Chapter 5

[Quietfire]

[b]The Three Persons[/b]

[i]Father and Son[/i]

The heavenly Father has a Son; the Gospels tell of their relation. We must now look at it more closely.

A son is a distinct person from his father; there is no way in which a father can be his own son. But though they are distinct persons, they are like in nature-the son of a man is a man, of a lion a lion. In this solitary case, the Father's nature is infinite; so the Son too must have an infinite nature. But there cannot be two infinite natures-one would be liited by not being the other and by not having power over the other. Therefore, since the Son has infinite nature, it must be the same identical nature as the Father's.

This truth, that the Father and Son possess the one same nature, might remain wholly dark to us if St. John had not given us another term for their relation-the second person is the [i]Word[/i] of the first. In the first eighteen verses of his Gospel we learn that God has uttered a Word, A Word who is with God (abiding therefore, not passing in the utterance), a Word who [i]is[/i] God; by this Word all things were made.

So God utters a word-not framed by the mouth, of course, for God has no mouth. He is pure spirit. So it is a word in the mind of God, not sounding outwardly as our words sound, akin rather to a thought or an idea. What idea produced in God's mind could possibly [i]br[/i] God? Christian thinking saw early that it could be only the idea God has of himself.

The link between having a son and having an idea of oneself is that both are was of producing likeness. Your son is like in nature to yourself; your idea of yourself bears some resemblance to you too-though it may be imperfect, for we seldom see ourselves very clearly; too many elements in us we see as we wish they were, too many we do not see at all.

Are we venturing too far if we feel that God does not have the idea for the sake of information about himself, but for the sake of companionship. However this may be, the idea that God has of himself cannot be imperfect. Whatever is in the Father must be in his idea of himself, and must be exactly the same as it is in himself. Otherwise God would have an inadequate idea of himself, which would be nonsense. Thus, because God is infinite, eternal, all-powerful, his idea of himself is infinite, eternal, all-powerful. Because God is God, his idea is God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God."

So far, the reader may fel that all this is still rathe remote-full of significance, no doubt, to theologians, but no saying much to the rest of usl With the next step we take, that feeling must vanish. The Father knows and loves; so his idea knows and loves. In other words the idea is a person. Men have ideas, and any given idea is something. God's idea of himself is not something only; it is Someone, for it can know and love.

The thinker and the idea are distinct, the one is not the other, Father and Son are two persons. But they are not separate. An idea can exist only in the mind of the thinker; it cannot, as it were, go off and start a separate life of its own. The idea is in the same identical nature; we coud equally well say that the nature is in the idea, for there is nothing that the Father has which his Word, his Son, has not. "Whatsoever the Father has, that the Son has in like manner", (Jn 16:15). Each possesses the divine nature, but each is wholly himself, conscious of himself as himself, of the other as other.

One immediate difficulty presents itself. We can harly help thinking of sons as younger than their fathers-so felt the painters who gave the Father a long beard, the Son a short beard. Is the second person younger that the first? If not, how can he be his Son? But this is another of those points where we must not argue from the image(ourselves) to the original (God). Among men, fathers are always older than their sons somply because a human being cannot start generating the moment he exists;he must wait til he develops to a point where he can generate. But God has not to wait for a certain amount of eternity to roll by before he is sufficiently developed. Eternity does not roll by; it is an abiding now; and God has all perfections in their fullness, not needing to develop. Merely by being God, he knows himself with infinite knowing poser, and utters his total self-knowledge in the totally adequate idea of himself which is his co-eternal Son.

[i]Holy Spirit[/i]
The production of a Second Person does not exhaust the infinite richness of the divine nature. Our Lord tells of a third person. There is a Spirit, to whom Our Lord will entrust his followers when he himself shall have ascended to the Father. "I will ask the Fter and he will give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you" (Jn 14:16). The Spirit, like the Word, is a person-he, not it. "But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things (Jn 14:26).

As we have already seen, there is one huge and instant difference betwen God's idea and any idea we may form. His is someone, ours is only something. With an idea which is only something, there can be no mutuality. The thinker can know it, it cannot know him; he can admire its beauty, it cannot admire his; he can love it, it cannot return his love. But God's idea is someone, and an infinite someone; between thinker and idea there is an infinite dialogue, an infinite interflow. Father and Son love each other, with infinite intensity. What we could not know, if it were not revealed to us, is that they unite to express their love and that the expression is a third divine person. In the Son, the Father utters his self-knowledge; in the Holy Spirit, Father and Son utter their mutual love.

