*Exactly* three persons in one God?

[Myhrr]

jc_escobar:

Mirr,

If you understand the meaning of God, there can only be one. You are making the mistake to believe that you can decide between many gods, but any other than the Living God (whose name is “I AM”) . He has been named with different name along history, but it is still the One Lord, The God of Abraham, Isac and Jacob Who happens to be the same as Yaweh, etc. etc.

Blessings,
J.C.

JC, I did say in my earlier posts that I’d use capitals GOD for the ‘meaning of God’, so I’m not sure what you mean by saying it’s a mistake to believe I can decide between many gods.

Your mention of I AM is interesting. We’re told in the Bible that Terah’s Gods came from the other side of the flood, do you know anything about Sanatana Dharma the religion of India? I was told it came to India about 10,000 years ago, it means something like ‘eternal righteousness’.

Pre Abraham India had a very well developed understanding of the supreme GOD as one without a second, Brahman, (not to be confused with Brahma the creator in the trinity of creator, preserver, destroyer) and the phrase Aham Brahmasmi is one of the “great sayings” of Sanatana Dharma, it means ‘I am myself Brahman’ , the great I AM.

Perhaps there is some play on words here from Christ as in his use of rock in the revelation Peter had and the name Christ gave him when they first met. Not a play on words, but one I like is the camel passing through the eye of a needle, I was quite disappointed when I found out that camel is the Aramaic for a thick ship’s rope, the kind he might have seen as he was talking beside the fishing boats - much prefer the idea of a camel trying to squash through…

 

[jc_escobar]

Hi Myhrr,

It doen’t really matter what gods any people have worshiped and how long before anyone. What matters is that GOD (as you want to call Him) exists and is there. Now, as for what we read in the entire history of salvation as shown in the Bible, GOD, decided to choose the decendants of Abraham to bring his Salvation to the world. I don’t doubt that He might have hinted other nations on His identity and maybe guided them a bit so they can be ready to accept the good news of Salvation once here, meaning to receive the Gospel when the time came. As for this last I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s possible. In reality it doesn’t matter.
What I don’t agree is in the way you speak of the “god” of so and so and the other “god” of such a place, etc. I just want to make it clear that there is only one God and there might be different ways that nations and people have perceived the idea of His existance, but the idea, as I perceive it from your words, of different gods, actually existing is impossible.
I find it funny that you said, I call the Idea of God “GOD”. It should be the other way around. GOD you should call the living God, of Abraham, JAcob and Issac. Our Lord Jesus Christ. All the other gods you mention are just some people’s idea of God.

Blessings,
J.C.

 

[Myhrr]

jc_escobar:

Hi Myhrr,

It doen’t really matter what gods any people have worshiped and how long before anyone. What matters is that GOD (as you want to call Him) exists and is there. .

Where?

That’s ever so slightly tongue in cheek because I agree it’s what matters, to me anyway, since I believe in a personal God. But, here come the buts, the question is still ‘can there be more than three to the trinity without contradicting Church teaching’ which RacerX noted has never said that GOD is three only?’

My suggestion here is that since the Trinity was formulated specifically to explain Christ’s Divinity in relation to God the Father it is not actually making any statement about GOD.

GOD then could be more than three and one way this could be so is that God the Father is only part of GOD, the Godhead, and that in a particular place, heaven, and so my mention that historically the Church via Melchisedek also worshipped the Queen of Heaven until this worship was outlawed by some. This outlawing of God the Mother worship in her various aspects, (mother, consort, wisdom etc), happened according to Jewish sources around the time of the formulating of the Babylonian Talmud which was the first time the Jews concentrated on defining GOD as a transcendental being, and I suggested this could have been influenced by some who also were of the ‘patriarchal mindset’ and who had previously objected to GOD being worshipped as anything but male.

It should be remembered that the women in Judaism do not have equality, they are considered chattel, belonging first to the father and then to the husband as all the laws relating to women show.

