Begetting of the Son

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Assyrian412

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This was taken from Catholic Answers… catholic.com/blog/tim-staples/explaining-the-trinity

"The Council’s definitions concerning the Trinity are really as easy as one, two, three… four. It taught there is one nature in God, and that there are two processions, three persons, and four relations that constitute the Blessed Trinity. The Son “proceeds” from the Father, and the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” These are the two processions in God. And these are foundational to the four relations that constitute the three persons in God. These are those four eternal relations in God:
  1. The Father actively and eternally generates the Son, constituting the person of God, the Father.
  2. The Son is passively generated of the Father, which constitutes the person of the Son.
  3. The Father and the Son actively spirate the Holy Spirit in the one relation within the inner life of God that does not constitute a person. It does not do so because the Father and Son are already constituted as persons in relation to each other in the first two relations. This is why CCC 240 teaches, “[The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity] is Son only in relation to his Father.”
  4. The Holy Spirit is passively spirated of the Father and the Son, constituting the person of the Holy Spirit."
QUESTION: What does “passively” generated mean? Is the eternal begetting of the Son an act of the Father’s will according to the Church? I know that is how Justin Martyr described it, I am curious to know what the official teaching is
 
Here is how I understand it: These rules are defining the relationships between the persons withing God. The first two rules concern the first two people. The first rule defines the Father’s relationship in the begetting of the Son. The second rule describes the Son’s relationship in being begotten by the Father. So the Father is active in generating the Son. The Son is “passive” in this dynamic of the relationship, as he is on the receiving end.

That is not to say that the Son is entirely passive. (The third rule states that both Father and Son actively spirate the Holy Spirit, which is the love between Father and Son.) The first two rules are only about what’s going on in regards to the Son being begotten by the Father.
 
Wesrock has it. But remember that “source and reception”, or “active and passive” are only the most appropriate words to describe the relationship (which is beyond comprehension in its totality). 🙂
 
If you would like an in depth look at this (and other things) I highly recommend Frank Sheed’s book “Theology for Beginners”. In my opinion he gives the simplest to understand explanation of the Trinity even though it is deep.
 
Thanks for the answers guys. I’ve just really been digging into the wisdom literature and how wisdom relates to Jesus.

From what I have found it seems to be a natural act and not an act of will. It is just something essential to the being of God; the Father emits the Son ie Sun emitting rays?

The fact that the Father begets Jesus makes sense of a lot. I found this article you guys may be interested in reading although similar arguments are used by JWs/Arians as the viewpoints are so similar, which seems to be denied by many, to prove their view.

Have a look…

tektonics.org/jesusclaims/trinitydefense.php

This is a trinitarian view of it but there are arguments made for the groups previously mentioned as well using the same scriptures and ancient authors. It’s interesting stuff
 
Assyrian412 said:
Thanks for the answers guys. I’ve just really been digging into the wisdom literature and how wisdom relates to Jesus.

From what I have found it seems to be a natural act and not an act of will. It is just something essential to the being of God; the Father emits the Son ie Sun emitting rays?

The fact that the Father begets Jesus makes sense of a lot. I found this article you guys may be interested in reading although similar arguments are used by JWs/Arians as the viewpoints are so similar, which seems to be denied by many, to prove their view.

Have a look…

tektonics.org/jesusclaims/trinitydefense.php

This is a trinitarian view of it but there are arguments made for the groups previously mentioned as well using the same scriptures and ancient authors. It’s interesting stuff
Click to expand...
The relation is that: God is creator and Son and Holy Spirit are creatures.
 
Dr. Peter Merely describes it as “playing second fiddle.” 😉

Oh, and Wesrock, very concise, simple, and insightful 👍

Christi pax.
 
hasantas said:
The relation is that: God is creator and Son and Holy Spirit are creatures.
Click to expand...
That’s not the Christian view, which I understand as saying that God is Love. He is relational within Himself, perfectly so, the first two Persons within the Trinity giving themselves, through the Holy Spirit, to what is Other within Itself. God transcendent, relates to His creation through His Holy Spirit, and entering into His creation by the incarnation of the Son, brings it into Himself. Through Christ, we become sons and daughters of God, our Father. All creation reveals God’s Triune nature. We ourselves are fundamentally knower-knowing-known, self-other’s who exist in harmony with all creation and God when we love, when we give of ourselves to what is other.
 
Aloysium said:
That’s not the Christian view, which I understand as saying that God is Love. He is relational within Himself, perfectly so, the first two Persons within the Trinity giving themselves, through the Holy Spirit, to what is Other within Itself. God transcendent, relates to His creation through His Holy Spirit, and entering into His creation by the incarnation of the Son, brings it into Himself. Through Christ, we become sons and daughters of God, our Father. All creation reveals God’s Triune nature. We ourselves are fundamentally knower-knowing-known, self-other’s who exist in harmony with all creation and God when we love, when we give of ourselves to what is other.
Click to expand...
God is always eternal. If you say Jesus was an incarnated God so that means God is not eternal anymore. And Holy Spirit came unto world and formed like a dove etc. So that three personality cannot be defined just as inherent relations. They(Son and Holy Spirit) have external presence. If there are three distinct persons and subsistences so that means there are three gods.
 
