TRINITY 333 – FINAL REVIEWDR. REGIS MARTIN – FRI MAY 4

1. Discuss the origin of the Christian doctrine of God. What was its source, abstract speculation or historical experience? What were the various developing stages in the doctrine’s emergence? And, finally, what questions was it necessary for the Church and theology to ask regarding the whole process?

o The Christian position is new, something never before disclosed – however it is not mere abstract speculation but based upon historical experience

DEVELOPING STAGES (?) & QUESTIONS:

“The Christian faith took a unique position… it held to the enlightened view of the philosophers: the gods do not exist. What the Christians call “God” is what the philosophers call “being”, “ground” or “God”.

-RATZINGER

“Between a belief in the many gods and the one Jewish God there is a stark starring opposition, BUT – both of these positions are miraculously reconciled in the Gospel.”

-ST MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR

i. “Contradictory, multiplicity unchecked” – polytheismii. “Unity but w/o any inner riches” –Judaism

BOTH are inadequate and grab hold of something which is greater (TRI-UNE GOD!)

o The Christian confession of faith begins with “GOD IS ONE”i. These words are summed up in the faith of Israel with the SHEMA:

“Here oh, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord and you shall love the Lord your God…” Deut 6:4

Jesus repeats the SHEMA in Mk 12:8 to respond to which commandment is the greatest

2 Points made clear:i. In both the OT and NT monotheism is not a philosophical question but the

result of a religious experience. a. A belief in the one God is to permit God to lay total claim upon you.b. Confession of faith in one God obliges one to live a life of continual

reversal (denying of self by the will)

ii. The oneness of God involves much more than a numerical oneness.a. The singularity of this God is qualitative, not merely quantitative

b. He is limitless uniqueness, by the very nature of his being God there can only be one of Him

c. If there were two Gods they would limit one another. d. “If God is not one then there is no God” – TERTULLIAN

o Both OT/NT answer primordial human question: “Where do we locate the unity of all things, the point of balance amid all things?”

i. Polytheists cannot bring all of the chaotic multiplicity to a point of balance

o Early on in the Churches baptismal catechesis – the doctrine of the one God was given pride and place

o Christianity distinguishes itself from the other monotheistic religions by understanding the TRINITY of the ONE GOD: the oneness of God absolutely depends upon the unity of persons.

o THREE CONSIDERATIONS:i. Notion that in grounding the oneness of God we do so in a monotheistic way

o (the infinity of God leaves no room for a second God)ii. The absolute oneness of God requires that God be w/o division

o The unity of this God nec. Excludes any materiality. (he must be pure undivided spirit whom absolutely transcends the world)

iii. The absolute unity of God demands that this unity of God and unity of the world God made cannot be confused.

o The problem of the one and many has to be solved in the terms of the world (man cannot summon God for an answer)

QUESTION: How does God solve his own unity among multiplicity?o Because God is a unity is it possible to think of God w/o some sort of otherness in the

God-head? w/o this differentiation there could not be the principle of unity either w/o the principle God would remain isolated and in turning to the world to

remove his isolation would not render him divineo Unity of God absolutely demands/ requires such a trinity (church fathers)o In OT there are hints to plurality w/in God…

Gen 1: Let us make man in our image and likeness Isaiah: Holy, Holy, Holy

o The angel of the Lord prefigures the one and many w/in God himselfo The notion of God’s oneness which we perceive to be separate from the world – is not

even conceivable w/o some sort of otherness w/in God himselfo If God were one person and created the world as counterpart then God would not be

God o God may be in relation to us b/c he is in eternal relation to himself

QUESTION: Is man the proper End for God?, who does God turn?o If so man would no longer be loved by God, but a companion of Godo God’s love for the world is not a function for need but gifto The counterpart to God is found in Jesus… he is the “you” eternally spoken by the

fathero We are drawn into the life of the father and son in the love of them which is the spirit.

