Nature of God

[Linusthe2nd]

This kind of response always frustrates me. I have studied this extensively, and I can tell you that there is a HUGE difference between not being able to demonstratively prove something, and that thing being illogical. While some things are indeed mysteries, and faith is absolutely essential, God is never illogical. We might not understand Him or His reasons, but then we are not working from the same knowledge or ability to understand that He is. Do we not experience this as children? Our parents can be extremely confusing and frustrating, but then examining their actions years later, we have the added knowledge and experience to see that they were right. So yes, God is a mystery, and yes, we must depend on faith, but don’t ever say that He is unreasonable.

Yes, that is correct. What I meant to say is that to man’s intellect the understanding of these things is beyond the capacity of human reason. But God is the Perfect Intellect, the Perfect Mind, So these things are perfectly reasonable and intelligible to Him. For these reasons we cannot demonstrate the Truth of these things.

Linus2nd

 

[AndrewRaZ]

Paziego: first of all, thank you for hanging on for two years with such a difficult and challenging question! Like I said, this topic is literally the deepest and most profound mystery that we can approach. We can say a lot about God, but we can never fully explain him.in him. The difficulty is there is no comparison. Everything we know comes through the senses, which means we explain everything in terms of material temporal-spacial reality. But God isn’t material, temporal, or spacial! So every time we go, “it’s kind of like this” we run into the immediate problem of “well, no, it’s really not.” That’s the inadequacy of analogy, for any similarity, there is greater dissimilarity. For example, if we say someone is “quiet as a mouse,” does that mean the person is really in any way like a mouse? Well, in some very limited way, yes. But in many more ways, no.

And you’re right, Jesus does have a human soul! Being a living human being means having a rational and free soul united to a body as one being (meaning body and soul aren’t separate entities, they are one being). And since Jesus is fully human, he has a human soul, with a human intellect, and a human will to choose. Why is that important? Because whatever Jesus did not assume, he could not save. So if he didn’t have a human will, he couldn’t save our fallen human will, etc. But being at the same time divine, he also had a divine will, and his human will was always in perfect union with the will of the Father, hence, “I come to do not my will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn 6:38). Exactly how is this possible? I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone has come up with a satisfactory explanation. Is there a logical contradiction in it? No. There’s no logical reason why the two natures could not be united and not lose anything of themselves. It certainly strains the brain to understand it, though!

This is why the Council of Chalcedon made the definition the way they did. There was a laundry list of people trying to figure it out with “well, maybe this…” and the guardians of the faith always stood in the center, and said, nope, we’re not walking away from this. That’s why they said this:
Council of Chalcedon:

One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved, and (both) concurring into One Person and One Hypostasis; not as though He were parted or divided into Two Persons, but One and the Self-same Son and Only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ

As for the Ascension, Jesus, raised from the dead has a glorified humanity. The divine life fully lives in his humanity. It’s hard for us to imagine, and it was equally hard for the people who saw him to explain–just see the resurrection narratives and try to piece it together–it’s Jesus, but it doesn’t look like Jesus, and he walks through doors! The super-cool thing, though, is that’s a glimpse of what He will do to us! Let me try to explain, another long-winded bit:
Jesus, raised from the dead, can never die (Rom 6:9). Since death came through a human, the resurrection also came through a human (1 Cor 15:21). Jesus has taken our sinful humanity. By his passion and death, he has taken the punishment of sin, and offered himself as a perfect sacrifice of love for us. But if he died, we would really be right back where we started, so he is raised from the dead not only as proof that he is God, and proof of his victory over death, but also so that he can take the raised humanity that he assumed, put to death, and take it into heaven. And when he does this, he brings our redeemed humanity, which he now has, with him into heaven. Then, entering the Holy of Holies, he pours out the Holy Spirit, so that as he brings his humanity into heaven, through baptism we are incorporated into Christ, who is in God. To sum up even more, I’ll use a phrase of the early Fathers of the Church: “Christ became man, so that man could become God.” (of course, not that we will ever be of the same nature, but he gives us his own divine life in baptism, so if we’re animated by the same Spirit, doesn’t that mean we are like God?)

So the second Person of the Trinity became Incarnate in Christ, but the other two Persons were involved, but not themselves incarnate. Nor was anything absorbed in the sense that it became indistinguishable from God, but from the moment of the Incarnation, the created humanity of Jesus was for the rest of eternity somehow inseparably “part” of God. And we don’t equally become fully God, only by adoption through the gift of his divine life. In one sense, it is a two-way street (by gift/grace), but in another, it’s not (nature).

