-    TRIUNE  GOD   -   Either one or three gods   - 

Living in a basically non-Christian milieu is "no joke". You have to persevere in living an exemplary Christian life of faith in Christ, translated into love for one another and transformed into hope for mankind which brings peace and joy. Not only must you live a true Christian life but you must also be able to explain intelligently your way of life to people who think and live quite differently from you. You struggle constantly to live up to your Christian ideals and grapple continuously to express in an intelligible way, that is, your beliefs to others. Even after all that, more often than not you meet with disbelief and misunderstanding. Indeed, a true Christian is not to be envied but to be admired.

One of the major misunderstandings with which we, Christians in Malaysia, have to contend with is the trinity.

"Either you believe in One God or three gods. Logically, you cannot believe in One God and three gods. Even a child can tell you that one is not three." This objection is only too familiar to us. Our usual defence is that we do not believe in three gods but One God in three persons, as we have been taught. The analogies that we dish out are classic: a triangle with three corners (take a corner out and you do not have a triangle); water in three stages (liquid, ice and steam). Do you think this will convince our non-Christian friends or foes? The analogies, they understand. But, they will say that the analogies have nothing to do with three persons in One God. You are a person, he or she is a person, I am a person. How can three of us, persons, be one? At this point most of us get stuck and our last resort is to call upon the mystery of God. The trinity is a mystery. We cannot fully understand God's mystery. The educated will resort, "Sure, this is exactly how primitive people argue when they could not explain emphatically, certain natural phenomena like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, etc. So, they attributed them to mysterious angry spirits. Like them, the way you argue, calling upon God's mystery, is an escape valve - a way out of ignorance."

Let us start with the objection that three cannot be equal to one. This is the logic of arithmetic. Higher mathematics tells us now that it all depends on the premise. If we change the premise that we all accept now, one can equal three. Besides, there are other logics: symbolic logic, linguistic logic, logic of life, etc. We are told that according to clear cut logical thinking, black be white. To say otherwise is a contradiction. Yet, in the logic of life, we know that love and hatred (two opposites like black and white) can exist in a person. A person can hate and love at the same time. Psychology has proven that there are many areas of grey in a human person and in his perception - hence also in his thinking process. Besides, why must we apply the logic of addition to God? Why cannot we use either multiplication or division? For example, one times one times one is one (1 X 1 X 1 X 1 = 1) or One divided by one, divided again by one is still one. How can we limit our understanding of God to a small fraction of human thinking, the logic of addition in arithmetic which is based on an agreed premise for convenience sake? Not only we make God human by this limited logic but we also make more than the logic of arithmetic. He is surely richer than a juggling of numbers. The irony of it all is that the very people who want to defend the infiniteness and transcendency (greatness) of God by such an argument, make God smaller than any existing reality.

Even by using our limited human reasoning, we can come to a logical conclusion that this argument applied to God is false. God is infinite, beyond all. We are finite, extremely limited by time and space. The gap between the Infinite (God) and the finite (human being) is unlimited. There is no boundary in the difference between God and us because the difference is infinite - without boundary. Is it then logical to apply what is so limited as a fraction of Man's reasoning - the logic of addition in arithmetic - to an infinite, without limit? It is folly even to attempt it. Hence, three", the logical arithmetical addition of a certain kind based upon an agreed premise cannot be applied to God. Therefore it is possible to speak of God as One and Three because He is beyond the logic of addition in arithmetic.

We would not have known God as One and Three if it were not revealed to us by Jesus Christ. Jesus in the Gospels claims to be divine He reveals to us God the Father and, with the Father, sends us His Holy Spirit. This is true mystery. It is not a mystery of ignorance. It is a mystery of God's revelation which ultimately our limited human mind cannot fully grasp. Nevertheless, we have to try and understand the mystery of the triune God revealed to us by Christ. It is not in order to understand fully or grasp God. No, rather it is because we are beings with minds that we must try to understand, as far as possible, a truth revealed to us. It is because as human beings we need to articulate our faith-experience. It is because we have to speak intelligibly to others of our faith that we try to approximate the Infinite so that it makes sense to us and to others.

                                              -   Three  Persons  in  One  God   -   

It has been drummed into our heads that God is One in three persons. I am sure many of us repeat this formula without really understanding it. I am less sure, however, how many of us fall into "heresy" in trying to understand "three Persons".

The brief history of the dogmatic statement "three Persons, One Nature in God" is rather important if we really want to understand the meaning of our faith in the triune God.

