The works attributed to Mary are salvation from sin, redemption, and mediation; she ascended bodily into Heaven and has returned bodily to Earth on several occasions to speak an authoritative word of God. Feeding miracles and healing miracles like those of Jesus have also been attributed to Mary by the Catholic Church.
Thirdly, Roman Catholic teaching on the sacramental system controls and diminishes the work of the Holy Spirit. For example, the gifts of the Spirit are not freely communicated when and where God chooses, but are only transferred through oil in the sacrament of confirmation. Likewise, cleansing from sin is not freely given by the Spirit through faith, but only by the holy water used in the sacrament of baptism.
These things distort God as Trinity so much that we may be using the same word but we mean very different things by it. I think we need to speak more clearly on this to help Protestants understand Roman Catholicism better and to help Roman Catholics to understand God better.
As far as calling Catholics creedal, and implying that we share common beliefs, I also think this language can obscure important differences. There is a great deal at stake when it comes to understanding Roman Catholicism correctly. If we as Christians think that most Roman Catholics are saved because they believe in the creeds and the Trinity then we are less likely to evangelize them personally or develop strategies to share the gospel with the many Catholics around us.
The result of this is that there are so few Catholics hearing the gospel and coming to evangelical churches in Australia that we cannot measure them statistically! There is also a question about whether emphasizing the things we have in common with Catholics is a wise strategy at present when the Roman Catholic church whilst not fundamentally changing is working very hard to present themselves to the world as being the same as evangelicals by obscuring any differences.
And the fourth is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man [ To Autolycus ]. The Church expresses her trinitarian faith by professing a belief in the oneness of God in whom there are three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The three divine Persons are only one God because each of them equally possesses the fullness of the one and indivisible divine nature. They are really distinct from each other by reason of the relations which place them in correspondence to each other.
First Nicaea defined the divinity of the Son and wrote the part of the Creed that deals with the Son. This council was called to deal with the heresy known as Arianism, which claimed that the Son was a supernatural being but not God. First Constantinople defined the divinity of the Holy Spirit and wrote the part of the Creed that deals with the Spirit. This council dealt with a heresy known as Macedonianism because its advocates were from Macedonia which denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit.
The Trinity can only be proved through the divine revelation that Jesus brought us. It cannot be proved by natural reason or from the Old Testament alone.
The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:. Although the vocabulary used to express the doctrine of the Trinity took time to develop, we can demonstrate the different aspects of the doctrine from Scripture.
The fact that there is only one God was already made clear in the Old Testament. For example, the book of Isaiah proclaims:. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me [Isaiah ].
The Father is proclaimed as God numerous times in the New Testament. For example, St. Paul declares:. There is. This is proclaimed in a variety of places in the New Testament, including at the beginning of the Gospel of John:. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father [John , 14].
In the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit is portrayed as a divine Person who speaks and who can be lied to:. The distinction of the persons can be shown, for example, in the fact that Jesus speaks to his Father. This would make no sense if they were one and the same person. What difference does it make to my life whether God is one or three or 15?
A good place to start is by looking at what the Church teaches about the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity arose from a careful reading of the Bible and from a sustained reflection on who Jesus is.
If Jesus claims to be God by forgiving sins e. Mk , Lk and by his unique relationship to the Father e. Jn , then how can it still be true that there is only one God, also a fundamental truth of the Bible e.
Deut , 1 Cor ? Would there not be at least two Gods — the Father and the Son — or does the Son have some other status, like a demigod or an angel? These questions drove centuries of discussion in the early Church, and they have brought forth some of the most beautiful theological writings about the nature of God and the person of Christ.
That is why the Catechism says that the Trinity is the fundamental teaching of the faith, because it is the answer to the primary question of all of theology: who is God?
If we cannot answer that question, or at least begin to answer it, the rest of the faith would be emptied of its meaning, since our whole faith is about relationship with God and through God, with our neighbor. If we get God wrong, we get religion wrong and we can end up worshipping a false image of God that we have in our mind, which is ultimately idolatry. God is a communion of persons — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — only one God, having only one divine nature, but existing in three persons who can be named, not because they are three separate some things, but because they are three distinct some ones.
This revelation about God is no small matter. It means that God in himself is relational. It means that, as St. Augustine therefore explains the Trinity in this way: if you see love, you see the three — the one who loves the Father , the one who is loved the Son and the love itself the Holy Spirit. What he loves is himself, and in that love, there is both perfect unity and perfect relationship.
Now we can begin to see why the Catechism speaks of this mystery as central not only to our faith but also to our life. When you love aright, you do so by means of God, who is love; just what kind of love is revealed by Jesus Christ, and we can read about it in the gospels. Jesus also invites us to share in this same love, to be his friends Jn and to join his fellowship 1 Jn God, therefore, is the end goal of our love, the means by which we love, and has provided an example of how to love.
It is precisely this love which God offers to us in Christ, because Christ is not simply a messenger or an angel, but he himself is God, the very incarnation of love.
To put it succinctly, the Trinity is the central mystery of Christian life because love — or charity — is both the goal and the means of the entire Christian life. After all, what we want most, even on a purely human level, is to love and be loved, to know and be known. We want to have perfect harmony within ourselves and with everyone else — be they friends, family, coworkers or strangers — without losing who we are uniquely.
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