The Trinity

donegalfella wrote: »

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The Trinity remained intact because remember that Jesus is fully divine and fully human. When Jesus died on the cross, His human soul left His body and went to Sheoul according to Scripture. During this time, Jesus' divine spirit was unaffected.

So Jesus has a human body, a human soul and a divine spirit.

donegalfella wrote: »

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Other than His soul being without a body, I would say His soul and divine Spirit were unaffected.

Slav wrote: »

Actually, it does not; it says that Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father but it's a slightly different issue.

I stand corrected, thanks for that. Apparently the Filioque dates from the 6th century.

Slav wrote: »

We describe Trinity as inseparable and indivisible so we cannot say Spirit existence is independent from Father's and Son's. Same as Son's existence is not independent of Father's and Spirit's. Same as Father's existence is not independent of Son's and Spirit's.

Agreed. So where did I go wrong in the (poor) explanation of the Trinity?

Slav wrote: »

If Father is the source, does it automatically make his existence independent? That would sound a bit like polytheism to me...

The
Father doesn't proceed from either the Son or the Spirit so I would say the Father is somehow independent of the Son and Spirit. The same can't be said of the Son and Spirit. But just to be clear, I'm not saying that the Father is superior to the Son and Spirit.

Slav wrote: »

BTW, glad you have discarded filioque after all!

No, I haven't. I believe the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son according to the Filioque.

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PDN wrote: »

This is why I stated earlier in the thread that I think we are better accepting the broad concept of the Trinity rather than trying to be too dogmatic about the intricacies of it.

If the Father does not depend on the Spirit or the Son, and yet if the Son and the Spirit depend on the Father, then I find it very hard to see how all three Persons can be said to be co-equal in power and glory. It would seem to me that the implication is that the Son and the Spirit, in such a scheme of things, are subordinate to the Father - and that in itself is anti-Trinitarian.

This problem, I believe, has come about through the Greek term monogenes being mistranslated into Latin (by the likes of Jerome) as begotten (unigenitus) rather than unique (unicus). Therefore theologians have contorted themselves trying to speculate how God the Son could be 'eternally begotten' (and excommunicating those who couldn't accept their contortions) instead of understanding that the Greek text actually said that God the son was 'eternally unique' in His relationship to Gods the Father. In other words, the term translated 'begotten' refers to uniqueness - not procession.

Remember that Augustine, for example, was notoriously bad at the Greek language - so he was expressing his theology in Latin, where words have a much narrower meaning than in Greek.

Then why is the term 'Son' used? Earlier you said in response to my question about if The Son only became The Son at the incarnation, before hand being The Word:

'Actually it's usually seen as being the other way round. The second Person of the Trinity is, according to the Nicene Creed, considered to be the "eternally begotten Son" of God the Father. So He was always God the Son, even before the incarnation.

However, He only became 'Jesus' when He was conceived in the womb of Mary and took on human nature.'

Its odd to use the term 'Son' and 'Father' if both are eternal no? Of course, if he wasn't always the son, but only became the son after the incarnation, then thats fine. However, if you hold to the 'always, eternally the son' then it throws up issue with the language IMO.
BTW, does Jesus always being 'The Son' rather than eternally being 'The Word' then becoming 'The Son' at the incarnation have any bearing on the trinity?

PDN wrote: »

The Second Person of the Trinity is the Son on the basis of His mission to come and save humanity

This is what I'm getting at with the term 'son'.

- and since He is eternal and outside of time then He is eternally the Son.

For example, He is described in Revelation as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8).

This raises another question, 'from the founding of the world', and also 'In the beginning the word was' are interesting. For we are not dealing with the 'eternal' nature. We are dealing with creation. A beginning. It says that he was there before 'the world' was. There is no 'beginning' for an eternal being though, so its only going back so far. The best one can summise is that he was is the Son since the beginning of time, which was created. Though, I would not use the term 'eternally the son' anyway. If 'the Son' described his mission on earth, then he was 'destined' to be the son since the beginning, but did not become the son until the incarnation. When we are dealing with an eternal being, 'Son' is not a language that makes sense IMO.

The reason why we don't refer to Him as being 'Jesus' eternally, I think, is because 'Jesus' relates to His relationship to men (temporal) whereas 'Son' relates to His relationship to God (eternal).

I understand why we don't refer to Jesus as eternal. As i said earlier though, if he is /was eternally 'the Son', its quite strange language to use. A son needs a father, but a father does not need a son etc. Again though, does it impact on the trinity, if The Word, did not become 'the Son' until the incarnation? Just curious.

Thinking about the Trinity late at night makes my head hurt!

Thinking about the Trinity full stop makes my head hurt! One of the issues of the doctrine of the trinity IMO, is that people can think it is 'the' explaination. Dr. Michael Brown describes the triune nature of God as 'complex unity', which I think is much better. Semantics I know, but it describes what we don't know as well as what we do, so its a more appropriate term IMO.

kelly1 wrote: »

So where did I go wrong in the (poor) explanation of the Trinity?

Well, it's only poor in my view (or in view of a different tradition). In fact this issue is very interesting and deserves quite a few pages of thoughtful analysis (which I'm not very good at!). Anyway, I'll try to do my best while keeping it short.

The whole issue is essentially down to how philosophy defines the term persona. Strangely enough the definition is very different in Western and Eastern Christianity. To summarise the differences:

East:
Defined in the 4th century by Cappadocian Fathers during trinitarian debates with Arians. They chose the word υποστασις to name it, literally standing beneath. It's described rather apophatically as something that is not essence or something that is still present when any context is removed. Each persona is absolutely unique. Persona cannot be defined but can be revealed (only) in personal interaction.

West:
Foundation was set in the 4th century by St Augustine, defined later in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas. The word for it is Latin persona, which means "mask". The definition is very straightforward: persona est relatio.


In East person is something that very intimate, something very well hidden (hipostasis -- standing beneath) while in West it's something very well visible (persona -- the mask); in East person is something completely independent of the context (like social relations) while in West it can only exist in (or maybe even created by) the context.

Now we can get back to your description of the Holy Spirit: the Holy Spirit is the result of the perfect bond between Father and Son.
This fits very well into persona est relatio definition. For me however it means that Holy Spirit is something impersonal and therefore does not exist.

BTW, describing the Son as a perfect image of Father does not make a lot of sense for me either. What exactly He is an image of? The essence of Father, Father's persona, or both (or maybe something else)? What makes the Son to be different from the Father then?

The Father doesn't proceed from either the Son or the Spirit so I would say the Father is somehow independent of the Son and Spirit. The same can't be said of the Son and Spirit. But just to be clear, I'm not saying that the Father is superior to the Son and Spirit.

In our experience cause alway looks somehow independent of the effect, something that can exist without the effect. This however does not apply to Trinity. Son cannot be independent of Father because He cannot be Son if not begotten from the Father. Similarly Father cannot be independent of Son because He cannot be Father if don't beget the Son. Beget and be begotten don't even mean an act -- it's essentially the being of Trinity.

No, I haven't. I believe the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son according to the Filioque.

I know you have not, I was just kidding!
But as we mentioned filioque would you mind if I ask you a question about it? In accepting it, do you only follow the teaching of your Church trusting its fathers or it has some special meaning for you, for instance it's something that helped you better understand a certain aspect of Christianity?