I thought all members of the Trinity were equal!

  • Thread starter Thread starter scapularkid8
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

scapularkid8

Guest
John 14:28 confused me. Amid one of the most in depth looks into the Trinity that Christ shows His disciples, He says

“You heard me tell you, ‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.”

Huh?
 
This is what I got from Agape Bible Study:
Jesus is speaking of Himself in His humanity, in His limited capacity as a human being. As the Living Word of God, Jesus, in His divinity, has glory equal to the Father [John 17:5], yet He humbled Himself on our behalf and took on our humanity [Philippians 2:6-8 *“Who, being in the form of God did not count equality with God something to be grasped. But he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.”]. In His humanity God is greater; in His divinity the Father and Son are co-equal [8:24; 10:30] and in His essence, He and God the Father are One [John 1:1-3, 5:23; 6:62, 10:30; 14:9]. Also see CCC# 460-476.
Click to expand...
 
scapularkid8 said:
John 14:28 confused me. Amid one of the most in depth looks into the Trinity that Christ shows His disciples, He says

“You heard me tell you, ‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.”

Huh?
Click to expand...
Check the Nicene Creed. The Son is begotten from the Father. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Hard to be equal when you are begotten, or when you proceed.🙂
 
scapularkid8 said:
John 14:28 confused me. Amid one of the most in depth looks into the Trinity that Christ shows His disciples, He says

“You heard me tell you, ‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.”

Huh?
Click to expand...
Jesus is speaking in a postitional sense that the Father is greater, positionally but that in NO way means that Jesus is less in His nature or substance. The council of Nicea 325 A.D. used the word “homoousious” which means of the same substance to describe the coeternity and consubstantiality of the Trinity.

And example of a postional sense of being greater, the president of the US is greater postionally than I as an average person, because he is in a higher position, but he is no greater than I am in his humanity, and he and I share equally in the same substance of our humanity. This is what Jesus is speaking about; that the Father is greater in a positional sense, since Jesus humbled himself and took on flesh and choose to be under (positionally) the Father for a time, in order to be a man; He has both a human and a divine soul (hypostatic union).
 
Along with Notworthy’s fine explanation is the fact that the authority within the Godhead is a hierarchy of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This does not damage the equality of the Son and the Holy Spirit any more than a human father’s authority over his wife and children deprive them of their equality as persons to their husband and father.
 
If Jesus was meaning by this statement that He was a lesser being (created) than the Father then what do we make of the statement He makes a short time earlier calling Himself equal? John 5:18 reads, "For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him; not only was He breaking the sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.

This is a passage that is frequently employed by modern Arians like Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons to deny the full and complete Deity of Our Lord.

What Christ is saying is that the Father, at this time in His humiliation, and forever as He is both God & man, is greater in position.

Jesus, being fully God, was so humiliated that He could be said to have a God. He is both God & man in one person: Jesus the Christ.

Jesus assumed a subordinate role through His incarnation in order to be our mediator. Being our mediator He is seated at the Father’s right hand and is lesser than Him in terms of having a human nature in addition to His Divinity.

I hope that helps. 👍
 
oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense actually! Thanks guys, that actually clears things up for me. Praise the Spirit for enlightening all of us.
 
No doubt.

It’s a pleasure to finally come across something less polemical.

God’s blessings!
 
Trinity1984 said:
If Jesus was meaning by this statement that He was a lesser being (created) than the Father then what do we make of the statement He makes a short time earlier calling Himself equal? John 5:18 reads, "For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him; not only was He breaking the sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.

This is a passage that is frequently employed by modern Arians like Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons to deny the full and complete Deity of Our Lord.

What Christ is saying is that the Father, at this time in His humiliation, and forever as He is both God & man, is greater in position.
Jesus, being fully God, was so humiliated that He could be said to have a God. He is both God & man in one person: Jesus the Christ.

Jesus assumed a subordinate role through His incarnation in order to be our mediator. Being our mediator He is seated at the Father’s right hand and is lesser than Him in terms of having a human nature in addition to His Divinity.

