 |
| Author | Post |
|---|
Ave_Girl
Moderator
| Joined: | Wed Nov 7th, 2007 |
| Location: | Ohio USA |
| Posts: | 172 |
| First Name: | Mary Clare | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Cradle Catholic |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Mon May 19th, 2008 02:03 pm |
|
After reading Dave A's post on the immutability of God a question I've pondered before came to mind. How is it that Jesus' glorified physical body is now in heaven as a part of the Trinity if God is Spirit and immaterial? Also, if God is immutable, changeless, outside of time, how could Jesus' Body in time come to exist within the Triune God? The CCC says "Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father: 'by the Father's right hand we understand the glory and honor of divinity, where he who exists as Son of God before all ages, indeed as God, of one being with the Father, is seated bodily after he became incarnated and his flesh was glorified." (CCC 663) (bold added) I guess I just don't understand how God could remain changeless and yet at one point Jesus' Body be taken up and be at the right hand of the Father.
Any takes on this would be greatly appreciated!
____________________
~Mary Clare Piecynski~
Coming Home Network Staff
740-450-1175 ext 105
maryp@chnetwork.org
|
|
|
Annie
Banned
| Joined: | Wed Feb 14th, 2007 |
| Location: | Columbus, Ohio USA |
| Posts: | 731 |
| First Name: | Annie | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | nothing, Quaker, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican, Catholic |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Mon May 19th, 2008 06:05 pm |
|
| This is why some smart saint or other said the man who tries to understand the Trinity will go mad.
____________________
Annie
Ora et labora
|
|
|
Ave_Girl
Moderator
| Joined: | Wed Nov 7th, 2007 |
| Location: | Ohio USA |
| Posts: | 172 |
| First Name: | Mary Clare | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Cradle Catholic |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Mon May 19th, 2008 07:23 pm |
|
I spoke with Jim here in the office and he explained that since the human nature of Jesus is not eternal therefore, it could not have existed from all eternity in the Trinity. The hypostatic union happened in time "He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the Virgin Mary" it is not eternal. To quote again the passage from the CCC Jesus "is seated bodily AFTER he became incarnate and his flesh was glorified." (CCC 663)
God bless!
Last edited on Tue May 27th, 2008 09:36 pm by Dave Armstrong
____________________
~Mary Clare Piecynski~
Coming Home Network Staff
740-450-1175 ext 105
maryp@chnetwork.org
|
|
|
Dave Armstrong
Network Apologist
| Joined: | Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 |
| Location: | Melvindale, Michigan USA |
| Posts: | 1627 |
| First Name: | Dave | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Evangelical (1977): Diverse Protestant Influences / Catholic in 1990 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Mon May 19th, 2008 11:06 pm |
|
Hi Mary Clare,
Yep, Jim said what I woulda said. The Incarnation is the Great Exception to the timelessness and immateriality of the Triune God, since in it God enters human time and takes on human flesh. It's in time and isn't eternal. God can interact with the temporal order without being subject to it. But God the Son voluntarily "lowered himself" as it teaches in Philippians.
Recently, I was disputing with someone who seemed to think that God was actually in time. But how could He be in time and create the universe? What would be the reference point with no matter to measure it? I think it is logically impossible, yet he believes this.
____________________
I'm happy to offer whatever theological & personal assistance I can. My blog, Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, contains 2000+ papers & web pages (absolutely free) & 16 apologetic books (for sale):
http://www.biblicalcatholic.com/
|
|
|
Dave Armstrong
Network Apologist
| Joined: | Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 |
| Location: | Melvindale, Michigan USA |
| Posts: | 1627 |
| First Name: | Dave | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Evangelical (1977): Diverse Protestant Influences / Catholic in 1990 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Mon May 19th, 2008 11:22 pm |
|
The Incarnation and Hypostatic Union are in time. They had a beginning point, which was the conception of Jesus. Therefore, the glorification of Jesus' resurrected Body is also a temporal event (which is, I think, a big component of the significance of the Ascension).
When we say "God never changes" we are talking about the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Logos: all eternal and immaterial Persons of the Triune Godhead. Jesus is eternal, but He was not eternally the incarnate Messiah, with a body. That began when He was conceived in the Virgin Mary.
God the Father experiences all events as "now" but it doesn't follow that Jesus was always in heaven with a glorified body. As far as I understand it (and I'm always perfectly willing to be corrected by Church teaching), that's not true.
On the other hand, there is mystery even in the Incarnation because of the timeless aspect of the Cross. I wrote in my book, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism (p. 99):
Some verses in Revelation state that the "prayers of the saints" are being offered at the altar in the form of incense (8:3-4; cf. 5:8-9). But the climactic scene of this entire glorious portrayal of heaven occurs in Revelation 5:1-7. Verse 6 describes "a Lamb standing as though it had been slain." Since the Lamb (Jesus, of course) is revealed as sitting in the midst of God's throne (5:6, 7:17, 22:1,3; cf. Matthew 19:28, 25:31, Hebrews 1:8), which is in front of the golden altar (8:3), then it appears that the presentation of Christ to the Father as a Sacrifice is an ongoing (from God's perspective, timeless) occurrence, precisely as in Catholic teaching. Thus the Mass is no more than what occurs in heaven, according to the clear revealed word of Scripture. When Hebrews speaks of a sacrifice made once (7:27), this is from a purely human, historical perspective (which Catholicism acknowledges in holding that the Mass is a "re-presentation" of the one Sacrifice at Calvary). However, there is a transcendent aspect of the Sacrifice as well.
