[Question] Monarchy of God the Father

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Scripture does say God is love. What do we know about love? Love can not exist by itself. There is a lover and the object of love, the beloved, and the love itself, a trinity. Love gives love to love. L----->L----->L. We see this as one directional. Does the Son love the Father? Ask yourself. I don’t think we need to resort to great theologians for the answer. That means the arrow goes the other way as well. The Father is beloved of the Son and vice versa.
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You’re thinking in a much too worldly way about love. Love doesn’t need an external object, a target. Love can belong to the self, towards the self, and be completely internal. This love is still expressed, but it’s not directed towards something as my love for my wife is directed at her. It is more like my love of my own soul expressed in my work towards holiness.

If you insist on making worldly analogies, then we can say it like this: The Father knows Himself, and expresses His self-knowledge, and this expression is the Son (this is the very meaning of Logos, incidentally). The Father loves Himself, as the perfect good, and expresses this love as the Holy Spirit. It is not an outwardly-directed love, as our love towards another, but a self-love in recognition of Divine perfection and holiness.

The Son, as an expression of the Father, also expresses the Father’s love, namely the Holy Spirit. The Son’s relation here is not directed “back at” the Father, but is a further expression of the Father’s love.

So the relationship goes like this:

Father =====> Son -------> Holy Spirit

The double line from the Father to the Son shows that in expressing the self-knowledge the Father also expresses self-love. The single line from the Son shows that the self-love continues its expression from the self-knowledge, because the knowledge, or image, contains and shows forth the love that the originator possesses.

The key point is that the Holy Spirit can’t be a “back and forth” between the Son and the Father, because that would mean that there are two principles of the Holy Spirit, the Father as distinct from the Son. One principle would be the Father towards the Son, and the second would be the Son towards the Father. This view is condemned by the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox. There can only be one principle and Spiration, of the Father and Son together, with the Father as the Source and the Son as the recipient and participant in the Father’s Spiration of the Holy Spirit. The Father and Son are united in Spirating, but the Father is the foundation and source, and the Son participates in the “going forth”. The Fathers expressed as a spring, a stream, and a lake/ocean, or as the sun, the rays, and the light. It can’t be expressed as a bouncing back and forth without reducing the Holy Spirit to the role of an object, rather than His rightful position as the Third Person of the Divine Trinity, the Third full expression of God.

Peace and God bless!
 
Ghosty said:
So the relationship goes like this:

Father =====> Son -------> Holy Spirit

The double line from the Father to the Son shows that in expressing the self-knowledge the Father also expresses self-love. The single line from the Son shows that the self-love continues its expression from the self-knowledge, because the knowledge, or image, contains and shows forth the love that the originator possesses
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SyroMalankara said:
Read the last paragraph of 112 and pg. 113.

Athanasius is not using the word ‘source’ as equal to ‘beget’. Only the Father begets.
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The second divine Person is begotten. The third divine Person is spirated. The term source is not limited to either.
 
If the double line symbolizesthe second and the third Person I think it would deny the participation of the Son as source of the Holy Spirit.
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The Son can’t possibly be the source of the Spirit in the sense I’m speaking of, especially since the Council of Florence denies this as well. The Son Spirates, certainly, but the Son can’t be the Source of deity at all, for anyone, because He Himself is begotten. Only the unBegotten can be the Source of deity, because the Father alone is God without proceeding from anyone or anything.

Even though we admit that the Son participates in the Spiration of the Spirit, and therefore the Spirit exists from the Son, we can’t call the Son the source of the Holy Spirit. Theologians may have used such terms in the past, but subsequent councils have not embraced such terminology. Besides, Augustine himself says that the Father alone is Source, at least in the sense I am using it, when he says:
For the Father alone is not from another, and therefore He alone is called unbegotten, not indeed in the Scriptures, but in the usage of disputants, who employ such language as they can on so great a subject. And the Son is born of the Father; and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father principally, the Father giving the procession without any interval of time, yet in common from both [Father and Son].
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So the Father gives the procession to the Son, though the Holy Spirit proceeds in common from both. Therefore the Father alone is the Source, since the Son receives (as stated by Florence). The Son can’t be removed from the procession of the Holy Spirit, so we can’t say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father in any way apart from the Son, but we can say that the Father is the Source and the Son simply shares in the Spiration. Again, the image of the spring, stream, and lake is a great illustration; the spring alone is the source, but the lake does not proceed in any manner from the spring seperate from the stream.

Peace and God bless!
 
