Dogma Synthesis
DIVINE WORD SEMINARY, Tagaytay City
Compiled by ARNOLD C. BIAGO, SVD
III. TRINITY
24. What is meant by the universality of the God-experience? Why is speaking about God a theological problem? What is meant by the analogy of being?
Ø Universality of God-experience
o Given to all human beings. It is not exclusive to Christians, even outside the Catholic Church. It is an all pervading state of man in which the reality of God is experienced.
Ø Speaking about God, a theological problem and the analogy of being
o Human ideas and concepts are not enough to know and articulate about the unfathomable and mysterious depth of God’s Being.
o Analogy of being: logical or conceptual tool to represent the transcendent Being of God. This means to say that every affirmation says something true about God (assertion) but at the same time, it contains a paradoxical element: God is not as we describe him.
25. Discuss the contemporary experience of contingency, relativity, temporality and autonomy and its relation to secularism and atheism.
Ø Contingency: This is the sense that the world and everything is the result causes that are neither necessary, rational or purposive, that what is given is ultimately arbitrary, and that beyond the given, there lies nothing, no ground, no ultimate order, no first cause, nor reason.
Ø Relativity: Nothing anywhere in experience is absolute, everything is relative to everything else and so conditioned by its relevant environment. Nothing is unchanging and self is subsistent being.
Ø Temporality: Everything is transient. There is no belief anymore in an eternal order established at the beginning of the things and has become conscious of his openness to the future. The concept of eternity and the immutability of God is therefore subverted.
Ø Autonomy: Whatever hope and meaning modern man will have must have to come to him from himself. He has to know his own truth, decide his own destiny, create his own meaning and establish his own values. This autonym is the key to human self-fulfillment, this will question any institution that requires faith, obedience and self-surrender.
Ø These experiences lead to secularism and atheism.
26. What are the classical proofs for the existence of God? What are signals of transcendence?
CLASSICAL PROOFS
Ø Moral Proof : God is the condition for the possibility of morality
Ø Mental Proof: Here an all-intelligent Being is postulated as the only explanation for the power of reason and for other non-material qualities of the mind and imagination.
Ø Existential Proof: There must be something inspiring religious experience because of inst universality (universality of religious experience.
Ø Theological Proof: there is an intelligent designer of the universe to account for its marvels.
Ø Ontological Proof: St. Anselm who mentioned God as a Being that which nothing greater can be thought of. He must necessarily exist.
Ø Cosmological Proof: Thomas Aquinas, who reasoned that each effect must have cause and that an endless chain must go back to a primordial first cause or Prime Mover, which we call God.
SIGNALS OF TRANSCENDENCE
Ø Argument from order: there is an order underlying the universe that supports and justifies the human propensities for order.
Ø Argument from play: inn play, it appeals as if one is stepping not only from one chronology to another, but from time to eternity.
Ø Argument of hope: We are always oriented towards a hope in the future which helps us to cope with the difficulties of life.
Ø Argument from damnation: there is a curse from supernatural dimension as a punishment of the offense committed.
Ø Argument from Humor: humor reflects the imprisonment of the human spirit in the world.
27. How did God reveal himself in the OT? What is the structure and content of God’s revelation in Ex. 3:15?
Ø God reveals Himself in the OT
o God revealed Himself to his people,
Ø The Structure and Content of God’s revelation in Ex
o From the analysis of Ex.
28. What kind of God did Jesus reveal? What is the NT understanding of the Father of Jesus, of his Son and of the Holy Spirit?
Kind of God Jesus reveals
Ø Jesus reveals God as “Abba”, Father. By the request of the Son, God sent the Holy Spirit. He reveals God as Trinity.
Ø For Jesus God is:
o The creator (Mk 10:8ff)
o A God who is gracious, forgiving.
o The Lord of heaven and Earth (Mt.
The NT understanding of the Father of Jesus, of his son, and of the Holy Spirit
Ø God as Father (170 times) which means:
o God as Father is connected to the reign of God, loving and merciful Father, manifests forgiveness as pure grace, not merited at all by sinful children (Lk 15:11-32)
o Father of all human beings both evil and the good (Mt
o Father of Jesus is called ABBA – meaning, familiar, intimate and personally close God. His Will must be done, name hallowed, His Kingdom must come. He is the eschatological judge who will pass sentence (Mt.
o Unconditional love – ground of all reality is love.