In showing that Christianity had a different understanding of the place of women I gave the example of Christ’s relationship with women which is remembered in the Church by remembering the women who were Equal-to-the-Apostles, this has been forgotten by the RCC, and it appears to be for the same reason that the worship of the Goddess was destroyed in Judaism, because of a certain patriarchal mindset that rejected women as equals even though we’re clearly taught that men and women together were created in the image and likeness of GOD.* And, this Christian understanding goes back to pre-prophet denunciation of women as any part of the GOD, to Melchisedek. Christians need to remember that Christ is eternal King and High Priest in the order of Melchisedek. This was an important understanding of Christ in the early Church.

jc_escobar:

Hi Myhrr,

Now, as for what we read in the entire history of salvation as shown in the Bible, GOD, decided to choose the decendants of Abraham to bring his Salvation to the world. I don’t doubt that He might have hinted other nations on His identity and maybe guided them a bit so they can be ready to accept the good news of Salvation once here, meaning to receive the Gospel when the time came. As for this last I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s possible. In reality it doesn’t matter.
.

Yes exactly, the key words here are ‘descendants of Abraham’, not ‘descendants of the Babylonian Talmud’. And Abraham acknowledged the Highest God of Melchisedek as his GOD. Where did Melchisedek come from? The Jews say he is Shem son of Noah, and, Abraham is also a descendant of Shem.

From my research into that connection to Terah’s origins from the other side of the Flood I also suggest that the religion of India, Sanatana Dharma the Eternal Righteousness, should be considered if trying to understand the reasons for Christ’s incarnation with respect to Salvation of the world. But, interesting as it is the subject of Salvation, its history and how different Christians and Jews understand this is really another discussion.

continued

 

[Myhrr]

continued

jc_escobar:

Hi Myhrr,

What I don’t agree is in the way you speak of the “god” of so and so and the other “god” of such a place, etc. I just want to make it clear that there is only one God and there might be different ways that nations and people have perceived the idea of His existance, but the idea, as I perceive it from your words, of different gods, actually existing is impossible.
I find it funny that you said, I call the Idea of God “GOD”. It should be the other way around. GOD you should call the living God, of Abraham, JAcob and Issac. Our Lord Jesus Christ. All the other gods you mention are just some people’s idea of God.

Blessings,
J.C.

But JC, who was this “living God, of Abraham, Jacob and Issac”?

How did they understand this before the incarnation of Christ? I don’t think it’s enough to say from where we are that their relationship was with Christ, I think it important that we try and think about how they understood this and the obvious way is to explore the history as much as we can.

• Jerome and others had a great influence on the Church in the West with regard to women, he, for example, denied the blessedness of procreation by saying that God originally created virgins and that marriage came with sin. This of course is contrary to Genesis I where God sees his creation of men and women as good and blesses them to procreate. I’ve just put in a search for Jerome and women and this came up.

womenpriests.org/traditio/jerome.htm

This rejection of women has taken different forms, but in principle there’s no difference between those who destroyed the worship of the Goddess and those like Jerome who idealized a state of virginity for women, the rejection in both is of GOD having anything to do with the reality of full blooded women.

 

[BLB_Oregon]

meep:

But let me ask you, if you could ask the Pope for an infallible statement on the matter, what would you expect the response to be?

Since making an infallible statement is not a process that occurs over the lunch hour, and since the teaching of the Church is entirely clear on the subject, I would expect his jaw to drop. After that, I could only hope for a response along the lines of “You are pulling my leg, right?” (The Holy Father does seem to have a sense of humor.)

 

[Teresita]

Myhrr:

continued

womenpriests.org/traditio/jerome.htm

This rejection of women has taken different forms, but in principle there’s no difference between those who destroyed the worship of the Goddess and those like Jerome who idealized a state of virginity for women, the rejection in both is of GOD having anything to do with the reality of full blooded women.

I’ve had a look at the site you mention, and (like most heretical stuff) it works by detaching quotations from their context. One can prove anything that way. You can, for example, prove that the Bible teaches the non-existence of God: after all, doesn’t Psalm 14 (and Psalm 53) say: “There is no God”? (Check it out.)

