Not a bad article through about here:
“What is the object, the Truth? Saint Thomas says that the primary object of faith is not words and statements but God himself. “We believe in God.” Further, as Christians we know God most fully in Christ, God incarnate, and as Catholics we know Christ through Holy Mother Church and her creeds.”
This is pure, patristic Christian theology.
But he falls right off the cliff, displaying his Protestant roots after this:
“Objectively, the core of faith is God, who is a Person, not a concept.”
God is not a “Person” or a “Persona”. God is ineffable, the “Being which creates beingness” We believe in God but God does not “exist” in any sense we comprehend. Any other concept leads to anthropomorphism, as for example this:
“God does not send you to hell for flunking his theology exam but for willingly divorcing from him.”
Nonsense. God doesn’t send anyone to hell. God’s mercy and love fall on the good and the evil alike, like rain on the earth. To say that God’s grace doesn’t fall on the evil is like saying the sun doesn’t shine on the blind! We can grow to hate God so much that His love becomes a fire which torments us just as it burnishes and refines those who love Him.
I am always pleased when a Protestant returns to The Church; it is cause for rejoicing. But The Church has an obligation to properly catechise people before they begin to “preach”.
K ... you are being too scrupulous with the text. Catholics believe the same thing, even Protestant converts. Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, words limit our ability to express the ineffable.
40 Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. We can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point, and in accordance with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking.41 All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures - their truth, their goodness, their beauty all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his creatures" perfections as our starting point, "for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator".15
42 God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God - "the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable" - with our human representations.16 Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God.
43 Admittedly, in speaking about God like this, our language is using human modes of expression; nevertheless it really does attain to God himself, though unable to express him in his infinite simplicity. Likewise, we must recall that "between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude";17 and that "concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him."18
15 Wis 13:5.
16 Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Anaphora.
17 Lateran Council IV:DS 806.
18 St. Thomas Aquinas, SCG I,30.
Having previously been an altar server in the Roman Catholic Church, you already know this.
Yaaaggghhhh!
Nice catch.
So, how to you explain the Trinity without saying “Three persons in one God?”
Three ‘beings’ in one God?
Hmmm. Wondering.
Strange that He revealed Himself in such 'anthropomorphic' terms. “God does not send you to hell for flunking his theology exam but for willingly divorcing from him.” Nonsense. God doesn’t send anyone to hell. God’s mercy and love fall on the good and the evil alike, like rain on the earth. People do end up in Hell, though.