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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: How much of Western Christianity is Unitarian?
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El Greco
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# 9313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
But I think that the church is founded on God's revelation in Scripture,
I don't. I think the church is founded on God's revelation that takes place in each one of us' personal Pentecost. What the scriptures called glorification is God's Revelation to man. The scriptures attest to that revelation; they are not that revelation. That revelation is beyond reason, beyond language, beyond words and cannot be expressed in words, nor be understood with reason.
quote:
I think that it is wrong, though, to give priority to the personal experience of God that the Orthodox fathers and saints and confessors and martyrs may have had. In saying this you are really just admitting their writings to the canon, and saying that they have equal weight.[/QB]
My own limited but personal experience agrees with theirs. So, for me, there can be no other way.
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
But I think that the church is founded on God's revelation in Scripture,
I don't. I think the church is founded on God's revelation that takes place in each one of us' personal Pentecost. What the scriptures called glorification is God's Revelation to man. The scriptures attest to that revelation; they are not that revelation. That revelation is beyond reason, beyond language, beyond words and cannot be expressed in words, nor be understood with reason.
I agree with you as far as the church in any particular individual goes. No book, no one else's experience, can reach into your soul. Only God can do that, and He does it on an individual basis.
But the source of legitimacy for the church as a whole is the common acceptance of beliefs, understandings, principles, and, if you will, humanity's storyline, that is recorded in some tangible, stable form. This is the Bible, insofar as it is universally accepted by Christian denominations as the inspired word of God. Of course not everyone accepts it that way, but it is nevertheless Christianity's core document. There are many other documents as well, but they have always been seen as peripheral to, and supportive of, the testimony of Scripture.
It's true, though, that this is only the basis of the church as a social and historical entity. The real church in the individual is based on the individual's connection with God - which hopefully also includes their faith in the Scriptures.
[ 27. April 2007, 17:12: Message edited by: Freddy ]
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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El Greco
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# 9313
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Posted
Dude, stop being words-centric. Human words cannot and will never be able to speak of God's Revelation.
It's not an issue of me not accepting fully the wholeness of Scriptures. I accept the Scriptures but I see them saying exactly what I have been saying in this thread. The fact is that we can't reason our way out from the scriptures to Truth, because this was not what they were intended to achieve in the first place and because reason cannot give us any information of Revelation because Revelation surpasses reason.
Orthodox theology is not an issue of rational debates and philosophical arguments. It has to do with the faith once delivered to the Apostles but this faith is NOT a credal statement and cannot be put in human words.
People get integrated to the Church by being initiated. During our initiation those people that initiate us do matter. Since they guide us towards the same experience they get, they can guide us to Truth but they are also capable of guiding us elsewhere, depending on the extent on which they experience Truth.
We cannot agree with each other because of the way we see words and documents and revelation.
The source of legitimacy for the church as a whole is her holiness. The church is legitimate to the extent that she experiences God. Not documents, but holiness. And holiness has to do with the direct and unmediated experience of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, to whom belongs all Glory.
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Dude, stop being words-centric. Human words cannot and will never be able to speak of God's Revelation.
Yet here you are writing away - somehow expecting to convey meaning, and hopefully agreement, by using words. Wouldn't it just be better to let God do His work?
You seem to me to be writing, as we all are, in the hope of communicating about these important issues, questions and truths. You also seem to be willing to put a great deal of time into the effort. So why are you dismissive of the value of the written Word?
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
It's not an issue of me not accepting fully the wholeness of Scriptures. I accept the Scriptures but I see them saying exactly what I have been saying in this thread.
I'm sure you do, and you have every right to do this. You may be right about all of this. I'm just saying that the evidence, to me, has to be Scriptural.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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El Greco
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# 9313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
You seem to me to be writing, as we all are, in the hope of communicating about these important issues, questions and truths.
I'm communicating ABOUT these issues, ABOUT the way man can get a face-to-face meeting with God, I am NOT communicating the meeting ITSELF. It is the meeting, when God reveals Himself, rather, when we directly experience God, that cannot be put in words. Guiding people towards revelation is not the same as speaking of the revelation itself.
Do you see what I am saying? Scriptures are to be read in a like manner. They are guidelines towards revelation, they are not revelation itself.
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
Andreas, I agree completely. The Scriptures are not the meeting with God. That's a personal thing.
But if you want to communicate about that - especially if there is any question about the right thing to believe - this is what the Scriptures are for.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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El Greco
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# 9313
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Posted
How on earth does a sign saying "40 km to Athens" say anything about Athens itself? The Scriptures and everything else said and written by the saints are road signs towards Revelation. You don't get an understanding of revelation by listening to the road signs. You move your way towards it, but you do not learn something about it.
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
That's right. But without the road signs, or without a map, you'll never find it.
The trick is finding reliable maps and signs.
I agree, though, that it is wrong to confuse the map, or the sign, with the thing itself.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Dafyd wrote: quote:
Whatever is the Christian claim that there is only one God, it must be understood in a sense that does not contradict the Jewish claim.
Of course we MUST CONTRADICT AND REJECT the Jewish claim. They claim that God is one person, we don't.
No. The Jews are correct in what they claim. They are wrong only in what they deny.
quote:
quote:
The Christian belief in the Trinity supplements but does not annul the Jewish confession.
The Christian belief in the Trinity equates the faith in the Trinity of the Patriarchs and the Prophets and the Just men and women of the Old Testament, but this faith is not the faith of Judaism...[/QB]
The faith of Christianity is part of the faith of Judaism. We are all grafted in to the cultivated olive. But the Jews are already part of that olive. God has not broken the covenant with the Jewish people.
We through faith in Jesus become part of the faith that the Jews have already.
quote:
quote:
If we take 'God' in the Shema to mean anything other than 'a divine existent' then we make a nonsense of it.
Then Christian faith is bullocks and the Jews have got it right all along... On the contrary, the Shema is spoken by the second person of the Trinity, by the second "divine existent" if you like, and it can only be understood as referring to the one divine nature.
What is the point of telling the Israelites that there is only one kind of god?
quote:
Greek speaking people said that one God means the one divine nature, and Greek speaking people said that God means the one divine individual.
Clearly not, because if that was what they said then they weren't speaking Greek, they were speaking English.
'God' in English does not ever mean the divine nature. And if a Greek speaker says so, then the Greek speaker cannot speak English. Likewise, if an English speaker says that 'theos' cannot mean 'the divine nature' then the English speaker cannot speak Greek.
If you wish to translate the faith you express into English you must be translate it as 'there is one kind of God, and three Gods.' Unless I misunderstand you completely.