In the same way, your site quotes St Jerome as saying, from the 83rd letter, To Ctesiphon, §3: “They shut themselves up alone with women and justify their sinful embraces by quoting the lines: ‘The almighty father takes the earth to wife; pouring upon her fertilizing rain, that from her womb new harvest he may reap’, commenting: “The medieval theologians based their understanding of conception and marriage on this notion.” The implication, clearly, is that St Jerome is teaching that all sexual congress is sin.

However, if one consults the full Letter, it becomes clear that St Jerome is not actually discussing the rights or wrongs of sex at all: the letter is written against various heresies, chiefly Pelagianism (roughly speaking, the idea that a Christian can avoid committing sin if he tries hard enough, with God’s grace being a sort of additional extra help rather than the ground and cause of all our virtue) and this section is showing simply that heretics who believe this, or who have a completely different teaching about sin(like the Manicheans), are total hypocrites, because they don’t practise what they preach. In the sentence quoted above, St Jerome shows that the followers of Mani, who apparently reject the body as evil and thus forbid marriage, in fact are indulging in fornication and justifying it with the sort of excuse he quotes. He is saying absolutely nothing about the rights or wrongs of sex within marriage.

I could take each quotation they extract and deal with it in the same way, but frankly, I have neither the time nor the inclination. Remember that when St Jerome writes about virginity, he is generally either addressing consecrated virgins or widows (like St Paula) who need encouragement, or countering writers (whose work has often been lost, unfortunately) like Jovinian, who were actually saying (as far as we can reconstruct their work) that virginity was pointless, and that sex was imperative for everyone. (Sounds rather modern.) Controversial literature taken out of context always sounds over the top, bigoted and uncharitable.

Sue

 

[jc_escobar]

Myhrr:

Where?

That’s ever so slightly tongue in cheek because I agree it’s what matters, to me anyway, since I believe in a personal God. But, here come the buts, the question is still ‘can there be more than three to the trinity without contradicting Church teaching’ which RacerX noted has never said that GOD is three only?’

My suggestion here is that since the Trinity was formulated specifically to explain Christ’s Divinity in relation to God the Father it is not actually making any statement about GOD.

GOD then could be more than three and one way this could be so is that God the Father is only part of GOD, the Godhead, and that in a particular place, heaven,

Hi Myhrr,

I can see that you have a problem with tha understanding of the Most Holy Trinity first of all. The mistery of the Trinity was NOT formulated to start with it was revealed to us from The Holy Spirit (GOD). After this was revealed, we came to know that for GOD to really be GOD, had to be a Trinity (this also by the grace of the Holy Spirit who is Himself GOD). How is this? well for GOD to be really GOD, he has to have absolute and perfect Knowledge of Himself, this Knowledge, is order to be absolute and perfec has to be a person in itself and this person in itself must be perfect, must be GOD Himself but in a different person, then, this Is GOD the Son. So we see that since The Son, being Himself GOD, and comming from GOD, at the same time knows GOD The Father in the same way HE is Known. From this perfect Knowlege of GOD in all His perfection, the is Love between Them (more propperly said: between Him), this Love is the Holy Spirit. GOD cannot be part of anything because He would then stop being GOD. So your argument would be describing something else rather that GOD. As I said before it would be a god or just someones idea of God, but not GOD.

Continued…

 

[jc_escobar]

Continued…

Myhrr:

and so my mention that historically the Church via Melchisedek also worshipped the Queen of Heaven until this worship was outlawed by some. This outlawing of God the Mother worship in her various aspects, (mother, consort, wisdom etc), happened according to Jewish sources around the time of the formulating of the Babylonian Talmud which was the first time the Jews concentrated on defining GOD as a transcendental being, and I suggested this could have been influenced by some who also were of the ‘patriarchal mindset’ and who had previously objected to GOD being worshipped as anything but male.

It should be remembered that the women in Judaism do not have equality, they are considered chattel, belonging first to the father and then to the husband as all the laws relating to women show.

