Thoughts on the Trinity

[TOmNossor]

Cavaradosi,
Thank you again for your response.
I think it possible that I understand now. If so then it is a lesson I learned before and should have recognized was necessary to understand what you were saying.

In my defense, I am a Cradle Catholic (do you ever become a former Cradle Catholic). I am a western Christian. I have always been a westerner. I share a name with the doubting apostle and with the Dumb-Ox Aquinas. To add insult to injury, I am an engineer. Dialectic reasoning is a large part of me.

First, I am aware of St. Basil and some of his thought around the inability to apply dialectic reasoning to BUILD from the revelations of God to determine more truth about God. Or more accurately, we could use reason on revelation to determine useful “truth,” but this “truth” would not be the same as reveled truth, thus if we applied reason to the “truth” not reveled (but built upon the revelation) we could err when the subject is God. Is that close to a good statement for Eastern Orthodoxy.

As one so married to such reasoning (for good and evil), I am not sure what to do with this arena of Eastern thought.
You said:

We confess that the Son and the Father are ontologically the same, and confess that they are ontologically different, signifying…

Part of me balks, but such does not make what you say any less “true.”

Now, I am not sure I could accept the Eastern way of dealing with these, but I would suggest that Father Don Davis is not embracing this Eastern way of dealing with the revelations of God. I would suggest that the “numeric” meaning of homoousian IS the western way of understanding God’s one-substance-ness. I would suggest that Augustine and Aquinas did not deal with this in the way Eastern thinkers would.
Do you disagree with any of the above?

In fact, Western Christianity (Protestant and Catholic) seem to be married to the idea of dialectic reasoning even when it is used in a way an Eastern Christian might never use it. Certainly Aquinas used it. Molina (who seems to be one of the few thinker some Catholics embrace at the point they reject Aquinas) seemed to use dialectic reasoning.

Is the view you espouse really available to a theologically minded adherent to the Catechism of the Catholic Church?

Charity, TOm

 

[TOmNossor]

Cavaradosi,
In addition to the possibility that I understand you as I mentioned above, and that I am unsure Catholics can follow you based on the continuation of thought in the West vs. in the East, I thought of another point on the treadmill today.
You said:

because God’s innermost being is unknowable.

The Roman Catholic confesses that the beatific vision is truly man experiencing God (man experiencing God’s essence). As I understand Eastern thought, man can never experience God’s essence but can only experience His energies.
This distinction in addition to what I offered above further complicates a Western Christians (Roman Catholic) embracing the thoughts you offered.
Charity, TOm

 

[GaryTaylor]

How would one know since God transcends the power of intellect? We have to concede here that sanctification by the supernatural is the only means. Nevertheless this argument is based on reason East or West. You do not see God by reason, you begin to comprehend by reason and comparison of the self to ones preconceived belief according to there actual state.

However. through sanctification/Grace the understanding beyond human reason can be transmitted as knowledge of and by God. We do not, nor will not have “infinite insight” to Gods essence nor does the CC teach this, the reason is very simple since the infinite/finite and the in-between there exists a vast unknown. In other words you can never comprehend God as He comprehends himself.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

 

[KathleenGee]

The universal Christian Church is based on faith and reason – and documentation…as Scripture exhorts the Church to ‘write it down’.

I had studied Thomas Aquinas’ Book One, in the Summa…‘Nature of God’.

He explains the nature and person of God intellectually.

The Orthodox come to God emotionally and mystically.

John Paul II said we can learn more about God from each other.

There is a movement in North American churches to decorate their environment with art work drawing on the Eastern icons. Some of ours in mine are being Latinized…more realistic, but same images…not the elongated limbs found in Eastern icons.

Elongated limbs means contemplation.

The Church never condemned its populace from reading Scripture. So it created visuals using stain glass to teach its peoples the nature of God, the life of Christ and Israel, and the saints to bring us a holistic concept of faith, as well as our faith environment reflect the Truth and Beauty of Christ…The Incarnate Word that created this world by the will of the Heavenly Father through His Holy Spirit.

Athanasius never took his faith lightly…or the Nicene Creed decided upon as an intellectual feat drawing on Greek tradition of philosophy.