The English phrase 'there are three Gods', translated into Greek would be ambiguous: it could either mean three divine natures or it could mean three individuals. Incidentally do the Greek fathers ever use the Greek translation of the phrase to assert the existence of the three individuals?
Also, you spend much of your time asserting what we do not deny and denying what we do not assert. It might help if you tried to find out where your understanding of our position is wrong. Perhaps you could state what you think our position is.
Dafyd
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Nigel M
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# 11256
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
How on earth does a sign saying "40 km to Athens" say anything about Athens itself? The Scriptures and everything else said and written by the saints are road signs towards Revelation.
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
That's right. But without the road signs, or without a map, you'll never find it... I agree, though, that it is wrong to confuse the map, or the sign, with the thing itself.
It might help to have a definition of 'Revelation' here. Andreas, you seem to define it as something static "out there", whereas I understand it as something dynamic - a movement from one object to another. Consequently I see the Scriptures as the channel for revelation and so in a sense revelation is indeed to be found there. If I see a sign saying "40km to Athens", I have in my mind an idea of Athens already - pretty incomplete, I admit, but a picture nevertheless. I also have an idea of what "40km" means and am able to get a feel for how far away I am from testing my picture against reality. The road sign becomes a channel for revelation.
Similarly with the map. A map certainly isn't the territory, but it is channel for revealing the territory in my mind.
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El Greco
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# 9313
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Posted
Dear Dafyd
I am not sure you are hearing what I said. You say that in English God means a divine individual. This is however what the Greek-speaking heretics (like Arius) said about Theos. They said that theos means a divine individual, and that therefore there can be no other God than God the Father. The Orthodox Saints replied that they are to receive the meaning of the word God from Truth and not from the way they use language. Since in Truth there exist three divine persons, and since their unity has to do with their nature being one, they said that God as used by the Scriptures in phrases like "Your Lord is one God" cannot mean the divine individual but the divine nature.
Personally I see no difference between these words in English and in Greek. The fact that after all the debate when the Church speaks of one God she means the one divine nature is irrelevant to how language can be used.
As to what the position I oppose is, it's something like what St. Bertelin said about what his own faith was:
quote:
I had this concept of the divine nature being some mysterious, deeper reality of which the three Persons of the Trinity were somehow part. It was almost as though the divine nature was a being/entity in itself but I wouldn't have articulated it like that.
What do you mean when you say God is one?
Dear NigelM
To me revelation has only one meaning: When God reveals Himself directly to an individual, one's personal Pentecost. Because Revelation, unlike Athens, has to do with the One that cannot be described, we can have no idea what Revelation is like until we experience it personally. After all, we say in the bible that God is good etc, but this goodness doesn't really say much about God, because His goodness as revealed in a face-to-face experience is radically different from anything we are familiar with and which we can call good.
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Nigel M
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# 11256
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
To me revelation has only one meaning: When God reveals Himself directly to an individual, one's personal Pentecost. Because Revelation, unlike Athens, has to do with the One that cannot be described, we can have no idea what Revelation is like until we experience it personally.
OK I see; I would qualify things a bit because - although I don't think you mean it this way(?) - it sounds as though Revelation is in itself a mediator between God and man. Obviously there are mediators, but unless I were to refer to Jesus as 'Revelation', in the same way that the labels 'Wisdom', 'Truth', 'Image' etc. are applied to him, I would prefer to use revelation (with a small 'r') to denote the conduit through which God communicates and makes himself known to creation. A channel, rather than an image. It's just a matter of definition, I guess.
And I've just used another red-flag word: "known"!
Nigel
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
I'm not sure I understand why the nature of revelation is the issue here. ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
I think that we agree that an individual's personal relationship with God is the real connection, and that other ways of "knowing" - such as information gained from other people, or from written sources - merely take the place of it as a means of developing it.
But why are we talking about this?
Is it because Western Christianity relies on Scripture, whereas Orthodoxy accepts it but relies more heavily on the traditions of the church? Or, andreas, are you saying that we should not rely on any written source of information, but should rely only on our own revelation from God?
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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El Greco
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# 9313
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Posted
Dear NigelM
Father Romanides wrote:
quote:
Amongst men, there are those of the Old and New Testaments, including certain saints, who have had visions of God at various levels similar to that of angels and these men are the highest spiritual guides and authoritative teachers of those who are striving for union with God. Neither for Dionysius nor for Palamas is baptism and sacramental participation in the Body of Christ yet union, because union is equivalent to vision of God and deification. Neither among angels, nor among men, is there any lack of direct communion with God, even among those who have been baptized and have not yet reached union or divinization. The Dionysian celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchy is not a closed system, as Father Meyendorff thinks. The most amazing thing about it is the fact that perfection is an eternal process which never comes to an end, even for the highest orders, since there can be no expulsion of motion and change and history by the actualization of every potentiality as happens with Neo-Platonic and Latin beatific visions. Had Meyendorff paid attention to these principles of Greek Patristic thought, he would have hit upon a real vindication of the eternal dimensions of history and motion.
This reflects more what I was trying to say. Dynamic, never ending, accessible even by those who have not yet reached their union with God... Direct communion with God corresponds with what I think you called "conduit" but is not what I called Revelation. Revelation the way I see it corresponds with father Romanides' "union"...
Dear Freddy
What do you think of this way of seeing things:
quote:
For Palamas and Dionysius the need of symbols in one's knowledge of God is done away with only during the supra-rational union with and vision of God by deification. In such cases the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and saints who see the uncreated glory of God have an immediate knowledge of God similar to that of angels. However, those same prophets, apostles, and saints may be initiated into the meaning of their immediate vision of the glory of God by angels. But these angels never produce the vision of God, nor do they become symbolic substitutes for God as happens for Augustine and the Latin West. Now the experience of those men who are taken up into God's glory is expressed to their fellow men by means of symbolic words and imagery, and these symbols become the basis of our Biblical tradition and are called symbolic theology, or the theology of Divine Names, and are by no means to be confused with reducing historical events to symbols of eternal truths as happens with allegory. It must be clearly borne in mind that the prophets, apostles, and saints in seeing the uncreated light or glory of God did not see symbols, but were sometimes initiated into the meaning of their experience by angels and expressed the will of God to their fellow men by means of symbols familiar to the society in which they lived.