Ghosty said:
You’re thinking in a much too worldly way about love. Love doesn’t need an external object, a target. Love can belong to the self, towards the self, and be completely internal. This love is still expressed, but it’s not directed towards something as my love for my wife is directed at her. It is more like my love of my own soul expressed in my work towards holiness.
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God generates Cognizance of Himself This action is generative
God eternally knowing Himself.
.
The Cognizance of God is the second Person.

Knowing is before Loving . ( ‘before’ as in nature is before person)

Cognizant (Son) of Himself, (Father) God ( Father/Son) Loves.
Love proceeds, distinguishing God the third Person,

:twocents:
 
Benadam said:
God generates Cognizance of Himself This action is generative
God eternally knowing Himself.
.
The Cognizance of God is the second Person.

Knowing is before Loving . ( ‘before’ as in nature is before person)

Cognizant (Son) of Himself, (Father) God ( Father/Son) Loves.
Love proceeds, distinguishing God the third Person,

:twocents:
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When I think about knowing and loving, or as I think more about them, it starts out as two separate activities. When I do them I can do one and then the other. I know the difference, but then as I thnk about them in relation to God I can not tell the difference between the two. Within each perfection of God, or as we think about God in one of His perfections, truth say, we find all the others.

God knows Himself and loves Himself simultaneously. In God there can not be a before and after. Before and after presumes time. God is timeless. All that He is, He is eternally. Therefore if He knows and loves, one can not preceed the other or come first, or before, or after.

All of this is speculation, or two cents.

We can not hold God in our intellect. The finite can not hold the infinite. Aquinas said that God is so far above us, or so infinitely greater, that we can have no direct knowledge of Him. Everything we know of Him is by analogy. So when Jesus teaches He says, the kingdom of heaven is LIKE unto a sower who sows… for example. We can know what God is like. We are made in the likeness of God. When we do things that are virtuous that makes us more like God. When Jesus says He is meek and humble of heart, if we are humble we act like Him. When we love or forgive and are merciful we do what He does. We take on His attributes or perfections. It makes us holy. God is holy. Growth in the spiritual life is nothing more than becoming holy. It is commanded of us. Jesus says, be ye holy even as your heavenly father is holy. It is not a suggestion. If we think about this, Jesus is telling us to be as holy as God. That sounds absurd, but He said it. How can I do that? It is impossible, but He is just and would not command the impossible.

Anything we do requires the power to do it, or ability. I do not have the power to make myself holy. I do not have the power to make my sins go away, or repent of them. In fact I am helpless. I do not have the power to love. Jesus says, without me you can do nothing. I can do none of these things I am commanded to do. I am like the crippled man confined to his bed, because he lacks the power to walk. Then Jesus commands, rise and walk, and he does. He gives the power to do what He commands, or we will not do it. This power comes to us by His Word. He speaks everything that exists into existence. He speaks, Arise, and the dead come to life. He speaks to my dead soul and it lives. He speaks to the soul enslaved by sin, and it is free. He speaks to the storm and it calms.

Here we speak of His omnipotence. He is all powerful. When He frees us and gives us life, new life, we experience Him directly, because He speaks to us and His Word transforms us. But Aquinas can still be right, because we do not know or experience Him in our intellect. He remains beyond human intellect. We think this experience makes us know Him. We have encountered Him. But Jesus says, no one knows the father, but the son. But if He reveals Himself to us, how can we not know Him?

There is a difference between knowing about a thing and knowing the thing. God did not make us to know about Him. He made us to know Him. The catechism asks. Why did God make me? God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this life and be happy with Him forever in the next. This is why we exist. Nothing else matters. This is direct knowledge, direct experience of Life. When the Son reveals the Father to us, still no one knows the Father but the Son, because we are incorporated into His Body, into divinity itself, made one with Him. This makes us participants in the nature of God, as Saint Peter writes. John writes that what we are becoming we can not yet see. So this thing is happening to us we can not see (understand). If God shares His life with us, we become part of Him. But God is one and has no parts, so we become one with Him, in His nature.

two cents, speculation.
 
grandfather said:
So this thing is happening to us we can not see (understand). If God shares His life with us, we become part of Him. But God is one and has no parts, so we become one with Him, in His nature.

two cents, speculation.
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Money well spent grandfather. I hadn’t taken our participating in divine oneness to that depth. I imagined human distinctions sharing in the divine oneness and was reminded of the truth so subtly laid out in the beginning as a snare, 'For you will be like Gods"
 