God encompasses all time and all space.
All moments spring forth from His eternal Now.

For us living in time, there is a before and after the present moment in which everything occurs, rooted in our timeless Home.
He reaches into His creation “now” to bring us to Him.

Consider Cain’s relationship with God. Before he was to decide on his course of action, Cain was warned of sin’s growing influence on him.

God is present with him in those crucial moments, as He is in all the moments of our lives, while transcendent, knowing all, all powerful and all benevolent, timeless and infinite.
 
hasantas said:
God is always eternal. If you say Jesus was an incarnated God so that means God is not eternal anymore. And Holy Spirit came unto world and formed like a dove etc. So that three personality cannot be defined just as inherent relations. They(Son and Holy Spirit) have external presence. If there are three distinct persons and subsistences so that means there are three gods.
Click to expand...
The Son’s divine nature is eternal. The human nature He assumed is not. God has had other theophanies and proclaimed his voice such that it could be heard. Did those theophanies make Him any less eternal? What we have in Jesus is a human will and a human soul and a human body, in submission to the eternal divine will He is joined with in the one person of Jesus Christ.

There is only one God, eternal, and He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
 
Wesrock said:
There is only one God, eternal, and He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Click to expand...
Correct, but for some people it is easier for them to accept that there is God the creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Sanctifier.

Always remember that the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and vice versa as Rahner stated in his axiom.
 
Wesrock said:
The Son’s divine nature is eternal. The human nature He assumed is not. God has had other theophanies and proclaimed his voice such that it could be heard. Did those theophanies make Him any less eternal? What we have in Jesus is a human will and a human soul and a human body, in submission to the eternal divine will He is joined with in the one person of Jesus Christ.

There is only one God, eternal, and He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Click to expand...
If you could achive exactly to submit orders of God so you may be like Jesus. Jesus achieved that but that do not make Jesus to be God. We should try so much to be like Jesus in submission to God. There is a Hadith: God did not settle in universes but in a heart of believer. If we could make our moral heart available for that so God may manifest through our soul. There are/were many moraly high people who achieved that.

God may create some voices from eternal will and wisdom. So what we hear is the creation of God.

To claim such thing that God had incarnated or became a man is very adventurous but do not grounded on any fact.Just some conjectures!
 
hasantas said:
. . . To claim such thing that God had incarnated or became a man is very adventurous but do not grounded on any fact. Just some conjectures!
Click to expand...
And, many claim that our belief in God is an adventurous departure from and ungrounded in what they understand to be the facts of reality - conjectures all. You and I know different, as I know that the ultimate Truth is the Triune Godhead.
 
Assyrian412 said:
This was taken from Catholic Answers… catholic.com/blog/tim-staples/explaining-the-trinity

"The Council’s definitions concerning the Trinity are really as easy as one, two, three… four. It taught there is one nature in God, and that there are two processions, three persons, and four relations that constitute the Blessed Trinity. The Son “proceeds” from the Father, and the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” These are the two processions in God. And these are foundational to the four relations that constitute the three persons in God. These are those four eternal relations in God:
  1. The Father actively and eternally generates the Son, constituting the person of God, the Father.
  2. The Son is passively generated of the Father, which constitutes the person of the Son.
  3. The Father and the Son actively spirate the Holy Spirit in the one relation within the inner life of God that does not constitute a person. It does not do so because the Father and Son are already constituted as persons in relation to each other in the first two relations. This is why CCC 240 teaches, “[The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity] is Son only in relation to his Father.”
  4. The Holy Spirit is passively spirated of the Father and the Son, constituting the person of the Holy Spirit."
QUESTION: What does “passively” generated mean? Is the eternal begetting of the Son an act of the Father’s will according to the Church? I know that is how Justin Martyr described it, I am curious to know what the official teaching is
Click to expand...
I have a description of the Trinity based upon observation of God’s creation. St. Paul said in Romans that we can know God from the things that have been made, therefore I believe we can gain insights into the Trinity by some of the laws of physics.

God is a force, and we know from God’s creation that there is no such thing as a singular force, that is a force all by itself–force comes in pairs, a force and a counter-force, action and reaction. For every action there is necessarily a reaction, and for every force there is of necessity a counter-force, by Newton’s third law. When you push on something, it pushes back. You cannot push unless there is something to push back. When you sit, you exert weight on the chair and you can feel the chair push back. Note that the force and counter-force exist simultaneously and in the same place. One does not exist before the other. However, the force can be thought of as the “father,” and the counter-force as the “son,” because the force generates or begets the counter-force. The counter-force is passive in its generation.

The Father generates or begets the Son from all eternity. Notice that he Father cannot be the Father without the Son and that there never was a time when the Son was not. The Father does not create the Son, but begets Him.

Newton’s second law can help describe the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the acceleration produced by the relationship between the Father and Son, by the action and reaction, just as a rocket is accelerated by the reaction of the action of the rocket exhaust. “And a powerful wind swept across the face of the deep.”

Again it is noted that the force, counterforce, and acceleration are all simultaneous and equal, hence all are God, but nevertheless can be conceputually separated. The counterforce and the acceleration are passive responses to the initial force, the Father, from which all being comes.

From Newton’s third law it can be seen that a singular figure such as Jehovah or Allah is precluded.
 
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