[snip]
Now the fact that the highest knowledge of God for Palamas and Dionysius is immediate vision of the uncreated glory of God even in this life, plus the fact that this vision and knowledge is above all categories of vision and knowledge because God remains a mystery even when unknowingly known, means that the Biblical symbols of the divine names can never become part of any credo ut intelligam method of theologizing, and that the very idea of Theologians or the Church getting a deeper understanding of revealed or dogmatic truth with the passage of time is nonsense, especially when these theologians not only have not seen the uncreated glory of God, but claim that those prophets, apostles, and saints who did see it saw either a creature or something imaginary.
[snip]
In order to substantiate this claim that the hesychasts may be having demonic visions, Akindynos appeals to the Fathers, who warn against visions which appear in shapes and forms and advise that the mind must be kept immaterial and formless. Palamas is quick to take advantage of this blunder to remind Akindynos that this would make his revelations to the prophets and apostles by means of real or imaginary symbols demonic. Nevertheless, Akindynos claims that at the baptism of Christ, St. John saw a dove which symbolized the Holy Spirit, but he did not see God. Palamas ridicules the idea that a dove could ever take the place of the Holy Spirit in St. John's vision and insists that there was no bird in the revelation. What St. John saw transcends human reason and is expressed by the dove symbol. Akindynos returns to the Thaboric experience and claims that the body of Christ was there the symbol of divinity which the apostles discerned by faith.
This is not a church traditions vs scriptures issue. It has to do with what the scriptural writers actually did when they wrote scriptures and the actual meaning of what they wrote...
http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.15.en.notes_on_the_palamite_controversy.01.htm
http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.15.en.notes_on_the_palamite_controversy.02.htm
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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El Greco
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# 9313
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Posted
This short story from fr. Florovsky's work on the Byzantine fathers reflects the ancient understanding of what tritheism means:
quote:
A more serious schism was that of the Tritheists, also known as the Cononites from their leader Conon, one of the early associates of Jacob — they were also known as the Philoponists from John Philoponus (d.c. 565). According to the extant sources the origin of Tritheism occurred in a most casual way. In a meeting with the Chalcedonians John Philoponus allegedly asked: "If you speak about two natures, why do you not also speak of two hypostases since nature and hypostasis are identical?" The Chalcedonian response was that they would indeed do so "if we considered nature and hypostasis identical, but as a point of fact we distinguish between the two." The Chalcedonian reportedly continued by proposing that John Philoponus, if he held nature and hypostasis to be identical, should therefore speak of three natures in the Godhead. His reply allegedly was: "Then, we will do so." When the astonished Chalcedonian exclaimed that to do so would be to teach Tritheism, John reportedly replied that "in the Trinity I count as many natures, essences, and Godheads as I do hypostases."
To the best of my knowledge, this is the only heresy that was accused of tritheism. It was because they divided the nature of the three divine persons and NOT because they counted them as three.
Isn't this different from what you people in this thread have been calling tritheism? Because as far as I can see, your view of what tritheism means differs from the ancient view... Which poses many problems as to what "one God" means...
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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Freddy
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Isn't this different from what you people in this thread have been calling tritheism? Because as far as I can see, your view of what tritheism means differs from the ancient view... Which poses many problems as to what "one God" means...
It doesn't seem different to me.
I'm actually stuck trying to understand where anyone got the idea of a distinction between nature and hypostasis. When was that distinction first proposed?
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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Nigel M
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# 11256
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
I'm not sure I understand why the nature of revelation is the issue here.
Freddy, it goes beyond revelation for me; it's the issue whether revelation of anything divine can communicate God in any meaningful way. Without a viable connection between creator and creation, and also without a desire on behalf of the creator to facilitate understanding by creation in addition to knowing, all talk of trinity, union or unity is meaningless.
What do we mean when we talk about a personal experience of God? Is it his actions? His 'person'? Or is it a heightened awareness of our own status as made in God's image (i.e. not anything directly about God at all)? Just what is being communicated?
I'm happy with the idea that God communicates himself - there's a union going on here - to his creation. I'm also keen to uphold the idea that the creation can 'know' God and that this knowing (and understanding) can occur through (not necessarily 'in') Scripture. I think the map analogy holds to an extent here: I read a map that has no meaning in and of itself; meaning is placed there by the author who seeks to communicate meaning to me by way of signa.
To that extent, I was not sure what andreas meant when he said that "revelation is beyond reason, beyond language, beyond words and cannot be expressed in words, nor be understood with reason." I sense that the term 'revelation' is being used for an experience quite a way down the Christian's path (a sublime experience), whereas I understood it to refer to each and any increase in understanding and knowledge of God from day one. So, a person can talk meaningfully about God (in trinitarian terms, even) no matter where he or she is on the Christian path.
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El Greco
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Posted
Freddy, I'm not sure you are following...
The Orthodox were astonished that a Monophysite would claim there are three divine natures. Because that would be Tritheism. You are astonished I claim three divine persons. This, to the ancient Church, is trinitarianism, NOT TRITHEISM.
As far as I can tell, the accusation of tritheism was applied a) by the heretics, like Arius, to the Orthodox for their faith in the trinity and b) by the Orthodox to that obscure sect for their saying there are three divine natures.
In this thread, and in other threads, when someone accused me for tritheism, they did not do that based on the ancient Christian understanding, but they did so for the same reasons the Arians and the Eunomians were calling the Orthodox tritheists! Or so it seems to me.
In a like manner, I am astonished by the way some (like Divine Outlaw Dwarf) speak of Christ as if he was a human individual... This is unbelievable within the Orthodox patristic tradition. Which leads me to think that there is something deeply disturbing and alarming within the Western Christian understanding of what Christianity is supposed to be teaching...
I got rather frustrated. I guess I shouldn't have. But I just wanted to express that frustration
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I'm happy with the idea that God communicates himself - there's a union going on here - to his creation. I'm also keen to uphold the idea that the creation can 'know' God and that this knowing (and understanding) can occur through (not necessarily 'in') Scripture.
That's the way I see it too.
quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
To that extent, I was not sure what andreas meant when he said that "revelation is beyond reason, beyond language, beyond words and cannot be expressed in words, nor be understood with reason."
Actually, this part of what andreas said makes perfect sense to me. He's just talking, I think, about revelation on a deeper level, a level that is not explicitly about words but about an interior state.
In the New Church this kind of revelation was what the most ancients, the people meant by Adam and Eve experienced in Eden. Although these people were pre-literate they experienced a profound communication and union with God. It depended on their deep love of Him and the purity of their hearts.
In this system the Fall was essentially the loss of that communication, as they succumbed to the inclination to credit the information of their senses (the serpent) over this interior wisdom from God. This eventually removed them from their paradisal state of peace and contentment.
