God as Person

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In the Scriptures, God is not referred to as ‘Person’, nor does He refer to himself as ‘Person’. Nor do we hear ‘God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity’ until much later. Why do we call God a ‘Person’ when there are so many other things that He is? Why do we call Him a ‘Person’ when this confuses many into thinking He is an old man in a heaven in the sky? I can find nothing on the Internet.

Blessings
 
Carol_Morgan said:
In the Scriptures, God is not referred to as ‘Person’, nor does He refer to himself as ‘Person’. Nor do we hear ‘God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity’ until much later. Why do we call God a ‘Person’ when there are so many other things that He is? Why do we call Him a ‘Person’ when this confuses many into thinking He is an old man in a heaven in the sky? I can find nothing on the Internet.

Blessings
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Remember, the Church is operated by philosophers. Philosophically, the term ‘person’ is not a synonym for ‘human being’, although in popular English, it is.

This makes matters somewhat confusing for nonphilosophers such as you or me.

God bless and ICXC NIKA.
 
**"Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;” (Gen 1:26).

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC);

The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity”. The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: “The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God.” In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), “Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature.” (CCC 253).

CA Faith Tract “God in Three Persons” gives more info here; catholic.com/library/God_in_Three_Persons.asp

From Merriam Webster;

One of the three modes of being in the Trinitarian Godhead as understood by Christians, the unitary personality of Christ that unites the divine and human natures. **

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/person

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, Ora Pro Nobis Peccatoribus!

mark
 
Carol_Morgan said:
Why do we call God a ‘Person’ when there are so many other things that He is? Why do we call Him a ‘Person’ when this confuses many into thinking He is an old man in a heaven in the sky?
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To refer to God as Person is to distinguish Him from an impersonal divine force present in everything. This is a very important idea for our culture in which our concept of the divine often seems to come from Star Wars rather than Scripture. God has mind and will. God acts with love and justice. These are personal qualities. God is a distinct entity.
 
Carol_Morgan said:
In the Scriptures, God is not referred to as ‘Person’, nor does He refer to himself as ‘Person’. Nor do we hear ‘God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity’ until much later. Why do we call God a ‘Person’ when there are so many other things that He is? Why do we call Him a ‘Person’ when this confuses many into thinking He is an old man in a heaven in the sky? I can find nothing on the Internet.

Blessings
Click to expand...
You can try to wade through what St. Thomas had to say about it:

newadvent.org/summa/1029.htm#article3

As always, he is exceptionally logical and, here, is a bit difficult to follow (at least for me) because of terminology.

Dan
 
Carol_Morgan said:
In the Scriptures, God is not referred to as ‘Person’, nor does He refer to himself as ‘Person’. Nor do we hear ‘God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity’ until much later. Why do we call God a ‘Person’ when there are so many other things that He is? Why do we call Him a ‘Person’ when this confuses many into thinking He is an old man in a heaven in the sky? I can find nothing on the Internet.

Blessings
Click to expand...
Welcome to CAF, Carol. A book that would help you understand this is Frank Sheed’s Theology for Beginners; the author addresses your question in his excellent chapters on the Trinity. It’s written in a very accessible style.
 
Many helpful replies for which I am grateful. I am not sure that we have gotten to the bottom of the problem, as there are so many other possibilities - the thousand names of God for example.

I trudged slowly through* Summa Theologica* on this issue, and came up with - wait for it -
*
Tres hypostases therefore appeared to conflict with the Nicaean doctrine of unity of substance in the Trinity. This difference was a main cause of the Antiochene schism of the fourth century (see MELETIUS OF ANTIOCH). Eventually in the West, it was recognized that the true equivalent of hypostasis was not substantia but subsistentia, and in the East that to understand prosopon in the sense of the Latin persona precluded the possibility of a Sabellian interpretation. By the First Council of Constantinople, therefore, it was recognized that the words **hypostasis, prosopon, and persona ***were equally applicable to the three Divine realities.

Further trudging suggested that Thomas Aquinas came to the conclusion that it was OK to call God a ‘person’, but that that was not the only possibility among many others. I think it more likely that the Council of Constantinople confirmed the use of the word ‘person’ to describe God once the meaning of the term ‘subsistentia’ was agreed, in the face of the Antiocheme schism (outline in Summa above).

To me, that suggests that it was agreed 359CE that the name could properly used. to describe God.

Now I am left with the question: why is it used more often than other names? Why is it the common name applied to God? Is it because the Trinity can more easily be explained by the use of the word ‘person’.

I have been told that the core of Catholicism is the belief that God is Person, and that our goal is to enter into an inter-personal relationship with God the Person. I am confused, no?

Blessings,

Carol
South Africa

Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ)
 
Welcome Carol, it is confusing. But we must have faith in the Church Fathers. Really, any term we use to describe God is just that, a term. We have no idea how to comprehend Him, other that what He has chosen to reveal.

Pope Pius XII makes it clear we must not equate God with mankind. And perhaps the term mankind is the distinction itself.

"A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, “Where have they taken him?”
Pope Pius XII

That quote is not relevant to the topic, but does show the clear distinction. 🙂
 
Carol_Morgan said:
Now I am left with the question: why is it used more often than other names? Why is it the common name applied to God? Is it because the Trinity can more easily be explained by the use of the word ‘person’.

I have been told that the core of Catholicism is the belief that God is Person, and that our goal is to enter into an inter-personal relationship with God the Person. I am confused, no?
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You don’t sound confused to me. The use of the term “person” is useful for describing the Trinity as well as drawing attention to our goal of being in relationship with God. The three Persons of the Trinity are in relationship with each other which leads us to seek an interpersonal relationship with God. The mystery of the Trinity also draws our attention to the incomprehensibility of God.
 
As I explain it to my students, our brains (minds) are not big enough to understand everything about God so we sometimes use simpler words to describe Him.
 
This has been helpful and I thank you.

I believe that the conclusion I might come to is that God is inevitably utterly unknowable, incomprehensible, ineffable, and that we must trust (pistis) in what we think, what we believe, we know about him.

In effect that means that God is **no-thing **(he exists outside our time and space) and is **every-thing **(He is God Creator and everything on this planet is of God). That includes you and me.

He has been called ‘God of a thousand names’, so perhaps I agree with most of you that ‘Person’ is just one of many terms, and is not synonymous with the person homo sapiens- the human person that we all know (and love most of the time).

Who am I?

God Creator, Abba Father,
Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God and Man,
Emanuel, Redeemer, the Christ,
Holy Spirit Paraclete
The Trinity

First Cause, Unborn, Beginningless, Endless

I am the Unknowable.

I Am that I Am

Love

Blessings IHN
 
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