The Our Father and the Creed

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Taught by Jesus:"Our father who art in Heaven…
The creed: “creator of heaven and earth”…(Then heaven is not eternal)
God being eternal preceded all creations,including that of heaven.
What should I tell someone that asks where God resided before creating Heaven?
Please help me formulate an answer.
Thanks
 
That may be a question that the answer is “We don’t know”

We aren’t given all the answers or complete understanding because 1. we are not ready for that and 2. then no faith would be required to actually believe.
 
Heaven isn’t necessarily a physical place.

God is Spirit. Our souls come from His Spirit.
 
The term heaven is used differently. Who “made heaven and earth” speaks of the Earth and all the celestial bodies, the heavens. “In heaven” refers to the eternal abode of God which is not so much a place as it is a condition. Will ‘heaven’ have dimensions? Quite possibly because we will have bodies, but it is primarily the presence, ‘face to face’ with God.
 
Tamsulosin said:
Taught by Jesus:"Our father who art in Heaven…
The creed: “creator of heaven and earth”…(Then heaven is not eternal)
God being eternal preceded all creations,including that of heaven.
What should I tell someone that asks where God resided before creating Heaven?
Please help me formulate an answer.
Thanks
Click to expand...
God didn’t reside anywhere.There was God and nothing else.We aren’t able to understand how and why God is.God can create ssomething eternal just like He is eternal.I need to ask you what do you mean by heaven?Whaat is your definition?
 
Tamsulosin said:
Taught by Jesus:"Our father who art in Heaven…
The creed: “creator of heaven and earth”…(Then heaven is not eternal)
God being eternal preceded all creations,including that of heaven.
What should I tell someone that asks where God resided before creating Heaven?
Please help me formulate an answer.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Two theological concepts: Chirios and Kronos (or Chronos).

Chirios (ker-E- Os) is “God’s-Time”; outside of sequencial time. Omnipresence; before, during and after.

Kronos is “people -time.” We are material beings and need to experience the passage of time in sequence.

So if something happens in the “past” or “future” (to us), God sees it simultaniously. Even though He created heaven, it still exists beyond time…because it’s non-material.

That’s how I learned it in theology class (Catholic).

Glennonite
 
scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c1p5.htm

From the CCC at “I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY, CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH”

Paragraph 5. Heaven and Earth

325 The Apostles’ Creed professes that God is “creator of heaven and earth”. The Nicene Creed makes it explicit that this profession includes “all that is, seen and unseen”.

326 The Scriptural expression “heaven and earth” means all that exists, creation in its entirety. It also indicates the bond, deep within creation, that both unites heaven and earth and distinguishes the one from the other: “the earth” is the world of men, while “heaven” or “the heavens” can designate both the firmament and God’s own “place” - “our Father in heaven” and consequently the “heaven” too which is eschatological glory. Finally, “heaven” refers to the saints and the “place” of the spiritual creatures, the angels, who surround God.186

327 The profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirms that God "from the beginning of time made at once (simul) out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then (deinde) the human creature, who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body."187
 
Catechism:

IV. “Who Art in Heaven”

2794 This biblical expression does not mean a place (“space"), but a way of being; it does not mean that God is distant, but majestic. Our Father is not “elsewhere”: he transcends everything we can conceive of his holiness. It is precisely because he is thrice holy that he is so close to the humble and contrite heart.

“Our Father who art in heaven” is rightly understood to mean that God is in the hearts of the just, as in his holy temple. At the same time, it means that those who pray should desire the one they invoke to dwell in them.54
“Heaven” could also be those who bear the image of the heavenly world, and in whom God dwells and tarries.55

2795 The symbol of the heavens refers us back to the mystery of the covenant we are living when we pray to our Father. He is in heaven, his dwelling place; the Father’s house is our homeland. Sin has exiled us from the land of the covenant,56 but conversion of heart enables us to return to the Father, to heaven.57 Jn Christ, then, heaven and earth are reconciled,58 for the Son alone “descended from heaven” and causes us to ascend there with him, by his Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension.59

2796 When the Church prays “our Father who art in heaven,” she is professing that we are the People of God, already seated “with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” and "hidden with Christ in God;"60 yet at the same time, "here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling."61

[Christians] are in the flesh, but do not live according to the flesh. They spend their lives on earth, but are citizens of heaven.62

vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PA4.HTM
 
Bookcat,please expand on"creator of heaven"
I found your explanation of who art in heaven"very good, but does not quite answer this person’s question.I get it, heaven is a state of perfection or holiness,not a place.But what happened before it
was created? What was there?The creed says it was created.
According to the dictionary,something that is created has a moment of origin.It could be eternal after that, but starts at some point.
 
“The heavens” were created, just like the earth. Only in that sense was heaven created. Heaven as the presence of God is beyond creation, just as God is beyond being created.
 