The issue was then how to recover that lost peace, or how to return to the garden. Since they could no longer reliably receive that interior revelation from God, they needed an external source that would take its place.
This is what the Incarnation is about.
So the primary feature of the history of humanity is the steady increase of knowledge of all kinds. Knowledge, and specifically the revealed knowledge of religion, is the means to replace what was lost in ancient times. Over the course of history, people have become increasingly able to understand and use complex ideas to shape both their inner and outer world.
The idea is that people can regain that kind of interior understanding, or even interior revelation, by following the road map that God gives through a series of revelations that have been recorded and passed along. This is therefore how He works with us through the ages.
Of course it's all about learning to love God and the neighbor - which turns out to be a surprisingly difficult and complex process, needing to be supported by a depth of knowledge as yet lacking in human society. But we are on our way.
So I think that this deep communication is what andreas is referring to. I think that he is mistaken in his approach, because although this kind of inner revelation is a goal, the means to that goal is to follow the "road map" of written revelation. I think that without this as a guide we are unable to find our way and will become spiritually lost.
But still, I understand what he means and it does make sense to me.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Freddy, I'm not sure you are following...
The Orthodox were astonished that a Monophysite would claim there are three divine natures. Because that would be Tritheism. You are astonished I claim three divine persons. This, to the ancient Church, is trinitarianism, NOT TRITHEISM.
andreas you reiterate this is virtually every post. How could I possibly not be following it? It's not a hard concept to grasp.
My question is why the distinction between nature and hypostasis - which is absolutely foundational to this entire discussion - makes sense to you. Where did this idea come from? When was it first proposed?
It seems to me that everything that you have been saying stands or falls on this distinction - which I, frankly, do not buy.
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
In this thread, and in other threads, when someone accused me for tritheism, they did not do that based on the ancient Christian understanding, but they did so for the same reasons the Arians and the Eunomians were calling the Orthodox tritheists! Or so it seems to me.
Yes, good point.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
My question is why the distinction between nature and hypostasis - which is absolutely foundational to this entire discussion - makes sense to you. Where did this idea come from? When was it first proposed?
Consider the metaphysics expressed in one way by Plato and in another very different way by Aristotle.
Suppose two things can be referred to by the same word, in such a way that reflects underlying reality. So two cows are both cows; two humans are both humans. In the Platonic/Aristotelian system this reflects reality (when it does so) because the two cows share the form of cowness, and the two humans share the form of humanness.
Now I assume that what Andreas is saying is that each of the divine persons shares the form of God, has the nature of God, but that there are three distinct individuals, three Gods - in the same way as if you have three humans in the room there is only one human nature or form of humanity in the room, but three different people.
According to my recent reading (Henry Chadwick's The Early Church) the first person to use the formula 'three persons in one substance' was Tertullian, who was writing in the West. There's no earlier expression of the formula.
Dafyd
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
You say that in English God means a divine individual.
This is however what the Greek-speaking heretics (like Arius) said about Theos. They said that theos means a divine individual, and that therefore there can be no other God than God the Father. The Orthodox Saints replied that they are to receive the meaning of the word God from Truth and not from the way they use language.
Since in Truth there exist three divine persons, and since their unity has to do with their nature being one, they said that God as used by the Scriptures in phrases like "Your Lord is one God" cannot mean the divine individual but the divine nature.
Personally I see no difference between these words in English and in Greek. The fact that after all the debate when the Church speaks of one God she means the one divine nature is irrelevant to how language can be used.
[QUOTE][QB]
What do you mean when you say God is one?
I mean that there is no God beside God. I mean that it is not correct to worship any being other than God, and that it is correct to worship Jesus.
Furthermore, I affirm that God is not the kind of thing that there could be more than one of. We cannot count God.
I mean that all humanity and all created things have a common destiny in God.
I affirm that the act by which the Father eternally begets the Son must not be understood in any way in which there is any similarity with the act by which the Trinity creates that which is other than God. God might have not created any world and might have created a different creation, but it is not the case that the Father might not have begotten the Son. No person has any existence independent of the other two persons.
And when I say that there are three, I say that the Son is not same person as the Father but is eternally begotten, and that the Spirit is neither the Son nor the Father but eternally proceeds.
Our language cannot speak of God so that any but the saints in glory may understand. Nevertheless it may help us overcome our perpetual desire to contruct idols and thereby open us to God's grace and love.
Therefore I affirm two ways of speaking about God, which are both true so long as neither denies the other. It is spiritually fruitful to speak of or image God as three distinct persons, and it is fruitful to speak of God as memory, reason and love - so long as neither denies the truth of the other.
Dafyd
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
You say that in English God means a divine individual. This is however what the Greek-speaking heretics (like Arius) said about Theos. They said that theos means a divine individual, and that therefore there can be no other God than God the Father. The Orthodox Saints replied that they are to receive the meaning of the word God from Truth and not from the way they use language.
It seems to me that, assuming you are correct, then Arius was right to say that theos can mean a divine individual but wrong to say that it cannot also mean the divine nature.
The last sentence is confused. Words do not get their meaning from truth, since any word can be used to state a falsehood. Or to be more precise, words get their reference from truth and their sense from language.
quote:
Personally I see no difference between these words in English and in Greek. The fact that after all the debate when the Church speaks of one God she means the one divine nature is irrelevant to how language can be used.
I apologise if I misunderstand you in what follows, and if my words come out as more argumentative than I intend. I seek only to understand and to explain.
If the word 'theos' means the divine nature, and the word 'God' does not, then there is a difference. If you cannot see it, that is because you don't speak English well enough. You have been told falsely that the two words are the same in all respects.
I think the actual difference is in the way the language works, not the actual word. English must mark a noun as somehow special, eg 'x-ity' or 'x-ness' to use it to mean 'the nature of xs'.
If the Church is using language when she speaks, the Church has to use language in the way in which language is used. If the Church does not do so, she doesn't speak at all.
You say that when the Church speaks of one God she means the one divine nature. Now when we speak of one humanity we mean the one human nature. But when we speak of one human we mean a single human person.
Do I understand the following clearly?
The Nicene Creed begins: I believe in one God, the Father. You say that in this sentence 'one God' does not mean 'only one God' but that it means that the Father is one God? Am I right?
Is it ever acceptable to say that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit together are three Gods?
If it is not acceptable, is this because 'theos' can only mean the divine nature and can never mean a divine individual?
Dafyd
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Freddy
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
According to my recent reading (Henry Chadwick's The Early Church) the first person to use the formula 'three persons in one substance' was Tertullian, who was writing in the West. There's no earlier expression of the formula.
