Full Text for Dogmatics 1- Volume 22 - What makes the Father different from the Son and the Holy Spirit? How are the Son and the Holy Spirit different from each other? (Video)

FILE: DOG22.WMV PAUL TOULETTE: What makes the Father different from the Son and the Holy Spirit? How are the Son and the Holy Spirit different from each other? DR. ROLAND ZIEGLER: Your question aims at the difference in the trinity and the distinct properties in the trinity. What distinguishes the persons from each other? That means we now talk about the eminent trinity. That is, we talk about God as He is in Himself in eternity. How can we do that? God, beyond time and space, how can we talk about God beyond -- being beyond time and space? Well, of course we can do so only because God has revealed Himself in time and space, that is, revealed Himself in history. That's the first way we know God. We look at His revelation. Now, God as He is in revelation, is called the economical trinity. Economical has nothing to do with the Dow Jones or your portfolio. But is derived from the Greek word ******* (nico kimahi) which is translated in the King James Version as dispensation. It is God's salvific history. God's way how He acts in history. That's what we mean when we talk about economical trinity. God as He acts salvifically in history. Again, distinguished from that the eminent trinity. God as He is in Himself. Now, when we talk about the economical trinity, that's what we did most of the time in this class. We talk about God how He has sent His Son, how He has sent the Holy Spirit, how He came in, how the spirit, again, creates faith in us. God in history. 29 No problem. We will count the deeds of God. But can we go beyond that? Can we make a statement that goes beyond how we see God acting in history? Can we make a statement about God outside of history? Or do we end up speculating about things that we cannot know or about which God has nothing revealed to us? Do we end up overstepping the boundaries that are set to mankind? Sometimes a review was taken and people said let's not talk about God as He is Himself. Let's just talk about God as revealed Himself. But that's not a satisfactory answer. Because if we talk like that, we avoid the question if God has revealed Himself in one way but really truly outside before history He might be different. So if we refuse to talk about the eminent trinity, we do not avoid a concept of God that again sees Him being Trinitarian as just a mode of His being for a certain purpose but not the way in which He truly exists. Therefore, it is not speculation but it is consequent and taking God's revelation serious to say, as God has revealed Himself, so He is from eternity. To put it differently, the revelation of God as three persons is not just a pose God assumed for the salvation of mankind or for His revelation in history, but that is actually as He is in Himself from eternity. That was coined in almost a slogan that the economical trinity is the eminent trinity and the eminent trinity is the economical trinity. God in revelation is the same as God from eternity. Therefore, the only way we can talk about the eminent trinity is coming from the economical trinity and going back or take in the relations between the persons. Or as we read about them in holy scripture, the eternal relations. So going really now to your question, after that long prologue, what can we say about the relationships? How far is the Father different from the Son and the Son from the Holy Spirit? When we look at the Father, then we can say that what is unique to Him is that He is unbegotten. That's why positively we can say about Him that He is the Father. That -- so His property is paternity or fatherhood. What do we mean by that, by fatherhood? When we look at God as the Father, then we first say that He is the archetype of fatherhood among men. It's not that men give to Him the title Father, but He is Father from eternity and everything on earth that is Father actually bears a resemblance to Him. When we call God our Father, we are not using a mere metaphor. The truth -- that is, that the truth is not of the Father but is a primary attribute of men, while it pertains to God really in the secondary or derived sense. So God truly is the Father. And He is, of course, first and foremost truly Father of the Son. Now, when we talk about God being the Father, and there is 30 this relationship between Him, the true Father, and all fatherhood on earth being just a shadow or a mirror of God's fatherhood, we also have to see that, of course, God's fatherhood is different from our fatherhood. The difference in the way that God the Father is begetting the Son by Himself. So God's fatherhood is efficient. There is no consort to the Father. In the pagan religions around Israel, you had these couples of god and goddess which then would procreate. There is no such thing in Israel and in the Biblical concept of God. The Father begets the Son. There is no female god or whatever. The fatherhood of God also differs from human fatherhood in the sense that it is absolute and unqualified. What do we mean by that? A human Father is always also a Son. The human Father is the Son of another Father. So He is, at the same time, Son and Father because he's part of the chain of generations. God the Father is only Father. He does not stand in anybody's -- in the relationship of Son-ship. Also, another difference is that fatherhood, to God the Father, is essential. We mean by that that it's not simply a decision of will. The Son does not come forth out of the will of the Father. It's also that God could say I do not want to be Father. But to be Father is what He is from eternity. So He is essentially the Father. He essentially exists in this relationship. What can we say about the Son? What is proper to the Son? Well, it's what the word itself bespeaks. The personal attribute of the Son is filiation or Son-ship. Or another way to put it also is passive generation. What do we mean when we say the person attribute of the Son is properly filiation or Son-ship. It means first and foremost that, of course, the Son gets His being from the Father. Again, that is an analogic to our being sons, but there are differences. It's God, after all, so there are differences. That is then -- the Son-ship of the Son is spiritual. That does not imply any separation or division in the divine essence. If you are a father and you have a Son, there is a division in essence. They are two different beings separated from each other that can exist from each other. Two different human beings. When the Father begets the Son, there are not two different gods. We talked about that when we talked about the unity and how each of the persons share the same essence and fully possess the same divine essence. It is a generation out of the being of the Father, out of the divine essence. It's just the reversal of what I already said about the Father. That is, again, the Son's generation of the Father is, although it is completely in harmony with God's will, it is not forced on God, but it is not simply an act of the will. That is, the Son is not a creature. The Son-ship of God the Son differs also from human Son-ship in that way that it is 31 eternal. We talk about God as He