BFSmith764 said:
one_lost_coin said:
You should add that they are all God and all Active to the original post.
another question though. when Jesus went back to heaven he went back in His Glorified Body which He will have for all eternity and something He did not have before the Incarnation. Does God the Father also have a Glorified Body?
No, since it was the Word (Greek: λÌγο - logos) who became flesh. What this means is God cloth His mind with flesh; it was God's mind and utterance that became the Jesus that we know in the New Testament.
These statements are true that you have posted.
"they are one, but
distinct, but not separate." "You cannot have one God, if the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit were separate from each other.
true. If they were separate then you would have three Gods." "Do we understand what Jesus is saying here? Not only is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one, Jesus in the above verse is telling us that through the Holy Spirit we have also become one with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are distinct but one with God. We have been brought into the God head."
Yes I do and its a beautiful thing.
There are a few items I should mention the language of the Trinity is a language of paradox it can only be discussed in this language.
Things must always be held together and never seperated to take any one thing as the whole way to understand the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity always leads to error as this is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the "hierarchy of the truths of faith". The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men "and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin".
Also may be helpful to recall the theological understanding of "persons". It has a depth to it that is not of common usage in modern english. I find the theological understanding is neccesary in avoiding confusing it with modern ideas of person and there fore hearing the creed of athanasius correctly.
For the constitution of a person it is required that a reality be subsistent and absolutely distinct, i.e. incommunicable. The three Divine realities are relations, each identified with the Divine Essence. A finite relation has reality only in so far as it is an accident; it has the reality of inherence. The Divine relations, however, are in the nature not by inherence but by identity. The reality they have, therefore, is not that of an accident, but that of a subsistence. They are one with ipsum esse subsistens. Again every relation, by its very nature, implies opposition and so distinction. In the finite relation this distinction is between subject and term. In the infinite relations there is no subject as distinct from the relation itself; the Paternity is the Father--and no term as distinct from the opposing relation; the Filiation is the Son. The Divine realities are therefore distinct and mutually incommunicable through this relative opposition; they are subsistent as being identified with the subsistence of the Godhead, i.e. they are persons.
full article hear
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11726a.htm
My objection to your simple way to Understand the Trinity "The Spirit of God or the Holy Spirit is God in action; whenever the Holy Spirit is mentioned, it means that God is doing something….God would not be God if He could not act."
is that it didn't go far enough, that it didn't include enough things to comprehensively define the Trinity. it only went far enough to define modalism. The Fathers of the Church distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia). "Theology" refers to the mystery of God's inmost life within the Blessed Trinity and "economy" to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life. Through the oikonomia the theologia is revealed to us; but conversely, the theologia illuminates the whole
oikonomia. God's works reveal who he is in himself; the mystery of his inmost being enlightens our understanding of all his works. So it is, analogously, among human persons. A person discloses himself in his actions, and the better we know a person, the better we understand his actions.
The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the "mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God". To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel's faith before the Incarnation of God's Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
The simplest understanding is found in the Athanasian or Nicene Creeds. It takes all those elements of the language of paradox held together to begin to communicate this revealation of God known as Trinity.
I will close with this quote from St. Gregory as I believe it sums my thoughts up very succinctly I probably just should have posted this and stopped
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, also called "the Theologian", entrusts this summary of Trinitarian faith to the catechumens of Constantinople:
Above all guard for me this great deposit of faith for which I live and fight, which I want to take with me as a companion, and which makes me bear all evils and despise all pleasures: I mean the profession of faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I entrust it to you today. By it I am soon going to plunge you into water and raise you up from it. I give it to you as the companion and patron of your whole life. I give you but one divinity and power, existing one in three, and containing the three in a distinct way. Divinity without disparity of substance or nature, without superior degree that raises up or inferior degree that casts down. . . the infinite co-naturality of three infinites. Each person considered in himself is entirely God. . . the three considered together. . . I have not even begun to think of unity when the Trinity bathes me in its splendour. I have not even begun to think of the Trinity when unity grasps me. .