Thank you, Dafyd. I see here that he also introduced the term "trinity" and that his dates are ca. 155–230.
I guess that this formula is universally accepted. Am I right about that? This puzzles me, because I think it is an unfortunate concept.
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El Greco
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Dafyd
I still don't understand what you mean when you say "there is one God". What does the word "God" in that phrase means?
You are saying that for three divine persons the way I describe them we should have been using the term "three Gods", But you, within your framework, use the term "one God". Am I right in thinking that you do not mean the trinity the way I do?
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
If the Church is using language when she speaks, the Church has to use language in the way in which language is used. If the Church does not do so, she doesn't speak at all.
You say that when the Church speaks of one God she means the one divine nature. Now when we speak of one humanity we mean the one human nature. But when we speak of one human we mean a single human person.
This was extensively discussed by the fathers of the first and the second ecumenical council and the heretics. There are two options. Either edit the scriptures and change the sacred words so that they can speak of "three Gods", or change the erroneous human custom of speaking of "many humans". But because in the case of man no huge error with regards to salvation happens when you say "Andreas and Dafyd are two men", but it affects our salvation to say there are three Gods, we don't mind the former while we are strict on the latter.
Language, especially as far as God is concerned, does not predate religion. Therefore, religion is not to learn the meaning of the word God from the current use of language, but language is to be taught by true religion.
P.S. I don't agree with what you say on Plato and Aristotle... But I don't want to change the thread's focus from trinitarian Orthodoxy to ancient Greek philosophy.
Freddy... The use of the terminology is irrelevant. And I don't think that highly of Tertullian, because of the heresy he fell into later in life. However, you can go even before Tertullian and see what more prominent fathers taught... what they said the Apostolic faith they received was.
For example, Ireneus of Lyons speaks of "three points" in which we believe, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He says that: "This, beloved, is the preaching of the truth, and this is the manner of our redemption, and this is the way of life, which the prophets proclaimed, and Christ established, and the apostles delivered, and the Church in all the world hands on to her children. This must we keep with all certainty, with a sound will and pleasing to God, with good works and right-willed disposition."
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/irenaeus_02_proof.htm
Isn't the language of "three points" similar to my way of understanding what the trinity means?
P.S. In a post above I explained that the Creator in the Creed refers to God the Father. This was not to exclude the Son and the Spirit from creating the cosmos, but in order to affirm God the Father's being the Creator which the heretics rejected saying that the world was not created by God but by an evil deity.
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El Greco
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Here's an excerpt from Ireneus' (second century) work on the Apostolic Faith:
quote:
6. This then is the order of the rule of our faith, and the foundation of the building, and the stability of our conversation: God, the Father, not made, not material, invisible; one God, the creator of all things: this is the first point of our faith. The second point is: The Word of God, Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord, who was manifested to the prophets according to the form of their prophesying and according to the method of the dispensation of the Father: through whom all things were made; who also at the end of the times, to complete and gather up all things, was made man among men, visible and tangible, in order to abolish death and show forth life and produce a community of union between God and man. And the third point is: The Holy Spirit, through whom the prophets prophesied, and the fathers learned the things of God, and the righteous were led forth into the way of righteousness; and who in the end of the times was poured out in a new way upon mankind in all the earth, renewing man unto God.
7. And for this reason the baptism of our regeneration proceeds through these three points: God the Father bestowing on us regeneration through His Son by the Holy Spirit.
[snip]
100. So then, in respect of the three points of our seal, error has strayed widely from the truth. For either they reject the Father, or they accept not the Son and speak against the dispensation of His incarnation; or else they receive not the Spirit, that is, they reject prophecy.
And here's some of what Saint Hippolytus (died about 236 AD) wrote:
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Therefore this solitary and supreme Deity, by an exercise of reflection, brought forth the Logos first; not the word in the sense of being articulated by voice, but as a ratiocination of the universe, conceived and residing in the divine mind. Him alone He produced from existing things; for the Father Himself constituted existence, and the being born from Him was the cause of all things that are produced.
[snip]
The Logos alone of this God is from God himself; wherefore also the Logos is God, being the substance of God. Now the world was made from nothing; wherefore it is not God;
[snip]
And that by Himself in person He might prove that God made nothing evil, and that man possesses the capacity of self-determination, inasmuch as he is able to will and not to will, and is endued with power to do both. This Man we know to have been made out of the compound of our humanity. For if He were not of the same nature with ourselves, in vain does He ordain that we should imitate the Teacher. For if that Man happened to be of a different substance from us, why does He lay injunctions similar to those He has received on myself, who am born weak; and how is this the act of one that is good and just?
See how Saint Hippolytus speaks of the two natures of Christ and of the one nature of the Father and the Son? Note that this distinction predates Arius (born in 250 AD).
Also note that Saint Hippolytus was accused by the Sabellians as a ditheist and that they used the same line of arguments used in this thread against what I said is the trinitarian monotheism of Christianity...
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0521.htm
It's interesting that in this work all these verses, from "you shall have no other God beside me" and "I am the first and the last" and "I and the Father are one" were used by those Noetians against the trinitarian orthodoxy of Saint Hippolytus. His replies are very interesting and revealing...
[ 29. April 2007, 15:41: Message edited by: andreas1984 ]
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Freddy
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Freddy... The use of the terminology is irrelevant.
The reason that I think it is important is that it shows the way that people were dealing with the language of Scripture. I think that it is mistaken to think of God in terms of one nature and three persons - so I am wondering when this language, which is not present in Scripture, crept into their thinking. The answer seems to be Tertullian.
To me it seems obvious that these people were grappling with the problem of how to think about Jesus' words about the Father, if Jesus Himself is also God and if there is only one God. This is a serious and puzzling issue.
The solution of one nature and three persons is a very understandable conclusion to come to. It is also wrong, in my opinion.
andreas, in everything you have written about this you make it clear that you actually think in terms of three distinct entities, each of whom are God in regard to their nature, but who are separate as to their persons. As I have said, I call that tritheism, and I understand that you call this the trinity and not tritheism.
But I'm not sure that you are seeing that I also have a problem with the very idea that nature and person are divided in God the way that Tertullian proposed.
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
And I don't think that highly of Tertullian, because of the heresy he fell into later in life. However, you can go even before Tertullian and see what more prominent fathers taught... what they said the Apostolic faith they received was.