Re: several comments on “demonstrating” or “proving”…
Modern positivist science has warped the idea of ‘proof’, honestly. After all, can we prove that gravity actually makes things fall? Well, no, but we can give an overwhelming number of reasons to believe that it does. The same is true of faith. We can’t prove faith (causally), but we can give reasons why it is reasonable to believe. It might be beyond fathoming that the all-powerful and transcendent God should become part of creation, but there’s nothing in it that results in a logical error or fallacy. If God is love, wouldn’t it make sense that he would want to be as close as possible to us, to be able to have a personal relationship with us that isn’t just based on an unrelatable idea of transcendence?

 

[paziego]

Thank you for your reply.

I hear what you are saying, and I can definitely relate to your point about the dangers of positivism in science and elsewhere. Although I disagree with you about there not being a logical error. Creation is creation because it was created; God, as the creator, can never become also the creation. Such a view would face the same criticisms as pantheism.

Also, I believe the Church does claim that God became spatial, temporal and material. That the Eternal Word became flesh in the most literal sense is the central claim of Catholicism. Most, if not all Christological heresies are deviations from this concept, either denying the divinity, humanity or physicality of Jesus.

If the Word’s nature is the same as that of the Father and the Holy Spirit, then anything that becomes conjoined to the Word’s nature must also become part of the rest of the Trinity. Otherwise we would be talking about different natures. Where Jesus is, the Word is; and where the Word is so are the other two Persons. It is necessary that the entire Trinity has a human soul, which, for the reasons mentioned above, I see as contradictory.

If we say that only the 2nd person of the Trinity has adopted human nature, then we would be saying that He has come to possess a different nature from the other two Persons, which is obviously also incorrect.

 

[AndrewRaZ]

You’re right again, we do believe that God became temporal and spatial. But when we say “became,” we have to be very very clear by what we mean by “became.” He didn’t “become” in the sense of going from one thing to another, but rather “become” in the sense of maintaining a non-temporal/spatial nature while uniting that nature with a temporal/spatial body. That’s why that definition from Chalcedon is so important: it re-emphasizes that God did not cease to be fully divine with those attributes proper to him when the Word took on human nature. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and. So you’re absolutely right, and it seems we agree on all that.

Now we’re really reaching the boundaries of my ability to explain, I’m going to be up front about that. But I’ll do my best.

The Word has the same nature as the Father and the Holy Spirit, yes. But they are not just logically distinct (i.e. we can say that a table has a front and back, but that is a logical distinction, rather than a real one; the front is not separate from the back). They are really distinct, but not separate (i.e. we can say that the table has four legs that are really distinct, not just logically, but not separate) [note: these analogies both fail when it comes to God…]
The three Persons of the Trinity, being really distinct (not just logically), are able to act distinctly–how exactly is beyond my expertise. I recall something about the distinction being clear within the Trinity, but when God acts “ad extra” or outside the Trinity, each Person is involved. I’m going to leave that alone.

Now, here’s the kicker. I find this pretty cool, personally! When “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” he never ceased being the second person of the Godhead, nor ceased being distinct from the Father and the Son. Now the Father is not the Son or the Spirit, and the Son is not the Father or the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son, right? And this is God’s divine nature. And the divine nature is unchanging. So when the divine nature in the Word united himself, without undergoing change, to human nature, he did not cease being divine, but he added a new mode of existence in history.

So, to approach your question, he did “possess” a different nature, but he didn’t cease to possess the divine nature, nor did he combine them. In his divine nature Jesus Christ was always present to the Father and the Spirit, and shared the beatific vision (“I beheld Satan fall like lightning…”. But in his human nature, not so (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”)

But if we say that the Father or the Spirit now has a human nature and the Spirit has a human nature we collapse the distinction between the persons.

So to sum up:
God’s divine nature is unchanging, and from all eternity three Persons.
“In the fullness of time,” the Word took on, that is, united himself with, a human nature, without ceasing to to be divine.
Because God’s nature is eternally unchanging, the distinctions of the Persons remain
Therefore, only one Person became physically Incarnate, although yes, all three Persons were involved, but not all three persons were incarnate.
What we see as ‘change’ in time is God’s eternal act manifesting itself in temporal history.

I don’t think I did a very good job explaining this, but you’re asking some very good but hard questions! I hope this helps a little bit at least.

