Zaccheus

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  1. Hello. I’m formerly LDS (Utah-raised, mission, temple marriage, etc.) and now a Roman Catholic. I am also a chrismated Eastern Orthodox Christian, though I have returned to communion with the pope in Rome. Both comprise the ancient Catholic Church of the Nicene Creed, along with the Copts, the Syrian Orthodox churches, Armenians, and the Nestorian Church of the East. Anyway, to the OP: a few comments. When you say the Bible is an LDS book, which Bible do you mean? The truncated KJV used by LDS and some Protestants? The original KJV that included the deuterocanonicals (Apocrypha)? The Greek Bible (with the Septuagint for the OT) used by Catholic churches of the Byzantine Rite, both those who are and aren’t in communion with Rome? The Syriac Peshitta? The Coptic Bible, whose OT is the Septuagint plus the Book of Enoch? Since you’re LDS, I assume you’re only referring to the Bible in your quad and saying the LDS KJV is an LDS book. When you say the Catholic Church took control of the scriptures and regulated them, it sounds like you’re not aware of this variety of Bibles in the Catholic tradition. Which Catholic Church are you referring to? It sounds like you’re referring to the Roman branch only. Your essay will benefit from some historical nuance. The various Catholic Churches I’ve mentioned have different Old Testaments, but all share the same New Testament, originally agreed to and canonized by Catholic Bishop representatives from all traditions (Latin, Greek, Syriac, Persian), meeting in a series of regional councils in the 4th century (centuries before the Latin, Roman Catholic branch of Catholicism was the monolithic institution it is today, by the way). When non-Catholics discuss the Apostasy and things like the Catholic Church “controlling the Bible” (or the Crusades, inquisitions, bad popes, indulgences, unmarried priests, the Reformation, etc), many aren’t aware that all of that applies ONLY to the Latin-Rite church, the Roman Catholic Church (out of which ALL Protestants came), which is just one branch of the ancient Catholic Church - the church of the Nicene Creed that established the New Testament canon (e.g., made the decision to put Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in your Bible and exclude the Gospel of Thomas). Regarding the Holy Trinity. Anatess is spot on. Three persons, one ousia, one being, one God. Jesus did not pray to Himself in the garden. He prayed to His Father and our Father. This is all human concepts and language, rooted in matter, time and space, that can only fallibly describe a God who dwells outside/beyond time and space and made matter/time/space out of nothing. Regarding the apostasy, Anatess is spot on here, too. It’s a matter of faith. We Catholics use the exact same verses you cite and interpret them differently. After all, the only reason the KJV contains the books it contains is because King James’s Anglican translators stuck with the Roman Catholic canon established centuries before. In short, your essay will only convince those already convinced or those who are cast adrift and seeking. just my 2 cents.
  2. Good morning. I’d like to add that, for trinitarians, God made everything that exists out of nothing (ex nihilo). This is radically different from Buddhism (and the Force from Star Wars). For Trinitarians, God made everything that exists. In Buddhism, God is everything that exists (pantheism). In Buddhism, matter is God and God is eternal, so matter is eternal. We are matter (and energy) so we are God. Trees, birds, rocks, rain, ocean waves are also God. Grasping this difference between Trinitarian Christianity and Buddhism is key to understanding what makes ancient Christianity so unique. Every other system in human history (Greek philosophy; pagan religion; Eastern systems like Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism; and Mormonism) posits that matter is eternal. Only in ancient Trinitarian Christianity (the church of the creeds) is there a distinction made between 1) everything that exists that isn’t God and 2) God understood as possibly being all that there is, with no diminution of goodness or greatness. Whether God creates or if He does not create, remaining eternally alone, God remains eternally the same. No other system teaches this, especially not Buddhism, in which God is not a person and does not create the cosmos; God equals the cosmos. Here’s another point that might clarify what trinitarians believe for those who might still be confused. God not only made everything that exists, He also maintains it in existence from moment to moment. If God were to wink out of existence (an impossibility, but stay with it as a thought experiment), so too would everything else. The same applies to Buddhism (and the other pantheist systems), since in that system God equals everything that exists. In pagan religion, and Christian churches that reject ex nihilo, which include Mormonism, the gods exist within and are part of the cosmos. If all gods (including Heavenly Father) were to suddenly cease to exist, the cosmos would keep on going; there just wouldn’t be any gods. All of the foregoing must be kept in mind if you seek to understand what we mean when we say God is one and also three. You have to remove matter, time and space from the equation, including all language, images and concepts rooted in matter, time and space. Only then are you ready to contemplate what we mean by God. Perhaps that helps you understand why we also refer to God as Mystery. Zaccheus
  3. Are you referring to trinitarians? If so, as a Roman Catholic, I’ll say we believe God is Spirit, not a mist. He exists eternally the same and would still be God in undiminished perfection, holiness and divinity, even if nothing else but God existed. God the Holy Trinity is, therefore, not ‘a being’ among beings, but Being itself.
