Gold Images

Tooling around the EWTN Religious Catalogue, I came across this 14KT Gold "Trinity Crucifix". I would feel like something was wrong if I were purchasing a $600 piece of gold anything to wear around my neck, but considering what my wife's engagement ring cost, perhaps I am short-sighted or hypocritical (or both).

Beyond that though, I do not like this (or any) depiction of God the Father. I believe that depictions of the Father are more modern practices than ancient. I found this Catholic website which denounces depicting the Father as an old man:

The creating of images of God the Father as an old man is to literally create a false god, another idol to worship. It falls short of reflecting upon the true nature of the Divinity of God the Father as He has been [] revealed to us through Jesus Christ and consequently through the Church that has preserved the original teachings of the Apostles.

In addition to this "Trinity Crucifix", I know I've seen an image of the Father with the Son crowning the Virgin Mary on the ceiling of the University of Notre Dame Cathedral (as seen on T.V.), and in the Basilica built at Fatima (also as seen on T.V.).

My subjective belief is that to make a solid gold image of what one imagines God the Father to look like is a foolish thing. Even if I were to accept that the wearer of this precious medal believes it to be only an image and not an idol, I think it is foolery. The Old Testament says, in my subjective interpretation, that no man can see the face of the Father and live. I would not counsel my children to ever depict the Father's face, therefore.

Newman: Calvinism Becomes Unitarian

Newman asserts several times in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine that Calvinism leads to Unitarianism. E.g., "Calvinism has changed into Unitarianism: yet this need not be called a corruption, even if it be not, strictly speaking, a development; for Harding, in controversy with Jewell, surmised the coming change three centuries since, and it has occurred not in one country, but in many" (p.175).

And later, "Principle is a better test of heresy than doctrine. Heretics are true to their principles, but change to and fro, backwards and forwards, in opinion; for very opposite doctrines may be exemplifications of the same principle. Thus the Antiochenes and other heretics sometimes were Arians, sometimes Sabellians, sometimes Nestorians, sometimes Monophysites, as if at random, from fidelity to their common principle, that there is no mystery in theology. Thus Calvinists become Unitarians from the principle of private judgment. The doctrines of heresy are accidents and soon run to an end; its principles are everlasting" (181).

These claims were not supported by a citation, and Newman's contemporary knowledge is long lost to me. So I put the following question to the historically adept Tertium Quid (via e-mail), "Cardinal Newman proclaims on several occasions in his "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine" that Calvinism has led to Unitarianism. Do you know what he's talking about?"

For his fascinating and beautifully written reply, see here. This must have taken some time, so I am grateful (and at a lawyer's billing rate, I probably owe T.Q. a cold one or two...).

Credo III: The Man Jesus

Do protestants properly treat the Godhead? Trinitarian teachings are complex and nuanced, nearly impossible for me to discuss without saying something that is probably (unintentionally) heretical. Our prayers made to "God" almost always mean to "the Father", and we usually pray in "Jesus name" alone. (Note: Christ prayed with particularity to "Our Father").

I was struck when I read 1 Tim 2:5-6 the other night: "For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men. (NIV)" This is not language that the majority members of the Council of Nicea would have chosen. "God" and "the man" Jesus appear quite distinct.

In principle, protestants should accept and adhere to the ancient ecumenical formulations regarding the Trinity and the Nature of Christ only insofar as we find them to agree with Scripture. But these points do not seem to be truly open for debate. If salvation, baptism, continuing revelation, et cetera, are open for debate, why is not the nature of Christ or His relation to the Father?

I suspect that if I were put to the task of determining the nature of the Godhead using nothing but the Scriptures, without reference to later doctrinal development, I would have to argue for a position differing from the ancient creeds. Protestants must accept that we inherently subscribe to a model of doctrinal development, or else let the creeds be fair game for debate.

Ware on Trinity

(See my prefatory piece here, and please note my comment in that combox about using "Ware" vice Bishop Kallistos without any intended disrespect.)

A Catholic suggested to me that the true dispute between Orthodoxy and Catholicism is not the filioque clause or original sin/guilt, but rather the primacy of the Roman See. I give full credit to this view, but feel better about leading up to that topic rather than working down from it.

