I Believe in One God

[mercytruth]

I am resurrecting this thread in order to acknowledge that I have not been deceived regarding the death that our Lord Jesus Christ endured for us. It was a death that he suffered not only bodily, but also interiorly, in his very soul. Thus, having died such a death, he was resurrected and born again into union with his Father, a union which he had prior with his Father, and a union which he has prayed for us on that great Paschal evening. (John 17).

“By two or three witnesses a thing is established”. We have the witness of St. Peter, St. Polycarp, St. John of the Cross, St. Faustina, St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, and Hans Von Balthasar, the esteemed Catholic theologian.

St. Peter: **“God raised him up, having loosed him from the pains of Sheol, for it was not possible for him to be held by it.” **(Acts 3:24), (St. Polycarp: Epistle to the Phil****ippians, chapter 1), (Hans von Balthasar: Mysterium Pascha]le, Going to the Dead: Holy Saturday)

On Pentecost the Psalms of Hallel are recited in the Temple services (Ps.113-118). What scripture was St.Peter referring to on Pentecost when he said, “**God raised him up, having loosed him from the pains of Sheol, for it was not possible for him to be held by it.”? **
Very likely, it was Psalm 116:3: “The pangs of death compassed me, the sorrows of Sheol got hold upon me.” Thus, this Psalm would have been fresh in the ears of the Jewish audience on that Pentecost (Shavuot) morning.

In addition, St. John of the Cross quotes the repetition of this Psalm found in Psalm 18:5-6 when describing the dark night. “The sighs of death encircled me, the sorrows of Sheol surrounded me, in my tribulation I cried out”(St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night,BookTwo,Chapter6).

Just one brief quotation of many from Hans Balthasar: **“I died, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades (Apocalypse 1,18). Once again, it is neither a question of a ‘struggle’ nor of a ‘descent’, but of absolute, plenary power, due to the fact that the Lord was dead (he has experienced death interiorly) and now lives eternally”. **

Just one quotation from St. John of the Cross: **“Second, at the moment of his death he was certainly annihilated in his soul, without any consolation or relief, since the Father had left him that way in innermost aridity in the lower part. He was thereby compelled to cry out: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? [Mt.27:46]. This was the most extreme abandonment, sensitively, that he had suffered in his life. And by it he accomplished the most marvelous work of his whole life… **(The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, Chapter 7).

Just one quotation from St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross: “God left him alone.(St. John of the Cross). That was the most intense suffering with which no earthly suffering could be compared. But nevertheless it was proof for him (St. John of the Cross) of God’s preferential love. It seemed to lead to death and yet was the way to life. No human heart ever entered as dark a night as did the God-man’s abandonment by God. But Jesus can give to chosen souls some taste of this extreme bitterness. They are his most faithful friends from whom he exacts this final test of their love. (The Science of the Cross,Chapter 1).

What is remarkable is that when St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) was writing this book on St. John of the Cross for the 400th anniversary of his birth in 1942, Saint Faustina had been such a chosen soul to taste of this ‘extreme bitterness’. This book, by the way was completed just prior to Edith Steins arrest by the Nazis and martyrdom in Auschwitz.

Here is what St. Faustina writes in her diary on December 20, 1934: “Thank you, Jesus, for interior sufferings, for dryness of spirit, for terrors, fears and incertitudes, for the darkness and the deep interior night, for temptations and various ordeals, for torments too difficult to describe, especially for those which no one will understand, for the hour of death with its fierce struggle and all its bitterness.I thank you Jesus, You who first drank the cup of bitterness before You gave it to me, in a much milder form.” (Divine Mercy in My Soul, 343)

These saints testify to the interior suffering and death of Lord Jesus Christ for our sins.

I thank God for revealing the writings of these saints to me, in order to confirm that I have not been deceived in this manner.

A Blessed Shavuot to all of you, and always remember the words of Jesus,** “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even as unto death.”**

 

[perro_sarnoso]

Thank you! I hope you had (or will have, depending on when you have chosen to observe it) a good and blessed Easter yourself.

Could you be more specific? Surely you don’t think that the concept of oneness* is* God.