  4. Bumping this to make sure it’s seen. I’m not sure it was. I wrote it in response to the claim, asserted twice now, that the doctrine of the Trinity was created by Constantine.
  5. The doctrine of the Trinity was not started by Constantine. That's a claim with no basis in historical fact. The surviving contemporary records that describe the events at the Council of Nicea make no mention of it. The doctrine can be dated to at least a century prior to the birth of Constantine and 150 years prior to the Council of Nicea, where Constantine allegedly invented the doctrine and imposed it on the church. Irenaeus, a 2nd century Catholic bishop of Lyon, France, addressed the nature of the Father and the creation. He clearly taught that God made all things out of nothing (ex nihilo creation), that God is 'a spiritual and divine essence...who contains all things,' and that only God is uncreated. All of these very Catholic doctrines are core tenets of the doctrine of the Trinity, contrary to LDS teaching that Heavenly Father is a man, with a glorified body of flesh and bones, who created all things out of pre-existent, eternal matter. Ireneaus penned the following in the late 2nd century, around 180 a.d.: “The rule of truth which we hold, is, that there is one God Almighty, who made all things by His Word, and fashioned and formed, out of that which had no existence, all things which exist.” (Against Heresies 1.22.1) “And that they may be deemed capable of informing us whence is the substance of matter, while they believe not that God, according to His pleasure, in the exercise of His own will and power, formed all things (so that those things which now are should have an existence) out of what did not previously exist...” “...but they [Ireneaus here speaks of the Gnostics] do not believe that God (being powerful, and rich in all resources) created matter itself, inasmuch as they know not how much a spiritual and divine essence can accomplish... “For, to attribute the substance of created things to the power and will of Him who is God of all, is worthy both of credit and acceptance. It is also agreeable, and there may be well said regarding such a belief, that ‘the things which are impossible with men are possible with God.’ While men, indeed, cannot make anything out of nothing, but only out of matter already existing, yet God is in this point preeminently superior to men, that He Himself called into being the substance of His creation, when previously it had no existence.” (Against Heresies 2.10.2-4) But the things established are distinct from Him who has established them, and what have been made from Him who has made them. For He is Himself uncreated, both without beginning and end, and lacking nothing. He is Himself sufficient for Himself; and still further, He grants to all others this very thing, existence; but the things which have been made by Him have received a beginning. But whatever things had a beginning, and are liable to dissolution, and are subject to and stand in need of Him who made them... (Against Heresies 3.8.3) “Truly, then, he Scripture declared, which says, ‘First of all believe that there is one God, who has established all things, and completed them, and having caused that from what had no being, all things should come into existence: He who contains all things, and is Himself contained by no one.’” (Against Heresies 4.20.2) It's obvious that Constantine did not create the doctrine of the Trinity. Here we have evidence of the core tenets predating him by at least a century. It goes back further than that. Prior to being the Catholic bishop of Lyon when he wrote Against Heresies, he was a priest for about twenty years (beginning in 161 a.d.) and before that was a disciple of Polycarp, Catholic bishop of Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey). Polycarp, who died as an old man in about 155 a.d., was a disciple of the apostle John the Beloved - author of the Gospel of John. Irenaeus, disciple of Polycarp, disciple of John, is the author of the doctrines quoted above. Clearly, the fundamentals of the doctrine of the Trinity are a lot older than Constantine. The claim that Constantine created the doctrine is demonstrably false. So...if the doctrine of the Trinity is an invention, it must have been created in the early second century and no later. Either Irenaeus invented it himself or he learned it from Polycarp, who invented it, or Irenaeus learned it from someone else who invented it, after Irenaeus' discipleship with Polycarp. Surely, no LDS church member can believe that the Apostle John invented it? Zaccheus