The formula of faith emerges out of the burning bush scene – for the jewsIn John the burning bush reaches its fullest meaning in the person of JCo Christ is the very nameability of God – God is no longer simply a word but a

PERSON

QUESTION: What’s the point of speaking God’s name?o You want to speak the name because it then becomes a relationshipo A name reveals the person, it discloses identity, nature answers question: what is this?,

person answers question: who?o God wants to open up a relationship w/ humanity so he makes himself nameable and

enters into humanityo The father and some become present in us through the holy spirito The Trinitarian confession is not the fruit of speculation but rather a summary of the

entire saving event of the gospels. (Christian existence begins at baptism)

I. QUESTIONS NECESSARY TO ASK:

1. Why did Christianity empty the world of the gods?2. Why would God want to be involved w/ the affairs of men?3. What is the worth of one human being?4. What does it mean for the church to profess faith in a triune God?5. How do we square the oneness of God with three distinct historical factors?6. What possessed Christianity to make the previous assertion?

2. Describe the Arian argument and why it was repudiated at Nicaea?

o Arianism was the greatest Crisis that beset the Church in 2000 yearso At the council Arius nearly hijacked everything!o Arianism wanted to dethrone the divinity of Christ.o St. Gerome prophesized that Athanasius stopped the world from Arianism

ARIUS – had an idea that made his heresy extremely appealing:o The absolute sovereignty of ONE, God was the un-originated ground of reality (truth)o BUT if God were to have something exist outside of himself it would NOT be a

result of God’s self communication (because that would mean God is not unchanging) – Including God’s son JESUS!

o Arius’ Question : “Given that the son is from the father, then the Question is this: Is he of the order of creator, who is God, or of the order of creature who is not God?”

o What Christ is - does not get answered in NT, only what he does… in asking whether Christ is the son of God or not, Arius in effect is asking a new question.

FOUR PROPOSITIONS OF ARIAN BELIEF:a) The son must be a creature whom the father had formed out of nothing (a perfect

creature but not self subsisting)b) If J.C. is to be, then there was a time when the son was not.

i. “There was when he was not”c) If this is true then the son can have no communion w/ the Father b/c he is entirely

distant from the essence of God. i. “The Father remains ineffable to the Son”

d) The son is liable to change, even that change we call sin. In theory he can sin, but in practice the father has overshadowed him and he did not sin.

Scripture to his defense:i. Romans 8:29 – “he was the first born among many”

ii. John 3:14 – “The Father is greater than I”… etc.

o Arius concluded that anything that derives from God as the son proceeds from the father is Created

Attitudes that shaped Christ’s awareness:a) If salvation is to work Christ must be fully human, but he must also be fully divineb) At no time does the church abandon the oneness of God, Christ cannot be some

inferior “God”c) Jesus is not wearing the “mask” of humanity (monarchism);

Nor is he an “encounter” of God which is really just our mistaken human belief or our minds creation (modelism)

o We know that we cannot break out of our minds to know God (yet God can break in!)

The Argument of Nicaea:The Argument was over the word LOGOS – What was Christ’s relation to the Father?

1. Is Christ fully divine & therefore consubstantial to the Father Homousious2. OR is Christ only a creature? if he was he would be infinitely inferior to

God

o If Christ is created than his mediation necessarily fails b/c he lacks divine substance and he cannot bring us to the Father more than any other creature (He would do us no damn good)

o There is no Salvation in the Arian “son” (yet Arius still believed stripped of divinity he could save)

o Athanasius – The son is all that the father is except for the name of the Father.

o Cutting edge of Nicene dogma is this :“Begotten out of the father, out of the substance of the father, God out of true God.”

i. Murray – son is not out of the Father’s will, but his substanceii. The son is begotten in the divine order, his being is not touched by created-ness

iii. He is Homousious w. the fathera. In the adj. ‘Homousious’ the problem of God finds its answer – in the

ontological category of substanceiv. Nicaea did NOT describe BUT DEFINE what the son is: from the Father in a

singular, unshared way. (move from what Christ does to who Christ is! the conversation brought to a higher plane)

o Nicaea primarily accomplished by the work of St. Athanasius b/c of his persistence of the word ‘HOMOUSIOUS’

i. Conservative Right: objected Homousious because it was not found in Scripture Real issue concerned development in understanding the Christian

revelation of faith – (scripture also does not use transubstantiation) ii. Arian Left: Sought to maintain the oneness of God

The church also maintains monarchy Yet Christ cannot be diminished or excluded from the monarchy.

