What do you mean by "Trinity"?

[Hoghead1]

You’re reacting to oversimplified slogans supposedly supporting the Trinity. The power and authority all apply to God “as a whole.” Because Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all persons of that whole, they all participate in the power and authority. In traditional theology, no action is done by any of the persons individually. They all participate in everything. So they don’t exercise power or authority individually.

So, exactly what are you claiming? There are three gods, three unique personalities, who reach some sort of democratic decisions about what to do?

 

[hedrick]

So Jesus does not have a real relationship with a person known as the Father?

What I would say is that Jesus is in current terms a separate person from God, and he certainly had a relationship.

However I would also speculate, with some NT evidence, that since Jesus shows us God, his ability to have a relationship with the Father reflects something within God's own experience, which is why we see him not as a monad but as a Trinity.

 

[Hoghead1]

I don't think this is what the heresy of modalism is. In saying that there are three ways of being God, you are saying that the Trinity is intrinsic to God, and doesn't just represent three ways in which we see his actions. The latter was the heresy.

You're using "personality" in the modern, psychological sense. I believe it would be a heresy to say that God is three separate personalities in that sense, so I think you're OK.

(Yes, what Hoghead1 has said is definitely permitted within the PCUSA, though I would hope if he said it in a Presbytery meeting someone would challenge him on the understanding that the position is modalist.)

Well, the attacks on modalism clearly did assume that it was intrinsic to God, as that is the way the modalists had it.
I am chuckling about the presbytery meeting. The GA and presbyteries are just about like the Republican convention, except they talk more about God at the Republican convention.

 

[hedrick]

So, exactly what are you claiming? There are three gods, three unique personalities, who reach some sort of democratic decisions about what to do?

No. In modern terms God is one personality. I think it's pretty clearly heretical to claim that he is three personalities. But all acts of that one God involve Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Given the psychological model that we both accept, along with much of Western theology, it's obvious that everything God does involves all three.

 

[Hoghead1]

So Jesus does not have a real relationship with a person known as the Father?

A "real relationship" means that each side requires the other in order to exist and that each side has an impact on the other. Yes, I believe that. You cannot be a father without a son, for example.

 

[Hoghead1]

What I would say is that Jesus is in current terms a separate person from God, and he certainly had a relationship.

However I would also speculate, with some NT evidence, that since Jesus shows us God, his ability to have a relationship with the Father reflects something within God's own experience, which is why we see him not as a monad but as a Trinity.

Would agree then that God is capable of empathizing with all creaturely feeling, capable of experiencing suffering?

 

[Hoghead1]

No. In modern terms God is one personality. I think it's pretty clearly heretical to claim that he is three personalities. But all acts of that one God involve Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Given the psychological model that we both accept, along with much of Western theology, it's obvious that everything God does involves all three.

Yes, true. However, I am flexible in my Trinitarian formulations. I have toyed with teh idea that the persons of the trinity actually constitute a kind of group mind or meta-God. I have no trouble thinking of God as a synthesis of personalities, as I view God as a social/relational being.

 

[hedrick]

Would agree then that God is capable of empathizing with all creaturely feeling, capable of experiencing suffering?

Yes, although i realize that technically this is probably heretical.

 

[Erose]

Yes, but we think of God in terms of personality, not as some sort of impersonal being or abstract principle.

Uh, are you not a human being? Are you some sort of impersonal being or abstract principle?

 

[Hoghead1]

So Jesus does not have a real relationship with a person known as the Father?

To go into more detail, I think that God would have remained totally unconscious, had he not entered into the complexity of his being. Hence, he differentiated into Father and Son, in whom he created all things.
God is a relational being and therefore exists in a I-thou relationship with the Son and the whole of creation. Hnece, each is a definite ontological part of the other.

 

[Hoghead1]

Yes, although i realize that technically this is probably heretical.

Heretical according to whom? Certainly not to the Methodist church.

 

[BobRyan]

How could Jesus create the world after Mary gave birth to him? How does the stupidity of that question elude you?

* I believe Jesus is a creator Son of God, creator of our world.

* I believe he is a creation of the paradise Trinity.