In showing that Christianity had a different understanding of the place of women I gave the example of Christ’s relationship with women which is remembered in the Church by remembering the women who were Equal-to-the-Apostles, this has been forgotten by the RCC, and it appears to be for the same reason that the worship of the Goddess was destroyed in Judaism, because of a certain patriarchal mindset that rejected women as equals even though we’re clearly taught that men and women together were created in the image and likeness of GOD.* And, this Christian understanding goes back to pre-prophet denunciation of women as any part of the GOD, to Melchisedek. Christians need to remember that Christ is eternal King and High Priest in the order of Melchisedek. This was an important understanding of Christ in the early Church. ,

Again Myhrr, it all comes down to your misunderstanding of what GOD is and you are confusing GOD with god. GOD can’t have any gender since He is simple in unity. He can’t have any attributes of shape, gender, size or anything like that. I reccomend you read the part of God in St. Thomas of Aquinas Summa Teologica for a better underrstanding of this. if you want you can find it in

www.newadvent.org

Yes exactly, the key words here are ‘descendants of Abraham’, not ‘descendants of the Babylonian Talmud’. And Abraham acknowledged the Highest God of Melchisedek as his GOD. Where did Melchisedek come from? The Jews say he is Shem son of Noah, and, Abraham is also a descendant of Shem.

From my research into that connection to Terah’s origins from the other side of the Flood I also suggest that the religion of India, Sanatana Dharma the Eternal Righteousness, should be considered if trying to understand the reasons for Christ’s incarnation with respect to Salvation of the world. But, interesting as it is the subject of Salvation, its history and how different Christians and Jews understand this is really another discussion.

continued

I don’t understand where you are comming from whioth this Hinduism and how do you relate it with Christianity and the history of Salvation but I would like to see you’r views. As you say, this would be another subject. But why don’t you open a new thread where we can talk about this.

Blessings,
J.C.

 

[jc_escobar]

Myhrr:

continued
But JC, who was this “living God, of Abraham, Jacob and Issac”?
How did they understand this before the incarnation of Christ? I don’t think it’s enough to say from where we are that their relationship was with Christ, I think it important that we try and think about how they understood this and the obvious way is to explore the history as much as we can.

Myhrr,

GOD still is, and how people understood Him in ancient times doesn’t matter because He doesn’t change, HE still IS. What matters is that He has now revealed Himself to us through Jesus Christ and we can know Him through His Church and hopefuly be eternally with Him. History and man is not qualified enough to understan GOD. That is why we need The Church, and The Church need the Holy Spirit. In other word we must be shown by Him who HE IS.

Blessings,
J.C.

 

[Myhrr]

Teresita:

I’ve had a look at the site you mention, and (like most heretical stuff) it works by detaching quotations from their context. One can prove anything that way. You can, for example, prove that the Bible teaches the non-existence of God: after all, doesn’t Psalm 14 (and Psalm 53) say: “There is no God”? (Check it out.)

Sue, what a coincidence that you should mention this aspect, it’s something I’ve said recently about RCC apologetics…

In the same way, your site quotes St Jerome as saying, from the 83rd letter, To Ctesiphon, §3: “They shut themselves up alone with women and justify their sinful embraces by quoting the lines: ‘The almighty father takes the earth to wife; pouring upon her fertilizing rain, that from her womb new harvest he may reap’, commenting: “The medieval theologians based their understanding of conception and marriage on this notion.” The implication, clearly, is that St Jerome is teaching that all sexual congress is sin

Firstly I’m sorry I didn’t make it clear that I was referring to his basic understanding of the fall, the idea I meant was in the Letter 22. To Eustochium

It’s in full here ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-06/Npnf2-06-03.htm#P583_110510

Jerome’s ideas on this are in italics from this letter on the womenpriest.org site, which are:

The command to increase and multiply first finds fulfilment after the expulsion from paradise, after the nakedness and the fig-leaves which speak of sexual passion.

*To show that virginity is natural while wedlock only follows guilt, *

Which I used to give an example of how certain fathers in the West were under the same patriarchal mindset we find in the prophets.

Jerome has taken Genesis I out of context because of his own personal bias.

So yes, “The implication, clearly, is that St Jerome is teaching that all sexual congress is sin”.

