didn't god and jesus get separated?

edited December 1969 in Non-Orthodox Inquiries
didn't they get separated when jesus came as a man to earth?this quesion is really confusing it get me sometimes to pull my hair from thinking??
i hope someone can answer me??
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Comments

  • why is it a NO"??? so do you mean that God is the one who crucified not jesus?
  • In the liturgy of St Basil at the end abouna says: "Truly I beleive that His divinity parted not from his humanity for a single moment nor a twinkle of an eye"

    Meaning that Jesus never ceased to be God, and his Divinity never interfeared or was deminished with his humanity.

    This question is a question alot of people do not understand because it is hard to comprehend a God who became and was incarnated as man yet still being God.

    Even the Jews could not understand and said "John 10:33 The Jews answered Him, saying, For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God."

    There are also many verses that point to His divinity (ie Godliness) and there are many verses that point to His humanity. The Question is are they contradicotry?

    Hopefully some one else can answer this qeustion...gtg to uni heheh...
    Shenouda.
  • If you can seprate the heat of the sun from its light from its physical spere, you still CAN'T sperate Jesus from His Devinity from the Holy Spirit.
    If at any point you can have a Sun (or a STAR) that is NOT hot and DOES NOT emit light you still won't have God without Jesus or the Holy spirit.
    Jesus Himself said, "The Father and I are ONE" "If you have seen Me then you have seen The Father" "I am in the Father and The Father is in me" To say they seperated is WRONG from every prespective.
    Jesus is God incarnate, He is ONE with the Father. They did NOT seperate, as Shenoods brought up, not for a single moment, not for a twinkle of an eye.
    We humans are Mind body and spirit. If the spirit is seperated from the body, then we die. We cease to exist. We can NOT be human unless the three componants are present.
    Same with Jesus. The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit, is what makes up God. There has never been, is never and will NEVER be a time where they are not together.
    If, the crusified Jesus, was not in union with the father at the time of crusifixtion, then our salvation is in vien because we are not redeemed by God who is a Sufficient sacrifice for us. and if the devinity would not leave Jesus during the cursifix what makes you think that they would seperate any other time.
    I understand the confusion but lets not go astray on false doctorines here. Many a hertics went down that path.
    How any you even say that when you draw the Cross. We say "In the NAME of the Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit, ONE GOD, Amen" we use Name in the singular (not plural) to discribe that they are ONE. then we say ONE GOD to signify the unity. The ONE God Can not be devided.
    I hope this helped
  • Jesus is God....how could they separate? That's like saying I can separate from myself.
  • Hello sandrahanna,

    I will try to explain to you the union between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in an easy and illustrative way, although Coptic boy explained before.

    Suppose you are sitting in a room with a window or a balcony, and you are looking to the sun up in the sky, you can see the disc of the sun up there and at the same time you feel the heat of the sun and the room you are sitting in is full of light. So you see the disc, the room is bright and you feel the heat of the sun.

    The light did not leave the sun “disc “, nor the heat. The sun still haven’t loose its light or heat.

    This is some how similar to the Christ coming to us and He had never left the Father or the Holy Spirit.

    I hope by this demonstration, the concept of your question is being understood

    God bless
  • The question is what is the nature of christ, did christ seperate from the Father when he was incarnate and became man?

    Jus to add to my answer....

    St John said "The word became flesh". All the things that we know of the trinity we know through the incarnation, when the son of God becames the son of Man and lived among us.

    The son remains God at the heart of the unchanged trinity, but something is added to his divinity, he becomes man, somthing wich is an incomprehensible paradox: the word without change in His divine nature, to which nothing can be added or deminished, fully engages in our condition to the point of even accepting death. He becomes man without the other person of the Trinity suffering or being crucified. However the salvation of the world is the single will of the Hypostases.

    I would also like to refer u to the Book by HH Pope Shenouda III called "the nature of Christ"...

    here is an exert from the 1st page

    The Orthodox Concept
    Concerning
    The Nature of Christ

    The Lord Jesus Christ is God Himself, the Incarnate Logos Who took to Himself a perfect manhood. His Divine nature is one with his human nature yet without mingling, confusion or alteration; a complete Hypostatic Union. Words are inadequate to describe this union. It was said, that without controversy, "Great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh. " (I Tim. 3:16).

    As this union is permanent, never divided nor separated, we say in the liturgy that His Godhead never departed from His manhood for a single moment nor even for a twinkle of an eye.

    The Divine nature (God the Word) was united with the human nature which He took of the Virgin Mary by the action of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit purified and sanctified the Virgin’s womb so that the Child to whom she gave birth would inherit nothing of the original sin; the flesh formed of her blood was united with the Only-Begotten Son. This Unity took place from the first moment of the Holy Pregnancy in the Virgin’s womb.

