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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Your stumbling effort was actually the undistributed middle fallacy. ‘Now go ahead and complain to the mods, you know you will.’ (THAT was a passive aggressive phrasing.)
Well HALLELUJAH! You're the FIRST Catholic to acknowledge that. Verga was given multiple chances to retract his poorly worded answer and he refused to do so. Here we are five hundred posts PAST his erroneous one and you are the first one of his peers to suggest it was wrong. Thank you. One would think that on a topic like this we could find much common ground and join together in defending the doctrine of the Trinity.
sure there is.
Sure, and they do......just like the trans-gendered think they are a boy, or a girl....but in reality they aren't.
Everyone is certainly entitled to practice whatever "denomination" or religion that they prefer but you cannot "uncatholicize" yourself......just like divorce....you think that you're no longer married.........you are.
Verga left.I do not speak for them.
Harry Belafonte Jamaica Farewell 1958
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaUo1QFCoHI
I disagree bro. We can, and DO become ex Catholics. My parents forced me into doing something I didn't want any part of. When I was on my own, I beat feet. A lot of people have.
You may choose to practice some other "denomination" but your Catholic basis is still there...thankfully!
I disagree bro. Nothing is still there.
Some people may have to bluff their way into Heaven. I don't know if you will, but I KNOW I won't.
Seriously? Your own church can declare your marriage is null after you divorce! So, you CAN be no longer married.
I didn't choose to be baptized as an infant into Roman Catholicism and when the Holy Spirit opened my eyes and heart to the gospel, I left that religion because I knew they had not taught me the truth of the gospel. There was no reason to stay. Instead, the Lord led me to a church home where I grew in my Christian faith and learned to walk with Christ coming to know Him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death. I didn't leave Jesus, I left a false religion.
It's funny how on a thread discussing the basic doctrine of the Trinity and the many non-Catholic Christians who have joined in to defend it, you have to come here and side track the whole thing. Where were you when it would have helped further the discussion against a few who denied and/or questioned it? Are you capable of that or is bashing former Catholics all you can do?
Apparently not.
The parallel is stunning, isn’t it?
As far as YOU are concerned.
And I doubt your opinion matters much to God.
It doesn't matter to me.
I am not a Catholic. Nor am I any other denomination.
When I was born from above, I did not become a Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, Lutheran, whatever denominational label anyone chooses to attach.
I became a child of God by receiving Him, just as HE promised I would be.
John 1:10-13 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
And yes, it DOES change my inherent nature because I went from spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
My spiritual identity is not a denominational label because I am a follower of Christ, not man.
My spiritual identity is Christ in me, the hope of glory.
Prove it.
Show the references from Scripture.
Your word is not enough since you admit that you are not infallible.
Since you, by your own admission are fallible, then you must provide outside sources to back up any truth claims you make for anyone to take you seriously.
Otherwise, it is just your unsupported opinion, which is as meaningless as anyone else’s unsupported opinion.
Did you ever see Civil War threads? Those were REALLY brutal.
The most insidious form of rape
But we ALL know that the pope might be wrong.
And yet Mary was SO slighted in the early years, that she just HAD to make multiple appearances so that HER message could be proclaimed!
One can reconstruct the missing by looking at the shadows it leaves behind...
And; every once in a while; if it REALLY feels like it; the OTC can EXcommunicate one of it's members.
Yet they STILL are considered by some Catholics to STILL be a CAtholic?
HMMMmmm...
I thought the POPE said he wasn't!
But; since the pope CAN be wrong...
Looks like tc and tm got the nasty post removal they were wishing for...
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