His influence was great in the West and from him and Augustine came this idea that sex itself was unnatural, the result of sin which came in the fall. To remind us Genesis I:28 says: “And God blessed them, saying, Increase and multiply…” From them come the RCC doctrines that we’re born guilty of Adam’ sin and so on which were not being taught by the Church in other places at the time or now.

And this bias against the full blooded nature of women in the image and likeness of GOD is found in all who take the order of creation from Genesis II, women as an afterthought after creating man in the image of a male God and it doesn’t take them long to then blame the female on everything that goes wrong. The Sumerian creation stories which pre-date the account in Genesis and from which it came give a different context and could not have been used to bolster Jerome’s bias against sexually vibrant women. That is the real context of Jerome’s letters.

As for the “The almighty father takes the earth to wife; pouring upon her fertilizing rain, that from her womb new harvest he may reap”. I think it’s a beautiful image, it’s one mentioned in the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church in describing the Mother of God as the untilled earth which brought forth the bread of life.

continued

 

[Myhrr]

continued

Teresita:

.

However, if one consults the full Letter, it becomes clear that St Jerome is not actually discussing the rights or wrongs of sex at all: the letter is written against various heresies, chiefly Pelagianism (roughly speaking, the idea that a Christian can avoid committing sin if he tries hard enough, with God’s grace being a sort of additional extra help rather than the ground and cause of all our virtue) and this section is showing simply that heretics who believe this, or who have a completely different teaching about sin(like the Manicheans), are total hypocrites, because they don’t practise what they preach. In the sentence quoted above, St Jerome shows that the followers of Mani, who apparently reject the body as evil and thus forbid marriage, in fact are indulging in fornication and justifying it with the sort of excuse he quotes. He is saying absolutely nothing about the rights or wrongs of sex within marriage. I could take each quotation they extract and deal with it in the same way, but frankly, I have neither the time nor the inclination.

I don’t want to get into these arguments here but will answer just the points you raise.

If you check out the early records you’ll find that Pelagius was cleared of all heresies whenever he defended himself personally and he was also defended by others in the West, it was Augustine that was found to be heretical by the rest of the Church. Jerome and especially Augustine’s understanding of Pelagius and grace fell short much as they show above in their un-Christian belief that sex is a product of sin in or out of marriage and a result of guilt.

Remember that when St Jerome writes about virginity, he is generally either addressing consecrated virgins or widows (like St Paula) who need encouragement, or countering writers (whose work has often been lost, unfortunately) like Jovinian, who were actually saying (as far as we can reconstruct their work) that virginity was pointless, and that sex was imperative for everyone. (Sounds rather modern.) Controversial literature taken out of context always sounds over the top, bigoted and uncharitable.Sue

He was encouraging the idea that virginity was superior to blessed procreation. This is quite different from those monks and nuns who went into the desert to pray and gave up sex and other pleasures to dedicate themselves to this calling. Jerome’s encouragement is perverse in that it equates virginity with the highest state of Christian blessedness and rejects GOD’s blessing on procreation and he does this by mangling Scripture to suit his argument, a very Protestant thing to do…

From the same letter:

“The command to increase and multiply first finds fulfilment after the expulsion from paradise, after the nakedness and the fig-leaves which speak of sexual passion.”

No it doesn’t.

He does here what Augustine did with original sin, instead of sticking to the Church’s teaching that death was a consequence of the act he read it as death was a punishment, and he admitted he was going against the Church’s teaching on this and he didn’t care, he put his own revelation above the traditions as handed down.

However wonderful some of his thoughts his context is a God that punishes disobedience by death, this doctrine has coloured the perception of Christianity in the West. Like Jerome, he preferred his own version.

Do you think the trinity can be more than 3?

