Yet Jesus also prayed to the Father and spoke to and about the Father as a separate Person. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 248. Why do Catholics make the Sign of the Cross? God, as a Trinity, exists in three Persons. 6 Cf. They are distinct in persons but united in one essence, which is divinity. Colossians 1:8 and has made known to us your love in the Spirit. The love between them is so real, so profound, that this love is another eternal Person-the Holy Spirit. the First Person (the Father) does not beget the Son in the sense of the act of begetting coming on top of the finished Person; it is the act of begetting, of giving oneself, of streaming forth. The living, eternal bond of love between the Father and Son is the Person of the Holy Spirit (Compendium, 48). Augustine sees the particularity of the Holy Spirit expressed precisely in this dilemma. Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott, in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, describes the Catholic belief as: The Holy Ghost Proceeds from the will or from the mutual love of the Father and the Son. But what does this mean? Father,Son And Holy Spirit The Catholic … However, the Father, Son, and Spirit are not three parts of God. Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world. . See more of Father,Son And Holy Spirit The Catholic Faith on Facebook. He pours our His life and love on the Son. Yet Jesus was clear when he talked about the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit was someone other than himself or the Father. I have not been able to find it in the catechism. The Holy Spirit as St. Augustine teaches, is the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father, poured forth for all of us. The Holy Spirit is God1.2 II. Cf. There is no teaching about God more noble, more pure, more encouraging than the Catholic and apostolic faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When he is named by that which is the divinity of God, by what the Father and Son have in common, then his essence is just that, the communio of Father and Son. a doctrine, on which the Teaching Authority of the Church has not yet finally pronounced, but whose truth is guaranteed by its intrinsic connection with the doctrine of revelation (theological conclusions). See the index of chapters from Fundamentals of Catholicism which have been reprinted to CERC here . God created us out of love, and we are created for love. I love Jesus and Mary. The result of this was that the Church developed a more sophisticated language to talk about God. Original Nicene Creed of 325 Ott gives the theological rationale for this doctrine: Scripture and Tradition ascribe the works of love to the Holy Ghost. That story may not be true, but the analogy is that just as there are three leaves on the shamrock, so there are three persons in God. Jesus was the Messiah promised by the God of Israel, and that God was one God. Further, “the Father loves not only the Son, but also Himself and us, by the Holy Ghost.” A “substance” or “nature” is what something is. Part One: Unity has Plurality (Apr 16, 2018) Part Two: God’s Love as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Apr 23, 2018) In 1919 after the end of the Paris Peace Conference, then Emir Faisal (or Feisal), along with his staff from the Arabian Peninsula, traveled with Lawrence of Arabia to London. Required fields are marked *. The story goes that St. Patrick used the shamrock to teach the Irish about the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is God2.2 II. As a Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love one another completely and entirely. This is from an exchange on the Coming Home Network forum, where I was staff moderator from 2007-2010. Your email address will not be published. What Do Catholics Believe about the Bible? When you have God’s Holy Spirit living in you, he is the Spirit of the Father and the Son (‘God’ and ‘Christ’ in the words that Romans 8:9 uses), so the Father and the Son live in you (John 14:23). The words are directly from Christopher West: Good News about Sex and Marriage: Answers to Your Honest Questions about Catholic Teaching (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Publications, 2004), p. 19. The unique relationship of Mary to the Spirit is yet again expressed through her … 2. This, too, can be helpful in understanding that there is something about God that is one and something about God that is threefold. I know that is how the Spirit is described in many explainations, but I don’t know if this would make a difference on a Jehovah Witness. Father,Son And Holy Spirit The Catholic … Media/News Company. The 11th Council of Toledo (675) declared: . The three Persons of the Trinity possess completely and co-equally the divine nature. He claimed for Himself things that belonged only to God, like the power to forgive sins. The later Athanasian Creed (not used in Eastern Christianity) describes in much greater detail the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It did not occur to him to conceive of it in any other way. Each Person loves the other Persons of the Trinity, as their very essence. Our earthly experience does not give us a lot of preparation for understanding the Trinity. Does identifying the Holy Spirit as the love that exists between the Father and the Son diminish the Spirit’s divine personhood and distinction from the Father and the Son, despite the fact that the quotation insists otherwise? 