Their love is infinite; its expression cannot be less. Infinite love does not express its very self finitely; it can no more produce inadequate expression than infinite infinite knowledge can produce an inadequate idea. Each gives himself wholly to the outpouring of his love for the other, holding nothing back-indeed the very thought of holding back is ridiculous; if they give themselves at all, they can give themselves only totally-they possess nothing but their totality! The uttered love of Father and Son is infinite, lacks no perfection that they have, is God, a person, someone.

As the one great operation of spirit, knowing, produces the second person, so the other, loving, produces the third. But be careful upon this-the second proceeds from, is produced by, the first alone; but the third, the Holy Spirit, proceeds from the Father and Son, as they combine to express their love. Thus in the Nicene Creed we say of him [i]qui ex patre filioque procedit[/Iwho proceeds from the Father and the Son; and in the [I]Tantum Ergo[/i] we sing [i]procedenti ab utroque[/i]-to him who proceeds from both.

We have seen the fitness of the names "Son" and "Word" for the second person. Why is the third called "Spirit"?

Here the word "spirit"-like the old English "ghost"-is best understood as "breath". This is the root meaning; our ordinary word "spirit" comes from it, because spirit is invisible, as air is. It is in its root meaning that "Spirit" is the name of the third person-he is the "breath"or "breathing" of Father and Son.

That is Our Lord's chosen name for him, and it is more than a name used merel because he has to be called something. There is some deep meaning in it. For Christ breathes upon the Apostles as he says, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit"; when the Holy Spirit descends upon them at Pentecost, there is at first the rushing of a might wind.

Observe that the third person is never spoken of as a Son, never said to have been begotten or generated. Theologians use the word "spirated" which is simply "breathed." We may wonder why the third person who is the utterance of the love of Father and Son should be called their Breath.

Let us note two things. It is of universal experience that love has an effect upon the breathing; it is a simple fact that the lover's breath comes faster. And there is a close connection between breath and life-when we stop breathing, we stop living. In the Nicene Creed the Holy Spirit is called "the Lord and giver of life." The link between life and love is not hard to see, for love is a total self-giving, and so a giving of life.

One final reminder. We saw how the second person is within the same nature, as an idea is alwas within the thinker's mind. So with the third person. The utterance of love by Father and Son fills the whole of their nature, producing another person, but still within the same identical deivine nature. Try to see the nature of God wholly expressed as thinker, wholly expressed as idea, wholly expressed as lovingness.

[b]Equality in Majesty[/b]
The truths God has revealed to us of his innermost life are not easy for us to take hold of and make our own. They do not yield much of their meaning at a first glance. I can only urge readers to go back over the last sections many times. Remember that we are making this study not to discovere whether there are three persons in God (for he has revealed that there are), still less to verify it (for no effort of our mind could make it any surer than God's own word), but simply to get more light on it and from it.

It is hardly my place to urge readers to pry for understanding. I can only state the plain fact that without prayer there will be precious little understanding. Our minds cannot take God's inner life by storm; we shall see as much as he gives us light to see.

But while we are talking of prayer, it should be noted that there is special light to be got from the Church's prayers, if we try to bring our new knowledge of the doctrines into saying them. The Preface of the Blessed Trinity in the Mass, for instance, is a blaze of meaning; so are the creeds and some of the great hymns, especially the [i]Veni Sancte Spiritus[/i] and the [i]Veni Creator[/i]. No book on doctrine will teach you as much as the Missal-provided you bring some knowledge with you. This book and books like it exist to provide the knowledge which the Missal assumes we have!

With what has gone before reread and meditated, we can go on to the completion of a first roug sketch of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity.

We have already glanced at the erroneous idea that if God has a Son, the Son must be younger; Father and Son are coeternal. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit likewise are coeternal. We must be on guard against thinking that [i]first[/i] the Father had a Son, [i]then[/i] Father and Son united to produce the Holy Spirit-and who knows what person may next emerge within the infinite fecundity of God? Ther is no question of succession, for there is no succession in eternity. The Father did not have to wait until he was old enough or mature enough to beget a Son or lonely enough to want one. He eternally [i]is[/i], in the plentitude of life and power. Merely by being, he knows himself with that limitless intensity of knowledge which necessarily produces the idea, the Son.

Nor must Father and Son wait while their love grows to the point where it can utter itself in a third person. Merely by being, they love with the fullness of loving-power; merely by loving thus intensely they utter their love; the Holy Spirit is as inevitable as Father and Son.

We have used the words "necessarily" and "inevitable". They are worth a closer look. It is possible that the Son may seem less real to us because he is an idea in the mind of his Father. He is, we may feel, only a thought after all, whereas we ourselves are not simply thoughts in God's mind; we really exist. But we exist only because God will us to exist; if he willed us not to exist, we should cease to be.