 

[Myhrr]

jc_escobar:

Hi Myhrr,

I can see that you have a problem with tha understanding of the Most Holy Trinity first of all. The mistery of the Trinity was NOT formulated to start with it was revealed to us from The Holy Spirit (GOD). After this was revealed, we came to know that for GOD to really be GOD, had to be a Trinity (this also by the grace of the Holy Spirit who is Himself GOD). How is this? well for GOD to be really GOD, he has to have absolute and perfect Knowledge of Himself, this Knowledge, is order to be absolute and perfec has to be a person in itself and this person in itself must be perfect, must be GOD Himself but in a different person, then, this Is GOD the Son. So we see that since The Son, being Himself GOD, and comming from GOD, at the same time knows GOD The Father in the same way HE is Known. From this perfect Knowlege of GOD in all His perfection, the is Love between Them (more propperly said: between Him), this Love is the Holy Spirit. GOD cannot be part of anything because He would then stop being GOD. So your argument would be describing something else rather that GOD. As I said before it would be a god or just someones idea of God, but not GOD.

Hi again JC, I don’t want to get into actual trinitarian arguments here, this description appears to make God the Holy Spirit not a person but a creation between Father and Son, but it still stands that the trinity is a description of Christ relative to the Father, “you have seen me you have seen the Father” and the procession of the Holy Spirit, “which I will send you from the Father”, it says nothing about GOD Absolute, for want of a better word.

I do understand that it came from revelation, “my Lord and my God”, but, it’s still a description of Christ’s relationship to God the Father. This is what Christ taught and which was the current expression of GOD at the time, however, the current understanding of the time also included thinking the Holy Spirit as feminine, yet in the Christian trinity we have a specific understanding that God the Holy Spirit is masculine.

Without the femine, since we are describing GOD in such relative terms, the Trinity as we have it can’t be describing GOD Absolute - unless you’re making the claim that GOD Absolute can only be expressed as male… GOD created male and female in his image and likeness, where is the female in the Trinity? If it’s not there then it can’t be a complete revelation of GOD.

.

Again Myhrr, it all comes down to your misunderstanding of what GOD is and you are confusing GOD with god. GOD can’t have any gender since He is simple in unity. He can’t have any attributes of shape, gender, size or anything like that. I reccomend you read the part of God in St. Thomas of Aquinas Summa Teologica for a better underrstanding of this. if you want you can find it in
HTML Code:
www.newadvent.org

I don’t think I’m misunderstanding what GOD is. RacerX’s point was that the Trinity is not defined by the Church as being ALL OF GOD, it was never meant to be. I think you’re reading into it more than it was formulated to be, and it was formulated, just as E=mc2 is a formula of something much more complex. It’s a description of the revelation of the Church against the various heresies around at the time about Christ. It was not specifically formulated to describe any revelation of the indescribable GOD.

continued

 

[Myhrr]

continued

I meant to stress ‘specifically’ in -

It was not specifically formulated to describe any revelation of the indescribable GOD

But the Trinity is formulated within the Creed which does include the feminine.

jc_escobar:

I don’t understand where you are comming from whioth this Hinduism and how do you relate it with Christianity and the history of Salvation but I would like to see you’r views. As you say, this would be another subject. But why don’t you open a new thread where we can talk about this.

I’m still in the process of researching this aspect so I won’t start a thread on it, but so far the connections back to Indian teaching are too numerous to mention. Especially interesting is the similarity of Godhead to Christian understanding, and of incarnation of this Godhead - which includes the remarkable similarity of Krishna to Christ.

There’s quite a library of information about Hinduism, Sanatana Dharma, on the web, this is an example of how GOD is discussed.

hinduwebsite.com/who_is_brahman.htm

continued

GOD still is, and how people understood Him in ancient times doesn’t matter because He doesn’t change, HE still IS. What matters is that He has now revealed Himself to us through Jesus Christ and we can know Him through His Church and hopefuly be eternally with Him. History and man is not qualified enough to understan GOD. That is why we need The Church, and The Church need the Holy Spirit. In other word we must be shown by Him who HE IS.

Well I can agree with the first part, but I do think it matters how people understood Him in ancient times. What’s the point of the Church bothering to remember that our God is the God of Abraham? If you want to concentrate only on how God has revealed Himself through Christ of course you can, but the Church continues to put Christ in context of the past by remembering prophecies and history, my musings here are simply a continuation of that.

 

[rschampine]

Racer X:

I submitted this to the AAA forum a few days ago but it hasn’t shown up there.

