One of several downside outcomes militating against…
Quiet as it is kept, I’m so chickenshit in the bumper sticker department that when I buy a car that has a police benevolent league sticker that marks you as the sort of sucker who buys raffle tickets from boiler room operations who rent the pba name for a few cents on the dollar of swag, I leave it on as camouflage.
I don’t know if this is a hijack, but since we are talking about one of the most difficult issues in Christianity and one that so far was not resolved in a way it sounds acceptable, you could of course also ask:
If God is God, why do you need a Trinity-God.
Or:
If God is God, why do you need to pray to the Jesus part to receive “salvation” and why do you need to declare that you can not be given this if you do not explicitely worship the Jesus part.
Where is God in fact, if you have to give an outspoken preference for worshipping the Jesus part of God because otherwise God does not recognize you as a believer in God.
(I must confess that I always feel a bit of compassion for the widely neglected Holy Spirit part. No special worship installed for this one.)
Or also:
If you can believe God is a tri-union, why can’t you believe that there are more then 3 in this union.
Salaam. A
Because this is what has been revealed to the Church.
Christ saved mankind from death by taking humanity upon Himself and healing it of death. God has chosen to mediate his healing and life-creating energies through the sacraments, such as baptism and the eucharist. Partaking of these sacraments, and purifying oneself through prayer, fasting, and asceticism, are the only sure way to salvation, so that when one comes face to face with the all-consuming fire of the presence of God, one will be able to withstand it. Any other path is a crapshoot at best.
Maybe not among most Western Christians, but among the Orthodox the Holy Spirit is worshipped equally with the Father and the Son. One of the most common Orthodox prayers, which begins the majority of the services, is “O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of truth, Treasury of good things and Giver of life!Come and abide in us, and cleanse us of every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.”
Because three hypostases in one Trinity is what has been revealed to the Church. There’s no necessary reason for three (that we can comprehend, at least); it’s just the way it is.
If this is so, then why is Jesus put under God in heaven?
**For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. ** 1 Cor 15:23.
Again, if they are equal in every way, then why does Jesus say:
"I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." John 5:19.
or "I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. " John 8:38.
and about the Holy Spirit **“But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears” ** John 16:13
Also, why would James say, when giving an example of faith: **You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that–and shudder. ** James 2:19
It is pretty clear that any power, radiance, or authority Jesus had comes from God. It is also true that “all authority under heaven and earth” have been given to Jesus, for he proved himself worthy of it. However the authority comes from God, not from himself.
While there is no need to go through the Protestant Reformation all over again, I am curious as to why it is necessary for the Church to continually develop additional theologies. John 5:24 says, “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” If Jesus’ word is sufficient, why burden believers with extra creeds and theories when they don’t bring us closer to God?
[QUOTE=yBeayf]
Maybe not among most Western Christians, but among the Orthodox the Holy Spirit is worshipped equally with the Father and the Son. One of the most common Orthodox prayers, which begins the majority of the services, is “O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of truth, Treasury of good things and Giver of life!Come and abide in us, and cleanse us of every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.”
QUOTE]
Um, in Western Christendom, there are us Charismatics who do indeed focus on the Holy Spirit’s place in the Godhead & activity in the Church & the world today.
and yes, I know that Orthodoxy has great suspicion (not totally unjustified) of the Charismatic movement.
First, that’s 1 Cor 15:27 - 28, and secondly, that is an inaccurate translation. The KJV matches what is in the Slavonic text fairly well: “For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” The first verse poses no problem for Trinitarian theology; of course the Father cannot be subjected to the Son, for both are equally God. As for the second verse, there are two ways the fathers interpret it: that it refers to Christ’s humanity, or that it refers to the Father as the source of the Trinity. Regarding the first interpretation, St. Ambrose says, “As Son of Man He confesses His subjection indeed under the conditions of the flesh, and not in the majesty of His Godhead.” (from Of the Christian Faith). Regarding the second, St. John Chrysostom says that the verse “shows His great concord with the Father, and that He is the principle of all other things and the first Cause.” In this case, “subjection” is taken to be merely a metaphor.