Sacred Scripture speaks of God the Father, Son of God or Word (of God) made flesh who claims divinity, and the Holy Spirit but never uses the terms "Persons" or "Nature". Living and trying to explain their faith, early Christians were forced to resolve certain questions which arose quite naturally. "Is the Son of God, God? Is the Holy Spirit, God? Is Jesus Christ God? Is He man? If the Son and the Spirit are God, then are there three goals? If not, how can one explain meaningfully that One God is three? This is closely linked to another series of questions. If Jesus Christ is God, is he truly Man? If so, how can he be both Man and God?

In trying to clarify these questions posed, the early Christians could only use words that they knew and could only think in a way that they thought [- metaphysical - Some parts of this section is a repetition of certain parts in chapter 1. I have thought it wise to recapitulate it for clarity of argument.] - mode of think in a way that they thought - the metaphysical mode of thinking. Hence they employed Greek words ousia, physis and "persons". There were violent controversies over these issues for a few centuries. [- God did not create and then go off to sleep, so to say. He is in His creation in such a way that its very evolution depends on Him. If He were to withdraw, so to say, His sustaining hand, all would disappear into nothingness. He continues to create.] - In the process of which, a number of heresies were condemned by the Church to defend the revelation of Jesus Christ that God is One in Three.

Heresies condemned: a)  Monarchianism - b)  Subordinationism - c)  Tritheism

a)  Monarchianism  - In explaining the "One in Three", this theory over-emphasized the Oneness or "unity" (monarchia) of God so that the Son as a distinct "person" from the Father was denied. The Father and the Son are one and the same.

b)  Subordinationism  - In fighting against monarchianism , the subordinationists, notably Arius, denied that the Son was equal to God the Father. The Word was created freely by the Father; not the Son of God by nature but by adoption; not equal to God but a intermediary being between God and creation.

c)  Tritheism  - In fighting against monarchianism, the tricheists over-emphasized the three "essence" or "nature" of the three persons leading to almost three gods.

It was in this context of trying to express one's faith in terms that could be understood by the people of that time and place, and in the situation where the Church had to take a stand to defend the revelation of Jesus Christ, that condemnations and dogmatic pronouncements were made. It was only at the Council of Constantinople (381 A. D.) that the trinitarian dogma was finally defined. The Council defended the plurality (three) within the unique, undivided God. The expression of this is that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are "consubstantial", one Godhead, one power, one substance, of equal dignity and majesty; but in three perfect hypostasis or Persons. Because of certain ambiguity in the word, hypostasis which could mean person of nature, the Church finally chose prosopon to mean "person". What was defined as of faith were not the words hypostases, "substantial", "power" etc., but the reality of Three in One of God. But the Church had to use words to express this faith and she used Greek words with special metaphysical connotations. The final "One God in three Persons" formula is simply a restatement in the Greek language and mentality in a condensed, compact and clearer way than the New Testament revelation.

We are not interest here in theological speculations nor academic arguments. Rather, faced with the challenge in Malaysia, we must try to express our faith of the "Three in One" in a way that is meaningful to our living faith and that is intelligible to our non-Christian friends.

The first thing to realize is that our faith is not contained in Greek words or mentality - like "Persons", "consubstantial", "Nature", etc., but in the "Three in One God" of revelation. The relevant questions are: "How are we to live this reality? How are we to express it in a way that can be understood by our non-Christian friends in Malaysia today?"

It is my suggestion that we should abandon the word "Persons" when talking of God for various reasons. (1) The word "Persons" as used by the Council of Constantinople has a highly metaphysical connotation; difficult for us to grasp Prosopon (Person) in Greek was originally used to denote the mask worn by an actor. Then it was applied to the role of the actor and finally to any character portrayed by the mask worn, that is, to an individual. Taken into philosophical-theological thinking, the word Prosopon finally meant "the subsistent, incommunicable subject of an intellectual nature". I wonder how many of us, even with the philosophical backgrounds can understand the meaning of this definition of "person". And it is this metaphysical meaning of the word "person" that one must read into the statement of "One God in three Persons". (2) The evolution of the meaning of some words is a fact. The meaning of the word "person" as used in the Catholic Church has also evolved. Owing to the influence of psychology, when we now use the word "person" it generally carries with it psychology connotations. We speak now of "John" as a person or "Mary" as a person. It is strictly applied to a human being with self-consciousness as being an individual, different from another human being but as being related to the world outside him. We also speak of a human being having three personalities. Because the meaning of the word person has moved from a metaphysical to a psychology frame of thinking, it is very dangerous to use the formula: "Three Persons in One God". If someone thinks of "person" in the psychological sense and applies it to God, then there is a great likelihood of falling into the heresy of three gods (tritheism). Besides, to think of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit as I think of "John", "Mary" and "Paul" as persons, would be to make God human (anthropomorphism). If we, who have a certain understanding of the Greek mind and language, find it difficult to speak now of three Persons in God meaningfully and with orthodoxy, how much less will people, who do not have our background, understand what we really want to say without inevitably thanking that we worship three gods. In fact, this is what Muslims think we do because we have failed to communicate the right understanding of the triune God to them. [See and Read Chapter 9]

