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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: ...consubstantial, co-eternal...
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
OK - I get that 'consubstantiality' means to most here, that you can't get a fag paper between the Father and the Son. That's good - I believe that - and I can witness to it, in that I can feel something about our enormous loss if that were not true.
I'm less clear (still) on the co-eternal thing...unless it's just a get-around for an objection to anything truly-God being made by anything else (as in a made-God implies a greater God, so the made-God is somehow not-God).
But given we've agreed their rock-solid mutual identification, this seems a bit belt-and-braces.
I like the stories about 'relationship within the being of God' - but, to be frank, it sounds a bit made up. I mean, -I- can accept it, but then I already want to believe...
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
Bugger, missed the edit. Should have said '...can't get a fag paper between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit'.
Binitarian theology - guess who's not a charismatic. ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Dafyd said quote:
Saying that the Father and the Son are consubstantial means that they are not independent entities. If one exists the other exists too.
Aaaah! It can be neatly expressed, and when it is, we see that it's about being and relatedness, and not about substance or essence.
But that's what substance means when you use the word in that way.
Or are you saying that theology shouldn't use words that are in any way multivalent? (That's have more than one meaning?)
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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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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
"Homoousias" means that everything attributable to God is attributable to the Son. If God is eternal, then the Son is eternal.
The battle cry of the Arians was "There was when the Son was not," and Saint Athanasius knew full well that denied the divinity of the Son.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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Fuzzipeg
Shipmate
# 10107
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Posted
But those who say:
'There was a time when he was not;' and
'He was not before he was made;' and
'He was made out of nothing,' or
'He is of another substance' or 'essence,' or
'The Son of God is created,' or 'changeable,' or 'alterable'
these the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematises.
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http://foodybooze.blogspot.co.za
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Michael Astley:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Incidentally, given that God's possibilities are so far beyond ours, it isn't so obvious that God can't disagree with God!
I disagree. We are talking here about a logical impossibility.
quote:
Why is it a logical impossibility? If the Father and the Son are two distinct persons, capable of having a relationship, why might they not be able to disagree?
quote:
I'll respond to your earlier post tomorrow, hatless, but the answerto this is that the three Divine Persons have the same grace and energies. Everything that has been revealed shows us that they act in harmony, with one purpose stemming from their one will.
That's right, is it? You assert it as if it's something that has been discovered as true, like a fact from physics. But you can't investigate the Divine Persons like that. What you have said is, I believe, simply a statement of how we have chosen to talk about God. We have decided to talk about persons, grace and energies (whatever they might be, it's not a phrase I'm familiar with).
Maybe we have good reasons for talking about God this way, but that's what has to be demonstrated. That's the 'so what?' bit, the cash value, the difference these terms mean.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Why is it a logical impossibility? If the Father and the Son are two distinct persons, capable of having a relationship, why might they not be able to disagree?
Where would any kind of disagreement come from? God knows all, sees all, understands all, creates all, ... Where would any kind of disagreement live? God is everywhere and eternal. God really is nothing like you and me. Actually, God can only be considered more than Person by virtue of relationship. I mean, literally. God is more than one Person strictly only in the sense that there is a relationship of origin in Him. The Son is a different Person from the Father only by virtue of the Son being from the Father rather than the Father being from the Son (and like statements about the Holy Spirit). For all other intents and purposes God is One.
Hmm. I'm not trying to argue that God can in fact disagree with Godself, or the Father disagree with the Son, I'm merely taking issue with the assertion that this is impossible. I see such assertions as unwarranted. I don't believe we can pronounce on the nature of God in this way.
All language about God is at best analogical. God doesn't 'really' have relationships, and as someone else said, 'person' when applied to God doesn't mean the same as when it's applied to us.
Scripture has a more robustly anthropomorphic view of God than the philosophical theologians take. God changes his mind in the OT, and in the Garden of Gethsemane we are shown a separation or distance between Jesus and the Father. Between the Son and the Father? I wouldn't like to say if the ache is within the hypostatic union or the Godhead, but Moltmann talks of the cross introducing a rupture into the Trinity.
At any rate, I don't think it's nonsensical to ask if God can disagree with Godself. It's provocative and perhaps silly. What I have a horror of is theology that makes confident, plonking assertions about what can and can't, must and must not be the case. This is God we are talking about, and all bets are off.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
That's right, is it? You assert it as if it's something that has been discovered as true, like a fact from physics. But you can't investigate the Divine Persons like that. What you have said is, I believe, simply a statement of how we have chosen to talk about God. We have decided to talk about persons, grace and energies (whatever they might be, it's not a phrase I'm familiar with).