3 Data of faith synthesized by council fathers :i. God the father is sovereign lord of all the universe

ii. The son is equally God, equally divineiii. The son is from the father and other than the father

3. What positively can be said in elucidation of the Church’s understanding of the Triune God? In other words, discuss the three theses pursuant to the church’s finished understanding of God.

3 Theses of the church: “one king, one essence, in three persons”i. This paradox is subordinate to, dependent upon the question of original meaning of

UNITY AND PLURALITY. a. To ancients- only oneness can be divine, absolute and plurality would be secondary –

for it represents the disintegration of unity b. Christianity affirms that the divine is both one and many

One is divine but plurality too is divinec. For Maximus the confessor 2 Things get reconciled –

i. Heathen polytheismii. Jewish monotheismo Both are equally imperfect and need enrichment, that completion is provided

by the Tri-une God of the Gospeld. Christianity is not disjuncted but fuses both plurality and unity.e. Plurality is not the break up of one into many – only through the doctrine of the

trinity can we reserve a place for the manyf. **If God is Triune than the highest possible expression of unity is not monotony BUT

the unity we achieve through LOVE b/c love is precisely one and many!

ii. Same paradox but a different way, meaning of the word: PERSONa. Paradox to be understood as an intrinsic implication of the very word personb. Greek: PROSOPON – “looking forward”

To be a person is to be looking towards or moving towards anotherc. Latin: PERSONA – “sounding through”

Expresses relatedness, yet this time in the form of communicationd. The words Prosopon/ persona point to the realities they signify e. If God is person – he cannot be an absolute singular person. – to be a person means to

be in relation to anotherf. If God is person then he is not reducible to mere unity – it looks to, speaks through an

otherness relationship

iii. The absolute character of RELATIVITYa. To get a datum on this handle of faith, we need to subordinate that datum to the

absolute and relative – only now we stress the absoluteness of the relativeb. 2 ARGUMENTS:

1. When we see God absolutely – he is only one Can’t be a plurality of divine principles This oneness which is God can only be founds on the

plane of substance, nature, essence2. The element of being three

The three-ness of God is something which cannot be found on the plane of substance – but the plane of relation (relativity)

c. In Gethsemane – Jesus goes to be alone with his father – an OTHERd. W/in God both the presence of I & THOU

i. An element of co-existent diversity & affinityii. All genuine relationships are characterized by diversity and affinity

e. In terms of SUBSTANCE – God is only one; while he is a trinity of PERSONS

f. The church makes a distinction between nature and personi. Nature – what is this stuff; Person – who is this

g. Divine nature – may not be reduced in any way, yet it maybe related to itself in a number of different ways.

h. Three distinct relations grounded to one substancei. “GOD IS LOVE” – very distinction of persons w/in God-head (p.13 of Handout)

i. Love is a movement of giving and receiving, a relationship btw personsii. A third person is implicit in this very act of mutual giving and receiving –

The GIFT is THE HOLY SPIRITiii. The divine nature is itself GIFTiv. The Spirit is the Love of the Father and the Son – all are perfectly united

in this “dance”j. w/in the trinity we have a genuine experience w/ a God who conducts a dialogue

with himself Not only LOGOS but DIALOGOSk. being father is purely a concept of relation

i. relationship w/in the trinity is not something extra or added (as is w/ us)l. “in God there are no accidents only substance and relation” –ST AUGUSTINE

4. Identify the three axioms of belief on which the entire Christian understanding of God finally turns, according to Jean Danielou.