It is in view of this difficulty that I propose a way of explaining the "Three in One" of God which might be helpful to Christians and to our non-Christian friends. My explanation comes from my own living experience of the triune God in my life. Hence I do not claim that this is the best way nor the only way by which we can explain the triune God. I am not trying either to explain God in Himself. I leave this to theologians like Karl Rahner, B. Lonergan and the rest. Rather, I am proposing to describe how God relates to me in a three fold way (triune) - therefore using experiential rather than abstract metaphysical concepts.    -   PAGE  ONE   -  

Experience  of  Triune  God - Man as a three dimensional being.  -    PAGE  TWO   -

By His Grace Bishop Paul Tan Chee Ing - S. J. 

 -   WELCOME TO SACRED SCRIPTURE / WORD OF GOD / HOLY BIBLE READER'S COMMUNITY   - 

Just as God originally inspired the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible, He has used this means to preserve His Word for future generations. But behind the writing lay periods of time when these messages were circulated in spoken form. [Oral Tradition] The stories of the patriarchs were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth before they were written. [Written Tradition] The messages of the prophets were delivered orally before they were fixed in writing. Narratives of the life and ministry of Christ Jesus were repeated orally for two or three decades before they were given written form.

Wishing you, 'Happy Reading', and may God, the Father, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ, fills your heart, mind, thoughts, and grants you: The Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord, and also His fruits of the Holy Spirit, that is, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Trustfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Amen! God blessing be upon you!

Why do you call Me, "Lord, Lord" and not do what I say?' "Everyone who comes to Me and listens to My words and acts on them - I will show you what he/she is like. He/She is like a man/woman who when he/she built his/her house dug, deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But the one who listens and does nothing is like the man/woman who built his/her house on soil, with no foundations: as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed; and what a ruin that house became!" - Luke 6:46-49 - 

If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ Jesus, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to it function. So the body grows until it has built itself up, in love." - Ephesians 4:15-16 - 

I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself, but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come. He/She will glorify me, since all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine." - John 16:12-15 -      

                                                -       Nurtured by the Church       - 

JESUS ESTABLISHES THE CHURCH, and he establishes us within the Church. The mystery of the Church is closely united to the mystery of Mary, mother of God and mother of the Church. Mary brings us forth and cares for us, and the Church does also. Mary helps us grow, and the Church does also. Mary help us grow, and the Church does also. And at the hour of death, the priest bids us farewell in the name of the Church and leaves us in the arms of Mary. She is "a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (Revelation 12:1). That is the Church and that is the modest Virgin that our faithful people venerate. That is why in speaking of the Church we need to feel the same devotion as we feel for the Virgin Mary. A favorite expression of Saint Ignatius  was Santa madre Iglesia hierarchica, "our holy Mother the hierarchical Church" (SpEx 353). This expression evokes three concepts that are linked to one another: holiness, fruitfulness and discipline.

WE WERE BROUGHT FORTH for the holiness within the body of our holy Mother the Church. Keeping ourselves firmly inserted in that holy body is the key to our apostolic fruitfulness and our calling to "be holy and immaculate in God's presence." The Church is holy: it is present to the world "as a sign - simultaneously obscure and luminous - of a new presence of Jesus, of his departure and of his permanent presence. She prolongs and continues him" (Evangeli Nuntiandi, 15). The Church's holiness is manifest in "the intimate life of this community - the life of listening to the Word and the apostles' teaching, of charity lived in a fraternal way, of sharing of bread (cf. Acts 2:42-46; 4:32-35; 5:12-16). This intimate life acquires its full meaning only when it becomes a witness, when it evokes admiration and conversion, and when it becomes the preaching and proclamation of the Good News" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 15). The Church's holiness is not naive, for she knows that "she is the People of God immersed in the world and often tempted by idols and she always needs to hear the proclamation of the 'mighty works of God' (cf. Acts 2:11; 1 Peter 2:9) which converted her to the Lord; she always needs to be called together afresh by him and reunited" (Evangeli Nuntiandi, 15). The holy Church Fathers expressed this mystery of the Church's holiness by calling her casta meretrix, the "chaste prostitute." The Church's holiness is reflected in the face of Mary, the sinless one, the pure and spotless one, but she does not forget that she gathers in her bosom the children of Eve, mother of all us sinners.