    As a result of the unity of both natures-the Divine and the human-inside the Virgin’s womb, one nature was formed out of both: "The One Nature of God the Incarnate Logos" as St. Cyril called it. The Holy Church did not find an expression more reliable, deep and precise than that which was used by St. Cyril the Great, and which St. Athanasius the Apostolic used before him. Both of them were true leaders in the theological field worldwide.
  • hey great answer Shnoods... and if god and jesus did seperate there would be a reason for seperation... correct me if i am wrong anyone!!!!
  • so that is a good point...so did god is the one who crusified right?
    i am starting to get crazy!!!
  • i am not trying to confuse you but only one thing this is getting crazy my only question was where was god when jesus crusified?
  • Yes, God was crucified in the flesh when Jesus was crucified. And, like I've said before, since Jesus is God, then God couldn't "leave" while Jesus was on the cross. That's why the Nestorians and docetists are wrong.

    According to Nestorianism, technically Jesus is not God, but rather viewed as God sort of "dwelling" inside of Jesus. This, as St. Cyril rightfully argued, would mean Jesus was no different from any mere man in so far as any mere prophet can have God "dwelling" inside of him.

    But when we say "Jesus is God", we mean it in a completely un-qualified sense. We can actually worship his flesh and blood precisely as being Divine flesh and blood.....that's considered over-stepping the bounds in Nestorianism.

    But note: Jesus is only the Second Person of the Trinity, not the entire Trinity, of course......so, of course, the entire Trinity was not crucified "in the flesh" (as the Byzantines tried to argue against the non-Chalcedonians in the fifth and sixth centuries).
  • haaa!...the trinity...interesting topic. But unfortunately for us, we can not fully comprehend it because it's BEEEYONDD us. To our limited human mind...the whole concept of 3 in 1 is something we will never get...But we do know His divinity parted not from his humanity for a single moment nor a twinkling of the eye..meaning, yes God was presented when Jesus (which is God in the flesh, the incarnate) was being crucified...

    anyways, if ur confused...its okay....i dun blame u..its kinda hard to grasp the whole concept...think of it like this...our mind is so limited and small....like a cup...and God is infinite and what he does and how he does it is beyond us...he is like a huge oceaan...it is as if trying to fit the entire ocean into a cup...u cant do that. Same goes with us..we cant reallly totallly understand it...so we should just have faith :)

    (lol, i hope u all got my lil analogy ;D :P)
  • But note: Jesus is only the Second Person of the Trinity, not the entire Trinity, of course......so, of course, the entire Trinity was not crucified "in the flesh" (as the Byzantines tried to argue against the non-Chalcedonians in the fifth and sixth centuries).

    Obviously the byzantines were attacking a strawman then; regardless of whether it be deliberetely as the result of an hidden agenda or out of sheer ignorance.

    Peace.
  • why did you said god job it was just a question anyways so when jesus prays in any miracles he did when he was on earth he was praying to him self?
  • [quote author=sandrahanna link=board=12;threadid=1913;start=15#msg29186 date=1119308070]
    why did you said god job it was just a question anyways so when jesus prays in any miracles he did when he was on earth he was praying to him self?


    God the Son was praying to God the Father....remember there are three Persons in the Trinity.
  • o..my god so there is 2 god look now what i name crazy!
  • how did you say god the son was praying to god the father??
  • [quote author=sandrahanna link=board=12;threadid=1913;start=15#msg29693 date=1119984664]
    o..my god so there is 2 god look now what i name crazy!


    The 3rd Century Church Father Tertullian once said (paraphrasing): "I believe it precisely because it is crazy".

    But there are not two Gods, or three Gods for that matter. It's one God who exists in three persons. The Father "begot" His Son from all eternity (sorta like when an earthly Father has kids...but don't take this metaphor too literally....lol). And He was pleased to have all the fulness of His "God-ness" dwell in the Son.

    A very (VERY) crude way of putting this is: imagine an earthly Father who has a son. But the son is himself (i.e. the Father himself)!
  • i think u just confused her more lol
    i'd give her the example of the fire,thats easier to understand :)
  • Dearest to Christ Sandrahanna,

    The Trinity is ONE God. One Personal God. When we look at three human persons say a father, a son and a daughter, they can be one family, but not one personal being. The Three Divine Persons can be and are one personal being: namely God. God is at the same time one and three; He is a Tri-Unity.