2 Corinthians 6:6 by purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love. The Holy Spirit is the third member of the divine Godhead (Trinity) and is the essence of divine love between the Father and the Son. The love of the Father for the Son is in the Father, and the love of the Son for the Father is in the Son, and the love of the Spirit for the Father and Son is in the Spirit. Does anyone know the source of this quotation? These are questions I am always confronted by friends who are not Catholics. does not impair unity of the highest being but fills it out. Contents1 Scripture1.1 I. They are not substances, personalities in the modern sense, but the relatedness whose pure actuality . . The bond of love uniting God the Father and God the Son is the Holy Spirit. However, ice, water, and vapor are three modes of being of H2O. Holy Spirit, Instructor of the faithful, help me to understand Christ’s words. Then came the Son from Him and so God became a Father..the love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit of their union as Father and Son. But the Greeks, after Photius, deny that He proceeds from the Son. . The word we use to describe this in the Nicene Creed is consubstantial. That is where we developed the use of the terms person and nature to make distinctions about God. So the love of each Person is in that Person. In one sense, it means that the Father and the Son love each other by Their own essence. Augustine, Enarationes in Psalmos68; De Trinitate VII, 1, 2.). Reflecting on this, the Church definitively teaches that the Father eternally generates the Son and that the Son is eternally generated by the Father. Holy Spirit, Substantial Goodwill of Father and Son, teach me goodwill. We even use the familial terms Father and Son to describe two Persons of the Trinity. Is He supervisor to Jesus? Holy Spirit, Divine Comforter, comfort me in all my sorrows. 9-10): [A] teaching pertaining to the Faith; theologically certain . The Nicene Creed, written at the Council of Nicea in 325 and revised at the Council of Constantinople in 381, was the result of the Church’s continued thinking about the Trinity. Another analogy for the Trinity is that God is three in one, just as H2O can exist as a solid, a liquid, and a gas. It is in the same manner that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Orthodox View: Holy Spirit from the Father Through the Son. 1450-75 (anonymous). Create New Account. Person is the pure relation of being related, nothing else. The Apostles' Creed does not explicitly affirm the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit, but in the view of many who use it, this doctrine is implicit in it. Pope Benedict XVI expressed a thought perhaps not unlike this one: [T]he “three persons” who exist in God are the reality of word and love in their attachment to each other. However, this analogy also has its limits. God loves us and wants us to know him. . When we meet other human beings, each human person possesses one human nature—there is only one nature per person and only one person per nature. . God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is both the Lover and Beloved and the Love between them. Even if one could show from Scripture that the Holy Spirit is the divine love, that He is also the mutual love of the Father and the Son would still remain to be shown. “Father” is purely a concept of relationship. Were in the scriptures did the Apostles or Jesus speak of the doctrine of the trinity.The trinity was developed many years later,by the church fathers.The Church fathers were not there when the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost.Jesus is the saving name of God.There is no other name under heaven given among men wereby we must be saved but,Jesus.The trinity puts Jesus in second place,one of the biggest lys of the,Devil. The Holy Spirit is sometimes defined as the love between the Father and the Son, and when a husband and wife express their marital love, sometimes a new human person results. Create New Account. And yet such is manifestly the teaching of Holy Scripture and the Fathers. When we defend the doctrine of the Trinity, we defend Love. He classifies it as a sententia certa belief, which means (pp. While he spoke to the Father as someone other than himself, he did also claim to be one with the Father. I love Jesus and Mary. Israel knew that there was only one God. Relationship is not something extra added to the person, as it is with us; it only exists at all as relatedness. It is identical with the act of giving. If so, why the trinity ie equal persons in one God? The Holy Spirit is God Job 33:4 – “The Spirit of God made me and the breath of the Almighty […] Recent Post by Page. “God is love” (1 John 3: 23). Does this source have roots in the Church Fathers, or traditions of the church? Log In. Get updates from Biblical Evidence for Catholicism delivered straight to your inbox. Because the Trinity