Maybe we have good reasons for talking about God this way, but that's what has to be demonstrated. That's the 'so what?' bit, the cash value, the difference these terms mean.
Not discovered: revealed.
I didn't re-state the examples - this is true - but it wasn't because I was expecting my words to stand alone as an authoritative assertion. Rather, I simply didn't think I would have to. In the biblical account of act of creation (the point holds regardless of literal/symbolic reading), in the biblical accounts of Theophany and Transfiguration, and in the prayers surrounding the sacraments which express what we believe God is doing in them, we find an understanding in the present and going back to biblical times of the divine Persons acting with unity of will. In the garden before his Passion, we see the tension in Christ's conformity of his human will to the divine will that He shares with the Father.
From this, we have traditionally understood that the communion of the three Persons and their oneness includes a single divine will. This is part of the energies of God that we can perceive through revelation. The idea of the Persons disagreeing among themselves is one that, to me at least, is alien to what God has revealed to us of Himself. We could be wrong, I suppose, but what is there to suggest that we are?
("Grace" and "energies" are synonymous. Using the former on its own runs the risk of it being misunderstood as the common protestant use of the word while using the latter on its own risks incomprehension to those unfamiliar with the sort of theological discourse where the term is common. I suppose using them both was more misleading but I never quite know how to word these things with a mixed audience.)
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If Christ is not fully human, humankind is not fully saved. - St John of Saint-Denis
Posts: 14741 | From: Greater Manchester, UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Dafyd said quote:
Saying that the Father and the Son are consubstantial means that they are not independent entities. If one exists the other exists too.
Aaaah! It can be neatly expressed, and when it is, we see that it's about being and relatedness, and not about substance or essence.
But that's what substance means when you use the word in that way.
Or are you saying that theology shouldn't use words that are in any way multivalent? (That's have more than one meaning?)
Theologians can and do talk to each other in a highly specialised vocabulary, but theology isn't just a specialism, it belongs to the church. There is theology, rightly, in our hymns and liturgies, and we introduce our children and members to it.
It will often use language in nuanced ways, but it does need to communicate with non-specialist people in the common discourse of society. English is rich and varied enough for us to be able to improve on consubstantial. We no longer talk about anti-phlogiston and defend it as opening an interesting discussion into the history of the science of combustion, we talk about oxygen.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
Michael Astley said quote:
From this, we have traditionally understood that the communion of the three Persons and their oneness includes a single divine will. This is part of the energies of God that we can perceive through revelation. The idea of the Persons disagreeing among themselves is one that, to me at least, is alien to what God has revealed to us of Himself. We could be wrong, I suppose, but what is there to suggest that we are?
Thanks for your clarification. I agree with the paragraph above. It's a fair summary of our traditional understanding, and it allows for the possibility that we might revise it; albeit a very unlikely one in this case.
The revelation of God is Jesus Christ. Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation are interpretations of that revelation and just as they were thrashed out over many years, so there is still room for revising the way we express them.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I don't believe we can pronounce on the nature of God in this way.
Well, I do. However, I find it a somewhat odd exercise to argue about the scope of the human mind. That seems naturally circular.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
All language about God is at best analogical.
Indeed. But the point of analogies is precisely to extract additional understanding by exploiting structural similarities. Analogies are not about stammering sounds that mean nothing.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Scripture has a more robustly anthropomorphic view of God than the philosophical theologians take.
Indeed. Consequently, there is very little scope in scripture for your hesitation concerning statements about God. Your attitude of "mystical vagueness" is actually a variant of philosophical theology, not of the robust faith of the Jews. And perhaps the best argument against it is that it captures none of the confidence of that robust faith. It is bloodless.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
What I have a horror of is theology that makes confident, plonking assertions about what can and can't, must and must not be the case. This is God we are talking about, and all bets are off.
All bets are off? Let's burn our bibles then, for they can tell us nothing.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
We no longer talk about anti-phlogiston and defend it as opening an interesting discussion into the history of the science of combustion, we talk about oxygen.