For example, Ireneus of Lyons speaks of "three points" in which we believe, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
I love Ireneus, and think very highly of what he writes here. I don't have a problem with what he writes about the "three points" or with what he writes about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He stays within the language and imagery of Scripture. It is noticeable that he makes no reference to any idea of one nature and three persons.
andreas I'm not sure that you understand that my issue is not with the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but with an understanding of these terms that turns them into three persons or three hypostases.
I understand these terms to be figurative language used to explain the relationship of the invisible interior divine, the Father, with the visible, incarnated divine, the Son. All of Jesus' sayings, prayers, and struggles, in which He speaks about or with the Father, are about the relationship between the external and the internal, and the process of uniting them, or of bringing the external into perfect unity and correspondence with the internal.
The Old Testament often speaks of the "spirit" of God and yet no one ever saw this as a distinct person from God Himself. People understood that this was simply God. But when the Son came along it was more complicated, because He spoke as if they were separate persons - with one bowing to the will of the other.
Ireneus does not fully grapple with this issue, speaking firmly about one God, and about Jesus as "God with us", and yet not resolving how it could be that He and the Father are one and the same. The idea of nature and persons does resolve the issue - but, in my opinion, it creates many more.
[ 29. April 2007, 17:39: Message edited by: Freddy ]
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Dafyd
I still don't understand what you mean when you say "there is one God". What does the word "God" in that phrase means?
God means the blessed and holy uncreated Trinity, (except when it is clear from the context that it refers to one member of the Trinity, usually the Father).
When we understand the word 'God' we understand the Father through the Son by the power of the Spirit. We understand the Son and when we understand the Son, the Son makes the Father understood. The Son is the knowledge and understanding of the Father.
Thus, Jesus says 'he who has seen me has seen the Father'.
So:
quote:
And through the Word Himself who had been made visible and palpable, was the Father shown forth, although all did not equally believe in Him; but all saw the Father in the Son: for the Father is the invisible of the Son, but the Son the visible of the Father. And for this reason all spoke with Christ when He was present [upon earth], and they named Him God.
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Without the Spirit it is not possible to behold the Word of God, nor without the Son can any draw near to the Father: for the knowledge of the Father is the Son, and the knowledge of the Son of God is through the Holy Spirit
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So then the Father is Lord and the Son is Lord, and the Father is God and the Son is God; for that which is begotten of God is God. And so in the substance and power of His being there is shown forth one God; but there is also according to the economy of our redemption both Son and Father. Because to created things the Father of all is invisible and unapproachable, therefore those who are to draw near to God must have their access to the Father through the Son.
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These things did the prophets set forth in a prophetical manner; but they did not, as some allege, [proclaim] that He who was seen by the prophets was a different [God], the Father of all being invisible.
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You are saying that for three divine persons the way I describe them we should have been using the term "three Gods", But you, within your framework, use the term "one God". Am I right in thinking that you do not mean the trinity the way I do?
I am not sure how you understand the Trinity.
If you refuse to use the phrase 'there are three Gods' then we may understand the Trinity in the same way.
As I see it, I think your way of understanding the Trinity is one true way and the Western tradition is another true way, and that both are correct in what they affirm and false in what they deny. That is, we can start from the three persons or start from the one substance.
Thus I mean what you mean, but you do not mean what I mean.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Language, especially as far as God is concerned, does not predate religion. Therefore, religion is not to learn the meaning of the word God from the current use of language, but language is to be taught by true religion.
If you mean that theology may stipulate that by 'God' we understand the creator of the universe, and not merely beings such as Odin or Thor, this is true. However, if you mean that theology may stipulate that the statement 'two humans' used to mean 'you and me' is used erroneously, you are talking nonsense.
I do not think the fathers talked nonsense for the most part, and so I suspect that either you misunderstood them or you have not clearly communicated what you meant.
quote:
P.S. I don't agree with what you say on Plato and Aristotle... But I don't want to change the thread's focus from trinitarian Orthodoxy to ancient Greek philosophy.
If I am trying to understand what you are saying, then I need to know how my understanding of what you are saying is incorrect.
quote:
Isn't the language of "three points" similar to my way of understanding what the trinity means?
Yes. The question though is not whether it agrees with what you say, but whether it denies what you deny. And as above, I don't think it is intended to do so.
Dafyd
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Freddy
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Dafyd, what are you quoting there? Several of them are very nice. Are they Ireneus?
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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El Greco
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It's not an issue of language or a different approach being used in the East than that in the West.
Let's see what Saint Hilary (died on 368 AD), a Latin-speaking bishop of Poitiers, wrote on the issue... He has the same understanding, and he does not let the way common people use language affect his faith. Neither does he thinks in a different manner because of Latin.
quote:
There is a distinction, for They are Father and Son; not that Their Divinity is different in kind, for Both are One, God of God, One God Only begotten of One God Unbegotten. They are not two Gods, but One of One
(on the trinity, book 2, emphasis mine)
Saint Hillary explains that there is one God because the divine nature is one.
quote:
23. You hear the words, I and the Father are one John 10:30 . Why do you rend and tear the Son away from the Father? They are a unity: an absolute Existence having all things in perfect communion with that absolute Existence, from Whom He is. When you hear the Son saying, I and the Father are one, adjust your view of facts to the Persons; accept the statement which Begetter and Begotten make concerning Themselves. Believe that They are One, even as They are also Begetter and Begotten. Why deny the common nature? Why impugn the true Divinity?
(book 3, emphasis mine)
That great Saint speaks clearly of two Absolute Existences, which are called one, because they are of the same nature.
And when he rejects what the Sabbelians confessed, he writes:
quote:
we reject this confusion of two Persons in One, while yet we cleave to the Divine unity. That is, we hold that God from God means unity of nature; for that Being, Who, by a true birth from God, became God, can draw His substance from no other source than the Divine.
(book 6, emphasis mine)
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Freddy
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Davy Wavy Morrison:
Now I understand why rectors get their curates to preach on Trinity Sunday.
Yes, I think that this is why people often resort to the word "mystery":
quote:
The existence of theological mysteries is a doctrine of Catholic faith defined by the Vatican Council, which declares: "If any one say that in Divine Revelation there are contained no mysteries properly so called (vera et proprie dicta mysteria), but that through reason rightly developed (per rationem rite excultam) all the dogmas of faith can be understood and demonstrated from natural principles: let him be anathema" (Sess. III, Canons, 4. De fide et Ratione, 1). This teaching is clearly explained in Scripture. The principal proof text, which was cited in part by the Vatican Council, is I Cor., ii. Shorter passages are especially Eph., iii, 4-9; Col., i, 26-27; Matt., xi, 25-27; John i 17-18. These texts speak of a mystery of God, which only infinite wisdom can understand, namely, the designs of Divine Providence and the inner life of the Godhead.