Benadam said:
Money well spent grandfather. I hadn’t taken our participating in divine oneness to that depth. I imagined human distinctions sharing in the divine oneness and was reminded of the truth so subtly laid out in the beginning as a snare, 'For you will be like Gods"
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Yes but remember that “you will be like Gods” was not the lie. The lie was that she would acheive it through disobedience. Rather, through obedience God shares with us His divine nature and the life of the Blessed Trinity. He condescends to take on our nature so that He can raise His elect to share in His.
 
grandfather said:
Yes but remember that “you will be like Gods” was not the lie. The lie was that she would acheive it through disobedience. Rather, through obedience God shares with us His divine nature and the life of the Blessed Trinity. He condescends to take on our nature so that He can raise His elect to share in His.
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That evil spirit revealed a wonderfull gift God had prepared for us and distorted our view of it into a right that God was keeping from us and ‘good ol’ satan the lawyer he is was going to make sure we got it! Doing the very thing he accused God of too.
 
grandfather said:
Some people object to the idea that the Church says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Maybe it might help if more was said. If the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, where does He go? Eternally He goes to the Son. There was no other place to go, before God made creation.
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The Holy Spirit does not have to “go” anywhere. He simply is. You are using a concept of “proceeds” that is based on our physical world. That doesn’t apply to the eternal relations within the Trinity.
 
Alethiaphile said:
The Holy Spirit does not have to “go” anywhere. He simply is. You are using a concept of “proceeds” that is based on our physical world. That doesn’t apply to the eternal relations within the Trinity.
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The problem is words. They do not suffice.

Jesus says that He glofies His Father and asks the Father to gloify Him. God’s glory goes from God to God, without going anywhere. There is movement while remaining in place.

Much of the spiritual life, or truth of the spiritual life is paradox. We die to live, give to receive. God moves without moving. Jesus says He makes everything new, but is unchanging.

Jesus says the Holy Spirit is like the wind. It blows where it will, moves from here to there, but still you are right, God does not go anywhere.

Remember the Children’s catechism. Where is God? God is everywhere. I remember as a child being confounded at this. How could God be everywhere? I am here and the chair is there, so God can not be there also.

Everywhere can’t move. But there is movement.
 
Ghosty said:
This is exactly the wrong idea of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, and precisely what the Orthodox object to. It’s also against the teaching of the Church Fathers.

The proper diagram would be this:

Father =====>Son>------Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is with and through the Son, from the Father. We can’t say that the Father and Son contribute to the Holy Spirit distinctly. This is why the whole “relationship of Love” notion is problematic and does more to harm the teaching of the filioque than to resolve it.

The proper teaching, embraced by both East and West, is that the Father alone is the Source of the Holy Spirit, and that the Son receives the Spirating of the Holy Spirit, not as if the Son is the “target”, but that the Son receives the “power” to bring forth the Holy Spirit from the Father precisely because He is the Son.

This is the Monarchy of the Father, that the Father is the sole Source of all deity. That is also the teaching of the Council of Florence:

The diagram posted above shows two principles and two spirations, directly contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Peace and God bless!
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Thank you.
 
Alethiaphile said:
The Holy Spirit does not have to “go” anywhere. He simply is. You are using a concept of “proceeds” that is based on our physical world. That doesn’t apply to the eternal relations within the Trinity.
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The term ‘proceed’ was adopted to conceptualize ‘sent’. Usually the one sent in the authority of another is not equal to the sender but of a lower status. The term proceeds was adopted as the best means to preserve the equality of the Son and Spirit.
 
Benadam said:
The term ‘proceed’ was adopted to conceptualize ‘sent’. Usually the one sent in the authority of another is not equal to the sender but of a lower status. The term proceeds was adopted as the best means to preserve the equality of the Son and Spirit.
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I would think “proceeds” is used because that is what Christ said of the Holy Spirit in John 16.
 
Alethiaphile said:
I would think “proceeds” is used because that is what Christ said of the Holy Spirit in John 16.
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Remember Jesus spoke Aramic
There is alot of theological debate over the various terms used in different languages by the father’s to describe the divine action of the Holy Spirit. Proceed is the english word. There are many here at CAF that could do better than I in explaining that.
 
Alethiaphile said:
I would think “proceeds” is used because that is what Christ said of the Holy Spirit in John 16.
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It looks like in the Greek texts that the word used in John 16 is send (pempso auton pros humas = I will send him to you all). Likewise the Vulgate uses the word to send as well.
 
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