is in Himself. That is, we talk about God outside of time and space. There is no before and after, therefore, in God. Now, I know that is hard to understand and we can't really imagine that because we are bound to time and space. Therefore, we have to talk in temporal language. So when we hear the Father begot the Son or the Father begets the Son, we think, oh, well, that's a point in time. So there must be something before where the Father was all by Himself. What we realize, though, that's presupposing that there was time. And we just excluded time. So we actually cannot talk like that. So we have to use temporal language. There is no other way of talking about God. On the other hand, we have the need to check ourselves and say we do not mean that there was a time when the Father was not the Father. That's when -- what we mean when we talk about eternal generation. There was never a time when the Father -- when God existed not as the triune God. But nevertheless, we talk about the Son being begotten of the Father. Now, you might say, well, why introduce that additional difficult teal? Let's just skip Son-ship and just say God from the beginning is one, two, three, or however you want to call it. That would solve some of the problems, the actual problems you might have right now. Unfortunately, it's not in harmony with the witness of scripture. It's scripture that calls the Son the only begotten of the Father. So when we are faithful to scripture, we have to talk about the Son-ship. We have to talk about generations. And following scripture, we also have to say that the Father is eternally the Father. That means that the Son is eternally the Son. So we can't escape that difficulty. What is proper to the Holy Spirit? We had a session where we talked about the personality of the spirit. And that must be maintained. When we read scripture, what is said about -- in scripture about the spirit, then we get to the language that the spirit proceeds from the Father. That is why the personal attribute, the personal property of the spirit, is called procession. The spirit goes forth from the Father. Sometimes it's also called spiration. Now, spiration is the same word like spirit. And spirit, of course, means breath or wind or moving air. That's one way to translate the Hebrew word ******* (urok) and also the Greek ******* (puma) and the Latin spiritus. Therefore, it's also one way to speak about the spirit that He is breathed by the Son and by the spirit. What do we mean when we say that, that the Holy Spirit proceeds or is breathed? Again what we say is that the spirit eternally receives His being from the Father and the Son. We follow again here what is said about the spirit in holy scripture. The spirit goes forth from the Father. He never 32 says that the Father goes forth from the spirit or that the Son goes forth from the spirit. So that's a relationship that is unique to the spirit and that order has to be observed. The spirit goes forth from the Father. Here we have to have a little historical excursion because the question for whom goes the spirit forth? From whom does the spirit proceed? From the Father or from the Father and the Son? It is a question that was hotly debated. You might think, why can you get excited about that? How can you get excited about that question? Well, theologians did so and actually one of the major splits in church history was at least partly due to that question when in 1054 the great schism started. The schism between the Eastern church and the Western church which still goes on in the separation between the Eastern Orthodox churches today from the Roman Catholic churches. When we look at the Nicene Creed, we see that it says, "And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son." So everything seems to be clear. The Nicene Creed says proceedeth from the Father and the Son. Well, it's not that easy because if we had an Eastern Orthodox close by, he'd say, that's exactly the problem. You amended the Nicene Creed. And historically, he's right. Originally the Nicene Creed said only who proceedeth from the Father. And then, in the Western church, starting in Spain in the 6th century, it became more and more customary to include the little phrase "and from the Son." And in Latin, that is ******* (filio qua). So that's the question of the ******* (filio qua). The East was quite incensed about the audacity that some people in the rather uncivilized West, changed an ecumenical creed. Ecumenical creed means universal. Adopted by the church everywhere. As distinguished from a local creed. So they said, a local synod, a local council, does not have the power to change an ecumenical creed. And you can understand that reasoning because the State legislature, for example, of Indiana, of course, does not have the power to change the U.S. Constitution. So historically, the East is right in saying originally the ******* (filio qua) was not in the creed. That doesn't, nevertheless, solve the question, does the spirit proceed only from the Father or from the Father and the Son? Because the Nicene Creed, in its original version, did not say that the spirit only proceeds. It said that the spirit proceeds from the Father. We encounter here two different ways to think about the Trinity. The East thinks very much from the monarchy of the Father. The Father is the source, the root of the deity. From Him, the Son receives His being. And then also since He is the 33 root, of course the Holy Spirit receives His being solely from the Father. And they accused the West that they actually destroy the monarchy of the Father. In Western Trinitarian thought, the -- started more from the divine essence which exists in three persons. And the Western thought also emphasized more that the relations in time must be rooted in the Trinitarian life. So although in John's gospel it says that the spirit proceeds from the Father, it doesn't mention the Son here as the source of procession, the West argued, but if you look what is said about the spirit, that the Son sends the spirit, that the spirit is also called the spirit of the Son, that there is a parallelism again in God sending and Jesus sending the Son sending. That the Son gives the spirit to His disciples. Then the Western Trinitarian thinkers said all that leads us to the consequence that if there is this relationship between the Son and the spirit in the economy of salvation, the history of salvation, then there must be an eternal equivalence so that in the Trinity also the spirit is sent forth, proceeds, is breathed not only by the Father but also of the Son. One final remark. When we talk about the interrelationships of the trinity, that is also called by the Latin term, you know, like doctors and lawyers, theologians also have this Latin terminology left, it's called the opera ******* (divina) or the opera ******* (trinitatris) intra. The words. Trinity inside of the trinity which are distinguished. Now, having heard all that, maybe you know empathize with Luther who said at one occasion, not even the angels can fathom this mystery. And all who have tried it, have broken their flex. Well, we don't try to fathom the mystery. But we try to describe it and go as far as possible. 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