Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| What the Doctrine of the Catholic Faith is Concerning the Trinity.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 4.—What
the Doctrine of the Catholic Faith is Concerning the
Trinity.
7. All those Catholic expounders of
the divine Scriptures, both Old and New, whom I have been able to
read, who have written before me concerning the Trinity, Who is
God, have purposed to teach, according to the Scriptures, this
doctrine, that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit
intimate a divine unity of one and the same substance in an
indivisible equality;25
| 25
[Augustin teaches the Nicene doctrine of a
numerical unity of essence in distinction from a specific unity.
The latter is that of mankind. In this case there is
division of substance—part after part of the specific nature
being separated and formed, by propagation, into individuals. No
human individual contains the whole specific nature. But in the
case of the numerical unity of the Trinity, there is no division of
essence. The whole divine nature is in each divine person. The
three divine persons do not constitute a species—that is, three
divine individuals made by the division and distribution of one
common divine nature—but are three modes or “forms”
(Phil. ii. 6) of one
undivided substance, numerically and identically the same in
each.—W.G.T.S.] |
and therefore that they are not three Gods, but one God: although
the Father hath begotten the Son, and so He who is the Father is
not the Son; and the Son is begotten by the Father, and so He who
is the Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the
Father nor the Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and of the
Son, Himself also co-equal with the Father and the Son, and
pertaining to the unity of the Trinity. Yet not that this Trinity
was born of the Virgin Mary, and crucified under Pontius Pilate,
and buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven,
but only the Son. Nor, again, that this Trinity descended in the
form of a dove upon Jesus when He was baptized;26
nor that, on the day of Pentecost,
after the ascension of the Lord, when “there came a sound from
heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind,”27
the same Trinity “sat upon each of
them with cloven tongues like as of fire,” but only the Holy
Spirit. Nor yet that this Trinity said from heaven, “Thou art my
Son,”28
whether when
He was baptized by John, or when the three disciples were with Him
in the mount,29
or when the
voice sounded, saying, “I have both glorified it, and will
glorify it again;”30
but that it was a word of the Father only, spoken to the Son;
although the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as they are
indivisible, so work indivisibly.31
| 31
[The term Trinity denotes the Divine essence in
all three modes. The term Father (or Son, or Spirit) denotes the
essence in only one mode. Consequently, there is something in the
Trinity that cannot be attributed to any one of the Persons, as
such; and something in a Person that cannot be attributed to the
Trinity, as such. Trinality cannot be ascribed to the first Person;
paternity cannot be ascribed to the Trinity.—W.G.T.S.] |
This is also my faith, since it is the Catholic faith.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
