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Trinity To Nazienzus Essay

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The Trinity to Nazienzus is absolutely essential in his Five Theological Orations, and in them he defines the “Father is the Begetter and the Emitter; without passion of course, and without reference to time, and not in a corporeal manner.” This means that “though numerically distinct there is no severance of Essence.” Christ is not subordinate to the Father, and the Holy Ghost is not subordinate to the Father or the Son; the Godhead is Triune in unity and is of the same substance. Even though the Holy Spirit and the Son “are from [the Father], though not after Him,” they still share the same essence as Him in the Trinity. This is an important distinction, because any part of the Godhead that has not existed for all time would not be God by definition. Nazienzus explains this by saying that the “cause is not necessarily prior to its …show more content…

He goes so far to say that the “notion of Two Sons, one of God the Father, the other of the mother” warrants the loss of adoption into God’s Kingdom. God and man have two distinct natures, just as the body and the soul are two distinct natures, “but there are not two sons or two gods” in the person of Jesus. This is valid because it adheres to scripture, and because the alternative is heresy. There are plentiful examples of the divinity of God, one being John 8:58, where Jesus proclaims to the dismay of the Pharisees “before Abraham was, I am,” which caused them to try and stone Him for what they considered blasphemy. His humanity can be seen in Matthew 4:2 where He hungered after fasting for 40 days and nights, and in Mark 15:37 where the human person of Jesus died on the cross, even though his deity descended to Sheol. This shows the validity of the Trinitarian model, which means that “the Three are One and the same in Godhead,” as Christ is still the fully functioning second person of the

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