goes beyond our earthly experiences, analogies may be helpful in understanding it. Filioque: Catholic-Orthodox Dialogue (William Klimon), Photo credit: The doctrine of the Filioque: The Trinity with a donor presented by St. Agricol. This helps us understand what is meant when the Church expresses its Trinitarian faith: “One God in three Persons.” Notice that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not merely three names for God or merely three ways in which the one God might appear. In another, it means that the Father and the Son “spirate,” or breathe, the love that is the Holy Spirit. The Father, from all eternity, is making a gift of himself to the Son. In God we see the Father—the “being one” and first principal of life in the Godhead—the Son—the “knowing one”—the Word who proceeds from the Father—and the Holy Spirit—the “willing one”—the bond of love between the Father and Son who proceeds as love from the Father and Son. SAINT THOMAS SAYS THAT “THE NEW LAW IS THE HOLY SPIRIT … or. This is part two of a two part series on the Trinity. The Love between the Father and the Son is so intense that it is a Person. They are three identifiable Persons, each fully God in a manner that is distinct yet related to the others (see U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults, 52). The western understanding (that became highly controversial, and was greatly misunderstood) was trying to convey that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ (Jn 15:26; Rom 8:9b; Gal 4:6; Phil 1:19; 1 Peter 11) as well as of the Father (Mt 12:28; Jn 15:26; Rom 8:9a; 1 Cor 12:3; Eph 4:30; 1 Jn 4:2). Comme nt: The foundation of all true love is the Holy Spirit. Nor should we think of the Trinity as three gods cobbled together in a corporate partnership. I need a good detail explanation with Bible refers. . Jesus also promised to send the Holy Spirit to be with his disciples after he was no longer with them in his physical body (John 14:26). Scripture describes God as love. 131-132; cf. St Augustine once enshrined this idea in the following formula: “He is not called Father with reference to himself but only in relation to the Son; seen by himself he is simply God.” Here the decisive point comes beautifully to light. In what sense, then, can we say that the Holy Spirit is the Love between the Father and the Son? Media/News Company. This love between the … or. It is, therefore, to be inferred that the Holy Ghost “proceeds” by an act of love (per modum amoris). This has to do with the filioque dispute: the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The older Roman Catechism stated that the “Holy Ghost proceeds from the Divine Will, inflamed, as it were, with love” (I, 9, 7; cited in Ott, p. 67). (p. 66). [public domain / Wikimedia Commons], Please also opt me in for Exclusive Offers from Patheos’s Partners. A person is “who” someone is. The Holy Spirit’s relation to humankind is in the embodiment of deep, personal love between God and man. Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! On the other hand, any one analogy taken too far will not describe the Trinity accurately. A husband and wife, no matter how closely united, are still two separate beings. mutual love of the Father and the Son. Obviously, a human family of three persons contains three separate human natures, not one. However, the Father, Son, and Spirit are not just modes of being. In these talks, he repeatedly and forcefully conveyed the cocept of the Holy Trinity in this way (my paraphrase): "The Father eternally begets and fathers the Son. Early Christians realized through what God had said through the Jewish prophets and through what Jesus said and did that God is one, but that God exists in three Persons. Holy Spirit… Nothing compares with it; nothing can replace it in our hearts and in our minds. We are created out of relationship for relationship. Thus the Holy Spirit proceeds from an act of willing in God — the mutual love between the Father and the Son, and so the Nicene Creed professes that he “proceeds from the Father and the Son”. Unity (as all monotheists believe), but also Trinity. For this reason the Fathers call the Holy Ghost “Love” . Furthermore, the human child begins to exist after his or her parents exist, whereas the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are coeternal (meaning that each Person of the Trinity never began to exist and will never stop existing: God always exists, without beginning or end). Faith in the Trinity, therefore, is not merely a doctrine but a dogma that shows us who God is and who we are as creatures made in his image. The Holy Spirit is sometimes defined as the love between the Father and the Son, and when a husband and wife express their marital love, sometimes a new human person results. This picture of the Spirit as the mutual love between the Father and Son goes back to Augustine who wrote: “And the Holy Spirit, according to the Holy Scriptures, is neither of the Father alone, nor of the Son alone, but of both; and so intimates to us a mutual love, wherewith the Father and the Son … For Exclusive Offers from Patheos ’ s love the familial terms Father and Son... 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