Trinity - Two natures

[SpeakInSilence]

Earlier on my facebook I posted this quote from Clement of Alexandria.

Clement of Alexandria

“The Word, then, the Christ, is the cause both of our ancient beginning—for he was in God—and of our well-being. And now this same Word has appeared as man. He alone is both God and man, and the source of all our good things” (Exhortation to the Greeks 1:7:1 [A.D. 190]).

“Despised as to appearance but in reality adored, [Jesus is] the expiator, the Savior, the soother, the divine Word, he that is quite evidently true God, he that is put on a level with the Lord of the universe because he was his Son” (ibid., 10:110:1).

My college roommate responded on my feed with this.

If Jesus is God, and the Father is God, and Jesus has two natures, then God has two nature. God can’t have two natures, because if he did he couldn’t be God.

I have yet to put a response, but if I did, what would it be?

 

[Robyn_p]

Earlier on my facebook I posted this quote from Clement of Alexandria.

Clement of Alexandria

My college roommate responded on my feed with this.

I have yet to put a response, but if I did, what would it be?

Your roommate is operating on a false premise, God can’t have two natures, and arguing from that. So I would first ask why it is he thinks God can’t have two different natures? We have two natures, a physical and a spiritual, why couldn’t God? Is there a reason why God couldn’t take on a human nature if He so willed?

But I’m curious why your friend mentioned the Father in his argument, is he trying to say that if Jesus is God and has two natures, then the Father must have two natures well? Because, if he is, that’s Modalism, not Christianity. Christians don’t believe that.

The doctrine of the Trinity states that the * One * divine nature is perfectly possessed by three Persons, who are all coequal and coeternal. but yet distinct from each other. One of those Persons, God the Son, possesses the One simple divine nature along with a human nature that He assumed at the Incarnation, but neither the Father nor Holy Spirit have a human nature.

 

[MarcoPolo]

I have yet to put a response, but if I did, what would it be?

Jesus assumed a human nature in his Incarnation, “taking the form of a slave” as Scripture says. To also support Robyn’s post: It is only the 2nd person of the Trinity that assumed human nature. See also *CCC#470 Because “human nature was assumed, not absorbed”, in the mysterious union of the Incarnation, the Church was led over the course of centuries to confess the full reality of Christ’s human soul, with its operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion, she had to recall on each occasion that Christ’s human nature belongs, as his own, to the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. Everything that Christ is and does in this nature derives from “one of the Trinity”. The Son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity: The Son of God. . . worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.

CCC#503 He was never estranged from the Father because of the human nature which he assumed. . . He is naturally Son of the Father as to his divinity and naturally son of his mother as to his humanity, but properly Son of the Father in both natures.*

 

[fred_conty]

Earlier on my facebook I posted this quote from Clement of Alexandria.

Clement of Alexandria

My college roommate responded on my feed with this.

I have yet to put a response, but if I did, what would it be?

Here is the way the argument winds up:

“God can’t have two natures, because if he did he couldn’t be God.” This is really this, “He couldn’t be God if he has two natures.”

He hasn’t given a reason why two natures are impossible. Probably second guessing him is that one nature is human as juxtapositioned against divine which to him seems like opposites, like water and oil which just don’t mix.

There are three distinct persons(Father, Son, Holy Spirit) in one divine nature(God).

Why are two natures(God-man) in one divine person(Son) any harder to believe?

The bible says he was human because he suffered, he was sad, he hungered and thirsted, he walked and talked. Yet it also says that he was divine by performing with his divine power: rasing Lazarus, walking on water, changing water into wine, multiplying loaves of bread, making those born blind to see, and most of all, rasing himself back to life. Jesus used both his human and his divine natures.

St. Paul expressed his human nature by saying, “He is like to us in all things except sin.”

The centurian at the foot of the cross expressed his belief in his divine nature, “Indeed this is the son of God.”

 

[Robyn_p]

Also, I wanted to add, the Trinity itself has always been and will always be one nature. That’s really the very definition of the Trinity, three distinct Persons in one divine nature.

But human nature has been elevated and united to the divine life of the Trinity through the person of Christ. That’s why the Incarnation is so amazing and mind-blowing! God and humanity are at one again. Which is why Jesus and only Jesus can be the perfect mediator between God and man. Because He joins together the two in His very person.

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

Earlier on my facebook I posted this quote from Clement of Alexandria.

Clement of Alexandria

“The Word, then, the Christ, is the cause both of our ancient beginning—for he was in God—and of our well-being. And now this same Word has appeared as man. He alone is both God and man, and the source of all our good things” (Exhortation to the Greeks 1:7:1 [A.D. 190]).

Well, 99.9999999…% of the case, the word “can’t” or “cannot” or “is not able” and so forth “cannot” apply to God.
Some things God surely “cannot” do is break his promises, for one, also I think God “cannot” cease to exist, but
could God “not be able” to come to have two natures? We are talking about the Infinite God here, we “can’t” limit
God to whatever we want, can we? Of course not. So God, who is infinite (unless your friend has reason to think
otherwise), CAN comprise of two natures. Might be worth considering the words of Barnabas: For the Scripture says concerning us, while He (the Father) speaks to the Son, Let
Us make man after Our image, and after Our likeness; and let them have dominion
over the beasts of the earth, and the fowls of heaven, and the fishes of the sea.

• (Epistle of Barnabas 6)

 

[MarcoPolo]

Putting here this relevant quote I came across in Cardinal Schoenborn’s God’s Human Face. It is a quote from Maximus Confessor, an early Church Father:And if I may be so bold as to mention what is supreme, I would say that even in the highest, uncreated yet all-creating, first cause we see that nature and hypostasis are not identical; for we recognize the one and only essence and nature in the divinity, unfolding in three hypostases distinct from one another by their properties . . . in particular by being unbegotten (the Father), by being begotten (the Son), and by emanating (the Holy Spirit): these properties do not divide the one nature and power of the ineffable divinity into three essences, or dissimilar––or even similar––natures, but they denote the Persons in whom the one divinity resides, and who are themselves this one divinity.

 

[tonyrey]

God’s love would be infertile if there were only two divine Persons!

      To the Everlasting Father,

And the Son Who reigns on high
With the Holy Ghost proceeding
Forth from Each eternally,
Be salvation, honour, blessing,
Might, and endless majesty. **- **Tantum Ergo

 

[SpeakInSilence]

Thanks folks!

 

[JimG]

Please recommend Frank Sheed’s book “Theology for Beginners,” to him.

The Trinity is not the sort of subject that can be explained in detail in Facebook posts.