I have a God Question

[Angry Dragon]

I was brought up in a Protestant religion so forgive me if I word my views of the Catholic religion incorrectly.

It is my understanding that Catholics believe in one God, and that one God is made up of three different personalities.

The other day I was having a discussion with a Catholic friend and he said he was taught that Jesus was not a god but he was just a man.
I told him that he just disavowed a large part of the Catholic faith. He did believe that Jesus was the son of God, just not a god himself.

So the question being: Was Jesus a god??

[hedgehog]

1. I think your buddy must have been looking out the window the

day the Trinity was discussed.

Consider whatever caused the Universe to happen. Now consider that whatever a Whoever.

Realize that that Whoever actually cares about trivial things like a sparrow, and imagine the concern that Whoever has about us.

Consider that Whoever loves us so much, Whoever can't help being one of us. That before the Universe was made, before we were more than a lemur in a tree, Whoever was one of us.

Consider that Whoever loves us so much, that Love becomes something I can't even describe.

For us to talk about the Trinity is like describing sound to a deaf person. A deaf person may feel vibrations, but can a deaf person ever really understand sound?

[Angry Dragon]

2. Thank you for answering

I have read a number of your posts and answers within posts and I must say that I am disappointed in your answer here. It does not seem to be up to your standards.

I assume you are not deaf so therefore I would think that you would have trouble understanding what a deaf person understands about sound. They may understand sound better than a person that hears.

So here I am trying to understand the Catholic teachings of the Trinity and how the parts fit together. I am just trying to find an answer to pass along to my friend and gain a better understanding for myself.

With understanding other' beliefs perhaps we can come closer to tolerance and less hate in the world.

[hedgehog]

3. I'm sorry for offending you with my clumsiness.

I was trying to catch some sense of the Mystery of the Trinity, Mystery as in deeper than we can ever imagine. I was going to say that for us to explain the Trinity is like trying to explain the concept of blue to a person blind since birth. I opted for the other metaphor because while a totally blind person apparently has no idea about sight, I assume most deaf people have some inkling of sound since many can feel vibrations.

From the Catechism:

253 The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the "consubstantial Trinity". The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: "The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God." In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), "Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature."

234 The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the "hierarchy of the truths of faith". The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men "and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin".

480 Jesus Christ is true God and true man, in the unity of his divine person; for this reason he is the one and only mediator between God and men.

469 The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He is truly the Son of God who, without ceasing to be God and Lord, became a man and our brother:

"What he was, he remained and what he was not, he assumed", sings the Roman Liturgy. And the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom proclaims and sings: "O only-begotten Son and Word of God, immortal being, you who deigned for our salvation to become incarnate of the holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, you who without change became man and were crucified, O Christ our God, you who by your death have crushed death, you who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us!"

http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

So that's the official teaching, which is very clear that Jesus is both God and Man.

I think when we try to get too precise with words in discussing the Trinity, we get farther from the truth. I prefer to use imagery myself, but then that's me. Perhaps music might be a better medium.


Edit - here is the Creed - the core beliefs of the Church from the Council of Nicaea of 325. this Council was a gathering of all the bishops called together by the Roman Emperor Constantine to settle the question of the nature of Jesus. It is recited at every Mass:

We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation

he came down from heaven:

by the power of the Holy Spirit

he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again

in accordance with the Scriptures;

he ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,

and his kingdom will have no end

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of Life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come. Amen.

[Angry Dragon]

4. I was not offended

I just thought by reading your other answers in other posts that you fell below your usual posts.

Thank you for this answer, however would you care to take a crack at it in your own words?? Just asking.........

I have found over the years that when is asked to explain something to one who has no knowledge of something one is forced to search inside, dig deep down, and try to grasp what they really feel, think, and believe. To explain the color brown to a blind person. That is hard because one has to exist in two worlds. One of sight and one of not seeing. One has to enter into that other person also to try to make sense of their words and world. We go through life taking things for granted. Sight, hearing, touch, etc. Do we really understand these things, or is it not understood by us until these things are taken away??

I would venture a guess that a deaf person truly understands hearing and sounds much more than a hearing person. What is sound except vibration of air. They can feel that much more than a hearing person. Just some of my thoughts.