I hope that helps. 👍
Click to expand...
In what way does Jesus assuming a human nature mean that he is “forever” lesser than the Father. Aren’t you then also implying that the Holy Spirit is greater in position than the Son?
 
They are equal in divine nature, but there is a rank of relationship among them.
 
scapularkid8 said:
John 14:28 confused me. Amid one of the most in depth looks into the Trinity that Christ shows His disciples, He says

“You heard me tell you, ‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.”

Huh?
Click to expand...
Father is greater as begin the Head of Godhead nothing to do with differance to deity.

it reflect their roles, their purposes not their aurthirty which is one and same God.
Gillian:)
 
Hi Scap___,

The Word was made flesh, and, as St. Paul says, he humbled Himself taking up our nature; He was like us in everything except sin.Jesus rarely speaks of his divinity. He presents himself as a human being, subject to this Father.

After his resurrection and ascension he “regained” in a way, his divine position “at the right hand of the Father”. and was further glorified in his human nature, as the first born of all of us who were to follow.

Verbum
 
Verbum said:
He was like us in everything except sin.Jesus rarely speaks of his divinity.
Click to expand...
Unless you count the Gospel of John. Every time He says, “I AM the …” (I believe it’s a total of 7 times), He is declaring His Divinity. And the Jews understood it.

Just look at when Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am”. The Jews try to stone him to death at these words. But of course, this is a good indication of why Jesus didn’t talk more often of His Divinity.

In Mark’s Gospel, as you said, He kept it hush until He was on His way to Jerusalem and He let Bartimaeus claim it to the people. What happened a week later? He died.
 
During the Arian controversy in the 4th century, this passage from Sacred Scripture was often used, or, rather, misused, to support the claim of the Arians.

What Jesus is saying here is that He, Jesus the man, is God’s agent. This is one of the few times that Jesus takes on the roll of prophet. In John 11/4, Jesus calls Himself the Son of God, this is just before He raises Lazarus from the dead. It is the only place in the bible that He refers to Himself by that title.

If John acknowledges, both in his gospel and his epistle, that Jesus is God, why would he be so inconsistant as to now dispute that fact? He doesn’t, it is illogical.

What Jesus is doing here is praying to God, the Father, which is equal to Him as John establishes in the first Chapter of his gospel and in his epistle and in doing so He is instructing the Apostles and us that He, with his human nature is not equal to God but is an agent of God and by serving in that roll He is showing perfect obedience to God. This roll of God’s agent is seen in the precious chapter in John 13/16 where Jesus states that servant is not greater than the master. This is also seen in Matthew 10/24 and Luke 6/40.

In regards to the Holy Spirit not being equal to the Father and the Son, this is well… preposterous. In short, the Holy Spirit does not come into the world to teach a totally new set of teachings but to lead and guide Our Lord’s followers in the teachings that have already been given to us by Our Lord. And He, the Holy Spirit, proceeds from both the Father and the Son, that is what the Nicene/Constantanople Creed says.
 
Hello,

The Athanasian Creed:

Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood.
 
Thanks for the quote from the Athanasian creed, that’s helpful.
 
Daniel_Marsh said:
They are equal in divine nature, but there is a rank of relationship among them.
Click to expand...
I wouldn’t describe them as equal in divine nature. They are one divine nature which I think is different from equal in divine nature.
 
Daniel_Marsh said:
I see it as the same thing.
Click to expand...
You might be right but I just think that saying the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are equal in divine nature seems to imply they each have their own divine nature which are all equal but there is only one divine nature, not three equal divine natures.
 
When we make the sine of the cross we say " In thename of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy spirit" We do not say "In the names**** of the …
We only know about God what he has revealed to us. He has chosen to reveal himself in the form (I can’t think of a better word to use than form, but that dosent fit) of a family. A father, and a son. The Holy Spirit was the last to be revealed.
684CCC “Through his grace, the Holy Spirit is the first to awaken faith in us and to communicate to us the new life, which is to “know the Father and the one whom he has sent, Jesus Christ””****
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top