    This is very difficult for us to understand and accept, because it is a way of existence impossible for us creatures. If you find it hard to grasp,.. well,.. That's good! It means you're a creature and that you feel like one! Not understanding it does not mean you can't believe it. In faith you can accept and make your own this revelation of God as at the same time one and three. One God, Three Persons - Three Persons One God.

    Now as Trinity the Persons relate to One Another. We know from the Bible and Tradition that the Father is the "head" of the Trinity, and the Son and the Spirit are the Father's hands (says St. Irenaeus of Lyon). Of course this does not mean that the Father is more Divine than the Son and the Spirit. They are equi-divine (iow equally - divine), but they have different characteristics that make the Father to be Father and not Son or Spirit, that make the Son the Son and not Spirit or Father, and that make the Spirit to be Spirit and not Father or Son. So there is Three,.. but we must not loose sight of the fact that there is only one! We can honestly say that God does not have three Persons, but that God is three Persons and in their being united as one, they are the ONE GOD that Moses met in the desert as JAHWEH.

    Inside JHWH, who is the Trinity, as it were, there must be communication between the Three Persons. And the relation of the Son and Spirit to the Father is one in which we can say that they "pray" to the Father. The bonds of love between Father and His Son and Spirit can be described as prayer. But this is Divine Prayer, and it is not given to humans or any other creature to participate in this high form of prayer that takes place inside the one God. This is, so to say, the "inner life of God" just as we have our inner life (and sometimes "inner dialogue") so God has His Own life too, but not in a human way but in a Divine Way.

    Humans and angels can pray to the Father also, and the Spirit and the Son make this possible to them. For Jesus says that nobody can come to the Father but through Him, and St. Paul says that we don't know how to pray and that the Holy Spirit makes our sighs into prayers. So the Divine Persons of Son and Spirit give us a very small piece of Their Own "prayer-life" with the Father so that we can pray to Him and be His children.

    Sometimes it is argued that Jesus was not fully God as the Father is because He prayed to God the Father. We now know that this is not true. The fact that Jesus prays to the Father simply means that the relationship of Father and Son remained unchanged, and it also means that the Son can now pray to God in a human way as well as in a Divine way. In Jesus Christ the Son of God prays at once as God and man, because of the unity of the nature. Remember that we, Copts, believe that there is one nature in Jesus not two. The prayers of Jesus are therefore human as well as Divine.

    In this way Jesus prays to God the Father in one prayer, that is both human and Divine. The human not mixed with the Divine nor separated from the Divine; we should interpret Jesus' prayerlife according to our Coptic Orthodox confession of one nature in Jesus Christ. So there is one composite prayerlife, just as there is one composite nature in Him.

    I understand this is all very very difficult,.. And I wish I could explain it better, but I am not a very gifted man when it comes to that I am afraid. If you have not been able to understand something I wrote it is completely my fault for not listening to the Lord well enough. For He can explain everything,.. and I cannot. So if there is a problem, pls pray for me and forgive me,.. and ask me again, so that I can try to make up for my bad.

    IC XC

    Grigorii
  • Hello sandrahanna,

    Please read again my post on the first page, because some later posting might cofuse you.
  • [quote author=Safaa link=board=12;threadid=1913;start=15#msg29817 date=1120087668]
    Hello sandrahanna,

    Please read again my post on the first page, because some later posting might cofuse you.


    Safaa....you make me laugh sometimes.
  • [quote author=Safaa link=board=12;threadid=1913;start=15#msg29817 date=1120087668]
    Hello sandrahanna,

    Please read again my post on the first page, because some later posting might cofuse you.


    Safaa, since you bring it up again, let me just say that the analogy you used in the post you point sandrahanna to is the same analogy that Sabellius used to teach the trinity. Sabellianism is a form of modalism that erases the personal differences in the trinity, hence, it is a quite serious heresy. To quote a scholar:
    " While the other Monarchians confine their inquiry to the relation of Father and Son, Sabellius embraces the Holy Spirit in his speculation, and reaches a trinity, not a simultaneous trinity of essence, however, but only a successive trinity of revelation. He starts from a distinction of the monad and the triad in the divine nature. His fundamental thought is, that the unity of God, without distinction in itself, unfolds or extends itself in the course of the world’s development in three different forms and periods of revelation and, after the completion of redemption, returns into unity. The Father reveals himself in the giving of the law or the Old Testament economy (not in the creation also, which in his view precedes the trinitarian revelation); the Son, in the incarnation; the Holy Ghost, in inspiration. The revelation of the Son ends with the ascension; the revelation of the Spirit goes on in regeneration and sanctification. He illustrates the trinitarian relation by comparing the Father to the disc of the sun, the Son to its enlightening power, the Spirit to its warming influence. He is said also to have likened the Father to the body, the Son to the soul, the Holy Ghost to the spirit of man; but this is unworthy of his evident speculative discrimination. His view of the Logos, too, is peculiar. The, Logos is not identical with the Son, but is the monad itself in its transition to triad; that is, God conceived as vital motion and creating principle, the speaking God, in distinction from the silent God. Each provswpon is another dialevgesqai and the three provswpa together are only successive evolutions of the Logos or the worldward aspect of the divine nature. As the Logos proceeded from God, so he returns at last into him, and the process of trinitarian development closes. "
    HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH by Philip Schaff
    http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/2_ch12.htm#_edn1

