latin part of the Church, which represented the Roman Church’s view on the question as this term was probably agreed on by the Pope and the Western Church representatives (5 Western Bishops and the 2 Papal Legates) before hand.
“I would take issue with that in that Jesus is subject to The Father, they are then not co-equal. Elohim is the greater of the three. He commands and They obey His will. Even when Christ didn’t want to obey The Fathers will He did. Because of Nicea there have been many contortions of doctrines to try to make the definition of The Trinity as expressed by Nicea 325 fit with scripture but it still doesn’t. Nearly all if not all the laborious definitions of the Trinity come after Nicea 325. Christ Himself never makes these contorted definitions. He made sure that even the simplest of peoples could understand what He was talking about. Christ is divine, He is eternal but He was begotten and has inherited what He now has. While we call Him eternal He Himself expresses it a little differently, calling Himself the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. There is no beginning of eternal so that itself could be a subject of much conjecture.”
I am trying to determine what group you belong to, Mormon, JW, Oneness-Pentecostal. So for the sake of discussion, what faith do you hold, it does not appear to me to be orthodox Christianity of any sort.
To summarize this succinctly, when the NT speaks of the Father being greater than the Son, this is referring to the Father being greater relative to Christ Human nature. The relational and natural ordering of Father, Son and Holy Spirit does not imply and ordering of priority, which is a subordination doctrine of the Trinity, rejected by the early Church in all the Creeds and Councils, etc.
MHGinTN:
Ok thanks, it seemed like that was one possibility. Mormonism would not qualify as Christianity and his a 100% free market American capitalism applied to making a new religion.
So this “Group of Gods” idea (Poly-theistic terminology), since it is not bound as Mormons reject the idea of Trinity (Three) anyway, can potentially grow to a larger Group, hence it is theoretically possible that this “Group of Gods” can become larger? Do I have this correct?
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