Question: what does it really mean, that God is both one and three?Answer: Love is contemporaneous w/ being, that is to say the very structure of the absolute is love. (P.14 - Handout.)

o Now we know that we are members of two gifts: a. Given in being –creation (nature)b. Forgiven in Grace

o We are created by love and for love, and re-created by love and for love. In the evening of our lives we will be judged upon love.

o w/in the Trinitarian life there is infinite, unending love

3 TRUTHS:a. God is eternally loveb. God loves us

c. We must love one another

o The love with which we are to love one another is a participation itself immersed in God who is love

o Human love is limited and is permitted to become sinful and change into its opposite. what joins me to a beloved – ie. Spouse – does not exhaust who I am

i. That relation which joins me to another human is not to be confused w/ my nature (our existence as students is not exhaustive of who we are)

ii. In other words love is something we experience/ express BUT love is defined as who we are (we are not the LOVE we have for our friends)

o The miracle of DIVINITY – “GOD IS LOVE”i. This is the highpoint of NT faith

ii. Love is what God is, he is nothing other than love, it is his very essence

iii. Therefore it is love free of limitations, unlike the love which we find in ourselves b/c love in ourselves is never the fullness of ourselves: our nature does not co-inside w. our being love

o GOD IS LOVE – What do those words mean?i. Everything we say about the three persons, everything we confess

about divine nature – amounts to the logic of GIFT!

o RELATIO – relationshipi. The dogma of God says the three divine persons are distinguished

by NOTHING, EXCEPT by there relations which unite them ii. To be a father is not the same as being the son or spirit, it is rather

to beget the son or ‘generate’ the soniii. What each person possess is only possessed in virtue of his giving

away, communicating itiv. Each person IS the relation he has with the other personv. This relation is none other than LOVE

o CS LEWIS “you may ask: if we can’t imagine this 3 person God than what is the use in talking about him? …. There isn’t any use in talking; we ought to be drawn into his life.

5. Concerning the Thomist problem of God, as understood by Fr. Murray, the substance of Aquinas’ argument reveals two general aspects of thought. Explain what they are.

o “St. Thomas aspires to heights unthinkable to human intelligence” – Pope Leo XIIIo Both the light of reason and faith come from same God: Grace perfects nature;

Faith perfects reason Illuminated by faith, reason is set free from limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin

o JPII “Fides et Ratio” –a) St. Thomas writes: what ever the source, TRUTH has it’s highpoint of origin

in the H.S.b) He was imparted in his love of truth, he sought truth wherever it might be

foundc) In the thinking of Thomas, the demands of reason & power of faith find the

most elevated synthesis of human thought

o Murray on Thomas : (p. 69 76 The Problem of God) “The first question to be asked about God is whether God is; …

having answered the first question we can move to the second: what God is… however in the case of God we cannot know what he is but only what he is not”

In the case of God we cannot know what he is, but only what he is not Once it has been established, the truth that God does exist, we cannot

go on to answer the question of essence in its positive form (ie. What God is)

d) THREE STAGES :a. You must empty every conceptual image of God that bears even

remotely on the created universe (left w. GOD IS)b. Acknowledgement that this is all you know of God – simply that

HE IS (the only admissible datum of human intelligence)c. You must even empty the ISING b/c that bears upon the world we

know (because the only ising we have is creaturely ising) LEFT W. GOD!

“This is a kind of poverty nothing left to be said” – Thomas

o Two interpretations – come together in the fact that “he who is” and cannot be designated b/c it is beyond our reacha. “I am who am” – I am who isb. “I am that which it pleases me to be” – more to God than the name GOD

o On the feast of St. Nicholas – Thomas struck silent – “all that I have written is nothing but straw – compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me”

o One thing remains completely unknown about God – NAMELY WHAT GOD IS!o All human knowledge of God ends in ignorance

6. Discuss the sense in which atheism and agnosticism in the modern context are less an issue of the intelligence than a problem of the will. In other words, in what sense are we describing, as Fr. Murray suggests, “a free act of choice that antedates all theories”?

o Atheism brings about the seeming death of God; a phenomenon of UNBELIEF – aggressive, hostile, belligerent disbelief.

