Posted on 06/14/2006 8:05:55 AM PDT by NYer
We believe in the Blessed Trinity because we believe in Jesus, Who revealed the Trinity. God had prepared the Jews not only to welcome the Messiah, but to recognize through revelation what philosophers like Aristotle achieved through reason: that there is a God and there can only be one God.
Moses said to the Jews, “Acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other but to believe in God Who is the only God.” When the Messiah finally came, He revealed a huge mystery that went far beyond what the Jews were expecting: that the one God in Whom they believe is not solitary, but a unity, a communion of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that the Messiah is the Son.
He told them explicitly that the Father and He are one (Jn 10:30). He told them that He and the Father would send the Holy Spirit (Jn 14:26, Jn 15:26). And when He sent them out to baptize in the name of God, He didn’t give them instructions to baptize in the “names” of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit — as if they were three different gods — but in the “name,” for they are fundamentally a union of three persons. This is what the term Trinity means. It was devised by the early Church apologist Tertullian around the year 200 from the Latin words “unitas” and “trinus,” literally “unity” and “three.” It signifies that there is a unity of three persons in one God.
Since the beginning of the Church, theologians have spent their lives trying to penetrate this mystery and explain it to others. St. Patrick used the image of a three-leaf clover. St. Augustine used the image of the mind, with memory, reason and will. More recent minds have used the image of H20, which can exist as ice, water, or steam. But none of these analogies — though interesting and somewhat helpful — do justice to the reality of the mystery of how three persons can exist in the one God.
When St. Augustine was in the middle of his voluminous and classic study of the Blessed Trinity, he took a walk along the beach in northern Africa to try to clear his head and pray. He saw a young girl repeatedly filling a scallop shell with sea water and emptying it into a hole she had dug in the sand. “What are you doing?” Augustine tenderly asked. “I'm trying to empty the sea into this hole,” the child replied. “How do you think that with a little shell,” Augustine retorted, “you can possibly empty this immense ocean into a tiny hole?” The little girl countered, “And how do you, with your small head, think you can comprehend the immensity of God?” As soon as the girl said this, she disappeared, convincing Augustine that she had been an angel sent to teach him an important lesson: No matter how gifted God had made him, he would never be able to comprehend fully the mystery of the Trinity.
This, of course, does not mean we cannot understand anything. If we want to get to the heart of the mystery of the Trinity, we can turn to the most theological of the Apostles, who meditated deeply on all that Jesus had revealed and, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said simply and synthetically, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:16). For God to be love, He has to love someone. None of us can love in a vacuum; there must always be an object of our love. Who is the object of God’s love? It cannot be man, or the created world, or the universe, because all of these existed in time and God is eternal and therefore existed before time.
It’s also impossible to say that God merely loved Himself in a solitary way, because this would not really be love but a form of egotism and narcissism. For God to be love, there needed to be an eternal relationship of love, with one who loves, one who is loved, and the love that unites them. This is what exists in the Blessed Trinity: The Father loved His image, the Son, so much that their mutual and eternal love “spirated” or “generated” the Holy Spirit. They exist in a communion of love. The three persons of the Blessed Trinity are united in absolutely everything except, as the early Church councils said, their “relations of origin,” what it means to be Father, what it means to be Son of the Father, and what it means to proceed from the Father and the Son.
These theological insights about the blessed Trinity may seem theoretical, but they become highly practical when we reflect on the fact that we have been made in the image and likeness of God and called to communion with God. To be in the image and likeness of God means to be created in the image and likeness of a communion of persons in love. Our belief in the Trinity — the central teaching of the Catholic faith — has given the Church the deepest understanding available to human beings of the nature of man, the meaning of human life, and what it means to love.
I have to disagree, on the basis of his prophecy for Judah (Gen. 49:8-12)--he was clearly expecting Judah to have leadership over the tribes.
I'll have to leave it at that, though. I'm about to head off to do my prison ministry. Have a great weekend!
Well you could always turn this discussion into another one of your memorable discussions about the nature of the Trinity. Then we could see some real sparks fly.
Oh wait, this thread is about the Trinity.
So that's what you call it, huh? In my day we used to call it "serving your sentence." :-)
God Bless.
cloves, nutmeg and mace?
As does a god incarnation.
I think I'll become a Messianic Methodist Jew. You get dumped on for that so much that you've gotta be doing something right. :>)
True story: Among the many hats I wear at Beth HaMashiach is working the sound booth. Since I don't even get finished with the prison work until after the service starts, I tend to arrive about halfway through. So the first time I went in (I had just taken over the prison ministry after the old assistant minister left), Cameron (the head minister/rabbi) is trying to do a sound-check right before starting the service, looks up, and notices that I'm not in the sound booth.