The universe is very large, many galaxies.

One thing is true - many galaxies.

Do you believe the Bible???

John 1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

He made the entire universe.

 

[hedrick]

Well, the attacks on modalism clearly did assume that it was intrinsic to God, as that is the way the modalists had it.

I checked my definition several places. But you're right. When I just read the account of modalism in the Catholic Encyclopedia, it is refreshingly candid. Basically modalism arose during a time when porto-orthodox belief was not well formulated. The CE thinks that the modalists had a point. It's apparently also a bit unclear what they actually taught, and the context in which they taught it was sufficiently different from final Trinitarian doctrine that it's hard to relate their beliefs with anything we'd run into now.

My understanding, however, is that the essence of modalism is that it didn't make a true distinction of "person" within the Trinity. If we try to forget the chaos of the period when this occurred, and look at how person ended up being defined, I don't think one can accuse adherents of the psychological model of modalism, since a large part of Western theology used the psychological model to define what the persons meant.

It's a bit hard to apply classical heresies to modern theology. But I would not accuse someone of modalism if they saw some kind of relationship, or equivalent, within the Trinity.

 

[Hoghead1]

I checked my definition several places. But you're right. When I just read the account of modalism in the Catholic Encyclopedia, it is refreshingly candid. Basically modalism arose during a time when porto-orthodox belief was not well formulated. The CE thinks that the modalists had a point. It's apparently also a bit unclear what they actually taught, and the context in which they taught it was sufficiently different from final Trinitarian doctrine that it's hard to relate their beliefs with anything we'd run into now.

My understanding, however, is that the essence of modalism is that it didn't make a true distinction of "person" within the Trinity. If we try to forget the chaos of the period when this occurred, and look at how person ended up being defined, I don't think one can accuse adherents of the psychological model of modalism, since a large part of Western theology used the psychological model to define what the persons meant.

It's a bit hard to apply classical heresies to modern theology. But I would not accuse someone of modalism if they saw some kind of relationship, or equivalent, within the Trinity.

Given that modalism means different aspects of one personality, yes, the psychological models of the trinity are modal.

 

[Hoghead1]

Uh, are you not a human being? Are you some sort of impersonal being or abstract principle?

Um, what does this have to do with the discussion?

 

[Erose]

Yes, he actually says that. Read his description of God. Even neo-Thomists are concerned with his claim that God has no "real relationship" to creation.

That is not no where near what Thomas claimed. From his Summa concerning God's omnipresence this is refuted:

I answer that, God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately and touch it by its power; hence it is proved in Phys. vii that the thing moved and the mover must be joined together. Now since God is very being by His own essence, created being must be His proper effect; as to ignite is the proper effect of fire. Now God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being; as light is caused in the air by the sun as long as the air remains illuminated. Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing, as was shown above (Question 7, Article 1). Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.

Reply to Objection 1. God is above all things by the excellence of His nature; nevertheless, He is in all things as the cause of the being of all things; as was shown above in this article. (First Part, Question 8)

 

[Hoghead1]

Maybe you can cite something from Calvin or Augustine that would suggest he was a modalist?

Perhaps you can give an example of an ordained modalist?
Or perhaps you can give an example of a church's doctrinal statement that tolerates modalism?

Also, when you ask for modern examples of modalists, you should check out the Oneness Pentecostals.

 

[Erose]

Um, what does this have to do with the discussion?

It has everything to do with it.

 

[Erose]

The way you drew up the Trinity makes it appear that the ultimate reality and authority is God, whose power transcends that of the Father, Son, or Spirit. If you believed the Father was teh Boss of bosses, then you would have represented the Trinity much differently. You might have said something like the Father is analogous to the Sun, the Persons to the light emitted from the Sun. But the way you have it, the Persons all emanate out from some central authority you label as God.

Actually the diagram does a good job outlining the Trinity ontologically. What it doesn't do is discuss the relational aspects of the Trinity.

 

[Tree of Life]

Also, when you ask for modern examples of modalists, you should check out the Oneness Pentecostals.

Oneness Pentecostals are fairly well dismissed as heretics by the majority of the churches.