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts. (Acts 2:42-46)

There is a wealth of theological literature about holiness. In canonizing saints, the Church, with the unfailing assistance of the Spirit, uses criteria with which we are all familiar. In our clerical lingo, we often jokingly overuse the word "holy" such as when we say with a smile, "this holy house" or "these holy customs." But it is also true that when we are impressed with a person's virtues and want to pay tribute to them, we say, "This person is a saint." In doing so, we renounce our many idols and kneel down before the mystery of God and of his infinite goodness as revealed in a human person. Love and devotion for Holy Mother Church means love and devotion for her faithful children. In our Church, we have many saints with whom we deal on a daily basis: in our parish life, in the confessional, in spiritual direction. Sometimes I wonder about the real relation for the bitter criticism of the Church, the censure of her many sins, the despondency we feel with respect to her. Are this negative attitudes perhaps not due to our being malnourished because we fail to take delight in the human holiness that surrounds us and reconciles us all? For it is by such holiness that God dwells in his body.

Holiness reveals itself in us through our desire to announce the Good News: "Our evangelizing zeal must spring from true holiness of life, and as the Second Vatican Council suggests, preaching must in turn make the preacher grow in holiness, which is nourished by prayer and above all by love for the Eucharist" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 76). This is the nexus between the Church's holiness and her maternal nature, and it is also the nexus between our holiness as consecrated persons and our effectiveness in forming Christian hearts. Here we may reflect on the questions proposed to us by Paul VI, question that we are all responsible for answering: "What is the state of the Church ten years after the Council? Is she firmly established in the midst of the world and yet free and independent enough to call for the world's attention? Does she testify to solidarity with people and at the same time to the divine Absolute? Is she more ardent in contemplation and adoration and more zealous in missionary, charitable, and liberating action? Is she evermore committed to the effort to search for the restoration of the complete unity of Christians, a unity that makes more effective the common witness, 'so that the world may believe'?" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 76).

TALKING ABOUT HOLY MOTHER CHURCH makes us think of fertility. Often we become skeptical in hoping for fertility, like Sarah who laughed to herself when she was promised a child (Genesis 18:9-15). Other times, in contrast, we become euphoric and set about quantifying and planning our productivity so assiduously that we end up repeating the sin of David, whose vanity impelled him to take a census of his people. The fecundity of the Gospel travels by different paths. It is always aware that the Lord never abandons us and that he fulfills his promise to be with us until the end of the world. This fecundity is paradoxical: it means being fruitful  but at the same time never being fully aware of it - and yet not being unaware either! I remember the words of that indefatigable missionary of Patagonia, Father Matthias Crespi, who when he was old used to repeat, "My life has flown past," as if to say that it seemed to him that he had never done anything for the Lord. This is the fecundity of the dew that dampens everything without a sound. It is the fertility that comes from a faith that may ask for proofs but understands that those proofs can never be definitive. The only unfailing proof is to be found in the "passing of the Lord" who consoles us, who strengthens us in faith, and who places us in our mission as stewards who will faithfully await him "until he comes."

They said to him, "Where is your wife Sarah?" And he said, "There, in the tent." Then one said, "I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" The LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son." But Sarah denied, saying, "I did not laugh "; for she was afraid. He said, "Oh yes, you did laugh."

The Church is Mother; she brings forth children with the strength of the deposit of faith. She "is the depositary of the Good news to be proclaimed. The promises of the New Alliance in Jesus Christ, the teaching of the Lord and the apostles, the Word of life, the sources of grace and of God's loving kindness, the path of salvation - all these things have been entrusted to her. It is the content of the Gospel, and therefore of evangelization, that she preserves as a precious living heritage, not in order to keep it hidden but to communicate it" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 15). The Church's mission, then, is to bring forth children, to give life. The Church brings forth her children in undying fidelity to her Spouse for "she sends them out to preach: to preach not themselves or their personal ideas (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:5), but a Gospel of which neither she nor they are the absolute masters and owners, to dispose of it as they wish, but a Gospel of which they are ministers, in order to pass it on with complete fidelity" (Evangelii Nuntiandi,  15). By her fidelity to her Spouse, who is supremely faithful, the Church teaches us how to be faithfully fruitful.

Wanting to be fruitful is a legitimate desire, but the Gospel has its own laws for determining the legitimacy of our activities. Its as if someone were to tell us: you will be fruitful only if you carefully maintain your status as a hired worker, only if you seek to balance your hard work with a sense of your own uselessness, and ultimately only if you convince yourself that, after you till the earth and plant the seed, the watering and the harvest are pure grace - they belong to the Lord.

We should love the mystery of the Church's fertility as we love the mystery of Mary who is Virgin and Mother, and in light of that love we should love the mystery of our own unprofitable servanthood, but always with the hope that the Lord will pronounce over us those words, "Good and faithful servant."