The Father is God as the Son is God as the Holy Spirit is God- One God. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and receives the same worship and glory.

The Son is eternally begotten of the Father: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

“…Lord, show us the Father and that will be sufficient for us…” I have been with you so long and you still don’t recognize me…" " He who has seen me, has seen the Father".

Not 3 three gods as the pagans believe…One God-Three Divine Persons.

The pre '62 Baltimore Catechism show an illustration of three separate circles around a central word “GOD”. Showing the the Father is not the Son; nor is the Son the Father nor are they the Holy Spirit nor is the Holy Spirit-the Father or the Son…(bear with me)

But they are one in the Godhead. And because of this Unicity and Triunicity-is the reason why God is Love. Love has to be shared in order to be Love. So God is Love.

 

[JohnVIII]

Out of curiosity, for those of you who confess the Nicene Creed, who or what do you understand the “One God” mentioned in the Creed to be?

Most of the Nicene Creed was intended to oppose the doctrines of the Marcionite Churches as well as the Gnostics. Just about every Christian (except for Orthodox Christians) believed that God, the creator of the world, was really a lessor being that acted under the direction of the Supreme God. The Nicene confession said that the creator God is the same God as the Supreme God, that there is no distinction. To make this clear the Creed says, “I believe in one God, maker of Heaven and Earth”. If it didn’t add the words, “maker of Heaven and Earth”, many Christians would think it was referring to the Supreme God, who did not create the Earth.

Even though today most Christians think it strange for anyone to teach that there is a Supreme God and a lessor “god” that acts under the direction of the Supreme God, this was a very common idea in the first three centuries of Christianity, held by both Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians alike.

For about 20 years, as an Orthodox Christian, I confessed the Creed thinking that I was preserving a faith that was reveled by Christ directly to His apostles and through them to the Church. Now I see it as a change from the common faith which the Fathers of the Church felt had to be done for the uniting of all Christians under the Roman Empire.

Today the common view is the Trinitarian view. I do not dogmatize any view, so I accept Trinitarian Christians as true Christians, so long as one confesses Christ and Him crucified.

 

[dzheremi]

Well that is distressing to read. I suppose more study or contemplation might turn you into an Arian, as that position was once quite popular, too. This is a sick and perverse way of approaching theology. Were the Old Testament not of God, why did the Christ who you apparently accept quote it and live by it to the letter, even going beyond the letter (without discarding it) to enlighten the world as to its true nature? (“You have heard it said…, but I say unto you…”, etc.)

As for the OP, I believe nothing less than what St. Athanasius the Apostolic wrote in condemnation of the Arians, when he expounded upon correct belief in his refutation of their wrong understanding of the Trisagion: “For the Triad, praised, reverenced, and adored, is one and indivisible and without degrees (ἀσχηματιστός). It is united without confusion, just as the Monad also is distinguished without separation. For the fact of those venerable living creatures offering their praises three times, saying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ proves that the Three Subsistences are perfect, just as in saying ‘Lord,’ they declare the One Essence.” (source)

God is One in the uncreated and undivided Holy Trinity. In essence a mystery, yet just the same knowable, as Christ has told us that if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father, and that the Father shall send in His name the Holy Spirit. And…well, that about covers it, doesn’t it? One God, three hypostases, one in essence.

 

[Trebor135]

Now I see it as a change from the common faith which the Fathers of the Church felt had to be done for the uniting of all Christians under the Roman Empire.

On what basis did you make this cynical determination?

 

[Ion]

One God in three persons God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
A muslim asked me how can one be three persons?Either one or three…
I told him that God is infinite. I told him that if you divide one infinite in 3 equal parts you get 3 infinites, and addind 3 infinites gives you one infinite.
Three non-contradicting infinite is infinite.

 

[mangy_dog]

The Father is God as the Son is God as the Holy Spirit is God- One God. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and receives the same worship and glory.

The Son is eternally begotten of the Father: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

“…Lord, show us the Father and that will be sufficient for us…” I have been with you so long and you still don’t recognize me…" " He who has seen me, has seen the Father".

Not 3 three gods as the pagans believe…One God-Three Divine Persons.

