Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The various ways in which the question Who do you say that I am? is asked and answered
show the development of the Christological doctrine which involves elements of both the old and
the new. It is a question that is not purely academic but one that arises from the experience of
salvation and is ultimately answered in the living of faith.
Council of Nicea (325)
Ambiguity brought about by Arius put the dogma of Jesus divinity at stake
o Close of the New Testament period (Double-task)
Cultural
Christianity began in the Jewish sect
Use of titles like Messiah Christological patterns that
functioned effectively to convey Jesus significance
To non-Jews, the apocalyptic pattern or title of Messiah did not
mean anything
How was the practice of honoring Jesus as divine compatible with the
prayerful conviction of their Jewish heritage that there is but one God?
How could the Father be one, the Son be another, both divine, and
yet only one God?
o Trial and error process
Adoptionists
Denied the real divinity of Jesus, viewed him as a human being
whom God favored with an exceptionally rich outpouring of Gods
spirit
Psilanthropism merely human
Monarchians
Denied that the Son was distinct from the Father
Gods self-revelation in history in successive modes w/ different
names
Image of Jesus as Gods logos
Bridge of Jewish and Hellenistic worlds
Jewish side translated as Word, logos resonated with the
medium through which God created and interacted with history
o Genesis: God creates by speaking
o God guides Israels history by sending Gods word to the
prophets
Hellenistic side translated as Reason
o Designates the principle of order immanent to the universe,
the principle of rationality that made the universe an
ordered cosmos rather than chaos
Justin
o Proposed Christianity as the true philosophy
o Christ as the logos
Terilullian
o Arius claim
If the Son or logos was not fully divine, then it was really not divine at all
Jesus was not divine
Definition of divinity: incapable of changing, while Jesus clearly
moved in the realm of this changeable world and indeed showed us
how to live in such a world
Jesus was not fully human
Logos functioned in him, in place of a human soul
Jesus as a mythical figure, a cosmological first principle who has taken on
a body, but is not divine nor human
o Arius solution
A non-divine Jesus might be considered one whom others might more
confidently seek to imitate
o Structure of Christian religious experience
Encounter with Jesus as a human being metanoia or conversion
reality of one true God
Reflection of what they have experienced communicating, revealing,
giving, expressing Gods own self to them
Proceeding to say that Jesus himself, this human being is Gods selfcommunication, self-expression, self-revelation, own Word
If God really is as God reveals Gods own self to be, then Jesus is identical
with Gods eternal self-communication, self-expression and Word
o Analogy: salt + water when salt is dissolved in water, it loses its character
(This is not the case with hypostasis)
o Jesus is not a hybrid, a third kind of being that would result from blending the
divine and the human together
Conclusion
o Chalcedon clearly teaches that Jesus is fully and completely human
o Chalcedon strongly rejects any notion that Jesus is party human and party divine
o Chalcedon affirms that the human being, Jesus, is nothing less than the
Emmanuel, God-with-us.
Hypostatic union as a restatement of the mystery of Gods graciousness
brought about and made known through Jesus
It shows that we do not know something and yet we want to know it: we
have a desire for this truth, whatever the answer will be
Reveals that we are in touch with a known unknown
Infinite thirst for truth and an infinite capacity for truth, an infinite
dynamism toward truth
Will we ever be fulfilled?
The only reality that will quench this quest of ours is Gods own
being which is infinite truth, Truth itself God
Sartre: there is no fulfillment ever to be had, while we are
structured toward the infinite, we are destined to eternal frustration
o Loving
When we love someone, and are loved, it reveals a dynamism of our spirit
which is boundless
Is this human thirst for love ever satisfied in life?