Ø The God-Son revealed:
o In Jesus we know there is an eternal Son. This Son is revealed to us in Jesus.
o The Son known in Jesus primarily in his life, action and preaching. In
o In the death of Jesus, we know the sonship of Jesus, revealed to us is the heart of a Son in total dedication to the Father.
o Christ is the image of the invisible God.
o In the resurrection, the disciples acknowledged the Messiaship of Jesus.
Ø The Holy Spirit
o Revealed in Jesus’ life and works, the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit from the very beginning of the life of Jesus – Baptism, Pentecost, Temptation in the Desert, etc. – his life and mission depended on the Holy Spirit.
o The Spirit reveals the Son and the Father (1 Cor
29. Discuss the historical development of the Trinitarian doctrine and the first attempts at an explanation. What was the result of the early Church’s decision in favor of the God of the philosophers?
NOTE: The answers here are not satisfactory. Please refer to other sources.
Historical Development
Ø New Testament: strictly speaking, we don’t have yet a neatly formulated doctrine of Trinity. But there is economic Trinity – the story of salvation wherein we know the Trinity.
Ø Monarchism: In OT – monotheism (Judaism)
o But here comes Jesus and the Holy Spirit, what happened to monotheism?
o In Monarchianism: the oneness of God is preserved.
o Modalist: 3 modes by which God shows himself in the history of salvation, thee ae no 3 persons but 3 modes.
o The problem: the 3 persons became not distinct 3 persons.
Ø Arianism: Arius influenced by Greeks – the Hierarchy of Beings.
o Divinity of Jesus is denied.
o Council of Nicea: Jesus is God, homoousious with the Father
Ø Nature: 3 distinctions, not tritheism or 3 gods.
o Capaduccian Fathers (Basil, Gregory of Nazanzius, & Gregory of Nyzza): Father is the giver, the Son receives, Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.
o The concept of relations: this brings about the distinction.
o They are one being, divine = hypostasis.
Ø The search for “models” to explain the intra-Trinitarian process.
o Augustine Psychological model: uses human spiritual life. Knowing the Word and in knowing oneself comes the Word. Loving = Spirit, the fruit of loving is the Spirit.
o Thomas Aquinas: Person = subsistent relation.
Ø It was only during the Council of Constantinople (381) that the formula “One God in Three Persons” was officially pronounced and formally ratified.
Result of the early Church’s decision in favor of the God of the philosophers
Ø The Christian thinkers believed that there exist a broad, common basis between God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the God of the Philosophers. The God of the Philosophers is a God of eternity. He is the unmoved mover, the first cause, an existence onto Himself. He is a God of transcendence.
Ø The Biblical concept of God is the Holy and Eternal One, far removed from man’s earthly existence. He is unseen, transcendent, and ineffable. He is the Lord of history.
Ø The attempt of the Church Fathers to reconcile Greed thought with the Biblical God to explain their faith has shaped the Christian theology. As a result, God is conceived to be One who intervenes from his position in eternity, although not an intrinsic part of history. He is devoid of emotion and feelings. He is complete, self-contained, fully perfect and without needs. He is not the cause of evil, but he permits it and he is not engaged in the struggle against it. His relationship with man is only “logical” and not “real”, otherwise he will have an accidental perfection
First attempts to an explanation
Ø Inherited from Judaism is the doctrine of the One God, the Father and Creator of all. The problem of that time was to integrate the belief brought by Jesus of Nazareth: “God revealed Himself in Jesus, offering salvation to all men through Him and pouring out his Holy Spirit upon the Church. Already imprinted on the Apostolic Tradition and in the popular faith (liturgy and kerygma), was the “plurality” of divine persons in God’s inner life. The New Testament writings were leading to a “dyadic” and triadic” patterns. It was only during the Council of Constantinople (381 AD) that the formula “One God in Three Persons” was officially pronounced and formally ratified.
30. Discuss the heresies that arose in the attempts to elaborate the Church’s Trinitarian teaching.
Ø Monarchianism: tendency to preserve the oneness of God by claiming that the Father, Son and Spirit are simply God’s way of expressing Himself in the history of salvation. Noetus of
Ø Subordinationism: preserves monotheism but described the Trinity as order of levels. Jesus is subordinate to the Father. This diminishes Jesus’ divine nature. Jesus is a second class God. Therefore he is not God. This admits three different persons in God but denies the consubstantiality of the Second and Third person with the Father, and therefore their True divinity.
o Arius (an example)
o Pneumatomachianism: Struggle against the divinity of the Holy Spirit – “Is he really God?” Holy Spirit is mere creature, a mere ministering Spirit like the angels.