o The problem of the ATHEIST:a) If God finally is not a proposition but a presence, the opposite is equally so b) To say that God is not is not to be understood as a proposition but a state of

existence

o P.77: The problem of God can only be understood by human WILL, not by a function of intelligence. – Atheism is NOT a problem of the intellect, but the will

o JPII – Atheism is the heart of the tragic experience of modern man, the eclipse of God and man

o The loss of a sense of God brings about a loss in the sense of man

o P. 78: Bible presents 3 major types of Godless man:a) W/in the people of God – this man is called by the psalmist: “The fool, the

idiot, the moron” – the fools denial does not concern God’s existence in a metaphysical sense but in an acting sense God is not here with me

b) Outside of the people of God – “the peoples who do not know God the Father, and will not listen to the good news of Jesus Christ” the agnostic, and the idolater – more or less an atheist.

c) The Philosopher – the sage - not making cosmic powers the “idol,” but his own learning

o Atheism is never a conclusion of any theory, but a free act of choice that antedates any theory – their atheism is reduced only by their will to be atheist

o P. 96: MODERN AGNOSTIC: “Since I cannot know what God is, I have decided to disbelieve that he is” stupidity, not only an implicit denial of God – BUT also an explicit denial of intelligence!

o Agnostism is atheism by default – “an atheism for the lazy”o Agnostic – gives up even the search for God (an atheism of despair)

2 Forms of modern atheism:a) Aristocratic atheism of the modern academy – to explain the world w/o Godb) Bourgeois atheism of the market place – we have no need of God – therefore God

doesn’t exist! – Sole realities of life are economic.

7. Identify the two forms of the God-less man of the post-modern age. Of the two, which is more amenable to conversion and why?

2 Forms in Post Modern Age:a) (easiest) – Godless man of revolution, here the godless man is not an individual but a

collective class.i. The will of the Marxist man is to transform the world

ii. For marx, everything is reduced to class (class structure, struggle, etc.)iii. For Marx the world is purely industrialiv. Man makes a unity, since it is his own work, thus it represents him (What I do

is who I am)b) The godless man of the theater – who dwells in world of public imagination

i. A world of dramatic fantasy and emotion (i.e. Television, media, music)ii. This godless man is not a philosopher

iii. His profession is Phenomenology: not interested in “whatness”iv. “Man is only a presence, a sort of process, a continual ‘standing forth’ an

actual ‘being-there-in-the-moment’ in action and freedom”v. His postulate is that man has no nature at all

vi. He isn’t interested in explaining anything, for he does not want to change the world

vii. His project is SIMPLY TO EXIST himself in a godless world – he wills the absence of God

viii. It really is more difficult to characterize this form of post-modern atheism

o The model for the godless man of the Theater is probably: Jean-Paul Sartrea) He begins w. the myth of the death of Godb) His question: Can we “live” the death of God? (to stand forth the world to

which God has died – to EX – SIST)

o The original ground from which the man of the theater proceeds is not the world of ideas but in the world of FACT – he sees a garden surrounded by death, and beyond death is nothing

o Freedom IS NOT the possibility of changing the worldo P. 116: For a man to be free is for him to assume single and full obligation for his own

existence. It is for him to bear alone the entire responsibility for being. In the face of the worlds absurdity, man’s original choice is to be-for-himself… this is the only value in an otherwise absurd world. And it is itself absurdity… For man to be thus free is for him to BE God. And this is absurdity squared. It is not only that man cannot be God. It is also that for a man to ex-sist God is for him not to ex-sist; for God does not ex-sist.

o P. 117: His question is biblical: “Is God here w/ us?” and his answer is: NO; the will of the man of the theater thus becomes a will to the repression of God from consciousness

o P. 119 CONCLUSION: one conclusion (2 parts)a. The modern problem of God had a measure of diminishing continuity

w/ medieval as structured by Aquinas. The central question was the same: what God is. In the post-modern age however, the intelligibility of God was meaningless… why argue at all. The thing to do was either change the world in the name of man’s freedom to do so; or simply ex-sist the world in the name of mans freedom to do nothing else.

b. In the post modern age problem has come back in biblical mode, its plane of position is the historical existential order where the terms of argument are presence or transparence.

OPINION:OF THE TWO WHICH IS MORE AMENABLE TO CONVERSION AND WHY?