All these show is that the members of the Trinity are perfectly united in will and action.
Because there are not three gods, but one God.
It is far from clear that that is the case, and in any event, your interpretation of the scriptures was unambiguously rejected by the Church over 1500 years ago.
But these “extra creeds and theories” are necessary for a correct understanding of God, and the issue of Jesus’s divinity has deep consequences for our salvation. If Christ were not God, then God was never joined to humanity, and there still exists an ontological gulf between man and God. The whole meaning of salvation is union with God (theosis, or divinization), and without a divine Christ there is no union with God, but only union with some lesser creature, in which case we may be better off than we are now, but ultimately are no better off than we were in the Garden.
Apologies… I am aware of Charismatics as a group, but know virtually nothing about them. I’m not terribly familiar with modern Protestantism; the only traditions I have much familiarity with are Orthodoxy and to a lesser extent traditional Catholicism, which in my view does tend to relegate the Holy Spirit to a side role (especially with the filioque). The closest I’ve ever been to a Protestant service was attendance at a high-church Anglican mass.
No it doesn’t. The criminal that Jesus was crucified with was saved, yet he had no knowledge of ousia or hypostases. Are you “more saved” know that you know those things?
Are these theories necessary to lead a holier life than the apostles, who didn’t know what the monks 500 years after their death would come up with?
When Zechariah said “On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.”
Did he really mean that God would tap the fountain in one day, but it wouldn’t really start gushing for a few hundred years? Isn’t the crucificixion sufficient? Don’t I only need Jesus to be saved, and not Jesus plus St. Augastine, and St. Ambrose, and St. Beneviliocious the Superlative etc?
These theories were developed in reaction to heretics such as Arius, Nestorius, and Eutyches, who denied various aspects of the faith that had been there from the beginning. The Church has always believed in a tri-hypostatic Trinity in one ousia, but it was only necessary to define it as such when Arius came along and denied that the Son was of the same ousia as the Father; likewise with Nestorius and his denial of the single hypostasis of Christ, and Eutyches and his denial of the two natures of Christ. Terms such as ousia and hypostasis were not just made up out of thin air by the 4th-century Church; they are well-known Greek philosophical terms dating from before Christ. Arius blasphemed Christ God by saying that He was not God at all. Those who followed Arius and yet worshipped Christ were then freely worshipping what they believed to be a created being, which is idolatry. Those who followed Arius and then refrained from worshipping Christ were rejecting God become man so that man might be joined in communion with God.
The Church teaches the faith of the apostles. The apostles may not have used the same language as the 4th-century fathers, but the belief was the same.
This is where Western Christianity really departs from Eastern. The Crucifixion was an important event: through it, Christ took death upon himself. However, what many Western Christians miss is that the crucifixion was not the key event! There are many reasons why Christ was crucified (and if you want a really in-depth study of it, read On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius), but the point of the Crucifixion is that it was necessary for Christ to die, so that He could destroy death by His Resurrection. The Resurrection is the key salvific event, not the Crucifixion. Through the Resurrection, death is defeated, and human nature can now be healed. This is the original teaching on soteriology; the Western obsession with the Crucifixion is a product of Anselm’s theorizing of the 12th century.
Theology and its many aspects can support a lot of different particular events as “Key”, or most important, or most needed, in the nature of the phenomena that comprise the Christian Church.
But to me, the key moment is the birth of love between the Lord, and this one poor sinner, lost in the world. Of course I was not paying attention when that love was first born. I only caught on when I joined into that love. Fortunately, the Lord did quite well without my help, as he so often has.
Not denying the philosophy, you understand. I just don’t understand the philosophy, and must rely on the love of Christ.
I’m not worried.
Tris
There is, recently, also charismatic Catholicism – they are looked upon a little suspiciously by the traditionalists, of course.