31. Explain the main sources and characteristics of the classical doctrine of the Trinity.
SOURCES:
Creeds
Apostles,
Councils
CHARACTERISTICS:
Ø One Nature: Makes a thing what it is. God has one nature.
Ø Two Processions: Eternal relation of origin. How one person proceeds from the other. There are 2 Processions:
1. Jesus proceeds from the Father
2. Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.
Ø Three Persons: Hypostasis – a distinct irreducible existence in God. There are 3 Persons distinct from one another:
1. Father,
2. Son, and
3. Holy Spirit) distinct from one another.
Their distinction came from their relations.
Ø Four Relations:
1. Father is related to the Son = Fatherhood, active generation
2. Son is related to the Father = Sonship, passive generation
3. Father and Son are related to the Spirit = breathing out, active aspiration
4. Spirit is related to the Father and Son = being breathed out, passive aspiration.
Ø Five Notions: Characteristics that enable us to know each person.
1. Fatherhood – Unoriginatedness, without origin.
2. Sonship
3. Breathing Out – Father and Son
4. being breathed out
5. Perichoresis/circumincession – co-existence and inter-penetration of the divine persons by one another, mutual penetration, complete circulation of life.
Ø Agent of Action (ad extra), outside of itself, revelation, creation, etc. It is Trinity = creation – action of the Trinity.
Ø Appropriation: Some actions are attributed to one person because those actions are very close to the characteristics of that person.
o Creation = Father, unoriginated origin –n but by fact it is the Trinity that creates.
Ø Economic Trinity: The presence of the Trinity in the history of salvation history. In the history of salvation, we know that God is Trinity. As history of salvation unfolds, we come to know the Trinity.
32. Discuss some new approaches to the Trinity and their criticisms of the classical explanation of Trinitarian doctrine.
CRITICISMS TO CLASSICAL DOCTRINE
Ø It relies heavily on philosophical notions or concepts.
Ø Few references to the Bible.
Ø The focus is immanent Trinity, to the neglect of economic Trinity.
Ø Easily becomes an object of speculation (very abstract), quite divorce from life, more of the mind and not of living.
NEW APPROACHES:
Ø Rahner: Rediscover the economic Trinity. Go back to Biblical data/experience. “The Economic Trinity is the Immanent Trinity”. God is self-communication
Ø Feminist Approach – Elizabeth Johnson: “She Who is”. Critique: We only attribute maleness to God, we are one sided. We must recover the female metaphor.
Ø Liberationist Approach – Leonardo Boff: “Trinity and Society”.
§ Boff makes a comparison between qualities of the Trinity and how we are supposed to imitate it in our lives.
o Nature: We are one nature. We are equal, no competition.
o Persons: unique/distinct relations, respect one another. Relations: not in separation, not individualism. Unity in diversity.
o Perichoresis: solidarity, empathy, compassion among people.
o Procession/mission: mission to the world.
33. What are the implications of belief in the Trinity for human relationships and social structures?
If a belief in the Trinity is to be genuinely relevant to our present generation, it must be interpreted in terms of appropriate to contemporary self-understanding. That is, human beings are more aware than ever before the need for community, of the fact of change of development, often accompanied by deep suffering in human life, and finally of the distinctively bisexual character of all human relations. If the concept of God, specifically of God as triune, does not in some way reflect these all-pervasive human concerns, then it will cease to be truly relevant to present-day men and women. As a Christian country, we must respect the dogma of the Trinity, security in one’s beliefs will be more highly valued than relevance to the contemporary science.
The classical doctrine of the Trinity was the crowning point of a very impressive philosophical and theological synthesis, which embraced the totality of Christian doctrine. If there is to be successor to classical doctrine, then it can be proposed only on the basis of an equally comprehensive systematic approach to theology.
For Human Relationships
1. a radical understanding of love (1 Jn
o Love becomes a condition of divine inhabitant
o Keeping the commandments
o Love of others (1 Jn
2. Intersubjectivity only a person fulfills a love condition.
3. Fellowship of disciple has to resemble to the union of the Son with Father and has to be a union within this union. Thus, a fellowship with God and fellowship in God.
For Social Structure
1. Seeing the community/society in Trinitarian Terms.
o So Trinity corresponds to a community in which people are defined through their relations with one another and in their significance for one another and not in opposition to one another, in terms of power and possession.
2. The convergence of the individual and society to form a truly “human society” – the humanization in social structures of personality and sociality without sacrificing one or the other.
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