M
MH84
Guest
If God is the Father, how can Jesus and the Holy Spirit also be God?
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I
inJESUS
Guest
the Father and His Word are 2 : Father, Word yet One God unless the Word of the Father is different from Him.okay, if you say so.
God and Jesus
gee the muslims are right. you are polytheistic. thats two separate objects of worship.
I
inJESUS
Guest
what is so confusing about the Father having Word and Spirit?
I
inJESUS
Guest
is the Word of the God not God? is the Spirit of God not God? is the Wisdom of God created? is the Spirit of God created?
A
AgnosTheist
Guest
theory is one thing, reality is another. by your actions you have acknowledge two different entities.
M
MH84
Guest
No, you are trying to put your own version into the words.
You said “God is Father”, NOT the “Father is God”. The latter would support the Trinity, because it doen’t clarify how many Persons could make up God.
However, when you said “God is Father” that implies that God (the divine Being) is separate from the Word and the Holy Spirit.
This is polytheism.
How many times on this forum have I tried to bring this up…
InJesus, I want to explain again in different words. You said that God is one Person and Jesus is another Person.
That means God (the Creator) is NOT Jesus or the Holy Spirit.
I
inJESUS
Guest
Nobody says 2 “entities” necessarily lead to 2 different things. The Father has Wisdom…whether you call Wisdom : power, entity, person, you name it, it is still the Wisdom of the Father = One.
T
thedavidwilson
Guest
From Theology and Sanity (katapi.org.uk/)
The short statement of the doctrine is, as we have all heard all our lives, that
there are three PERSONS in one NATURE.
But if we attach no meaning to the word PERSON,
and no meaning to the word NATURE,
…
The newcomer to this sort of thinking must be prepared to work hard here.
It is a decisive stage of our advance into theology to get some grasp of the meaning of nature
and the meaning of person.
Fortunately the first stage of our search goes easily enough.
We begin with ourselves.
Such a phrase as “my nature” suggests that there is a person, I, who possesses a nature.
The person could not exist without his nature, but there is some distinction all the same;
for it is the person who possesses the nature and not the other way round.
One distinction we see instantly.
NATURE answers the question - WHAT we are;
PERSON answers the question - WHO we are.
Every being has a nature;
of every being we may properly ask, What is it?
But not every being is a person:
only rational beings are persons.
We could not properly ask of a stone or a potato or an oyster, Who is it?
By our nature, then, we are WHAT WE ARE.
It follows that by our nature we do what we do:
for every being acts according to what it is.
Applying this to ourselves we come upon another distinction between person and nature.
We find that there are many things, countless things, we can do.
We can laugh and cry and walk and talk and sleep and think and love.
All these and other things we can do because as men we have a nature that makes them possible.
A snake could do only one of them - sleep.
A stone could do none of them.
NATURE, then, is to be seen not only as what we are,
but as THE SOURCE OF WHAT WE DO.
But although my nature is the source of all my actions,
although my nature decides what kind of operations are possible for me,
it is not my nature that does them:
I DO THEM,
I - THE PERSON.
Thus both person and nature may be considered as sources of action, but in a different sense.
The person is that which does the actions,
the NATURE IS is that by virtue of which the actions are done,
or better THAT FROM WHICH THE ACTIONS ARE DRAWN.
We can express the distinction in all sorts of ways.
We can say that it is our NATURE to do certain things, but that WE do them.
We can say that WE operate in or according to our NATURE.
In the light of this we see why
the philosophers speak of a person as the centre of attribution in a rational nature:
whatever is done in a rational nature
or suffered in a rational nature
or any way experienced in a rational nature
is done or suffered or experienced by the person whose nature it is.
Thus there is a reality in us by which we are WHAT we are:
and there is a reality in us by which we are WHO we are.
But as to whether these are two really distinct realities,
or two levels of one reality, or related in some other way,
we cannot see deep enough into ourselves to know with any sureness.
There is an obvious difference between beings of whom you can say only WHAT they are,
and the higher beings of whom you can say WHO they are as well.
But in these latter -
even in ourselves of whom we have a good deal of experience -
we see only darkly as to the distinction between the WHAT and the WHO.
Of our nature in its root reality we have only a shadowy notion, and of our self a notion more shadowy still.
If someone - for want of something better to say - says: “Tell me about yourself”,
we can tell her the qualities we have or the things we have done;
but of the SELF that has the qualities and has done the things we cannot tell her anything.
We cannot bring it under her gaze.
Indeed we cannot easily or continuously bring it under our own.
As we turn our mind inward to look at the thing we call I,
we know that there is something there,
but we cannot get it into any focus:
it does not submit to being looked at very closely.