Ware discusses the Orthodox view of the Trinity in Chapter 11 (page 208 of the 2nd edition). Part of the beauty of Ware's book is manifest in this section: he presents the spectrum of views within Eastern Orthodoxy, and ably compares this to Western Catholic and Protestant beliefs. Trinitarian doctrine makes my head spin; I fear I will badly oversimplify the profound. It takes only the slightest mishandling of words on this topic to throw off the balance. I will be cautious and, Lord willing, may be able to give you a flavor of how Ware sets out the trinitarian 'landscape'. Please remember that mine is only a layman's summary.

The Orthodox make use of the 'apophatic' and 'cataphatic' expository methods. By the former, they describe a doctrine in negative terms (e.g., Jesus was not made), and by the latter, they describe it in affirmative terms (e.g., Jesus was begotten). With trinitarian doctrine, negative language is essential to balance a positive description of the relationship within the Godhead.

Ware begins with this: God is transcendent over His creation, and nothing of the created order will ever have the slightest communion with the supreme nature. But God is not cut off from His creation. Rather, He is within it. Here the Orthodox employ a distinction between God's essence and His energies. His essence remains unapproachable, but His energies come down to us. [I note, as an aside, that this distinction sounds Scholastic. Ware is elsewhere highly critical of Western subjugation to Scholasticism.]

God is not a single person, but a Trinity of persons, each of whom dwells in the other two by virtue of a perpetual movement of love. While united, God is not a unity.

"Procession" is where it gets tricky. There is a distinction between the eternal procession of the Son, and His temporal mission. So the filioque dispute is not over the outward action of the Trinity toward creation (i.e., the temporal mission), but about the eternal relations within the Godhead. In terms of the sending of the Holy Spirit to His temporal mission, East and West are in accord. But in terms of eternal procession, we are not. The Orthodox point to John 15:26 as a proof-text ("But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me." (ESV)).

The Father is the origin and cause of the Godhead [this is where my head swims, where we say that the Father 'caused' the other Persons of the Godhead, but that he did not 'make' or 'create' them...]. The 'hawk' Orthodox view says that to see Jesus as a mutual cause of the Holy Spirit is heresy as it imbalances the Trinity, leading either to ditheism or semi-Sabellianism (i.e., modalism). Under this imbalance, either there were two separate 'causes' of the Holy Spirit (leading to ditheism), or the persons of Father and Son are dangerously blurred when acting together as one 'cause'. This latter view, by confusing the Persons, destroys their uniqueness and hampers the 'monarchy' role that is ascribable to the Father alone.

Therefore, in the West the principle of unity within the Godhead flows from their shared essence and not from the person of the Father. The West has come to understand the persons of the Godhead not in terms of their personal characteristics, but in terms of the relationships within. This makes God remote and abstract, not the personal God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As the West wrongly stressed unity over diversity in its characterization of the Godhead, so it came to wrongly stress unity over diversity in its view of the Church.

Ware is careful to cabin how far this 'hawk' view should be taken, and he optimistically describes the 'dove' view, a view which holds much greater ecumenical hope. The 'doves' say that a critique of the Western doctrine is only effective when pushing Western views to the extreme. They note that if Orthodox views are likewise taken to the extreme, they could be seen as leading to Tritheism.

My thoughts? I must admit that the notion of eternal procession was foreign to me. I understood the filioque dispute to be about the transmission of the Holy Spirit to the created order, and, in that light, did not understand Orthodox objections to the Western view. I better understand their sensitivity now. However, my 'tritheism' feathers were ruffled as I read through this description of Orthodox teaching. It is hard to digest their sharp distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, and indeed between the Son and the Father.

I was also surprised by how hurriedly my Protestant views grabbed for the lifelines of Catholic theology. Especially in light of trinitarian doctrine, Protestantism is truly Western; our stomach is filled with Western tradition before we even come to the table of the Holy Scriptures to feed on the Word.

Finally, this is truly, absolutely, and certainly an issue of far greater complexity and importance than a layman can deduce from his reading of Scriptures. If I had to write a dissertation on the Trinity with nothing for source material but my Bible, what would my conclusion look like? I would not even come close to the refined nature of the East/West dispute. This is an issue for the Church to settle, and not for the individual.