A.Suarez's Treatment on a Pope's Formulation for Original Sin's Transmission!

Thanks for this fitting clarification.

I firmly believe in the Trinity! And think the Trinity is the very foundation of truth.

What I mean is this:

The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.

However, the Father is not the Son, and is not the Holy Spirit. And the Son is not the Father, and is not the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is not the Father, and is not the Son.

This means that God is a full relational entity, the absolute being consisting in pure relationship.

Accordingly, the meaning of the expression that “man might be made God” (by the Greek and Latin Fathers and Doctors of the Church) means that God will make us participants of the Trinitarian life: We will become part of the Trinitarian relationship as a person more within the Trinity, but we will be neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit.

The ultimate end of the whole divine economy (God’s plan of creation-salvation-glorification) is the entry of God’s creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity, according to:

John 17: 22-26
I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me— so that they may be brought to complete unity. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. […] 26 I have made you[e] known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.

We are called to be a dwelling for the Most Holy Trinity:

John 14: 23-26
Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. […] 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

A very long answer! But do you still claim that ‘God’ does not refer to a ‘single person’ .

What you are featuring here is the situation for the “first heaven and the first earth”, “the old order” that we have now and will last till the last judgement.

By contrast, I am referring to “the new heaven and the new earth”, the final state that will start after the last judgement, according to:

Revelation 21: 1-4

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. […] And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

That seems to be a digression, distracting (intentionally?) from the issue at hand, namely, do we ourselves ‘become God’, omnipotent and omniscient. We do not.

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Speak for yourself, mortal! I’m all-knowing and it’s time for me to hit the stock market. Imma make a killing!

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According to me:
Nothing is truer than the truth of the Trinity!

Absolutely!

God’s goodness is the very stuff we are made of.

By sinning we prompt God’s goodness, and God gives us the opportunity to repent and come back to him.

God’s goodness led God to counter the first human sin (“culpa”)
by letting us on earth bound over to the state of “original sin” (disobedience)
to have mercy on us all (for the sake of our Redemption).

So what is felix is not the culpa (the first human sin) but rather God’s goodness, and to a certain extent “the state of original sin” as the opportunity we are given by God’s mercy to reach salvation.

Here the citations:

St. Athanasius the Great (“On the Incarnation of the Word”, chapter 54):

“God became human so that we might become God”

St. Irenaeus (Against Heresies, Book V, Preface):

“the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.

St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae, III parth, question 1, article 2, I answer that):

“Fifthly, with regard to the full participation of the Divinity, which is the true bliss of man and end of human life; and this is bestowed upon us by Christ’s humanity; for Augustine says in a sermon (xiii de Temp.): “God was made man, that man might be made God.”

Additionally and in the same sense:

John Calvin (Commentary on 2 Peter 1:4)

“Let us then mark, that the end of the gospel is , to render us eventually conformable to God, and, if we may so speak, to deify us .”

Martin Luther (Quoted from a 1526 sermon of Luther’s)

“God pours out Christ His dear Son over us and pours Himself into us and draws us into Himself, so that He becomes completely humanified (vermenschet)and we become completely deified (gantz und gar vergottet, “Godded-through”) and everything is altogether one thing, God, Christ, and you .”

The important conclusion from all of this is that humankind has a dignity that animals and machines do not have.

Or as St. Thomas Aquinas quoting St. Augustine states:

“[by God’s incarnation] we are taught how great is man’s dignity, or as Augustine says (De Vera Relig. xvi): ‘God has proved to us how high a place human nature holds amongst creatures, inasmuch as He appeared to men as a true man.’

Christmas is not an event of Christianity alone: “the birth of Jesus is a universal event that concerns all of humanity.”

Merry Christmas to all of you!

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Do you believe the authors of those thoughts believed that we would be entirely like God, omnipotent and omnipresent?! I hope you can perceive that they did not!

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For me it is patent:

The citations of these authors in my previous post convey the message that we will be entirely like God.

What I can perceive is that the authors are suggesting this is not yet the case now, but it will be the case in the final state of the world, when God will be all in all.

In the present “old” heaven and the present “old” earth, and till the last judgement, ONLY God is omnipotent and omnipresent. After the last judgment, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, where “omnipotence” and “omnipresence” do no longer matter, because there will be no separation in space-time (no limit of quantum superposition! :wink:), and then God is all in all.

Then, we will be entirely like God, i.e.: like a person more within God’s Trinitarian life, adoptive children of God.

The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem we celebrate today reveals this:
God becomes completely humanified and we become completely deified.

The video “Man from Steve Cutts” you post is a distorted version of Jesus’ prophecy about the Last Judgement in Matthew 25:31-46.

The important difference is that in Jesus narrative there are righteous people while in Cutts’ picture all humans are evil.

Cutts nurtures hatred against humankind, and this is harmful.

So we can then bring a universe into being?

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Well I find it disturbing and a call to check ourselves. I think that would have been his intent. It certainly isn’t a celebration of anything.

Why did he say that do you think. Oh, he did not want to blaspheme and say that we would be equal to God.
 

Bizarre. You cannot see anything metaphorical, figurative or rhetorical in your citations. And the earth was created on 22 Oct 4004 BC.

We will all be Fathers, Sons and Spirits in one, Trinities, too. How does that work again, please? (Don’t answer that – it was rhetorical, speaking of rhetorical, and I really do not need to hear any more.)
 
(There is another little problem, namely that God is spirit, and we will have resurrected bodies, like our Lord’s.)

Oopsie! 

Another oopsie–how do we square that with the vision of elders in Revelation worshipping God? Will God be worshipping us?

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Since you have already contributed a guest post to BioLogos, are you going to contribute another one where you develop these new ideas?

In 1 Corinthians 15: 42-44 you find the solution to “the little problem” you address:

42 It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. 43 Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength. 44 They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.

You have to keep in mind that God assumes a body in and through Jesus Christ, in order we can become deified also in our body. And this is the reason why we are in the image of God, because we share a body like the body of Jesus Christ. Our true common ancestor is Jesus Christ, not genetically but theologically.

Adam (in the sense of the first sinner) is our common ancestor, not genetically but according to the lineage of sin: We all are “bound over to disobedience”, the state the first sin produced (the so called “state of original sin”) and, paradoxically, thanks God’s mercy (Romans 11:32)!

That is only a partial answer to the several issues raised.

This is a very good remark!

I dare to answer as follows:

  1. The event of the 24 elders worshiping God in Revelation 4:10-11 takes place before the Day of (the last) Judgement, i.e.: when there are still people on earth rejecting God. So it is fitting to assume that these elders in representation of all righteous in heaven want to expiate for this, and “fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say…”

  2. After the Day of Judgement, it is stated in 1 Corinthians 15: 28:
    “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.”
    This means that within God’s Trinitarian life the Son (who is entirely God) can be considered submitted to the Father (who is entirely God). Accordingly, we (who through and in the Son will be entirely God) will be subjected to God the Father as well, and God will be all in all.

  3. The principal act of worship consists in revering God with filial affection, and the saints will fulfill this act above all after the Day of Judgement, and they will also mutually honor one another.

God’s love for us makes him mad to the extreme of revering us with paternal affection:

John 3:16:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Revelation 21:3-4
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

John 13: 3-5:
To explain what means for God to be omnipotent!
“Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”