Editing Fast Fridays: 30 Minutes for God (section)

== Friday, January 3: the Trinity and what the heresies got (get?) wrong ==
The notion of the Trinity confounded many in the times of the early Church, and continues to confound many today. Modern non-believers may accept a “nature’s god” or some benign guiding spirit, or even various gods or spirits, including the yin/yang view of good versus evil. The Christian Trinity, however, defies any such dualism, agnosticism, or polytheism.

The Trinity, or the “Godhead,” is a single nature with three persons. The Catholic view identifies those persons as the Creator, the Savior, and the Sanctifier. And that last gets even more complicated when we think of the Holy Spirit “proceeding” from the Father and the Son — huh?

Are these semantic distinctions, or do they carry fuller import? We will discuss the Arian heresy, a form of “subordination”, and discuss what, exactly, do we understand the Trinity to be.

I first thought seriously about the Trinity while it to Catechism students, which forced me to consider what/ why I'm teaching. It's a great opportunity to engage students in the required combination of Belief and Reason for fuller Faith. Like the hypostatic union of Christ as all God and all man (my students learn, "100% God! 100% Man!"), the Trinity as one nature and three persons is irrational.

The notion of the Trinity confounded many in the Early Church (and continues to confound many believers and non-believers today). We can group their heretical understandings in several general categories:

{| class="wikitable"
!Movement
!Christ as God alone
!Christ as Man alone
!Christ distinct 
from the Father
!Christ as other
|-
|Adoptionism
|
|Y
|Y
|Christ adopted by God
|-
|Arianism
|
|
|Y
|Christ is God and man, but not the same as God
|-
|Dosceticism
|Y
|
|Y
|Christ existed in spirit only
|-
|Gnosticism
|Y
|
|Y
|
|-
|Modalism
|Y
|
|Y
|God in the form of Christ
|-
|Subordinationism
|
|Y
|Y
|The Son is "subordinate" to the Father
|}
For the Gnostics, especially, the idea that Christ was human was repulsive. Some went so far as to argue that he didn't go to the bathroom. For them, the material world is evil, and only the spiritual can be divine. So Christ was just God pretending to be a man, or he wasn't a man at all.

There are serious theological problems that arise from this distinction. In 1095, Saint Anslem wrote, ''Cur Deus Homo?'' (*Why did God become man?") because, evidently, there was still much misunderstanding about these questions:<blockquote>I HAVE been often and most earnestly requested by many, both personally and by letter, that I would hand down in writing the proofs of a certain doctrine of our faith, which I am accustomed to give to inquirers ; for they say that these proofs gratify them, and are considered sufficient. This they ask, not for the sake of attaining to faith by means of reason, but that they may be gladdened by understanding and meditating on those things which they believe ; and that, as far as possible, they may be always ready to convince any one who demands of them a reason of that hope which is in us. And this question, both infidels are accustomed to bring up against us, ridiculing Christian simplicity as absurd ; and many believers ponder it in their hearts ; '''''for what cause or necessity, in sooth, God became man, and by his own death, as we believe and affirm, restored life to the world''''' ; when he might have done this, by means of some other being, angelic or human, or merely by his will. Not only the learned, but also many unlearned persons interest themselves in this inquiry and seek for its solution. Therefore, since many desire to consider this subject, and, though it seem very difficult in the investigation, it is yet plain to all in the solution, and attractive for the value and beauty of the reasoning ; although what ought to be sufficient has been said by the holy fathers and their successors, yet I will take pains to disclose to inquirers what God has seen fit to lay open to me.<ref>St. Anselme: Proslogium; [https://archive.org/details/stanselmeproslog00anseuoft/page/178/mode/2up?view=theater Monologium; an appendix In behalf of the fool by Gaunilon; and Cur Deus homo] : Anselm, Saint, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1033-1109 : (Archive.org); p. 178-79</ref> (emphasis mine)</blockquote>We can work later on Anselm's formulation, which can be summed up as:

# Man sinned.
# God did not.
# Man cannot atone for sin.
# God can.
# Therefore, God had to be both man and God in order to atone for our sins.

Theologically, the distinction is huge, for if Christ was God alone, or if he was man alone, then we are not saved. 

For now, though, we will focus on Arianism, which held to Christ's duality as God and Man but did not consider him fully the same as God. I heard a priest describe the Arian heresy as a word game that went that Christ is "Son of God, but not God the Son."  Arianism is a type of "subordinationism" heresy.

Arius was a cleric or possibly presbyter, which is a bishop of sorts, in North Africa, likely having been educated in Alexandria. He held that while the Son preceded creation, he was not eternal, which means that the Father preceded the son.  He doesn't argue against the life of Christ and salvation in him, he just says, heh, the Father came first, then came the son. So what's the problem with that? 

Here from Arius<blockquote><poem>... And so God Himself, as he really is, is inexpressible to all. 
He alone has no equal, no one similar, and no one of the same glory.
We call him unbegotten, in contrast to him who by nature is begotten.
We praise him as without beginning in contrast to him who has a beginning.
We worship him as timeless, in contrast to him who in time has come to exist.
He who is without beginning made the Son a beginning of created things
He produced him as a son for himself by begetting him.
He [the son] has none of the distinct characteristics of God's own being
For he is not equal to, nor is he of the same being as him.</poem></blockquote>
Hmm. We'll start with one and then see where else we go:
# If the Father preceded the Son, then the Word is not the Son. There goes John 1.