  6. Hello all. I’ve been a lurker for a number of years. I know I’m late to this conversation but thought I’d pitch in my 2 cents. A warning – it’s kind of long. I’m a Roman Catholic and, by way of full disclosure, formerly LDS – born and raised in the church, seminary grad, mission, temple marriage, the works. The topic of the Holy Trinity is dear to my heart; the Holy Trinity is the God I worship. There is a lot of confusion about what we Trinitarians mean by God, including among some under-catechized Catholics. To understand Catholic teaching and specialized terms like being, Being (note the capitalization), person, essence, nature and existence (and the Greek and Latin terminology which these English words are used to translate, especially ousia, prosopon, hypostasis, ens, and esse), understanding them in the Catholic sense requires thinking about them in reference to the most fundamental of all Catholic ideas about God – that God is not a being among beings, but is Being itself. What on earth does it mean to say that God is Being and not a being? Beings with a lowercase ‘b’ are created things like individual human beings, trees, rocks, dogs, dolphins, all of them entities that exist and move within the matrix of being, time, space, matter, everything, the cosmos created by God out of nothing. Let’s call it ‘the world.’ All of these entities are beings among other beings and can only be understood when compared and contrasted with each other. A dog is not a cat, is not a tree, is not a human being. God is not that kind of thing. God is not a kind of thing that can dwell as God as a type of thing within the world. God exists outside of it and created it. He exists independently of it in an absolute sense. If God had not created, He would still be God in undiminished goodness and greatness. God would still be God, even if nothing else except God existed. This is what Catholic philosopher and priest, Robert Sokolowski refers to as the ‘Christian Distinction.’ As Sokolowski put it: “The Christian distinction is appreciated as a distinction that did not have to be, even though it in fact is. The most fundamental thing we come to in Christianity, the distinction between the world and God, is appreciated as not being the most fundamental thing after all, because one of the terms of the distinction, God, is more fundamental than the distinction itself...God is understood not only to have created the world, but to have permitted the distinction between himself and the world to occur. He is not established as God by the distinction…The Christian distinction between God and the world is therefore a distinction that is, in principle, both most primary and yet capable of being obliterated, because one of the terms of the distinction, the world, does not have to be. To be God, God does not need to be distinguished from the world, because there does not need to be anything other than God alone. “ So what ‘kind’ of ‘being’ is God? God is God. God exists. God is. God cannot be classified or categorized. Or, as St. Thomas Aquinas put it, God’s essence is existence. His essence or nature is to exist. God is existence itself. God is Being. Nothing else but God exists in that mode, hence God is incomparable. Created beings are essences that need not have existed. An essence is defined as what a thing is; existence is defined as that it is. Existence is added to essence by God and something new, e.g. a human being, is brought forth into the matrix of being. Because God does not belong to the matrix of being, He made it, God is the only ‘being’ where his essence just is existence full stop. God is Being. This is radically different from what is posed in LDS thought, where matter and intelligence is eternal and Heavenly Father, along with all of the other exalted heavenly fathers in existence, exists within the same eternally-existent material cosmos where the laws of physics hold, the same as all of us. Theoretically, I could use the Millenium Falcon and travel to wherever it is in the universe or multiverse where God dwells (somewhere near a star named Kolob) and visit him (assuming God lets me and I’m able to travel between universes or dimensions, if that’s what’s required to get to him). This is unthinkable from a Catholic standpoint. There’s no ‘where’ or ‘there’ where God can be found. God as He is is not localized. He is everywhere present and fills all things. Try to think of God existing alone, with nothing else existing but Him. Are you imagining something floating around in endless darkness? If so, you’re still not thinking like a Catholic. The darkness and the space it fills are creatures, God made them. Get rid of them and now try to think of God alone. It can’t be done. It’s literally unthinkable, which is why Catholics say God as He is is incomprehensible. I think a lot of the confusion about what Catholicism teaches derives from thinking of the Catholic God from within a materialist context, forgetting or not understanding that, for Catholics, God created matter, time, space, the universe and all multiverses, everything that exists apart from God, out of nothing. It’s not possible to properly understand what Catholicism teaches about the Trinity, about one God in three persons, without grasping this fundamental “distinction between the world understood as possibly not having existed and God understood as possibly being all that there is, with no diminution of goodness or greatness.” I hope this helps. I tried to keep it layman-friendly. May the peace of Christ be with all of you.