Last edited on Tue May 27th, 2008 09:38 pm by Dave Armstrong
____________________
I'm happy to offer whatever theological & personal assistance I can. My blog, Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, contains 2000+ papers & web pages (absolutely free) & 16 apologetic books (for sale):
http://www.biblicalcatholic.com/
|
|
|
David W. Emery
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Brownsville, Texas USA |
| Posts: | 2072 |
| First Name: | David | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Catholic |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Tue May 20th, 2008 12:00 am |
|
Recently, I was disputing with someone who seemed to think that God was actually in time. But how could He be in time and create the universe? What would be the reference point with no matter to measure it? I think it is logically impossible, yet He believes this.
Yes, it is logically impossible. Time is a measure of material motion, not of logical anteriority and posteriority. God being pure spirit and logically anterior to created existence, he could not have been in time in the creation of everything else that is.
The Incarnation and Hypostatic Union are in time. They had a beginning point, which was the conception of Jesus.
The Fathers of the Church tell us that God entered his own creation in the incarnation. This is tantamount to saying that he entered time, for this creation is where time has its being. In Christ’s ascension and glorification, he takes his human nature back into eternity with him.
David
|
|
|
Dave Armstrong
Network Apologist
| Joined: | Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 |
| Location: | Melvindale, Michigan USA |
| Posts: | 1627 |
| First Name: | Dave | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Evangelical (1977): Diverse Protestant Influences / Catholic in 1990 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Tue May 20th, 2008 07:49 pm |
|
A mystery is not something we cannot comprehend at all; it is, rather, something that we can understand to a degree, but not totally. There are things about it we can indeed perfectly comprehend, within our inherent creaturely limitations and vantage-point. We can by analogy, or parable or approximation to something we do know. We can say a number of "correct" things about a Christian mystery, but in the end our knowledge is incomplete because we are finite creatures.
Even our friends the Eastern Orthodox, who emphasize the incomprehensibility of God (and often -- wrongly -- accuse Catholics of being "hyper-rational"), nevertheless engage in much sophisticated theology proper (of God) just as we do. They accept dogmas as we do. They have developed doctrines as we do, through rational reflection over centuries. They even develop their own distinctive doctrines of the last 1000 years (though many try to deny that they do this: an example is the theology of St. Gregory Palamas, that I have written about). Many of the greatest theologians in the patristic period were from the East. But they recognize the ultimate mystery.
We can make correct statements insofar as we can comprehend it. The incarnation was an event in time, but the effect is timeless. We don't have to conflate the two: deny that it was in time because it had a connection with the timelessness. Jesus was not eternally in heaven with a glorified body, because there was a time when He had no body at all. When He helped God the Father create the universe He was a spirit. We're not forced to think illogically. We only have to recognize where our rational understanding stops and simple faith kicks in.
We can understand these things to an extent. We don't have to regard them as literal gibberish utterly incomprehensible to us, as if they were some complicated scientific or mathematical formula or Sanskrit.
Jesus was conceived in the Virgin Mary. He "became man." That was an event in time. Prior to that, God did not have a physical body (in fact it was heresy to believe so: as JWs and Mormons and others believe about the Father).
God can enter time because He is outside of time. He created time. He can interact with that which He created, by the nature of the case. It's not contradictory. There is nothing illogical or impossible about that. God can enter time if He so chooses, just as He became a man.
Catholics believe (above all, St. Thomas Aquinas, who has often been proclaimed the preeminent Catholic theologian) that faith and reason exist in harmony, not conflict. The presence of mystery and things difficult to fully comprehend does not change this.
It's like saying: "I can't fully comprehend the theory of relativity; therefore it is irrational and contradictory." That doesn't follow. All this tells anyone is that I am limited in understanding that particular thing: not the logical or illogical status of the thing itself. Logic is something objective, outside of us.
What we do is take baby steps in trying to understand Christian mysteries, as much as we can (as far as reason can take us). So. e.g., by analogy, we could note the Doppler effect: where a car horn of a car passing by changes pitch. We heard a different pitch than the person in the car heard. The sound was relative to the person: doesn't make it a "contradiction." So this helps the layman start to understand how things can be relative to the observer, and that is one of the beginning premises of relativity, that has been proven by various scientific means in the last 100 years or so.
Logic, however (at least classical logic) is not relative.
A true logical impossiblity is a statement like the following:
1) God exists and doesn't exist.
2) God created the earth and the moon to always be in the same place at the same time.
3) A square is a circle.
4) Dave Armstrong was born on July 30, 1958 and also on June 30, 1968.
5) The Detroit Lions won the Super Bowl (just a joke, folks!!!)
Christian mysteries are not examples of self-defeating logical impossibilities like these at all.
Last edited on Tue May 27th, 2008 09:42 pm by Dave Armstrong
____________________
I'm happy to offer whatever theological & personal assistance I can. My blog, Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, contains 2000+ papers & web pages (absolutely free) & 16 apologetic books (for sale):
http://www.biblicalcatholic.com/
|
|
|
Current time is 08:32 pm | |
|
|
|
|
|
