Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
Heard that line for decades, but how can 2 Persons be distinct, but not separate? How can the Son on earth pray to the Father in heaven, which is the test case for smashing all modalistic teaching tendencies, if the Father is not at all separate from the Son?
Any theology which attempts to define God Himself, all the while going beyond the text of the scripture, will always be filled with inconsistencies. By "dig deeper" do you mean just shut up and accept extra-biblical teachings? Please find me just one mention of the word "three" or "tri" in all of scripture when referring to God.
|
There are many ways things can be distinct but not separate. For example, there can be aspectual or epistemic distinctions. That is, we can see different things that are true of a single objects from different perspectives. Second, things can be relationally distinct but not separate, say as Augustine has it in his gloss on the Trinity. The three persons are relations of the divine being to itself. The relations are different but since they are relations of the essence they are nothing over and above the divine essence. A more Eastern Orthodox view (me) would take the divine persons to be coinhering ways of being, similar to the relation between a mind and its thought and a mind and its life. This is how the Cappadocian Fathers tend to speak of the matter.
The Father is distinct in that he has his own hypostatic or personal properties that distinguish him qua person from the Son. But he is not another entity, object or being other than the One God. That is what separation would entail, namely three Gods.
The Son prays to the Father as a distinct divine person who acts humanly via his human natural powers, which is why for example that Jesus has a human intellect and a human will, hence two wills.
It is important to note that asking questions does not amount to actual demonstrations of a problem. If you think Trinitarianism is inconsistent on this point, then you bear the burden of proof to show why.
You write that any theology that goes beyond the text of scripture will be inconsistent. I am wondering how exactly did you find this out? Second, does going beyond Scripture mean, going beyond the mere words of scripture or beyond its sense? If the former, this reduces to absurdity, not the least reason of which is that Jesus notes that people mistake the meaning of the words and draw the wrong conclusions. If the latter, then guilty as charged, but that is innocuous since it is impossible to understand the words apart from conceptualizing the meaning of those words.
By dig deeper, I meant you could learn alot from people wiser than yourself, particularly that the Church has acknowledged as such. If for example you read Basil's Against Eunomius you would not have had as much difficulty in understanding how things could be distinct and not separate. This is not to chide you but to give you a concrete example.
As far as extra-biblical teaching, well if we restrict ourselves to the scriptures in the way you seem to suggest, then we will have to reject the scriptures as a whole. The reason is simple, The formal list of books is not taught by Scripture. That is an extrabiblical teaching handed on by the apostolic ministry of bishops and codified in councils. Either we have to make an exception here for some extrabiblical teaching which is ad hoc or your restriction is entails that we reject the scriptures as a whole, which is a dead end.
You ask me to show you where scripture uses trinitarian technical terms, but this is fallacious. First it is an instance of the word concept fallacy. If scripture expresses the concept it doesn't matter that it doesn't contain the technical terms. Technically scripture contains no English words for example. Scripture doesn't contain or describe itself as "the bible" either.
Second, scripture teaches that there is one true God the Father who eternally begets the Son and from the Father the Spirit proceeds, all prior to the creation. I don't need it to use the technical terms to know it expresses what the technical terms express.
As far as defining God, I am not defining God. Following what Scripture expresses is not a technical definition. It does not provide an analysis or comprehension of what God is. It only provides language and concepts for how to speak and think about what God has revealed. This is why the Church Fathers for example say it is impossible to know or cash out what it is for the Father to beget the Son. So there is no definition here, but rather regulative structures so that we follow what scripture expresses.