    As you can see, the analogy of the sun and its rays is quite misleading and heretical when it's considered carefully.
  • As you can see, the analogy of the sun and its rays is quite misleading and heretical when it's considered carefully.

    for simple souls like me its usually good enough sarah lol ;), if i'd get into deep complicated theology i guess any analogy wouldnt be sufficient to explain the Trinity 100% correct, but thnx for clearing things up :)
    u really need to explain this stuff in further detail when u visit again, such a long time no see, pizza again? ;D
  • xaira: you quoted that fascist Schaff???!!! Shame on you!!!!
  • Xaria and u_stole_my_name,

    It is the same model used by H.H. to teach the simple people, for God declare Himself to the simple and the pure in heart.

    If your way is to make mockery of people in this website, then may God forgive both of you.

    I told you before, I am not upset of such childish behaviour, I just want you to be good Christian character, for God will not judge us on how much we know in knowledge but on how we treat one another in love.

  • Hello sandrahanna,

    Just to a comment about Jesus' death on the cross: As you obviously know, God does not die, so in order to fulfill the our punishment, He assumed our human, mortal nature. When Jesus took our nature His divinity united to both His soul and His body. Thus on the cross when Jesus died, His soul - united with His divinity- was separated from His body-also united with His divinity.

    This is why we say in the liturgy as other people said earlier, "that His divinity parted not from His humanity for a signle moment nor a twinkling of an eye."

    Have a blesed Apostle's fast,

    MOHAYAR
  • ok i've been watching this post for a while and i've come to this conclusion: Christ, obviously, is God. He couldn't have been anything but that on the cross, because all he would be then was a normal human being. To make his death on the cross take all our sins with him, he had to be God. It simply wouldn't work any other way. As for his death, for he rose, and remember the he was the only one of the trinity that died.

    I once heard someody explain this on a post. He said that the holy trinity was like the angles and sides on an equaliteral triangle. The father is at the top and the Son and Holy Spirit are at the ends. All three sides are equal, all angles are equal, everything is equal. When you rotate it, everything still looks and stays the same. So I they are three in one, and one in three. Three in one being the Father in the Son in the Holy Spirit. One in three being that each one is still different though being one.

    So when you say who was he praying to, he was praying to his father, the first person in the Trinity.

    Jesus needed to appear to us in a human way, for nobody would have understood him any other way. Yet the purpose of appearing to us in the first place was to die on the cross and save us from sin, so he still was divine. So they simply mixed, with the Virgin Mary's blood and the Divine blood.

    I'm sorry I'm not really good at explaining this, mostly because I myself hardly understand it.
  • Dear Xaira,

    It is a certain fact that every human analogy adopted in order to help feeble minds grasp at a concept infinitely beyond our comprehension, will ultimately fall short in one way or another.

    However, Safaa was addressing a 13 year old girl who is attempting to understand this obviously complex topic that learned theologians have spent miles of ink attempting to explain away, and I think that in this light, Safaa was justified in her employment of such an analogy.

    Furthermore, though Sabellians may have misused this particular analogy, the fact of the matter is that it was also indeed one employed by many undoubtedly Orthodox Church Fathers including the one who was first to employ the word Trinity itself in patristic theology – Tertullian (whose later heresies have no bearing on his work pertaining to the Trinity, which is undoubtedly Orthodox). Although the analogy is flawed in the sense that it does not account for personal distinction, it does explain other fundamental aspects of the doctrine e.g. the concept of three existing as one simultaneously as well as the concept of “light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made” i.e. the generation of X from source Y in a manner that a) X is of the same essence of Y and b) X’s existence does not precede Y in-time.

    Furthermore, as I recall, Sabellianism not only misused certain analogies that are used to convey the concept of the Trinity, but certain terminology as well. For example, homoousion as employed in the Nicean creed, was actually concillarly condemned (council of Antioch) in A.D. 268 because it was then used in a heretical context by Paul of Samosata.

    I think you have a valid point; however I don't think it is made in an appropriate context.

    Peace.
  • great respond Iqpal!
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