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From Tom Ditullio '17 The following are excerpts from major papers written last year by Class of 2017 students in the honors-level “Sacramental & Moral Theology” class. In these papers, students were required to engage with the writings of multiple Church Fathers, medieval mystics, and other theologians in order to compose a unique expression of Trinitarian and Christological doctrine contrasted with competing heresies, an assignment in which they also needed to incorporated quotes from these texts into their own writing with parenthetical citations in order to enhance their explanations and support their arguments. From Tom DiTullio ’17: … God is triune both in Himself and in us. The Catholic Church teaches that God is made up of the Holy Trinity, a fundamental belief and foundation of doctrine. This consists of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This does not mean there are three gods, as it might sound, but three persons in God. These persons or “hypostases” are all distinct from each other but are all of the same nature or “ousia.” This nature is God-ness, which they all possess, but it is the same ousia making them all one God. This can be thought of as three people sharing one copy of a movie; they all have the movie but it is that same copy of the movie. … Since all three hypostases in God share the same ousia, they are homoousios. … The three hypostases mutually indwell within each other. This is known as perichoresis, or circumincession. While the hypostases indwell in each other, there is also a pattern of procession as well. The Father, who is the source of God-ness, overflows in love and begets/generates the Son, the Father’s Word. Blessed John van Ruusbroec depicts this generation in The Spiritual Espousals, saying: He eternally, ceaselessly, and without intermediary utters a single, fathomless word, and only this word. In this word he gives utterance to Himself and all things. This word, which is none other than “See,” is the generation and birth of the Son, the eternal light, in whom all blessedness is seen and known. (CP3 32) Ruusbroec is saying that the Father speaks His Word, Christ, in creation and that through Christ all of creation is able to learn and be united with God in His Mystical Body, the Church. The Father also spirates the Holy Spirit along with the Son. This takes place outside of space and time so the Spirit is not a creation of both persons but a procession of love and being from one to the others, because they are all eternal. Johannes Tauler summarizes the processions in saying that: [The Father] turns inward, comprehending Himself, and He flows outward in the generation of his Image (that of His Son), which He has known and comprehended. And again He returns to Himself in perfect self-delight. And this delight streams forth as ineffable love, and that ineffable love is the Holy Spirit. (CP3 35) This is because the Word, the Son, is the Father’s self-expression through which He knows Himself and the Holy Spirit is the way in which the Father expresses Himself. However, these processions also take place in space and time in the distinct temporal missions of the Trinity. “The Father pours Himself forth in the processions of the divine Persons and then on into creatures” (Tauler, CP3 35), creations of God, in these missions where the Father sends His Word to Earth to become Jesus Christ in the Incarnation and allows creation to take part in the begetting and generation of the Son through Jesus. … This takes place when the Word is made flesh; He takes on our human nature and unites it with His divine nature, which is known as the hypostatic union. This is comparable to, as St. Gregory of Nazianzus depicts it, the Son “[taking] on the poverty of [our] flesh, that [we] may gain the riches of His divinity” (CP3 15). This is a sacrament/revelation, where the Father gives His love to us inwardly as grace through the outward sign of the Incarnation, and in this sacrament, Christ brings the Church, His Mystical Body, into union with His divinity and saves us. From Katie Morris ’17: …In order to understand God and how He relates to us, the human race must view God as Triune. The most important aspect of Catholic doctrine is the belief that God is a Trinity. There is one God in three Persons. More specifically, God is one divine ousia/substance/nature in three distinct Persons/Hypostases. One must not believe that these distinct Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are all one and the same Person. This clearly goes against Catholic doctrine and is considered heretical (Sabellianism). As well as being distinct, these three Persons of the Trinity are homoousios/consubstantial with each other. This means that they are all one and the same divine ousia/substance/nature (as mentioned previously). The Persons are co-equal and co-eternal, and they are each equally God. One Person is not more dominant than another. The three distinct Persons of the Trinity are also perichoretic, or within each other. To elaborate, Perichoresis/Circumincession is the mutual indwelling of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit within one another. Blessed John van Ruusbroec, an orthodox writer who lived from 1293 to 1381, discusses this perichoretic behavior and the natural “flowing” motion that Perichoresis provides. Ruusbroec refers to God the Father and God the Son, stating that “the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father” (CP3 34). He further states how this “meeting” of the Trinity (Perichoresis) is “constantly renewed in the bond of love, for just as the Father ceaselessly sees all things anew in the birth of the Son, so too are all things loved anew by the Father and Son in the flowing of the Holy Spirit. This is the active meeting of the Father and the Son, in which we are lovingly embraced by means of the Holy Spirit in eternal love” (CP3 33). The term “Perichoresis” can also refer to the communion of the three Persons in “mutual inflowing” and love. Through the grace of God in Christ, this communion of eternal love is extended to us (humanity). In other words, we take part in the Perichoresis of the Trinity. This Perichoresis also relates to the divine/eternal processions and temporal missions. The divine/eternal processions of the Trinity are the ways in which the three Persons within the Trinity are related to one another. The Father is the origin or source of the Trinity. The eternal procession of God the Son is the eternal generation/begetting of the Son from God the Father. The procession of God the Holy Spirit is the spiration of the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son. Hans Urs von Balthasar, a Catholic theologian who lived from 1905 to 1988, writes about these eternal processions within his writings. He discusses especially the eternal generation/begetting of the Son from the Father. He refers to the Son’s eternal procession when stating that the Father “lets go of His God-ness, and in a way shows a God-like Godless-ness of love. … But we must remember this: the Father, in uttering and surrendering Himself, does not lose Himself. He does not extinguish Himself by self-giving, just as He does not keep back anything of Himself either” (CP3 42). In other words, God fully utters Himself through the Son while remaining fully Himself. He does not lose a part of His being when begetting the Son and/or spirating the Holy Spirit. …The temporal missions of the Son and Holy Spirit are the eternal processions expressed within time. However, the temporal missions and eternal processions are distinguished by theology in certain aspects. The temporal missions occur “temporally” or within time. They also take place “outside” God and happen freely by God’s grace for us. The Son’s mission is being sent by the Father in the Incarnation. The Son’s mission also includes His life, death, and Resurrection, which unite all of humanity as we become a part of the Mystical Body, the Church, through the sacraments. The Holy Spirit’s mission occurs when He is sent by the Father and Son at Pentecost to fill the hearts of those members within the Church. These temporal missions (and divine processions), through the power of God’s grace, are poured outwardly to each and every one of us. We take part in the Perichoresis and processions of the Trinity. This outpouring of God’s love to creation is reflected in the writings of Meister Eckhart. He states that “[t]he Father speaks the Son always, in unity, and pours out in Him all things. They are all called to return into whence they have flowed out. All their life and their being is a calling and a hastening back to Him from whom they have issued…” (CP3 27). Eckhart explains that the Son is poured out of God the Father into each and every one of us. This occurs so that we may freely express/show God’s grace/glory. When viewing Catholic doctrine, one must also remember to analyze the purpose of Jesus Christ’s Incarnation (and our resulting redemption). In the Incarnation, God becomes human (as Christ) while remaining fully divine. In other words, Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine. It is incorrect to say that Christ only appeared to have a physical/human body (Docetism), for Christ was fully human.
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