Both as to the nature that we ourselves have
and the person that we ourselves are,
we are more in darkness than light.
But at least we HAVE certain things clear:
nature says what we are, person says who we are;
nature is the source of our operations, person does them.
Now at first sight it might seem that this examination of the meaning of person and nature has not got us far towards an understanding of the Blessed Trinity.
For although we have been led to see a distinction between person and nature in us,
it seems clearer than ever that one nature can be possessed and operated in only by one person.
By a tremendous stretch we can just barely glimpse the possibility of one person having more than one nature, opening up to him more than one field of operation.
But the intellect feels baffled at the reverse concept of one nature being totally “wielded”, much less totally possessed, by more than one person.
Now to admit ourselves baffled by the notion of three persons in the one nature of God is an entirely honourable admission of our own limitation;
but to argue that
because in man the relation of one nature to one person is invariable,
therefore that must be the relation in God, is a defect in our thinking.
It is indeed an example of that anthropomorphism,
the tendency to make God in the image of man,
which we have already seen hurled in accusation at the Christian belief in God.
…
Go to the website and read on if you are curious about the Trinity.
M
MH84
Guest
If you call the Father of Jesus, “God” that means you are saying that God is a Person separate from Jesus.
How can God, the Father of Jesus, be God (in other words He is Himself), and yet have a Son who is God (be His Father)?
A
AgnosTheist
Guest
^ well “God and Jesus” does sound like two different things. I dont recall any other christian saying that. hmmm how about if i create a poll in the apologetics section…let the masses decide if it is really a proper thing to say…
I
inJESUS
Guest
We confess that the Kuran is the speech of Allah, uncreated, His inspiration and revelation, not He, yet not other than He, but His real quality, written in the copies, recited by the tongues, preserved in the breasts, yet not residing there. The ink, the paper, the writing are created, for they are the work of men. The speech of Allah on the other hand is uncreated, for the writing and the letters and the words and the verses are manifestations of the Kuran for the sake of human needs. The speech of Allah on the other hand is self-existing, and its meaning is understood by means of these things. **Whoso sayeth that the speech of Allah is created, he is an infidel **regarding Allah, the Exalted, whom men serve, who is eternally the same, **His speech **being recited or written and retained in the heart, yet never dissociated from Him.
The Muslim creed : taken from the Wasiyat Abi Hanifa
This Muslim creed is 2/3 of the Trinity. Apply the same theology to the Holy Spirit, and you get the Christian creed.
The Muslim creed : taken from the Wasiyat Abi Hanifa
This Muslim creed is 2/3 of the Trinity. Apply the same theology to the Holy Spirit, and you get the Christian creed.
T
thedavidwilson
Guest
What is your definition of “person” and “nature”? Is it the same as used by Christians to decribe the Trinity? Read the pervious post from Theology and Sanity.
M
MH84
Guest
David, thank you for your efforts. But please, please read my posts carefully. InJesus said that “God is the Father”. He did NOT say “God the Father is the Father”.
Catholics believe God is the Trinity. However, InJesus (and other Christians) are then saying that the Trinity is the Father of Jesus.
This is frustrating for me.
Catholics believe God is the Trinity. However, InJesus (and other Christians) are then saying that the Trinity is the Father of Jesus.
This is frustrating for me.
I
inJESUS
Guest
A
AgnosTheist
Guest
I
inJESUS
Guest
T
thedavidwilson
Guest
You must separate the Church from its members. I have not analyzed what inJesus wrote but I posted what the Christian (Catholic) doctrine on the Trinity is. Becasue the Trinity is God it will always be a mystery to us humans becasue we are finite. A mystery is not something we can know nothing about but something we can never know everything about. What we know about it, explained for non-theological experts like you and I, is presented in the book by Sheed. There are many analogies for God and His Triune nature:David, thank you for your efforts. But please, please read my posts carefully. InJesus said that “God is the Father”. He did NOT say “God the Father is the Father”.
Catholics believe God is the Trinity. However, InJesus (and other Christians) are then saying that the Trinity is the Father of Jesus.
This is frustrating for me.
3 leaf clover
Water being liquid, vapor, ice yet always being water,
etc.
All of these help us to understand the Trinity a little more. It is something you can study the rest of your life and never know completly yet still never stop learning about it. This is because the Tri-unity is the nature of God.
M
MH84
Guest
A
AgnosTheist
Guest
Thats more like the heretical belief that God role-plays one person at a time.
I
inJESUS
Guest
yet i get you. When i wrote :
Of course we say God and Jesus. God is the Father.
I meant God the Father to differentiate between the Father and Jesus. I did not mean the the Trinity is the Father but rather i was talking about God the Father, a very orthodox title.
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