[Matilda]

5. Jesus was not "a god",

Because the Catholic church, and all Christian denominations teach us that there is only one God, a belief we have in common with Jews and Muslims. There is a difference, implied in the use of the capital letter.

But your friend was wrong in his assumption that Jesus was a mere man; the Catholic Church teaches us that Jesus was fully human and fully divine.

As a human, Jesus felt fully all human needs and emotions – he got hungry, thirsty, and tired; he felt love, anger, and pain. He didn't know everything in his human form that the divine part of him would have known.

The divine aspect is the harder one to understand – Paul explained it as Jesus putting away his divinity in order to live among us as human, and that's the best understanding I have. But I think his inherent divinity must have given him a special grace that enabled him to remain always close to the Father and carry out his will in spite of the very human doubts and fears he felt.

Do I understand it? No. It's one of the great Mysteries of faith.

[Angry Dragon]

6. Hedgehog #3 post above

has copied some things from the catechism that states otherwise.

I am curious by what you mean as divine?? I am lost for a definition that works for me.

[Matilda]

7. In what way is the catechism different?

It references the nature of the Trinity, and states that Jesus "is true God and true man", i.e. fully divine and fully human.

It's a very difficult concept for us ordinary mortals to grasp; that's why it's called a "Mystery of Faith" – something we may not fully understand, but accept on trust as part of our faith.

"Divine" refers to something that is connected to God, or comes from God. I'm sorry if that doesn't work for you, but there is no other meaning.

[hedgehog]

8. I think the problem here may be vocabulary - Matilda and I are both

saying that yes, Jesus is God. Now, try to explain what that means - that's the mystery. People get all wound up over whether is Jesus is God, it really counts about dying on the cross because of course, God would be able to stand pain , or did Baby Jesus know he was God, etc.

I think the important thing to take away from all this is what Jesus said about God, that we each and every one of us is important to God. Jesus calls God Father, and by father he means the guy who had the Prodigal son.

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. The nature of the Holy Trinity and the three Persons who comprise it

jointly and severally are mysteries that the human mind will never be able to understand in the sense of that word that is familiar to us.

The deeper the mystery, the more paradoxical it will be, seems to be the rule, and this applies just as much apparently to the physical world, physicists have been discovering, as to the world of the spirit that we know. In fact, the further their understanding has penetrated our physical universe both, at the microcosmic and the macrocosmic levels, the more such paradoxes/mysteries abound; Consequently, they now seem to be reduced to conjecture as to the the ultimate nature of matter.

It took the Fathers of the Church - the successors of the Apostles, if not always in terms of the Church hierarchy - centuries to tease out essentially what Matilda said, that there is one God, consisting of three Persons in one nature; each is God, individually, as well as jointly, as one God!

The catechism is drawn from Christ's Gospel teachings and the Jewish religion he was himself taught as a child. Philip was baffled as to the nature of the Father, a common occurence with the Apostles in a host of matters, where Jesus found it difficult to grasp how little his created brothers and sisters by adoption, understood heavenly matters, compared to himself. Being true Man as well as true God, he learned experientially as he grew up, in the same way that we do - except that he was obviously more receptive to spiritual enlightement, despite having chosen the essentially normal limitations of a human incarnation.

"Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father. That is all we need."
Jesus answered, "Philip, I have been with you for a long time. So you should know me. The person that has seen me has seen the Father too. So why do you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you truly believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The things I have told you don't come from me. The Father lives in me, and he is doing his own work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or believe because of the miracles I have done."

[cleveramerican]

10. God and man both

a little hard to wrap your head around
this is where faith comes in.

St Patrick explained it with the shamrock
three leaves make one

[hedgehog]

11. It's funny that this story explaining the Trinity is so closely associated with

the Irish. I believe they had several gods/goddesses who wore three faces, and they also had myths about persons traveling through several incarnations. It's not the Trinity, but it does open the mind to possibilities.

The other story about the Trinity goes as follows:

A future saint (Augustine?) is walking along the beach trying to puzzle out the Trinity. He encounters a small child pouring water into a hole. The child explans he is attempting to pour the entire sea into the hole he dug. The saint explains that this is impossible. "Just so", the child rejoins, " you can not pour the Mystery of the Trinity into your head." and vanishes.