![\"\"](\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/papacy-coat-of-arms-205x300.png\" "\\"papacy")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
First, a few clarifications<\/strong>. By “modalist” I do not mean “Sabellian” or “monarchian.” (Those ancient catholics probably did hold to various forms of modalism, but the term is not a historical one, and can refer to other views which probably no ancient person held.) Nor do I mean modalism by definition to be heretical relative to orthodox\/catholic creeds. What I mean is that at least one of these – Father, Son, Spirit – is a mode of the one God, in some sense a way that God is. That last phrase is deliberately ambiguous<\/a>.<\/p>\n In his recent\u00a0Christmas sermon<\/a>\u00a0the Pope said:<\/p>\n In all three Christmas Masses, the liturgy quotes a passage from the Prophet Isaiah, which describes the epiphany that took place at Christmas in greater detail: \u201cA child is born for us, a son given to us and dominion is laid on his shoulders; and this is the name they give him: Wonder-Counsellor, Mighty-God, Eternal-Father, Prince-of-Peace. Wide is his dominion in a peace that has no end\u201d (Is 9:5f.). … A child, in all its weakness, is Mighty God<\/a>. A child, in all its neediness and dependence, is Eternal Father.<\/strong> …<\/p>\n God has appeared \u2013 as a child.<\/strong> It is in this guise that he pits himself against all violence and brings a message that is peace. (emphases and link added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This last phrase, X has appeared as S<\/strong>, is ambiguous. It could mean that X has manifested as it really is, really being S. Or it could mean that X appeared<\/em>\u00a0to be (whether or not X really is) S. But given the Catholic theological tradition, I assume the first is meant here. God has appeared as a human baby, meaning, at least at that time, he really was<\/em> a baby. This is not to comment on a quality or property he has; rather, the idea is that he was numerically identical to this baby. This baby, this little human self – was the same self as<\/em> God. The one true God, that is, the Father, just was certain baby.<\/p>\n But doesn’t the Father differ from the Son, and from the Spirit? Sure. The child just is the Son. And this is a “guise” of God\/the Father. The Son is a different guise than the Father, and both are different guises from the Spirit. Which is just to say, these three ways God acts are really three such ways.<\/p>\n The view seems to be this: God is a single self<\/strong>: the Father\/Son\/Spirit – call him what you will. Any two of those are the same god as one another, and so the same self as one another. If considered as guises, as ways of appearing to us, then they are different – the Father-guise is not the Son-guise, etc. But it is one and the same self who may, as it were, put any of them on.<\/p>\n Coincidentally<\/a>, the Pope brings up St. Francis, saying that<\/p>\n Francis loved the child Jesus, because for him it was in this childish estate that God\u2019s humility shone forth<\/strong>. God became poor. His Son was born in the poverty of the stable. In the child Jesus, God made himself dependent<\/strong>, in need of human love, he put himself in the position of asking for human love \u2013 our love. (emphases added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Again, the baby (and so, the Son) is a guise of God<\/strong> – a way God appears and is. He continues with a bit of traditional human-reason-bashing, and then back to his main point:<\/p>\n …if we want to find the God who appeared as a child<\/strong>, then we must dismount from the high horse of our \u201cenlightened\u201d reason. We must set aside our false certainties, our intellectual pride, which prevents us from recognizing God\u2019s closeness. …\u00a0We must bend down, spiritually we must as it were go on foot, in order to pass through the portal of faith and encounter the God who is so different from our prejudices and opinions \u2013 the God who conceals himself in the humility of a newborn baby<\/strong>. (emphases added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Simple Len and Learned Len aren’t two men<\/strong> any more than the Father and Son, in the Pope’s view, are two gods. They “are” the one God. Or more accurately, he thinks that God, the Father, appears as a human – the Son, the human being, is a guise of God. Of course, there’s more to God that we see in this baby (child, man) but that’s while God conceals himself, that is, certain features of himself, by appearing to us in this way.<\/p>\n This view of God and Jesus is arguably a theological disaster<\/a>.<\/p>\n But am I right<\/strong> that this is the current Pope’s view? Can anyone point us to some other relevant statements by him?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First, a few clarifications. By “modalist” I do not mean “Sabellian” or “monarchian.” (Those ancient catholics probably did hold to various forms of modalism, but the term is not a historical one, and can refer to other views which probably no ancient person held.) Nor do I mean modalism by definition to be heretical relative… Read More »Is the Pope a Modalist?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,13,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-modalism","category-theologians","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5616,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245\/revisions\/5616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/padre-priest-costume-129x300.jpg\" "\\"padre")
Suppose that a priest named Len is very learned. Yet when among simple folk, he adopts the persona of a simple man, so as to relate better to them. Learned Len<\/strong> conceals himself in Simple Len<\/strong> – for there is far more to Len than we see in Simple Len. In those moments, Len really is Simple Len – that’s really him, using simple words, eschewing the airs and manners of a scholar – he is really acting in that way. And yet, that way, that guise, is inherently misleading; it would naturally lead one to think Len to be unlearned. One could call Learned Len a “guise” of Len too, though it doesn’t tend to mislead about how he really is.<\/p>\n