Joseph Hollcraft MA
Theological Foundations CCP 210
Week 2: September 13, 2007

III. Trinity (John Paul II’s foundation to the New Evangelization): Three Person’s one nature: nature is the source of operation and person is the one who does them. The first person knows himself. The act of knowing produces an idea, a word; and this idea, this word, is the perfect image of Himself, is the second person (the link between sonhsip and having an idea of oneself is that they both produce likeness). In turn perfect love begets the Holy Spirit, for this love is the Father loving the Son and the Son loving the Father--The Spirit is the most attentive hearer of the Word—it is breath (Sheed, 25-46).

1. Relationship between the two creation accounts. Creation account # 1 God is Elohim—Creator; Creation account # 2 God is Yahweh—Lord and Father. These two creation accounts are not discrepancies against one another but rather a prism into understanding how we acquire knowledge—by being in relationship with the Father!

A. The science of inquiring knowledge of created beauty has at its core being in relationship with the Father. Truth about God can be attained by way of reason, but again reason serves faith as faith serves reason.

2. Gn.1.26; 5.3: “Let us make man in our image and likeness and let them have dominion over the earth.” We image the Trinity when two become one and that love shared creates a third…three in one (cf.Gn.2.24). Marital love expresses that divine language so that human beings can learn to speak the language of God honestly and fluently. In procreation, we are leaving footprints towards the Trinity.

A. The love shared between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. So you have the love shared being the generative force creating three in one. “Authentic married love is caught up in divine love” (CCC 1639). This is the essence of the covenant family bond. John Paul II remarks: “God in his deepest mystery is not a solitude but family, because he has fatherhood, sonship and the essence of family which is love.”

1. I would note here that the Hebrew word for marriage is Kiddushin; it also means “holiness.” In this way, families become outposts of the Trinitarian life--sacrificial/unconditional love of presence. God the Father loving because He exists.

a. God uses family language so that we might grasp his familial purpose in his eternal design for mankind. Note that in the first creation account, we read “let there be” but when he creates man he states, “let us make.”

B. God using family language to speak of his new arrangement in His new covenant family plan in the church. God’s family is the organic character found throughout history (consider the key patriarchs).

1. Christ himself enters human history through a family, that of Nazareth. Therefore, that alone allows us to see the significance of the role that the family has today. In this way, the church steers our attention between family and church.

a. Theologia and Oikonomia: Theologia is the mystery of the inner life of the blessed Trinity; Okonomia is the law of God’s household…oikos means “home”,nomos means “law” (law comes from a Hebrew word that is actually an archery term that means, “To strike bullseye”).

1. Jn.3.3...Our initiation into God’s family is when we are “born anew” in the waters of Baptism. Here we are entering into the divine life of God (cf. 2 Peter 1.4)

2. Mk.14.22...We are sustained and nourished in God’s family by feasting on the “blood of the new covenant”; the bread of the “Lamb of God” (Jn.1.36

3. Rev.19.7...our ultimate destiny is “the marriage supper of the lamb”.

4. Rom.8.15...Creator as Father; Gn.1.26...Creatures are children; Ex.38.12...the cosmos are our home.

b. Scott Hahn, in his treatment of the Trinity, states: “Marriage is for the home, the home is for the Church, and the Church is for God. The sexual instinct is completely subordinated by the church for the sole purpose of building up a Christian society through the home. As the church is the universal family the individual family is the domestic church”. This acts as a commentary to CCC 1656.

1. This rules out free love and state proprietorship of marriage. The family is the main support of the state and the church is the main support of the family. The church is the great social cementing force (cf. 1 Cor.7.39; Eph.5).

C. For notes on the role of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, see Counselor from the Word of the Week Catholic Hour website.

Homework assignment: Reflecting upon pgs 62-64, what role does God’s law and freedom have in ordering our lives to God’s will?