That's not because the meaning of anti-phlogiston has changed whereas oxygen is a perfectly good ordinary English word. The meaning of 'oxygen' is fixed by scientific discourse rather than by the community of English speakers as a whole.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
quote:
Maybe we have good reasons for talking about God this way, but that's what has to be demonstrated. That's the 'so what?' bit, the cash value, the difference these terms mean.
As I said up thread, doctrine begins with taking the Holy Scriptures as true. Doing so leaves a lot of questions about the nature of Jesus. These words, like homoousias and hypostasis arise when we, without in anyway way dispelling the mystery, seek to identify the metaphysical issues at hand and show how the Christian Faith in the Holy Scriptures is not completely irrational.
Writing off the paradoxes in Scriptures as a mystery we don't have to think about is just another way of saying the Scriptures aren't true. We are creatures with brains, and we are obliged to use them in any real faith.
Zach
[ 10. May 2012, 12:36: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
Zach, I must disagree with the way you appear to be presenting the proper approach to the Christian canonical scriptures. I would say that properly we take them to contain or express various truths and insights about ultimate meanings, but they are not "true" or "Truth" in the sense of being definitive. Thus, I would view St Paul (or collectively the possibly several authors of the letters ascribed to Paul) as being the Church's first theologian, but the theology he presents isn't fully consistent or clear, and some of his ideas on subjects apart from Christology may be taken as simply erroneous and culture-bound. As far as Paul's christology, this would best be viewed as grappling with a number of conceptual problems and an attempt to hammer out a theory of the nature and relationships between the monotheistic patriarchal God of Judaism, Jesus of Nazareth, and the figure of the awaited Messiah, and of the nature of the salvific/atoning activity that was attributed to the work of Jesus as the Messiah acting in concert with the Father-God. The theorising moves forward with the formulations of the author of St John's Gospel, using Hellenistic constructs.
The creedal formulations aren't contradictory to the rather disparate theorising we have in the corpus of Scripture, but they are a further development of some very rudimentary or seminal ideas first presented by the writers of the books that came to comprise the "New Testament". However, it seems to me a simplification to talk of these things as "true", as though we were talking of verifiable facts or propositions of formal logic. Rather, both scripture and the creeds present various models that attempt to describe and encapsulate theological truths that cannot be adequately or firmly comprehended by such formulations.
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
I am sorry, LSK, but I can't see a difference in taking the Scriptures as true and taking the Scriptures as definitive. The Bible is not a mere suggestion to be considered by the Church among other suggestions. It is God's judgment against humankind and for Himself, and while it needs to be interpreted in the Church, it must be accepted in faith.
Neither can I accept the Creeds as an account of God apart from the accounts of God in the Scriptures. The Creeds are the Christian account of the Scriptures.
[ 10. May 2012, 13:56: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
Rather, I would say that since humans wrote the scriptures, they are human judgements about God, humankind, and the Creation. We take them to represent the peculiar ("unique") revelation in our tradition of the nature of ultimate truth. However, in fact, the scriptures can at best only point us to Truth or Ultimate Meaning. And sometimes the scriptures may take us off course, as well.
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
I would also add that it is the Living God as active agency and the atoning action of God uniquely presented in the person of Jesus of Nazareth that must be taken on faith, not the canonical scriptures, which merely transmit the story. Taking the scriptures themselves on faith potentially leads us down a very slippery slope to all sorts of unhelpful views, uncritical beliefs, and literalisms.
Posts: 7328 | From: Delaware | Registered: Apr 2006
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
quote:
I would also add that it is the Living God as active agency and the atoning action of God uniquely presented in the person of Jesus of Nazareth that must be taken on faith, not the canonical scriptures...
Ah, the difference between truth and Truth, as if the two were entirely unrelated!
I would point out that "the atoning action of God uniquely presented in the person of Jesus of Nazareth" is, according to the Creed, "In accordance with the Scriptures."
What would you say the real difference is between your views and those of Marcion, LSK?
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
Zach I'm now away from home for a couple of days and on an iPhone so I must defer a larger response for now but would very much like to respond later at greater length. As I understand it the Niceness Creed says Christ rose again in accordance with the scriptures. In a way the relationship between scripture and creed could be described as tautological, though that would not be my point. That actually is one of the more scriptural assertions of the Creed, whilst others such as "eternally begotten of the Father" or the assertions regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit are more extrapolations from scripture, formulated in a Hellenistic context. I think we may engage these formularies as the statements of the doctrine of the historic Church without thinking that they are perfect and lucid models of ultimate reality.
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