The pre '62 Baltimore Catechism show an illustration of three separate circles around a central word “GOD”. Showing the the Father is not the Son; nor is the Son the Father nor are they the Holy Spirit nor is the Holy Spirit-the Father or the Son…(bear with me)

But they are one in the Godhead. And because of this Unicity and Triunicity-is the reason why God is Love. Love has to be shared in order to be Love. So God is Love.

What we know of God the Father we know from His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ who is one in being with the Father. Together They send the Holy Spirit who-with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified and is God.

This follows: Paternity, Spiration, Filiation and Procession. We could get higher and higher into the theological spiral but in the end it would be as simple as God is three and God is one.

Jesus Christ is the one, true Lord and God of all. Nothing can or ever will change that.

“…he who has seen me, has seen the Father…”

 

[JohnVIII]

JohnVIII;9347755:

Now I see it as a change from the common faith which the Fathers of the Church felt had to be done for the uniting of all Christians under the Roman Empire.

On what basis did you make this cynical determination?

The Roman Empire adopted a view that it would better serve the interest of national unity to make one version of Christianity legal, uniting all Christians under this one version, rather than continuing to persecute all Christians. That one version was Catholic. Catholic unity is based on the person of St Peter. The Marcionite (Pauline) Church was not a subscriber to St Peter, and for this reason (a political reason) became an enemy of both Church and State. Although the scriptures of the Marcionite Church (the epistles of Paul) were not officially accepted by the Catholic Church until 367 AD they were very widely popular not only among Marcionites and Gnostics, but among Catholics as well. The Catholic Church (i.e. the Church Fathers) adopted a similar tactic, in regard to the Marcionite Church, that the Roman Empire had with Christians. The practice of the Marcionites (monasticism) and the Marcionite scriptures (The Epistles of Paul, with interpolations that introduced the primacy of Peter) became a part of the Catholic Church. Since most Marcionites cared more for the practice rather than the doctrine of their faith (Marcionite doctrines were not dogmatic, and holding unto them at all costs was seen as a prideful act), this tactic was quite successful in incorporating vast numbers of Marcionites into the Catholic Church - most of them becoming monastics.

The aim was Christian unity, not dogma. However, some dogma became necessary toward this unity. The Nicene Creed was structurally based on the Apostles Creed. It is maintained by recent scholars that the Apostle’s Creed was drawn up in the Roman Church in opposition to Marcionism (cf. F. Kattenbusch, “Das Apost. Symbol.”, Leipzig, 1900; A.C. McGiffert, “The Apostle’s Creed”, New York, 1902). However, the teaching that a lessor god was the creator of Heaven and Earth was not exclusively Marcionite, it was that mainly only the Marcionites that were popular enough to carry this teaching forward for a number of centuries. Even after the number of Marcionites finally diminished by the 5th century, several other groups continued this teaching, such as the Cathars.

“Catharism”, as quoted here from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism “was a name given to a Christian religious movement with dualistic and gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. The movement was extinguished in the early decades of the thirteenth century by the Albigensian Crusade, when the Cathars were persecuted and massacred and the Inquisition was set up to finish the job”.

“Dualism” is the term used that refers to this teaching about a lessor god being the creator, but I referred to it as “the common faith” because it was so widely held by so many people in the early time of Christianity, especially among early Jewish Christians. It was, and really still is, a central teaching that inspired monasticism, first among the Essenes (also known as the “Jessenes” meaning the son of Jesse, whos leader was John the Baptist), then among several gnostic Christian groups and the Marcionites, then finally (after 367 AD) the Catholics as well. The reason it was central to monasticism is because this lessor creator god said in Genesis 2:18, “And Jehovah God said, It is not good that the man should be alone”. And as Laodiceans 6:12 says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood; but against the original-archons and rulers-of-humans; against the system-holders of the darkness of this aeon; against the wicked spiritual hosts in the heavens” (aka Ephesians 6:12), in our wrestling against Jehovah the opposite was considered to be the truth, that “it is good for man to be alone”. It is also noteworthy that early Catholic canon law prescribed that monastic fasting rules shall not be followed for the wrong (Marcionite) reasons.

Peace!