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The Christian and the Trinity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

Giles Hibbert O.P.
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Extract

To be a Christian is to believe in Christ; and this in its fullness is to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnate Word of God: to accept Christ as God made man, who through his Passion takes away the sins of men, and through his Resurrection restores to them a life of communion with the godhead. This life of communion with God—in which lies the possibility and reality of man's perfection—is in and with and through Christ, through faith in him. And the proper place of this life is visibly in the Church on earth, which he founded, with her sacraments through which her members meet with him whose body she is, together with and in just relation to her ministers and saints, who play their necessary and leading rôles within her life. All this, and one's relation to it in faith, is relevant to one's life as a Christian. If those who Profess Christ are wrong about these points, they are at least endangering the solidarity of their life in Christ. The more firmly the Christian believes these things, and the more he appreciates their significance, the deeper is the possibility of his spiritual life in Christ.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 17 , Issue 198 , February 1963 , pp. 307 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 There can be no doubt about the authority of the Athanasian Creed, ft fall into the same category as the Apostles’ Creed, although it can neither be considered to be as venerable, nor as having such everyday immediacy. It is no more the direct work of St Athanasius than the Apostles’ Creed is of the apostles.

2 With the love which activates it and the witness (the witness of the Church to Christ) which gives it content both being the free gift of God, this faith, though necessarily ours, is thus at the same time entirely the gift of God.

3 The suggestion that the Athanasian Creed may derive from St Augustine more directly than is generally accepted is attractive on both stylistic and doctrinal grounds, and does not present insuperable historical difficulties.

4 It is only the ‘physically’ transmitted gift of God through Christ (that which earlier we have referred to as witness) which is given; but also the power and interior reality of our response—the gift of faith.

5 The comparison here is not strictly that of soul and body with Trinit Incarnation, but with the mystery of the Trinity and the mystery of God incarnate. The Incarnation as such is the embodying of the Word, not the Trinity. And furthermore the Trinity is, of course, only restricted in any way by the Incarnation with regard toourpossibilityof knowing it, or in other words within the order of our salvation.

6 ‘Incarnation’ is here being taken as meaning—as it has done for the most part Throughout—not merely the birth of our Lord at Bethlehem, but the whole life and activity of the God-man, Emmanuel; thus including Christ's ministry, passion, death and resurrection.