OUR LOVE FOR THE CHURCH is a love that inserts us into a body, and this requires discipline. The same idea may be expressed in the phrase, "discerning charity." For a priest, indiscipline means lack of discernment, which always involves a lack of love. Discerning love will help us grow to be fully conscious of belonging to a large community which neither space nor time can limit" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 61). Our consciousness of belonging will make us understand that the mission of evangelizing on which we are sent "is for no one an individual and isolated act; it is one that is deeply ecclesial. When the most obscure preacher, catechist, or pastor in the most distant land preaches the Gospel, gathers his little community together, or administers a sacrament, even alone, he is carrying out an ecclesial act, and his action is certainly attached to the evangelizing activity of the whole Church by institutional relationships, but also by profound invisible links in the order of grace. This presupposes that he acts not in virtue of a mission which he attributes to himself or by a personal inspiration, but in union with the mission of the Church and in her name" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 60). Our discipline is rooted in the fact that "no evangelizer is the absolute master of his evangelizing action, with a discretionary power to carry it out in accordance with individualistic criteria and perspectives; he always acts in communion with the Church and her pastors" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 60).

Our belonging to the kingdom "cannot remain abstract and disincarnate; it reveals itself concretely by a visible entry into a community of believers:... the Church, the visible sacrament of salvation" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 23). We are called to "communion with the visible sign of the encounter with God which is the Church of Jesus Christ; and this communion is in turn expressed by the application of those other signs of Christ living and acting in the Church which are the sacraments" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 28). Our belonging to the kingdom then, must enter into the side of Christ suspended on the cross, for it is from there that his Spouse is born, the fruitful Mother of a well-disciplined body nourished by the sacraments. "There is thus a profound link between Christ, the Church, and evangelization. During the period of the Church that we are living in, it is she who has the task of evangelizing. This mandate is not accomplished without her, and still less against her"  (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 16).

Discipline is not something decorative, nor is it an exercise in good manners. An undisciplined heart can end up producing the kind of "disruptive person" Saint Ignatius wrote about, for those who have not controlled their passion are often "disruptive." Persons who are undisciplined may sow division and disunion in the heart of a community or a diocese; using deceitful and pharisaical means, they seek to gain a few followers and create a situation of injustice. In presenting the theme of discipline in this way, I don't mean that we should engage in obsessive self-examination and penance before the Lord regarding our defects as pastors. That would be sterile introspection. Rather, the correct attitude is to place ourselves in prayer before the Lord, asking him insistently to pronounce over to us that efficacious word that corrects us and bonds us to him: "Child, give me your heart."

My intention in this meditation has been to speak about love for our holy Mother, the hierarchical Church. We've already talked about the responsibility we have to be sons and daughters of the Church and at the same time to create Church. Our love for the Church should lead us to make manifest to the world her holiness, her loving fruitfulness, and her discipline, all of which flow from her being totally Christ's. The Council states it succinctly with the words, De Verbum religious audiens et fidenter proclamans: the Church "religiously hears the Word of God and faithfully proclaims it." May our Lady, the Virgin Mother, obtain for us from the Lord the grace of a love that is holy, fruitful, and disciplined in accord with the Church.

                                                 For Prayer and Reflection

Reflecting once again on Evangelii Nuntiandi 60, let us end by meditating on our love for and our belonging to our Mother, the Church: The observation that the Church has been sent out and given a mandate to evangelize the world should awaken in us two with two convictions.

The first is this: evangelization is for no one and individual and isolated act; it is one that is deeply ecclesial. When the most obscure preacher, catechist, or pastor in the most distant land preaches the Gospel, gathers his little community together, or administers a sacrament, even alone, he is carrying out an ecclesial act, and his action is certainly attached to the evangelizing activity of the whole Church by institutional relationships, but also by profound invisible links in the order of grace. This presupposes that he acts not in virtue of a mission that he attributes to himself or by a personal inspiration, but in union with the mission of the Church and in her name.

From this flows the second conviction: if each individual evangelizes in the name of the Church, who herself does so by virtue of a mandate from the Lord, no evangelizer is the absolute master of his evangelizing action, with a discretionary power to carry it out in accordance with individualistic criteria and perspectives; he acts in communion with the Church and her pastors.

We have remarked that the Church is entirely and completely evangelizing. This means that, in the whole world and in each part of the world where she is present, the Church feels part of the world where she is present, the Church feels responsible for the task of spreading the Gospel.