Does the Church teach that there are three and only three persons within the one God? Or do we only say that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the three persons which have been revealed to the Church but leave open the question of whether there are more?

I would consider it a highly conceited position to assume that God has revealed Himself fully (in any of His aspects) to us mortals unless He has explicitly told us that He has done so.

The fullness and infiniteness of God resides in all three persons. God’s majesty is not divided up. To say more persons within God necessarily reveals “more” of God, is to not understand the infiniteness of the Father, the infiniteness of the Son and the infiniteness of the Holy Spirit. To equate infinity with quantity reveals the finite limits of our ability to understand. We will not understand this infiniteness completely until, God willing, we experience the beautific vision.

 

[jc_escobar]

rschampine:

The fullness and infiniteness of God resides in all three persons. God’s majesty is not divided up. To say more persons within God necessarily reveals “more” of God, is to not understand the infiniteness of the Father, the infiniteness of the Son and the infiniteness of the Holy Spirit. To equate infinity with quantity reveals the finite limits of our ability to understand. We will not understand this infiniteness completely until, God willing, we experience the beautific vision.

Hi rschampine,

I couldn’t agree more with you. Excellent reply…

Blessings,
J.C.

 

[jc_escobar]

Myhrr:

Without the femine, since we are describing GOD in such relative terms, the Trinity as we have it can’t be describing GOD Absolute - unless you’re making the claim that GOD Absolute can only be expressed as male… GOD created male and female in his image and likeness, where is the female in the Trinity? If it’s not there then it can’t be a complete revelation of GOD.

Myhrr,

You can’t express or give GOD atributes of gender, neither male not female. GOD has no such atributes, if He did he would not be GOD anymore. That is appart from any religious thinking, it is inherent to the meaning of GOD. If he created us in His image it certainly isn’t because of genders, but because He gave us a soul and the capacithy to decide (free will). Not because He is male and female but on the contrary because he is neither male nor female. GOD simply IS.

Blessings,
J.C.

 

[Myhrr]

jc_escobar:

Myhrr,

You can’t express or give GOD atributes of gender, neither male not female. GOD has no such atributes, if He did he would not be GOD anymore. That is appart from any religious thinking, it is inherent to the meaning of GOD…

Hmm, so Jesus was genderless? Or are you saying that Jesus wasn’t GOD because Jesus was male and GOD has no gender? Would your priest agree with you?

 

[jc_escobar]

Myhrr:

Hmm, so Jesus was genderless? Or are you saying that Jesus wasn’t GOD because Jesus was male and GOD has no gender? Would your priest agree with you?

Myhrr,

Jesus is God incarnate. He became man for a very specific purpose: to save us from sin. He, a man had a gender, but only in his incarnation. God, can’t have a gender since He is wholly simple.

Blessings,
J.C.

 

[ricatholic]

St Veronica:

We must be talking past each other, because I do understand your question and I have pointed out that yes the Church teaches definitively (which you asked about) that there is only a Trinity.

If the Church teaches the Trinity is DOGMA (which it does), then it cannot change, there will be no further revelation about this.

We can be confident that there cannot be anything further because Christ came and fulfilled the prophesies. During the time of the Jews, in the OT, the prophesy was unfulfilled…we see the fulfillment in the NT.

Christ established the Church, …Christ guides the Church to this day…the Church cannot make error when it comes to faith and morals.

SV

Because Jesus bound God to do what the humans on earth tell Him to do, St.V is correct. God couldn’t send another son to another planet , even if He wanted, the church prevents Him from doing so.

Peace

 

[Richard_Lamb]

Racer X:

I submitted this to the AAA forum a few days ago but it hasn’t shown up there.

Does the Church teach that there are three and only three persons within the one God? Or do we only say that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the three persons which have been revealed to the Church but leave open the question of whether there are more?

I would consider it a highly conceited position to assume that God has revealed Himself fully (in any of His aspects) to us mortals unless He has explicitly told us that He has done so.

It would be concited were it our own invention, but is isn’t. Jesus said we are to baptise in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit. At his baptism in the Jordan we see all three persons manifest. This is how the apotles understood it and it is how it has been handed to us from them.