Ultimately only infinite love can satisfy this thirst of ours infinite
Love God
o Hoping
The capacity to believe in a better future and to hope against hope for it
The imaginative ability to hope against hope reveals that we have an
infinite capacity for life, which ultimately can be filled only by the source
of life, God, Life itself
o Rational Animals
Beyond this, we are made that we are dynamically structured toward the
infinite and will only be satisfied by the infinite God
o It is the finite reality with a capacity for the infinite, and a thirst for the
infinite
Divine Nature
o Gods own being (divine nature) is utterly incomprehensible to us
o Neither can you fit the mystery of the Trinity into your finite mind
o If you have understood, then what you have understood is not God
o God is love
God would not be God without being love
o Three persons
God is God first of all in the divine self the unoriginate and source of all
(Father)
God is always self-expressing, self-uttering, always going out (Son, the
Word)
God is the power of unifying love, always bringing the divine selfexpression back into the primordial unity (Holy Spirit)
o Trinity safeguards the understanding of divine nature as a mystery of selfcommunicating and self-giving love
One Person
o Misconception: divine nature has been thought to overshadow human nature, to
diminish it, or even to swallow it up
o Misconception: God and humanity are somehow opposed to each other, or made
in competition with each other, so that a choice has to be made for one of the
other
o Given the way God has created and redeemed us, we are not in competition with
God but rather made for God
From our side, we are structured toward the infinite with the capacity for
truth, love and life that knows no bounds. The nearer we get to the Truth,
Love and Life or God the more fulfilled we are going to be
As for God, who creates and redeems out of love, God is glorified not by
the diminishment but by the enhancement and growth of the beloved
creature
The more human we become, the more God is pleased
The glory of God is the human being fully alive!
o Parents love, good married love, love of friendship
o The closer we become to God, then the more fully our own selves we become,
rather than less ourselves
o Nearness to God and genuine human autonomy grow in direct and not inverse
proportions
o Jesus profoundly united to God, therefore, he is genuinely human, and in fact
more human, more free, more alive, more his own person than any of us, because
his union with God is more profound
o Jesus is like us in all things, tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin.
o Kenosis self-emptying
o God as the triune mystery of self-giving love, then it becomes possible to see
Jesus existing as the Word of God in time who, in his humanness, embodies the
self-emptying of the God of love
o As this human being, Jesus is the Son of God. Precisely as this human being he
is God in time. He is fully human, fully free, fully personal and as such he is God
who has self-emptied into our history.
Gaudium et Spes, 22
o Human nature as he assumed it was not annulled He worked with human hands,
thought with a human mind, acted by human choice, and loved with a human
heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like us in all
things except sin
o Human nature, by the very fact that it was assumed, not absorbed, in him has been
raised in us also to a dignity beyond compare
A SERMON FOR TRINITY SUNDAY
Trinity
o Heart of the Christian faith
o What makes the gospel what it is, the kind of good news that it is
That we are forgiven, that our sins have been blotted out, redeemed
through no merit of our own
Beyond this, the gospel is not just that we are saved from sin, but that we
are taken up into the life of God himself, that we are raised beyond simple
o We have been divinized and elevated to become adopted sons and daughters of
the Father
Trinity
o Three distinct persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit
God is relational
We are created in the image and likeness of God
Cannot define one without the other
Relational because it is based on love
o One God, in three distinct and equal persons
HAPPINESS
Misconception: accumulation of fame, sex, power and money
Misconception: being unbothered, carefree, blissful life of a child
Genuine happiness resided not in the feelings at all, nor in our accumulations, but rather
in the soul
Eudaimonia having a good soul
Happiness was holiness being whole which we can understand from the many
synonyms of holy: all-together, unfragmented, consistent, focused, integrated,
harmonious, and fully alive
Happiness, then, independent of feelings, means being serene in the face of the
unchangeable, courageous before the changeable, and wise enough to know which is
which
Rational Animals Plus
o Exclusively human activities that exceed the scope of the body and brain: honor,
forgiveness, guilt, wonder, humor, patriotism, wisdom
o Go beyond the humdrum, beyond mere survival
o The pleasure principle
Eros (life-wish) crave for challenge, striving, even if one doesnt
achieve
Thanatos (death-wish) crave for the passive security of the womb, the
maximum return from the minimum input
Evolving a soul
o Soul reflection of the entire core of ones personal existence: the whole living
being of an individual and that selfs reason for living, a unique storyline, a
lifeline
o The secret to happiness: learning, loving, growing more intensely human
o How to evolve a soul
WHY GO TO MASS?
Faith the things that last
o Faith is not a pacifier or just a feeling, its an instrument of knowledge
o Faith is an experience between persons, one person in communication with
another, one person sharing life with another
Knowledge to know Jesus
o Understanding the reasons why we do things
Mercy and redemption
o Knowledge of yourself as a sinner, acknowledging the need of Gods love, mercy
and redemption
The sacred in our lives
o An encounter-experience with the Lord to meet Christ, to be with him, to share
our lives with him and to thank him for saving us from our sinful situation
Community of believers
o The life of the believing community