Forgetting which week it was, he shouts over at my best friend Steve, "Hey, where's Mike?"
Steve shouts back across the whole congregation, "In prison! Where you sent him!"
Shalom.
Nah, Neo's goth girlfriend.
LOL!
From all your Messianic Neener pals who really love it when you talk trinity like that. :>)
Then what's this?
Mary was conceived without original sin and was saved in a special a priori manner befitting her role as the Theotokos (God-bearer).
It has been my experience that people who accept infallibility do not have the slightest idea how few times in 1000 years it is claimed to have been exercised.
Seems to me that an office which claims for itself the ability to infallibly speak God's word is being kind of stingy if it only does so a handful of times over a millenium.
Maybe it's because current popes have declared past popes to be WRONG or HERETICAL so many times that infallibility is so rarely claimed.
History. Check it out.
It's always a pity when Popes just aren't authoritative enough to suit non-Catholics.
I'm happy the Church allows intellectual freedom where it is not necessary to combat heresy by outlining a definitive pronouncement.
SD
Please refer to Reggie's #315
SD
You are entitled to your opinion, but I disagree with it.
There's more than just a "name" being discussed here. Besides, St. Peter did say we should glorify God in that name and St. Peter's opinion is what counts more than your opinion or mine. He was one of Jesus' chosen Apostles.
Ask a Messianic Jew why he/she won't use the word Cross, but instead calls it an "execution stake." That's what Jehovah Witnesses call it.
You said that Jesus never required anyone to be called a Christian, tell me where He required anyone to be called a Jew who is a Gentile?
Why do Messianic Jews observe the Mosaic dietary laws when Jesus said it isn't what goes into a man that defiles him but what comes out of a man's heart?
While some will villify Catholics for calling priests Father, why is it okay to call men Rabbis when Jesus said not to? Messianic Jewish congregations have Rabbis.
If we were to continue on with Jewish Temple worship, why did Jesus say that the Temple would be destroyed and it was?
Why are there Hebrew Christians who don't mind using the name Christian?
Messianic Judaism seems to be an oxymoron of a name. How can you be Messianic and practice Judaism? Judaism rejects Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
If Jesus was such a "right" practicing Jew as the Messianic Jewish movement proclaims, why was He so at odds with the Jewish leaders? Their customs? Their traditions?
I don't think either label is required.
That's all. Nothing more.
You are missing the difference between what's required and what's optional.
I am ALLOWED to observe dietary laws if I want to. They just don't have one single thing to do with my salvation.
Paul was ALLOWED to enter the temple in Jerusalem, go through all the ritual, offer a sacrifice, and STILL be a Christian. He just wasn't REQUIRED to do it.
Salvation is determined by faith alone in Christ alone. It is the ultimate REQUIREMENT.
I think you've proven my point.
Alex, a short while ago, on another thread you made the point that probably the reason that the da Vinci Code was able to take off at all is because a lot of people were not able to explain how the Doctrine of the Trinity came to be, using Scripture.
I began to think about that and realized that I'm one of the people who cannot. However, the first Scripture that came to mind when I read your post was the following:
Jhn 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.Jhn 1:2 The same was in the beginning with God.
Jhn 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Jhn 1:4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
Jhn 1:5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
Jhn 1:6 There was a man sent from God, whose name [was] John.
Jhn 1:7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all [men] through him might believe.
Jhn 1:8 He was not that Light, but [was sent] to bear witness of that Light.
Jhn 1:9 [That] was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
Jhn 1:10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
Jhn 1:11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
Jhn 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, [even] to them that believe on his name:
Jhn 1:13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
This Scripture may have nothing to do with what you're saying, but thoughts of Christ as the Second Person immediately sprang to mind, and then this Scripture did. I was only going to post the first few applicable verses, but then I didn't want to arbitrarily cut the Scripture off because it's too beautiful.
Anyway, and if you're so inclined, I was wondering if you could show how one does derive the Trinity from Scripture?
I don't think you understand what he's saying.
Is it somehow better to use the "greek" instead of the "hebrew" when speaking of the Messiah?
And is there anything wrong with a non-Jew who adopts Jewish cultural trappings? No more than having a Jew adopt non-Jewish cultural trappings.
It's obvious that Paul lived in both worlds, and we know the God-fearers did....such as Cornelius.
But if they think it is preferable or Scripturally advisable for Christians to act according to Jewish tradition, they are wrong.
Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man." -- Matthew 15:16-20 "And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding?
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