T
Tomster
Guest
Dan,
I was about to continue my presentation to you. After considering the Divine Persons collectively, I was going to introduce them to you individually. However, it seems that both you and regardless are having a difficult time understanding the nature of each of Three Persons of the Trinity. I will take a moment and explain, briefly, what is meant by the terms nature and person.
First some general notions. By the Blessed Trinity we mean the mystery of one God in three persons, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, each subsisting distinct in the same identical divine nature.
It will be well if, at the outset of our study of this fundamental dogma of the Christian religion, we acquire precise and clear cut ideas as to the exact significance of such terms as nature and person.
They are words which we employ commonly enough in ordinary conversation, and in writing in a losse literary way, without adverting to their more precise philosophical and theological connotations. Both words are of ancient lineage and have played no mean part in the history of dogma. For centuries they were the watchwords, the touchstones of orthodoxy, during the great controversies which distracted the early Church as to the divinity and humanity of Christ. In the welter of theological argument, ambiguities were gradually removed, and in the course of time the meaning of these two words gradually crystallised into definite technical form.
The word nature, derived from the Latin natum (Nasci, to be born), means literally that which is born, or that which is produced. We use the term nature, in its widest sense, to indicate everything that has been produced, the totality of finite things, the whole created universe which in its various parts furnishes the objects of what are called the natural sciences. These objects, the earth, the sea, the animals, the stars, differ very considerably: each, we say, has its own nature. And so by an easy transition from its etymological significance, we arrive at the philosophical meaning of the term nature as that which makes a thing what it is; it other words, the essence, or quiddity of the thing.
“Nature, properly so called,” says Aristotle, “is the essence of beings, which have in themselves the principle of their movement.” The nature of any being, then, is simply its essence considered from the dynamic standpoint, that is, precisely as the principle of its particular activities. It is the nature of a fish to swim, of a bird to fly, of a reptile to crawl; and it is by observing their characteristic operations, their native activities, that we are able to classify things according to their natures.
cont.
I was about to continue my presentation to you. After considering the Divine Persons collectively, I was going to introduce them to you individually. However, it seems that both you and regardless are having a difficult time understanding the nature of each of Three Persons of the Trinity. I will take a moment and explain, briefly, what is meant by the terms nature and person.
First some general notions. By the Blessed Trinity we mean the mystery of one God in three persons, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, each subsisting distinct in the same identical divine nature.
It will be well if, at the outset of our study of this fundamental dogma of the Christian religion, we acquire precise and clear cut ideas as to the exact significance of such terms as nature and person.
They are words which we employ commonly enough in ordinary conversation, and in writing in a losse literary way, without adverting to their more precise philosophical and theological connotations. Both words are of ancient lineage and have played no mean part in the history of dogma. For centuries they were the watchwords, the touchstones of orthodoxy, during the great controversies which distracted the early Church as to the divinity and humanity of Christ. In the welter of theological argument, ambiguities were gradually removed, and in the course of time the meaning of these two words gradually crystallised into definite technical form.
The word nature, derived from the Latin natum (Nasci, to be born), means literally that which is born, or that which is produced. We use the term nature, in its widest sense, to indicate everything that has been produced, the totality of finite things, the whole created universe which in its various parts furnishes the objects of what are called the natural sciences. These objects, the earth, the sea, the animals, the stars, differ very considerably: each, we say, has its own nature. And so by an easy transition from its etymological significance, we arrive at the philosophical meaning of the term nature as that which makes a thing what it is; it other words, the essence, or quiddity of the thing.
“Nature, properly so called,” says Aristotle, “is the essence of beings, which have in themselves the principle of their movement.” The nature of any being, then, is simply its essence considered from the dynamic standpoint, that is, precisely as the principle of its particular activities. It is the nature of a fish to swim, of a bird to fly, of a reptile to crawl; and it is by observing their characteristic operations, their native activities, that we are able to classify things according to their natures.
cont.
