I wish it did fit into my propositions in a way that avoided the logical dilemma! Your image is exactly the problem, in pictorial terms, of the illogic I have been highlighting.
We're just talking here RF.....there's no way I could keep up this very scholarly discussion!
Re the image....I don't know of any way, besides a one or two sentence explanation, to properly portray the Trintiy.
Like I said...any example is heresy...but I do (or I should say DID) use examples when teaching our faith to kids.
For instance,,,,the one about a man being a father, an uncle, a husband is a heresy.
The one about water being 3 different elements is a heresy.
I'm thinking that maybe we're over-thinking this....maybe we're trying to understand it too much?
Orthodox Trinitariaism is threatened on one side by accusations of tritheism (Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three Gods), and on the other by accusations of modalism (Father, Son and Holy Spirit are mere modes of the same single entity) – and while always striving to bend to neither, a bend away from one is often a bend toward the other.
Exactly! My point re the examples.
HOW to have a proper example of something that DOES NOT HAPPEN if our time/space? (or whatever it is since now even time/space is being questioned).
Thus, emphasizing the distinctiveness of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in fending off modalist challenges seems to be a nod toward tritheism; and vice versa. Here's my tentative solution:
Any defense of a tripersonal God (I prefer “triune” God, but we can use the adjectives interchangeably for now) requires two context-dependent definitions of “God” – one defining “God” as the Trinity itself, another defining “God” as a single divine person of that Trinity.
Good. I like the definiton of God being the Trinity itself.
I also like the term GODHEAD,,,,and Triune God is also good.
Understood as a single divine Person of that Trinity would then break up the Godhead if we add the 2nd Person and the Holy Spirit.
Even the way I understand the Trinity is not really correct since I'm splitting up God (modalism?)....but it's the best I can do.
Isolating the “stuff” of “Godness” may be impossible to express in human terms, but we don’t need to do so; we only need to hold that whatever that ousia may be, it subsists in each of the three “Persons” within the Trinity. It may help to use a musical analogy here, one I am indebted to Jeremy Begbie for.
Ousia meaning essence?
OK.
Yes. The 3 are of ONE SUBSTANCE...I think that would be the same as essence....
Think of a chord composed of three different notes, say the chord C major composed of the notes C, E and G. Each note is a sound, and when played together the C chord is likewise a sound. In each case the sound is recognizable as what we call “music.” By analogy of “deity” to “music,” each of the three persons, like each note of the chord, is deity (music), and together they form deity (music) through three distinct sounds (persons). But the real harmony is in the Trinity (chord). Played simultaneously, the individual notes comprising the chord are subsumed in a single identifiable sound; our ear does not immediately pick the chord apart (although we can do so intellectually, and on the sheet music). It’s just music to the ear. It’s just God.
Smile....
But you're splitting up God, like I do !
It's more like all 3 are the chord....
I think you said it best when you said it's really difficult to express this in human terms.
But "person" as an analogue of "note" here is only an approximation. It is common these days for Trinitarians to latch onto “person” as the right translation of hypostasis. Some of that is fueled by the KJV’s English translation of the word in Hebrews 1:3 as “person.” Lucian Turcescu’s Gregory of Nyssa and the Concept of Divine Persons (Oxford University Press, 2005) “proposes to explain the difference between ousia and hypostasis, two Greek words the Cappadocians used to refer to ‘substance’ and ‘person’ respectively” (p. 48). I am reluctant to translate hypostasis as “person” rather than “individuated substance.”
I don't use the KJV and I don't think it matters too much how any one particular word is translated because we then have so much theology we could learn that explains each word and/or idea in the NT.
I can't remember if it's this thread that a member brought up the idea that Jesus is not a Person....and, indeed, He is not.
Jesus was both a man with a human nature and God with a divine nature...but He was not a Person in its true meaning. Which I will never understand BTW,,,but which YOU probably can.
IF we say that Jesus was a Person....then the Trinity becomes a total of 4 Persons instead of 3.
(not that I understand this very well - a little knowledge is a dangerous thing).
Gregory of Nyssa’s Letter to Peter works out the distinction between ousia and hypostasis as relating to the different names and properties attributed to God.
“As a theological term the word hypostasis was originally used as a possible equivalent to ousia (‘being,’ or ‘existence’), as being the substratum or underlying existence of things. Cp. Heb. i. 3 (‘the express image of His being’ (hypostaseos). It was still used in this sense in the earlier years of the fourth century. But later the two terms were distinguished, and currency was given to this distinction by the formula of the Cappadocian Fathers to denote the Trinity ‘One Being’ (ousia) ‘in three persons’ (hupostaseis). The later Western term ‘person’ has different associations from hypostasis, which denotes ‘a particular centre of being.’” J.H. Srawley, The Catechetical Oration of St. Gregory of Nyssa (1903) p. 26 n. 1.
There we go....
They both sound so the same to me....but apparently they aren't or a different word would not be needed.
Ousia:
The ousia of God is God as God is. The essence, being, nature and substance of God as taught in Eastern Christianity is uncreated, and cannot be comprehended in words. According to Lossky, God's ousia is "that which finds no existence or subsistence in another or any other thing".
Hypostasis:
PHILOSOPHY
an underlying reality or substance, as opposed to attributes or to that which lacks substance.
Hypostasis (plural: hypostases), from the Greek ὑπόστασις (hypóstasis), is the underlying, fundamental state or substance that supports all of reality. It is not the same as the concept of a substance[citation needed]. In Neoplatonism, the hypostasis of the soul, the intellect (nous) and "the one" was addressed by Plotinus.[1] In Christian theology, the Holy Trinity consists of three hypostases: that of the Father, that of the Son, and that of the Holy Spirit.[2]
source: Wikipedia
I have stopped referring to the Trinity as three PERSONS in one God -- because it will trip us up needlessly. “Person” is just the wrong translation of hypostasis. With all due respect to the KJV’s translation of that word in Hebrews 1:3 as “person,” you need to consider what happens when you juxtapose -- as the Nicenes did 1700 years ago -- hypostasis with ousia. They are not the same. Students of Greek and Latin who look at hypo and stasis as mirror images of sub and stantia are falling into a trap. I don’t want to downplay the importance of Hebrews 1:3 for Greek trinitarian theology, but we should be cautious in presuming that the author of Hebrews used the word in the exact same sense as the Cappadocian Fathers did three centuries later.
They are not the same....indeed.
I copied the above paragraph and plan to discuss with someone that should be able to explain it well to me.
If I can remember,,,,I'll report back. I don't expect you to spend a lot of time doing this. Explaining, I mean.
But thanks for such a good convo!