But he cannot will the second person out of existence, any more than he willed him into existence. We must not imagine the Father feeling that it would be nice to have a son and thinking one into existence, and as liable to think him out of existence again if the humor took him. It is an exigency of the divine nature that the Father should thus know himself; simply by being himself the Father knows himself, generates the idea of himself; there is no element whatever of contingency in the existence of the second person; there is origin but no dependence. God is as necessarily Son as he is Father.

The same line of thought shows us the Holy Spirit, too, as necessarily existing. There is no difference among the three in eternity or necessity; and ther is no inequality. The Father possesses the divine nature unreceived; Son, and Holy Spirit possess it as received, but they possess it in its totality. They have received everything from the Father, [i]everything[/i]. To quote again from the Preface of the Trinity:

Whatever we believe, on Thy revelation, of Thy glory, we hold the same of the Son, the same of the Holy Spirit, without any difference to separate them. So that in the affirmation of the true and eternal Godhead, we adore distinction in the Persons, oneness in the Essence, equality in majesty.

[b]Appropriation[/b]
The distinction of action among the persons of the Blessed Trinity is a fact of the [i]inner[/i] life of God. It is within the divine nature that each lives, knows, loves, as himself, distinct.

But the actions of the divine nature upon created beings-ourselves, for example-are the actions of all three persons, acting together as one principle of action. It is by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that, for example, the universe is created and sustained in being, that each individual soul is created and sanctified in grace. There is no external operation of the divine nature which is the work of one person as distinct from the others.

Yet Scripture and Liturgy are constantly attributing certain divine operations to Father [i]or[/i] Son [i]or[/i] Holy Spirit. In the Nicene Creed, for instance, the Father is Creator, the Son is Redeemer, the Holy Spirit is Sanctifier, giver of life. That the Son should be called Redeemer is obvious enough: he did in fact become man and die for our salvation.

But since all three Persons create, why is the Father called Creator? Since all three person sanctify, why is the Holy Spirit called Sanctifier? Why-to use a theological term-is creation [i]appropriated[/i] to the one, sanctification to the other?

If there is to be appropriation, of course, we can see why it is done like this; we can see, in other words, how these particular appropriations are appropriate. Within the divine nature, the Father is Origin; Son and Holy Spirit both proceed from him. Creation-by which the world originates, and by which each soul originates- is spoken of as belonging especially to the Father.

Again, with the divine nature, the Holy Spirit is Love, the utterance of the love of Father and Son. Sanctification, grace-these are gifts, and gifts are the work of love; they are appropriated to the Holy Spirit. Grace is a created gift of love; the Holy Spirit is the uncreated gift of love. By grace, Father and Son express their love for us-as eternally they express their love for each other-in the Holy Spirit.

Is there any similar appropriation to the second person? As we have noted, he is called Redeemer; buyt not by appropriation, since he did in fact redeem us himself; it was not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who became man and died for us, but the Son only (the Redemption was not an operation of the divine nature but of the human nature he made his own). But he has his appropriation all the same.

In the Creed, God the Father is called Creator, and we have just seen why. But in the opening of St. John's Gospel, the second person seems to be Creator too. Creatioin, as a work of origination, bringing something into existence where nothing was, is appropriated to the Father. But what was brought into existence was not a chaos; it was a universe ordered in its elements; it was a work of wisdom, therefore, and as such appropriated to the second person, the Word of God, who proceeds by the way of knowledge. The structure of the universe and all things in it, the order of the universe, is attributed especially to the Son; and when the order was brought to disorder by sin, it was the Son who became man to repair the disorder and make the new order of redeemed mankind.

But the perfect aptness of the attribution of operation to one or other person must not blind us to the reality that in all these operations all three persons are at work. Grace comes, says Our Lord, from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our souls; but he also says, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him." So it is in fact an indwelling of all three persons, Then why have appropriation at all?

In order, one may perhaps assume, to keep the distinction of the three persons ever present to our minds. If we invariably spoke of every divine operation upon us as the work of God, or the work of the three persons, we might come to feel that there was no real distinction between them at all, that Father, Son, and Spirit were simply three ways of saying the same thing.

But appropriation is a constant reminder to us that they are distinct; not only that, it reminds us of the personal character of each-that the Father is origin, the Son proceeds by the way of Knowledge, the Holy Spirit by the way of Love.


end of Chapter 5.

If you enjoyed this, may I suggest purchasing a copy of "Theology for Beginners" by F.J. Sheed.

Jake, I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you enjoy the book.

God Bless.

Peace.

[Jake Huether]

Do I enjoy it? Man, I can't get enough. This is really some very cool, and important stuff.

Thanks!