BY HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS - Open Mind, Faithful Heart - Reflection on Following Jesus -

     -   WELCOME TO SACRED SCRIPTURE / WORD OF GOD / HOLY BIBLE READER'S COMMUNITY   - 

Just as God originally inspired the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible, He has used this means to preserve His Word for future generations. But behind the writing lay periods of time when these messages were circulated in spoken form. [Oral Tradition] The stories of the patriarchs were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth before they were written. [Written Tradition] The messages of the prophets were delivered orally before they were fixed in writing. Narratives of the life and ministry of Christ Jesus were repeated orally for two or three decades before they were given written form.

Wishing you, 'Happy Reading', and may God, the Father, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ, fills your heart, mind, thoughts, and grants you: The Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord, and also His fruits of the Holy Spirit, that is, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Trustfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Amen! God blessing be upon you!

Why do you call Me, "Lord, Lord" and not do what I say?' "Everyone who comes to Me and listens to My words and acts on them - I will show you what he/she is like. He/She is like a man/woman who when he/she built his/her house dug, deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But the one who listens and does nothing is like the man/woman who built his/her house on soil, with no foundations: as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed; and what a ruin that house became!" - Luke 6:46-49 - 

If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ Jesus, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to it function. So the body grows until it has built itself up, in love." - Ephesians 4:15-16 - 

I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself, but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come. He/She will glorify me, since all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine." - John 16:12-15 -  

                                   -  THE  TITLE  THEOTOKOS  -  MOTHER  OF  GOD  -

We have already seen that Mary was written about in reverential terms during the second century of the Christian era. Christian authors developed their thinking about her over subsequent centuries, and by the time of the Council of Chalcedon (451), the main lines of Marian doctrine and devotion had been established. The teaching which was most important for subsequent Mariology is that which holds that she is correctly called 'Mother of God' or more accurately, 'Godbearer'.

The belief that the Virgin Mary is the Mother of God is the corollary of the belief that her son, Jesus Christ, is God incarnate. A central tenet of the Christian faith is the doctrine of the incarnation. This teaches that the Word of God, who is God himself, through whom all things were created, became a part of his own creation when he was conceived, gestated and born of the Virgin Mary. The Word of God is simultaneously the man Jesus of Nazareth because he has a human mother. Theologians have generally agreed that this is an indispensable article of the Christian faith, although the exact reasons for its importance have been disputed. One classical version, however, runs as follows.

God created the world in a state of goodness, as a work of grace (something freely given), but sin entered the world when humanity disobeyed the Lord God. This goodness and its loss through human rebellion has traditionally been told through the narrative in which Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, disobeyed God when they ate the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the Garden of Eden, and were expelled to a life of hardship (Genesis 3). This first sin led to men and women being estranged from God, from one another and from the earth with which they struggle for the food, clothing and shelter that sustains them. In theological language, when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, the consequence was that nature fell from grace. That is to say, the world as it was created by God (the world of nature) lost some - though not all - of the glory and holiness with which it was originally endowed (that is, grace). This was caused by human sin, but its effect touches all other creatures as well.

What counts here, of course, is not the detail of the putative first ancestors of the human race, but the representative function that they have always performed. They stand for a humanity which knows that men and women live disordered lives, in which our relationships with God, with one another and with other creatures - minerals, plants and animals - are often harmful rather than joyful. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in the nineteenth century: 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God....[but] all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil. Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

Yet simultaneously with this awareness that the world is awry, Adam and Eve, who once lived in Eden, represent men and women who know that the way the world is now is not how it has to be: indeed, they have confidence that this is not what God wills for it, and even now, that it is not the whole truth. As Hopkins continues: And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things. ( Hopkins 1963:27 )

The conception and birth of Christ from his mother Mary are cardinal moments in God's redemption of the world from the sin that generates the state of malaise. For God did not wish his creation to continue in its condition of suffering and estrangement from him, and he sent Jesus into the world to save it from sin and death. Jesus' own death - a violent death by crucifixion - was the only sacrifice which was sufficient to atone for the sins of the world, just as his resurrection from the dead, on the third day following his execution, was the only conquest that could restore humanity to its right relationship with God: that could overcome death itself. The resurrection constitutes the most fundamental tenet of the Christian faith, and Christ's resurrection and eternal life will be shared by all those who have been redeemed by him, when he returns in judgement on the Last Day and transforms the whole created order into a state of glory.

Now, the reason why the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are able to have the redemptive significance which Christians attribute to them lies in Jesus' identity. For Jesus Christ is not only a human being who cooperates with the will of God for the redemption of the world: he is himself divine. Since it was Adam - and with him, all humanity - who sinned, it was necessary that a human being should make good what had been damaged. Yet humanity alone is not capable of restoring the world to that fullness of grace which comes from God alone. And so God redeemed the world by uniting himself to human nature in Jesus and working the world's redemption as God incarnate - that is, God made flesh.

