History of Philosophy | 18 Middle and Neo-Platonism

[Thomas]

Debates about the Trinity almost always center on Christology. Once in awhile pneumatology figures in (But usually only if someone brings up the idea of Binitarianism by contrast). Almost never is Paterology mentioned.

That's a given.

It's almost as if God as he might have been known or thought of amongst the Jews, disappears or fades into the background in Christian theology.

Oh, I don't see that at all. I think scholarship shows that God Most High, the very God of Israel, was, as Hart says "was beyond all immediate contact with the created order" to the Jews and Christians of Jesus' day.

In fact, in that sense it was jesus' teaching that brought the Father close.

One of the reasons I am baffled by the concept of the trinity is to me it feels like it conceals God, even if, at least hypothetically, it is considered a way to reveal God.

It reveals God the Father in a way that surpasses all else, and in the Trinity, in union, reveals the Father intimately.

 

[Thomas]

The rest of McClellan's presentation is in much the same light.

7:49 “... so now we got John 8:58 ...”
John 8:58-59 “Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I tell you, before Abraham came to be, I AM. So they took up stones, in order to cast them at him; but Jesus was hidden and departed from the Temple [, passing right through their midst and so slipping away].”
I have dealt with the relevant ego eimi statements above, at #137.

13:22 “so it is through possession of the Divine name, the authorized bearing of the Divine name, that Jesus can say I am, can identify with it, and this is what facilitates the mutual indwelling between Jesus and God this is what allows Jesus to say I and the father are one.”
The qualification ‘can identify with it’ is weak. John 16:15 says, “All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine.” So Jesus, being in possession of all the Father is, can say ‘I am’ with the same weight and authority ...

13:39 “one Jesus is not saying I am God Jesus is saying I am the authorized possessor and bearer of the Divine name I am God’s image or agent I speak on behalf of God on Earth ... “
Jesus does declare His divinity, just not as God the Father, but as God the Son who possesses ‘all that the Father has’ – His essence, His substance and His name, and to Jesus alone is it ‘given’ (although made known to Moses) ... and there’s a huge distinction between ‘image’ and ‘agent’, in that anyone can be an agent of God – angel, prophet, priest, king – but the image belongs to the Son alone.

His ‘divine image’ exegesis I find questionable, in the light of Leviticus 26:1 “Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God.”
Stones were raised by the Jews as memorials and markers, but not as Divine Images – that was pagan practice.
Neither architecture of the Temple nor or the Ark of the Covenant are a ‘Divine Image'.

15:44 “to see me is to see God and we see Thomas realized this in John 20:28 where he falls down and says my Lord and my God he finally gets it”
Thomas says “ho kyrios mou kai ho theos mou” – I offer Hart’s commentary on the text:
“Here, Thomas addresses Jesus as ‘ho theos’, which unambiguously means ‘God’ in the absolute sense. He addresses him also as ho kyrios, again with the honorific article, which also happens to be the Greek rendering of the Hebrew Adonai in the Septuagint, the preferred textual circumlocution for God’s unutterable name, the tetragrammaton (YHWH). Thomas’s words here, then, appear to be the final theological statement of the Gospel at its “first ending.” (Hart agrees with other scholars that Chapter 21 was a later addendum.)

In short, I find Hart's reading of John more insightful than McClellan's, which too readily glosses over difficult terrain.

 

[TheLightWithin]

Debates about the Trinity almost always center on Christology. Once in awhile pneumatology figures in (But usually only if someone brings up the idea of Binitarianism by contrast)

Almost never is Paterology mentioned.

That's a given.

Why?
Why wouldn't Paterology and Pneumatology be equal parts of the discussion of the Trinity if they are equal parts of the trinity?

 

[TheLightWithin]

It reveals God the Father in a way that surpasses all else, and in the Trinity, in union, reveals the Father intimately.

???

 

[Thomas]

Why?
Why wouldn't Paterology and Pneumatology be equal parts of the discussion of the Trinity if they are equal parts of the trinity?

I think they are? One really can't discuss Trinity without involving all Three Persons?

The poor state of Christian education is a separate topic, a different order of issue.

To be a good Christian, to be a saint in the sense of an embodied virtue, does not require a theological insight into the Trinity – that's for those of whom find the subject intoxicating.

The majority of Christians, and most saints, I would have thought, have no need of metaphysics ... their faith suffices.

 

[Thomas]

???

That's paterology from a Trinitarian position.

No-one has ever seen God (the Father), because God (the Father) is above all forms, all distinctions, all determinations.

The Son is God and the 'face of God', the Logos, the firstborn of all things in that all things subsist in Him (the Alpha and the Omega – the Cause and End of all being). It is the Son who 'reveals' the Father.

The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, is the Indwelling Presence, the immanent apprehension of the transcendent Divine. as such it is a 'dark knowing' and a 'mystery', but it is known and made real within the individual soul as presence, of Itself and, simultaneously, the reveals the self to itself, and in so doing reveals the Son who reveals the Father both in a love poured out and a love received.

 

[Tony Bristow-Stagg]

The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, is the Indwelling Presence, the immanent apprehension of the transcendent Divine. as such it is a 'dark knowing' and a 'mystery', but it is known and made real within the individual soul as presence, of Itself and, simultaneously, the reveals the self to itself, and in so doing reveals the Son who reveals the Father both in a love poured out and a love received.

As per the Word as given by Jesus Christ, It is made real to those that are born again.

This indwelling Holy Spirit is the Essence of all God's Annointed. I see this in all the Messengers and God becomes One in all the Names.

It is Jesus that said the flesh amounts to nothing, that He would be called by a New Name and only those that accepted the New Name, that came with a New Law , as the New Heaven and the New Earth would overcome and accept Christ at the end of ages.

I offer that, all the Love that one can imagine and profess that came from Jesus Christ, can be seen in all of God's Messengers.

How else will we be gathered as One Fold under One Shepherd, God?

Regards Tony