Tamsulosin said:
Taught by Jesus:"Our father who art in Heaven…
The creed: “creator of heaven and earth”…(Then heaven is not eternal)
God being eternal preceded all creations,including that of heaven.
What should I tell someone that asks where God resided before creating Heaven?
Please help me formulate an answer.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Easy. Key word: WHERE. When one asks where God resided, it means space,time and matter,thus applicable to us and all creatures.However, God is ETERNAL,hence outside of space and matter. Is God subjected to gravity? Nope! He is the Creator and author of gravity,thus why would He be bound to it? Get the picture? 👍
 
Scripture never teaches us that Heaven is eternal.

However, as others have said but it bears repeating, God is not where but what. We believe that God is eternal, this means that God’s existence, like all of His other attributes, is perfect. Augustine explained it by saying that for our imperfect existence the present cannot be experienced because our experience is necessarily one of remembering. Therefore what we call the present is actually our pondering the very recent past. As such we never truly experience the present but rather the past as we meditate on the future. However God experiences all things as present. That is in some sense God experiences every where and every when as perfect and immutable present. This is not exactly the same thing as saying God does not experience time, but rather that God transcends our experience of time. And ultimately I think that is what the confession about God being everlasting really means that God transcends the way we know existence.

Therefore transcendance does not mean that God lives above the sky but rather that God fills the totality of creation perfectly at all times in a way we can only guess at by analogy.

Btw this does not mean that all things have a little bit of God in them but rather that all things are by the plan and purpose of God who knows the end from the beginning because He has already filled all things with His power might and purpose.

And if that is hard for you to grasp well it is for me too.

God Bless
 
Danno:So, you think that
in the terms " heavens" and “heaven” there is a distinction.Maybe.
But the prayer says creator of “heaven and earth” ,not “the heavens”
When I used the word “resides” I should have used “art”. I did not because I do not quite understand what “art” means.Is it a verb?
(Also, and aside of the question in this post, why we are not saying"arts", since it is the third person singular?)
So, the question should have read: Where did God art ,before He created heaven?
Even if the concept of time is a human concept, to create someting or originate something, the Creator or Originator must exist first.He conceived us before He made us.
 
Tamsulosin said:
Danno:So, you think that
in the terms " heavens" and “heaven” there is a distinction.Maybe.
But the prayer says creator of “heaven and earth” ,not “the heavens”
When I used the word “resides” I should have used “art”. I did not because I do not quite understand what “art” means.Is it a verb?
(Also, and aside of the question in this post, why we are not saying"arts", since it is the third person singular?)
So, the question should have read: Where did God art ,before He created heaven?
Even if the concept of time is a human concept, to create someting or originate something, the Creator or Originator must exist first.He conceived us before He made us.
Click to expand...
“Art” is an archaic form of the 2nd person, not the 3rd. “Our Father, You Who are in heaven,” would be a more modern translation.
The Creed was originally written in Greek, but the Latin that we use has the same use in this regard. The word caelum has for its primary meaning “the heavens” even though it is singular in form (see e.g. Cassell’s Latin Dictionary). The original and the Latin are really best translated by the term, “Creator of the heavens and Earth.”
 
bogeydogg said:
Scripture never teaches us that Heaven is eternal.

However, as others have said but it bears repeating, God is not where but what. We believe that God is eternal, this means that God’s existence, like all of His other attributes, is perfect. Augustine explained it by saying that for our imperfect existence the present cannot be experienced because our experience is necessarily one of remembering. Therefore what we call the present is actually our pondering the very recent past. As such we never truly experience the present but rather the past as we meditate on the future. However God experiences all things as present. That is in some sense God experiences every where and every when as perfect and immutable present. This is not exactly the same thing as saying God does not experience time, but rather that God transcends our experience of time. And ultimately I think that is what the confession about God being everlasting really means that God transcends the way we know existence.

Therefore transcendance does not mean that God lives above the sky but rather that God fills the totality of creation perfectly at all times in a way we can only guess at by analogy.

Btw this does not mean that all things have a little bit of God in them but rather that all things are by the plan and purpose of God who knows the end from the beginning because He has already filled all things with His power might and purpose.

And if that is hard for you to grasp well it is for me too.

God Bless
Click to expand...
WOW. We don’t experience the present, but I Am does. We always say, “Live in the moment.” But only God is “ever-present.” Wow.

Augustine says that our present is really the very immedient past. And the rest is the contemplated future. I say again, wow. How could I have never thought of our existence in these terms before?

Thanks, boggeydogg,

Glennonite
 
Tamsulosin said:
Danno:So, you think that
in the terms " heavens" and “heaven” there is a distinction.Maybe.
But the prayer says creator of “heaven and earth” ,not “the heavens”
When I used the word “resides” I should have used “art”. I did not because I do not quite understand what “art” means.Is it a verb?
(Also, and aside of the question in this post, why we are not saying"arts", since it is the third person singular?)
So, the question should have read: Where did God art ,before He created heaven?
Even if the concept of time is a human concept, to create someting or originate something, the Creator or Originator must exist first.He conceived us before He made us.
Click to expand...
Old English (Shakespearian): 2nd person and third-person plural verb “to be”.

art=“are”. eg. Thou art… Who are. 🙂

Glennonite
 
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