We can be more specific on this point. In Christian teaching, the One God is also Trinity. That is, God is both single and triune, three 'persons' who are nonetheless one. Each person of the Trinity - the Father, the Son (or Word) and the Holy Spirit - is God, and all three persons are present in the action of any one of the three. Thus God the Father created the world through the eternal Word and in the power of the Holy Spirit; but this is a single action of the one God. In the created world, number is applied to bounded objects conceptualized as separate from one another - three rabbits, twelve currant buns, or two hundred carrots, for example. And if there are three, twelve or two hundred, then these are not simultaneously one. In God the Creator, however, there is no boundedness - no limit of any kind - and thus the contradiction between the single and the triune nature of the Godhead. The 'threeness' of the Deity is clearly something different from the threeness of the rabbits mentioned above. But this doctrine is too mysterious to be adequately grasped by human understanding, and for that very reason, mediation upon the Trinity provides a safeguard against imagining God to be our own, or any other, image. The doctrine of the Trinity is the guarantee that humanity cannot comprehend or manipulate the Deity, but must always stand in awe of the God who is before and beyond the boundaries which characterize the created order.

So, to be more precise about the incarnation: since the One God is also Trinity, it was the eternal Word - or Son - of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who became flesh in Mary's womb for the salvation of the world. Thus the means by human flesh, with all its sensual pleasures and pains, that the Creator should be one which a creature, as an embryo in a woman's entrails; that he who is eternal should take on transience, like the earth whose substance is shared by human flesh (Genesis 2:7); that he who is immortal should take on immortality, and that he should indeed suffer and die for the sake of his creation.

One of the greatest exponents of the theology of the incarnation is the fifth-century bishop Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444). Cyril teaches that the Word of God was conceived in Mary's womb in order to consecrate the human race from our very beginnings - that because God himself has been conceived in a woman's body, all human conception may now be sanctified. ('Third Letter of Cyril to Nestorius', from the documents of the Council of Ephesus (431), in Tanner SJ 1990:58) And because the immortal God united himself to human flesh even in death, he accomplished 'the incorruptibility and imperishability of the flesh... first of all in his own body', as we see in his resurrection from the dead, but also for the whole human race. By uniting himself to human death in Christ, God who is immortal overcame death itself and thus enabled all flesh to be 'set... beyond death and corruption'. (St, Cyril of Alexandria 1995:57) 'In short, he took what was ours to be his very own so that we might have all that was his.' (Ibid,:59)

So Jesus' unique salvific power derives from his identity as both true God and true man, and for this reason Mary is essential to the Christian account of God and creation. For in the union of God and humanity, it is Mary who imparts the humanity. This belief is expressed in the teaching that Mary conceived Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit when she was still a virgin. (Luke 1:26-38). Eternally begotten of God the Father, Christ was conceived and born on earth of his mother Mary. For this reason she is called by the paradoxical title of Theotokos, a Greek term meaning 'Godbearer' or 'Mother of God'. Indeed, it was in order to explain and defend this title for Mary that Saint Cyril of Alexandria wrote his Christology. God, of course, does not have a beginning: God is from all eternity, with no origin - no parent - outside Godself. But how else are Christians to express the wonder of the incarnation, whereby God and humanity are perfectly united, if not by the assertion that the human woman who is the mother of Christ is, by that token, the Mother of God? Furthermore, the Catholic, Orthodox and ancient Eastern churches have invariably held that Mary gave her free assent to the conception of Christ. If she had not consented to Gabriel's message, then the world's redemption would not have come about in precisely the manner in which it did: the redeemer would not have been the Jesus of Nazareth who in fact is God incarnate. So Mary is not only a physical but also a moral, agent in the world's salvation.

The title Theotokos - the one who conceived or gave birth to God - is not without its difficulties, however, and it was in order to counter objections to this title that Saint Cyril of Alexandria formulated his explanation of it. Saint Cyril came from the oldest school of Christian theology, that of Alexandria, in Egypt. To understand the relationship that exists between the divinity and the humanity of Christ, Alexandrian theologians before Saint Cyril had discussed the question, 'Did the Word of God die on the cross?' It should be immediately clear that there cannot be a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer to this. After all, since the Word of God is eternal, it seems incorrect to say that he died. Yet, as we have seen above, the doctrine of salvation demands that the human Christ's salvific work of life, death and resurrection should have been accomplished also by God. The technical solution to this conundrum was to say, "In this humanity, the Word of God died on the cross; in his divinity, the Word of God did not die.' The subject of both the dying and the non-dying is the same Word of God. Thus it is appropriate to say, "The Word of God died on the cross'. And more than this, Alexandrian theologians held that if one would not affirm this truth, then one had not properly grasped the reality of the incarnation, which, since it is the perfect union of God and humanity, entails that everything that can truly be attributed to Christ's humanity can also be attributed to his divinity, and vice versa. This principal is called the communicatio idiomatum, or 'communication of properties' (that is, between Christ's divinity and his humanity). - There is one exception to this principle, namely the statement, 'The Word of God was created.' This was not used by the Alexandrian theologians (and has not been used in 'mainstream' Christian theology since that time) because that formula had been specifically rejected at the Council of Nicaea (325), in opposition to the Arian, who held that the Word of God in his divinity had been created by God the Father. -  

