Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
I sometimes get caught up in modalism type thinking!
In honor of Trinity Sunday let's reflect. I like this part.There is a good wikipedia article on the trinity that helped me: Trinity
It explains that they are three persons of the same substance.
I was raised by 'the church' to believe that some things were too hard to understand.What is your belief of the trinity that helps you understand the 3 in 1 concept of God.
The Father is not the son , The Son and the Father is not the Holy Spirit, Yet all are one God.
How do you with our limited human knowledge of God get through this one?
Didn't give up being a spirit but extended spirit to flesh.So THE WORD gave up being 'a spirit' in the trinity.
Well for starters nothing in creation can be compared to God since He is Unique and scripture declares there is none like Him . In fact God rebukes man in the book of Job 37-40 for trying to do just that .What is your belief of the trinity that helps you understand the 3 in 1 concept of God.
The Father is not the son , The Son and the Father is not the Holy Spirit, Yet all are one God.
How do you with our limited human knowledge of God get through this one?
Well for starters nothing in creation can be compared to God since He is Unique and scripture declares there is none like Him . In fact God rebukes man in the book of Job 37-40 for trying to do just that .
But God has declared a few things about His Being.
1- God is One
2- God is the Father
3- God is the Son
4- God is the Holy Spirit
God is Tri and Unity. God is Tri-Unity, Triune, Trinity , Tri-Personal etc
At the bottom of my #85 post, I asked you all to answer with scripture if you want to respond to me. I am not going to give 'religious opinions' before His throne, to support my heretical beliefs. I have no use for indoctrinated opinions, and neither should you.Didn't give up being a spirit but extended spirit to flesh.
I think of the original analogy in characters in a play, or movie. Think of Harrison Ford as an example, as I think he manages the task of acting in a way that few can. Indiana Jones is not Harrison Ford, nor is Harrison Ford Indiana Jones but there is an essence that they share. Indiana Jones is not simply a projection of Harrison Ford, nor is Indiana Jones simply a part of Harrison Ford but the essence they share is inseperable. Indiana Jones is a person, and Harrison Ford is a person, but they are one being. There is no Indiana Jones apart from Harrison Ford. Now, of course, this is an anaolgy as is anything we can say about God and so it fails if stretched too far but I find the analogy supremely helpful in understanding the mystery enough to be comfortable leaving the rest of the mystery in tact.
Meaningless scribbling unless you can provide credible, verifiable, historical etc. evidence.You are talking about a persona. Persona is the Latin root for the word person. In the days of the early church fathers, the word person did not exist. A persona was an actor's mask.
Triune is an adjective and Trinity is a noun.The words triune and trinity have slightly different meaning. Triune is the better term.
Meaningless scribbling unless you can provide credible, verifiable, historical etc. evidence.
Meaningless scribbling unless you can provide credible, verifiable, historical etc. evidence.
The use of the Greek word prosopon (plural prosopa) which is translated into Latin as persona (plural personae) was used by the Sabellians to argue that God was one Hypostasis and three prosopa. Which is akin to saying God was one Person with three faces. Like an actor changing masks in a Greek drama.
The meaning of prosopon:
G4383 - prosōpon - Strong's Greek Lexicon (kjv)
πρόσωπον - Wiktionary
However, with the Sabellian controversy mostly a thing of the past, the fathers and theologians of the 5th century had no trouble using this word in a strictly Trinitarian way. Thus, for example, the confession of the one undivided Hypostasis and Prosopon of Jesus Christ declared at the Council of Chalcedon,
"εἰς ἓν πρόσωπον καὶ μίαν ὑπὸστασιν"
"in one Prosopon and one Hypostasin"
"in one Person and one Subsistence".
And so the use of prosopa, and thus personae, to refer to the Three Hypostases of the Trinity. Three Persons or Subsistences; one Ousia or Substance/Essence/Being.
The use of prosopon in Trinitarian theology shouldn't be conflated or confused with its use by heretics who used it to deny the Trinity.
As we do not confess a single actor putting on different masks as the Sabellians did; we confess Three Divine Hypostases. Not merely faces, but concrete, real Someones. The Father is His own Person and Hypostasis, distinct from the Son and the Holy Spirit (and so on and so forth).
-CryptoLutheran
Do you have any info on the church fathers who used the term in the second century? It's been a real long time but I think there are two from the second century who wrote about the trinity using the term and they weren't Sabellians.
For Latin the only one I can think of would be Tertullian in the early third century; who probably did use it (though I won't say that confidently at all) in his works against the Sabellians.
Looking at Tertullian's Against Praxeas he does use the word in Chapter 6,
"This power and disposition of the Divine Intelligence is set forth also in the Scriptures under the name of Σοφία, Wisdom; for what can be better entitled to the name of Wisdom than the Reason or the Word of God? Listen therefore to Wisdom herself, constituted in the character of a Second Person" - Against Praxeas, Ch. 6
In Latin:
"Haec vis et haec divini sensus dispositio apud scripturas etiam in sophiae nomine ostenditur. quid enim sapientius ratione dei sive sermone? itaque sophiam quoque exaudi, ut secundam personam conditam"
And later in the same chapter,
"says Wisdom, 'I was present with Him; and when He made His strong places upon the winds, which are the clouds above; and when He secured the fountains, (and all things) which are beneath the sky, I was by, arranging all things with Him; I was by, in whom He delighted; and daily, too, did I rejoice in His presence.'"
The bold portion, in Latin:
"cottidie autem oblectabar in persona ipsius."
So Tertullian speaks of the Logos as a Secundum Personam, a Second Person (distinct from the Father) and quotes Proverbs 8 where Holy Wisdom (identified by Tertullian here with Jesus, the Logos) says that she/He delights in persona ipsius, in God the Father's Person.
-CryptoLutheran
Yes Jesus remained a man permanently since the Incarnation forward . He is forever God in the flesh , a man having a human body now glorified.At the bottom of my #85 post, I asked you all to answer with scripture if you want to respond to me. I am not going to give 'religious opinions' before His throne, to support my heretical beliefs. I have no use for indoctrinated opinions, and neither should you.
JESUS disagrees with YOUR opinion, but He certainly agrees with mine.
LUK 24:39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have."
As I understand it a lot of them wrote in Greek and preached in Latin. Theophilus appears to have been one of the ones I was trying to remember. The quote below is a good indication of how the Godhead was understood in 169 AD. This pattern is pretty close to the one I adopted as my own years ago.
"For the divine writing itself teaches us that Adam said that he had heard the voice. But what else is this voice but the Word of God, who is also His Son? Not as the poets and writers of myths talk of the sons of gods begotten from intercourse [with women], but as truth expounds, the Word, that always exists, residing within the heart of God. For before anything came into being He had Him as a counsellor, being His own mind and thought. But when God wished to make all that He determined on, He begot this Word, uttered, the first-born of all creation, not Himself being emptied of the Word [Reason], but having begotten Reason, and always conversing with His Reason. And hence the holy writings teach us, and all the spirit-bearing [inspired] men, one of whom, John, says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God," showing that at first God was alone, and the Word in Him. Then he says, "The Word was God; all things came into existence through Him; and apart from Him not one thing came into existence." The Word, then, being God, and being naturally produced from God, whenever the Father of the universe wills, He sends Him to any place; and He, coming, is both heard and seen, being sent by Him, and is found in a place."
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?