[Jake Huether]

Quitefire,

Is there a section in this book on the Person of Jesus? Because in response to this chapter, and thinking about God, I have a question:

I will ask it in the open mic to get more of a resposne, but I will post it here for those who view the Apologetics corner.



It has been established that God is One God because He is one Being, one Nature, the Divine Nature. And this one Being, who is God, has Three Persons. So it is the Being of God that makes God one. Okay, but my question comes from the complexity of the fact that Jesus is actually two natures, two beings. Jesus is fully a human being, and He is fully a Divine Being. And we state during Mass that Jesus, God's only Son, is One in Being with the Father. So, is it correct to say that Jesus has two Beings? In other words, the One Being that is God has Three Persons, but One of those Persons has two beings. And so, since one of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity has two beings, this way, Jesus, who is God, is a human. I guess I'm not clear on how Jesus is both God and man at the same time. If there are two Beings, two Natures, and they are in this hypostatic union (is that the right word), doesn't the definition of "being" or "nature" automatically separate the Person of Jesus into two persons. My understanding was that a being can have more than one person (i.e. God). But I don't know that a Person can have two beings. I mean, I know with God all things are possible. But, can you please comment on this or add any clarification?


Thanks again for the posts!

[Quietfire]

To answer your question as simply as possible...Yes.

Jesus is fully devine, and fully human. And since he was ascended to heaven in the physical state then he is still there...Fully devine and Fully human.

Now, I could be wrong on this. I am reading some more stuff on this subject and will definitely get back to you if I am wrong, but this is what I am being led to think.

Peace.

[Quietfire]

Ok, I will make you impatient for the book.

Yes, to your answer. To quote...

[quote]The second person of the Trinity became man.  Grasp the precision of this.  He did not take human nature as a mask which, when the play was over, he would triumphantly strip off.  [b]He is man in heaven and everlasting.[/b]  Nor did he simply take the appearance of a man, like the angel who guided Tobias.-F.J. Sheed[/quote]

Just so you know. The book is only 186 pages long. Short and sweet and to the point. Hoo-ah!

Edited June 11, 2004 by Quietfire

[Quietfire]

Jake,

Did this info help you to answer your question?


Your sis,
Q

[Jake Huether]

[quote name='Quietfire' date='Jun 13 2004, 02:01 PM'] Jake,

Did this info help you to answer your question?


Your sis,
Q [/quote]
Very much so. Thank you, Quitefire, for your responses. Our God is so amazing.

[Mary's Knight, La]

i dont know that it would be correct to say He has two beings that would almost be like saying there are two of Him I read Theology for Beginners and parts of Theology and Sanity (much more in depth) and from what I ready the way it happened is the person of Jesus took, in addition to His pre-existing Divine Nature, a human nature which wouldn't have caused division of his person into a seperate being but gives Him the ability to do distinctly human things (suffer, die, offer attonement) but i could be wrong i'll read it again it's a lot of info, i highly recommend Theology and Sanity, but in small doses...

[Quietfire]

Mary's Knight, La;

I just ordered Theology and Sanity. Cant wait to read it. I never got the impression that Jesus was or is two persons. He is God and Man, but that is one. Did something in the post lead you to think that was the conclusion that Jake and I came to?
Sorry about that, and I hope it doesnt lead others to think that.
I am reading another book by Sheed right now. Cant remember the title, but it's good also.
Also, I read "Making Sense out of Scripture" and ended up emailing Mark Shea to ask a few questions, and comment on his excellent work on the book. He emailed me back to thank me and answer my questions personally. The man rocks!

Let me know what you think after you read the book again, ok?


Ok. I just read Jakes question. Let me see if I can answer it in a different light.


If you were to ask the Three, "Who are you?" One would answer, "The Father." One would answer,"The Son." One would answer, "The Spirit."

If you were to ask them, "What are you?" There would be one answer, "God".
Because each wholly possesses the devine nature and can do all that goes with being God.

Again though, if you asked Christ who he was, the answer would be, "God the Son." If you asked him what he was, the answer would be, "I am God, I am man."

Or as Sheed puts it.
A simpler defininition of person is, "That which can say [b]I[/b]." Apply this to Christ and we find "I" used on two levels-"I and the Father are one." "I thrist." God the Son speaks in the nature which is his eternally from the Father, and in the nature which became his in the womb of Mary.
We may need a dozen clarification needed, for God is not a diagram, neither is Christ. But with their crudity, these bits and pieces may help beginners.

Better?


Peace :peace:

Edited June 26, 2004 by Quietfire

[MorphRC]

How does sheen explain, Christ's D/M nature, and it in connection to pain? IE: muslims always go, how can God die.