This principal is called the communicatio idiomatum therefore entailed the possibility of saying, 'Mary gave birth to God', and so it was this principle which was used to justify honouring her with the title 'Godbearer'. However, a group of theologians who are sometimes called 'Antiochene', because many of them had been trained in the theological school of Antioch, opposed calling Mary the 'Godbearer'; and it was the dispute over this title which led to the calling of the Council of Ephesus in 431. - This is discussed in detail in Richard price, 'Theotokos', in this volume (56-63). A somewhat different assessment of the council is offered in Stephen J. Shoemaker, 'Marian Liturgies and Devotion in Early Christianity', also in this volume (130-45). -   

The main objector was Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, and one of his concerns was the title Theotokos implied that God had a beginning - as if he were a pagan god, or some other created being. The Word of God, he insisted, was eternal, and therefore without a beginning. Nestorius did not doubt that Christ was truly both divine and human, but Mary, he said, was the mother of Christ's humanity, not his divinity. But this concern was symptomatic of a more fundamental difference of approach between Nestorius and Cyril. Cyril subscribed to a Christology that is sometimes called Logos/sarx, or 'Word/flesh', Christology, because it flows from the verse in John 1, 'And the Word became flesh...' This Christology emphasizes the total union of the divine Word with the flesh of Christ, and holds that Christians in turn are sanctified because of their own union with Christ in the flesh. Cyril held that this union could be accomplished most fully by receiving the elements of the Eucharist - the body of Christ. Mary was therefore the mother of the Word made flesh.

Nestorius, on the other hand, held to a school of Christological doctrine that is sometimes called Logos/anthropos, or 'Word/human.' According to this understanding, it is important to emphasize that the Word of God was united not only to Christ's flesh - since this may mislead people into thinking that his divinity took the place occupied by the soul in other human beings - but that God was united to a whole human being, body and soul. Accordingly, Nestorius emphasized the importance of the imitation of Christ in one's actions, rather than just the sacramental reception of his body, for attaining the goal of the Christian life. Where Nestorius and the Antiochenes taught a strongly historical Christology, which focused on the life of Jesus as found in the Gospels, Cyril and the Alexandrians taught a much more cosmic Christology, focusing on the union of God with the whole of humanity and creation.

The main weakness of Nestorius's position was that it could not account adequately for the union of divinity in Christ, and gave the impression that the divinity and humanity were in some way stuck together without being properly united. If Mary did not give birth to God, then how and when did the Word of God unite himself to Christ's humanity? Crucially, of course, Nestorius's objection to the title Theotokos - to the assertion that Mary bore God - held equally well in the case of Christ's death: for just as God has no beginning, so he also has no end. And if we cannot say that the eternal Word of God died on the cross, then how is humanity redeemed? Cyril, by contrast, argued that the child to whom Mary gave birth was the one in whom 'the Word was flesh', and this made it clear that, in Christ, the two could not be separated.

Having said this, we should also note that when the Theotokos was victorious at the Council of Ephesus, and Nestorius was condemned as a heretic, Cyril may have been the general who won the war, but he did not win every battle in it. Where he had originally argued that there was only one nature in Christ, he eventually concealed Nestorius's point that Christ's humanity and divinity should indeed be considered as two natures. This formulation, together with the clear assertion that the child whom Mary bore was the one in whom these natures were united, provided the foundation for the Christology formula of the Council of Chalcedon (451), that Christ was 'one Person [that is, the Word of God] in two natures [divine and human]'. This Christology is that which is still held by the Catholic Church, and by most Orthodox and Protestant churches.

Edited by Sarah Jane Boss - MARY THE COMPLETE RESOURCE - 

BIBLIOGRAPHY - Boss, Sarah Jane (2004) Mary, London: Continuum. Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1963) Poems and Prose, ed. W. H. Gardner, Harmondsworth: Penguin., St. Cyril of Alexandria (1995) On the unity of Christ, trans. John Anthony McGuckin, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. Tanner SJ, Norman P. (ed.) (1990) Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, London: Sheed & Ward, and Washington: Georgetown University Press.