If I'm not mistaken, the contradiction which appears to be inherent in a trinity that is not tritheism is often identified that way.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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El Greco
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Freddy, we say the incarnation is a mystery, but we do not mean that there is a paradox with God the Son coming in the flesh in Judea. The mystery is the way the Incarnation happened, not that it happened. Likewise, the divine nature is mysterious and the way the Son is begotten of the Father (and the way the Spirit proceeds from the father) is a mystery, but it is no mystery that there is one divine nature in three divine persons and that the Father is the source of the other two...
Yes, some people do hide their unclear understanding behind the term "mystery", but the Church's view on the trinity has been clearly explained by the holy Christians of the first centuries and that faith was re-affirmed, at least in Orthodoxy, by all the holy people of God at all times and places.
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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Freddy
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
but it is no mystery that there is one divine nature in three divine persons and that the Father is the source of the other two...
Are you sure? I have often heard the term "mystery" applied to the idea that there are three persons and yet, mysteriously, not three gods.
Maybe that is just in the popular imagination. ![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
As I have mentioned, I don't think that the concept of one divine nature but three persons is actually helpful here.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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El Greco
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And I have implied that much of Western christianity at the moment is unitarian... So, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that this has been your experience. I wouldn't be surprised even if you quoted some Orthodox (that are not Saints though) attributing it to mystery that "paradox"... I find it shocking that the same things that was said by the Arians and the Sabellians and the Eunomians against the holy people of God, that they were tritheists, is now also said against the distinction I confess between the three persons, but perhaps I should not be surprised.... especially if I take into account a) the real consequences of and causes for the schism and b) the fact that theology and sanctity cannot be separated, i.e. the only theologians whose theology is authentic and true are the Saints.
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El Greco
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quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
As I have mentioned, I don't think that the concept of one divine nature but three persons is actually helpful here.
Why? There is One God and this God has a Son... How many gods? One. The Father. But the Son isn't of a different nature than the Father. Just like the Son of a man is man and not a horse or a rose or a stone, so the Son of God is God. Same nature, different person. The difference being that He lives in the Father and the Father in Him. So, we can use the term God as a name, referring to the Father, like Paul or the Creed does, we can use it to mean the divine nature, ann we can use it, as a consequence of all this, to call a divine person on an individual basis. But these three different uses of the term are not to be confused.
[ 30. April 2007, 15:35: Message edited by: andreas1984 ]
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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Freddy
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
I find it shocking that the same things that was said by the Arians and the Sabellians and the Eunomians against the holy people of God, that they were tritheists, is now also said against the distinction I confess between the three persons, but perhaps I should not be surprised....
The Arians and the Sabellians and the Eunomians were heretics. The solutions that they proposed to the puzzling nature of the trinity were not any better than the one that was adopted. It doesn't mean that their criticism of three persons was necessarily wrong.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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El Greco
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They were heretics because they were not standing firm on the ground of sanctity. When one tries to solve the great theological problems of one's times based not on communion with God but on what is available to all humans irrespectively of their morality, i.e. the wisdom of this world, this is where we get... Heresy...
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Freddy
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They were also heretics because they were not standing on the solid ground of Scripture...
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El Greco
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The Scriptures cannot be understood by the non-holy, because they were written by people that were themselves holy who tried to guide others towards a face-to-face meeting with God. So, the heretics misinterpreted the scriptures, using phrases like "I an the father are one" and "he who has seen me has seen the father" in a mistaken way, not intended by the original authors. Unlike them, the holy people of God knew from experience what the scriptural writers were talking about, and they defended the Scriptures against the heretics' misusing them. But since the wisdom of man on which the heretics were dependent, is not enough to search the Wisdom of God, they could not understand the reasonableness of what the Christians that have kept the Apostolic faith were telling them, leading themselves to their own destruction...
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
Dafyd, what are you quoting there? Several of them are very nice. Are they Ireneus?
Yes, they are.
Dafyd
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
The Scriptures cannot be understood by the non-holy, because they were written by people that were themselves holy who tried to guide others towards a face-to-face meeting with God.
The problem with this argument is that it equally applies to you, Andreas. If one side slings mud, the other side can sling mud back.
It doesn't convince anyone or help anyone learn; it merely entrenches both sides in their own pride and folly.
I'm sorry that you feel the need to resort to name-calling.
Dafyd
[ 30. April 2007, 17:40: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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El Greco
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Posted
It's not name-calling. It's my analysis on what those people did. Imagine the countless gnostic sects, and the heresiarchs that existed after that, from Arius and Sabellius, to Eunomius and Nestorius... What is it that those people did? How where they led in their errors? My view is clear about them and those that like them struggled with the important theological questions without being holy. After all, holiness takes a great price, while rational discourse is relatively easy, especially for people as distinguished as they were.
P.S. I read those quotes from Saint Ireneus and I see they are perfectly trinitarian and within what I have been describing. This does not mean though that I am surprised people misunderstand them to uphold unitarianism... I am not. It's no different than the debates of antiquity.
[ 30. April 2007, 17:45: Message edited by: andreas1984 ]
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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El Greco
Shipmate
# 9313
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Posted
It's interesting to see that the Latin-speaking Saints also said the same things concerning the way people use language. Saint Ambrose, in his work on the Christian faith (book 5), he writes:
quote:
39. But the Arians maintain the following: If you say that, as the Father is the only true God, so also is the Son, and confess that the Father and the Son are both of one substance, you introduce not one God, but two. For they who are of one substance seem not to be one God but two Gods. Just as two men or two sheep or more are spoken of, but a man and a sheep are not spoken of as two men or two sheep, but as one man and one sheep.
40. This is what the Arians say; and by this cunning argument they attempt to catch the more simple-minded. However if we read the divine Scriptures we shall find that plurality occurs rather amongst those things which are of a diverse and different substance, that is, ????????? . We have this set forth in the books of Solomon, in that passage in which he said: "There are three things impossible to understand, yea, a fourth which I know not, the track of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the path of a ship in the sea, and the way of a man in his youth." Proverbs 30:18-19 An eagle and a ship and a serpent are not of one family and nature, but of a distinguishable and different substance, and yet they are three. On the testimony of Scripture, therefore, they learn that their arguments are against themselves.
This discussion, unfortunately, became too hard to follow... I'm partly responsible for that. My question as to how influential some forms of unitarianism are remains. Many thanks to those that contributed... Especially to Freddy. And apologies to the people that found my posts difficult to read...
