One God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity

[BobRyan]

Jesus came forth out of God (John 8:42),

There is no "out of God" in John 8:42 were you wanting us to "quote you" for that reference?

42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came forth from God and am here; for I have not even come on My own, but He sent Me.

When many meanings are possible candidates - context determines which is the correct one for rendering a given word.

Replacing come/came/sent with "generate" does not make sense in the text.

Jesus is speaking of the incarnation. HE s not saying "I did not generate myself" he says "I did not come on My own" -- we can't just stick in "generate" at those points.

 

[Clare73]

Indeed. And the term for hypostasis and person is qnoma, and parsopa refers to distinguishing attributes. I am familiar with the Syriac terms relating to Christology, indeed, I even can speak a little Syriac; the Syriac Christians I love a great deal. I also tried learning Coptic but that turned out to be really seriously hard, so I gave up.

I am of the opinion that hypostasis should never be translated into Latin or English, as Latin and English lack a word suitable to express it. And indeed, in Orthodox works on theology, and many Catholic and Protestant works, hypostasis is not translated, whereas ousia is almost always translated except in discussions of Arianism (the Christian doctrine of homoousios vs. Arian homoiousios or heteroousios).

This is Greek to me.

Where are ousia, homoousios, homoiousios, heteroousios found in the NT?

 

[The Liturgist]

This is Greek to me.

Where are ousia, homoousios, homoiousios, heteroousios found in the NT?

You have got to be kidding me, right?

 

[Clare73]

You have got to be kidding me, right?

Is it a funny question?

So they are not in the NT.

What are they referring to in the NT?

 

[Andrewn]

Luk 15:11 Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the ousia that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant region, and there he squandered his ousia in dissolute living.

 

[Graydon Booth]

Such as... Love? justice? kindness? These seem more like attributes.

I think we can only leave it at mystery. The deepest fact of God's reality as it is in itself seems beyond our human understanding. I can respect that.

However, non-trinitarians and even Jews could very easily argue that God doesn't "hide" Himself. I don't agree with them, but what you are saying could be easily refuted.

 

[The Liturgist]

However, non-trinitarians and even Jews could very easily argue that God doesn't "hide" Himself. I don't agree with them, but what you are saying could be easily refuted.

In practice they don’t, however. Muslims, Druze, Unitarians and Jews regard God as entirely transcendent. The Druze and some Muslims go so far as to deny that God has attributes.

It is Christianity which embraces an unhidden, immanent God through the doctrine of the Incarnation, in which the Divine Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity, became God Incarnate by putting on our Humanity, as Jesus Christ, the Messiah.