Athanasius was removed from his episcopacy and put into exile 4 times…pretty traumatic. Atleast 80% of the bishops in the Christian world fell into Arianism…

But at this time in the Church, now that Christianity could publicly practice its faith, thanks to Constantine’s signing of the Edict of Milan, there was likewise more freedom of thought and action, and profession of faith. So it is no wonder that Arian had ‘free time’ to think and ponder, and brought his idea to the bishop.

The pope at that time reflected on it and agreed with it for a brief time…but it was Athanasius who corrected and clarified the nature of Christ as True God and True Man.

The Nicene Creed, subsequently, was the final Revelation of Jesus Christ, through this time, the work of the Church, founded on the Apostles.

Basta.

 

[KathleenGee]

A Carmelite priest shared with us that the very first criteria to be declared a saint in the Universal Christian Church (Catholic, fullness because we are communion to the seat of Peter), there is one thing the Church looks at.

The first criteria to be considered a saint in the Church is how badly ecclesiastics and lay mistreated the individual in mind.

As I said in my previous post, St. Athanasius was not at some intellectual banquet figuring out how to describe the divine and human nature of Christ.

Athanasius was removed from his episcopacy and exiled four times. The pope affirmed the living revelation of Christ found in Athanasius’ teachings.

The Mormons are misusing Athanasius in their concept of ‘theosis’ to stating he was among those who stated we would become gods some day.

To make such a claim totally invalidates the truth of what Athanasius taught…that the Holy Trinity is the same substance: God. And always will be.

And we? Always creatures but sharing in the divine life:

How?

Being humble servants of the Lord Jesus, by becoming holy standing with Him at Mass in proclamation of His victory over the world, sin and death, our reception of the Word and Sacraments and prayer, and by aligning ourselves with the poor by extending His love to those who are suffering and in need, Humble servants.

 

[KathleenGee]

Ecumenical Patriach Bartholomew is now working on greater dialogue with the Latin Church.

If our two branches are restored, we will achieve the sacred unity ‘so that the world may believe’…One Baptism, One Bread, One Baptism…communion of heart, soul, and mind in the Holy Trinity!!

We must pray for our reconiliation and mutual understanding and respect. Sometimes intellectual pride really overturns the cart and all the apples spill out.

"Bartholomew in Seeking to Reinvigorate Dialogue with Roman Catholics’, www.CalledtoCommunion.com.

 

[SteveVH]

The second. The application of the term homoousion to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the affirmation that they are different hypostases or subsistences is not meant to make the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit particular members of a species or genus of divinity, represented by the essence of God in the same manner that Peter and Paul are two hypostases in which the human essence subsists. These terms are used because they help approximate the Trinitarian mystery, but they do not define it. The manner by which the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one is unknown, although we do know that the Father, being the origin of both, is the cause of this unity. Similarly, hypostasis is not used to denote how the three differ, but only that they differ, and that their difference is a true ontological difference, against the doctrine of the modalists and sabellians who taught that they are merely illusory roles taken on by one God in the history of human salvation, like actors in a play.

As for your question earlier in this thread on the Chalcedonian definition, I answer that the term homoousion was used differently depending on the subject matter. When applied to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, its intention is as above, only to state that the Son is one with the Father, sharing in His eternal and impenetrable inner being with the Holy Spirit. When applied to the consubstantiality of the Son with us, its meaning is that the complete human nature assumed by the Son is consubstantial with us in the manner of sharing the same species of humanity (the ‘generic’ sense of the term). The implicit difference between how the term is used in reference to God and in reference to the incarnation comes from the fact that positive or cataphatic thinking is applicable to creation, but not to the unknowable shared inner life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The consubstantiality of the Son with us can be known cataphatically, because we know that the Son became a true and real man (not an illusion of a man), and therefore became consubstantial with us as Peter is consubstantial with Paul, whereas the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father is unknowable in its manner, only reflecting the revealed truth that the Father and Son are truly one from all eternity.

:bowdown::bowdown2::bowdown::bowdown2:

Thank you for that. I tried to find a difference between Eastern and Western thought on this and could not find anything with which I would disagree. That is simply a beautiful explanation which boilds down to the fact that every human word that can be used to express the essence of God can only diminish him. In many ways, the less said the better. “Be still and know that I am God”.

 

[Pepband_Mom]

Tom

Christ the Lord was given

Myrrh - Jesus the Lamb of God who was sacrificed for our sins
Gold - Jesus the King
Frankincense - Jesus the God-Man

Merry Christmas