What helped me was not taking a class on Trinity, or reading a book (Luis Ladaria: Living and True God is pretty good, btw, if technical). What helped me was praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament and begging God to give me faith and understanding. I said, “God, I don’t get this. And I know it’s beyond me. But how can I believe something that just seems so incredible? Help me!” I can’t say “I’ve got it,” but I do believe he’s been giving it to me. And I’ve been asking for years, too. Don’t let that discourage you. He is faithful, and he will do it!

 

[Aloysium]

. . . The three Persons of the Trinity, being really distinct (not just logically), are able to act distinctly–how exactly is beyond my expertise. I recall something about the distinction being clear within the Trinity, but when God acts “ad extra” or outside the Trinity, each Person is involved. I’m going to leave that alone. . . . When “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” he never ceased being the second person of the Godhead, nor ceased being distinct from the Father and the Son. Now the Father is not the Son or the Spirit, and the Son is not the Father or the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son, right? And this is God’s divine nature. And the divine nature is unchanging. So when the divine nature in the Word united himself, without undergoing change, to human nature, he did not cease being divine, but he added a new mode of existence in history. . .

You actually led to an explanation:
As Father, God is our loving Creator: revealing His Beauty, Goodness and Truth.
He is the Word, by which the universe was created and through His emptying of Himself, He became one of us, redeemed us and made possible our salvation.
The Holy Spirit of God calls us to Him, bestowing upon us His graces and the gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord that enable us to know and love Him.

 

[paziego]

Thank you AndrewRaz. That is an excellent explanation. I was having difficulties understanding the two natures in one person; but now I can see how, in principle, it doesn’t “compromise” God’s divinity, as the natures weren’t fused but joined.

I remember hearing something about that too - about all members of the Trinity working together whenever God takes action. Creation was used as an example: with the will of the Father, the Word and the Spirit all acting together to produce one result; and the Gospels also show all three persons acting in different ways towards the same end of salvation.

I read a book called “7 Secrets of the Eucharist” (it’s a legit book by the way - nothing new-agey) that developed the idea that, where one Person is, in some way so are the others by virtue of their shared nature.

It still seems necessary to conclude that whatever relationship the 2nd Person’s nature has with the humanity of Jesus, it must shared by the rest of the Trinity, since it is the same nature. Even if only the Word became incarnate.

Can we understand the difference between nature and person as nature an identity? I mean, can we say that the same single, indivisible nature shared by the Trinity dwelt, together with human nature, in Jesus Christ, but that only the identity of the 2nd person fused with the human identity? (I am assuming fusion at least at some level, as Jesus was one person with one will).

In which case, was the identity of the 2nd Person fundamentally altered?

 

[AndrewRaZ]

I hope I’m not hijacking this topic…

Aloysium: That’s pretty good, yes! But the Persons are *really *distinct too, and don’t just manifest in different ways, too, but now I’m kind of splitting hairs…

Thanks be to God I didn’t confuse you more!
I’ve heard tons of great things about the 7 Secrets book.

paziego: brief answer, since I’m working on homework:

Can we understand the difference between nature and person as nature an identity? I mean, can we say that the same single, indivisible nature shared by the Trinity dwelt, together with human nature, in Jesus Christ, but that only the identity of the 2nd person fused with the human identity? (I am assuming fusion at least at some level, as Jesus was one person with one will).
In which case, was the identity of the 2nd Person fundamentally altered?

First question: yes.
Second question, I’ll quote my brilliant Jesuit professor:
“It depends on what your definition of nature is! Rahhhhhhh!” At which point he throws his notes in the air.

I suppose that’s funnier if you’ve had him shouting that line at you two days a week for a whole semester… But another frequent quote from him would be “It’s both!” Really. The difference between nature and person is what St. Thomas is trying to explain in the Summa Theologica part 1, questions 27-29, especially, but also related to the Incarnation, Part 3, questions 2-15, getting more into specifics the further down those questions you go. And in those Trinity questions, sometimes he uses a word in one sense, and rejects it in another, particularly “nature,” because it can be so hard to pin down a precise meaning. Sometimes the word works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Anyways, inasmuch as you associate ‘personhood’ with ‘nature,’ yes, the ‘personhood’ was altered in some sense, as he took on a new mode of existence (human) without changing his divine nature/personhood. I mean if you try to define what “nature” is and the “nature” of a person is, you’ll understand what I mean when I say “it depends on your definition of nature.”
I’m sorry that’s not a more complete answer, but I have to get back to studying.