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
So when Ambrose confesses that the Father and the Son are of one substance, you agree that he is defending the catholic faith?
Because that is what we are saying - that you must not deny that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are of one substance.
And you must also affirm that they are three persons.
Dafyd
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
It's not name-calling. It's my analysis on what those people did. Imagine the countless gnostic sects, and the heresiarchs that existed after that, from Arius and Sabellius, to Eunomius and Nestorius...
It is name calling because it is saying that we who disagree with you are unholy and therefore unable to understand. This may be the case. But the opposite may also be the case - so it isn't an argument that is usually made in polite company. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
What is it that those people did? How where they led in their errors?
They did, I agree, misunderstand the Scriptures - but whether they did this willfully we cannot know. Their errors, though, in the end, were that they denied the teaching of Scripture, such as that some denied Jesus' divinity for example.
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
My view is clear about them and those that like them struggled with the important theological questions without being holy. After all, holiness takes a great price, while rational discourse is relatively easy, especially for people as distinguished as they were.
Yes, rational discourse is easy. It is not so easy to walk the walk, which is what really counts.
It is tricky, however, to exclude unholy people from struggling with important theological questions.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
My view is clear about them and those that like them struggled with the important theological questions without being holy.
And what good does that do you and me? You are - if you pardon my saying so - not especially holy yourself, and neither am I.
Were the Scriptures written for those who are already holy, or those who are not yet holy? They were surely written for those who are not yet holy, that they might become holy, since those who are already holy do not need the Scriptures.
In order to understand the Scriptures we do not need to be already holy. Rather we need to confess that we are not already holy. And we need to worship with the people of God and to receive the Eucharist and to submit our understanding to the correction of our brothers and sisters.
What the heretics all did was they denied that there could be one substance and three persons. For each human person is only one substance, and so the heretics said that you must have the same number of substances and persons. So Sabellius and the Modalists say there is one substance and therefore only one person; and Arians says that there are two or three persons and therefore two or three substances. Thus, the heretics all tried to tie down God to something that could be easily understood as the same as created persons.
Rowan Williams, who is rather more holy than I, has written about the history of Arius and Arianism, and I understand the above from what I remember of what he said.
We cannot truly think the Father except by the Son, and we cannot think the Son truly unless we think the Father as well, and we cannot think either truly without the power of the Spirit. Therefore the Father, Son and Holy Spirit together are one substance since none could be without the other two.
That is why we do not ever say that there are three Gods, because that would say there are three substances.
I believe that this is compatible with the teaching of the fathers, I believe that this is what Irenaeus affirms above, and I hope that this is compatible with your understanding of the Trinity.
quote:
P.S. I read those quotes from Saint Ireneus and I see they are perfectly trinitarian and within what I have been describing. This does not mean though that I am surprised people misunderstand them to uphold unitarianism... I am not. It's no different than the debates of antiquity.
Of course they are perfectly trinitarian. I don't know what Freddy believes, but I'm not upholding unitarianism. I am describing the blessed Trinity within the limits of my understanding.
Now I don't know what you mean by unitarianism. You say that the West is unitarian because it affirms one substance and then you say that Ambrose is not unitarian because he affirms one substance. Which is it?
Does affirming one substance make you a unitarian?
In English, someone is a unitarian if they deny the divinity of Jesus. That's clear enough. By extension, we can say that someone is a unitarian if they claim that the Logos is created.
The word is not normally used for someone who is a modalist or patripassionist or sabellian; but I can see why the word would be used for such people because they confound the three persons.
Dafyd
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Leetle Masha
Cantankerous Anchoress
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Posted
<I'm just down here on my knobby knees, Dafyd, thanking God that nobody's confusing substance with "nature" at this point!>
I'll get me chotki.
M
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eleison me, tin amartolin: have mercy on me, the sinner
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El Greco
Shipmate
# 9313
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Posted
Substance has been defined by all the fathers to be the same as nature. Dafyd's and Leetle Masha's position that substance is somehow different than nature leads to unitarianism. It's simple.
As to whether the scriptures are accessible by the non-holy, I'll just say that it's a matter of tradition, just like what the trinity means is a matter of tradition. In my tradition, when Anthony the great were asking some monks about a particular verse, what it meant, and they gave him their opinion, the youngest monk, that was asked last, said "I do not know". Anthony the Great replied that that monk was right and he was on his Way to God, because he said that he does not know.
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Substance has been defined by all the fathers to be the same as nature. Dafyd's and Leetle Masha's position that substance is somehow different than nature leads to unitarianism. It's simple.
Which makes me wonder what you mean by that? Neither terms are biblical, unless I am mistaken. They were applied in the effort to reconcile how there could be three persons but one God.
After Dafyd's question, I wonder if you could clarify what you mean by unitarian. Is it the denial of Christ's divinity? Modalism? Something else?
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
As to whether the scriptures are accessible by the non-holy, I'll just say that it's a matter of tradition, just like what the trinity means is a matter of tradition. In my tradition, when Anthony the great were asking some monks about a particular verse, what it meant, and they gave him their opinion, the youngest monk, that was asked last, said "I do not know". Anthony the Great replied that that monk was right and he was on his Way to God, because he said that he does not know.
The one who understands best is the one who knows that he does not understand. What does that say about us?
I agree that the Catch 22 that you are describing is real. You can't understand the wisdom of the church unless you are holy. You can't become holy without the wisdom of the church. ![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif)
In my opinion, the Lord came into the world to solve that puzzle.
Before He came, the only way to wisdom was by direct access to the interior wisdom of holiness. It could be described in words only remotely, and earlier in human history it could not be described at all. Instead there was much more commonly a kind of direct access to angels who enlightened the wise without words.
As humanity moved farther and farther from God, becoming more and more materialistic, technologically oriented, skeptical, and immoral, the interior channels were perverted into magic and idolatry, or closed completely.
So there was no way back. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
The Lord came into the world to make Himself present in external things, so that materialistic and technologically oriented humanity could again have access to Him. He spoke in words that more directly described the path to wisdom and opened the way back to Him.
It is still true that people who do not wish to hear, or who see but do not see, will still not understand. But God has now made it so that anyone who wishes to understand will be able to grasp His truth, and come little by little into wisdom.
So the Catch 22 isn't as definitive as you make it sound. It is true that the unholy can't understand Scripture, but we can understand it little by little, and our understanding will grow as we become better people. Scripture is God's presence among us, helping us to see Him.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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