Trinity, Creation, and the Fall

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Trinity, Creation, and the Fall

• Lecture 1
• In the Beginning

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Mystery

• Is not
• Unsolved Mystery
• Something that makes absolutely no sense but we
  believe it anyway.

• Is
• Something that we would not have known unless it
  had been revealed to us.
• It has been revealed to us so we can know and
  understand it, but not fully.

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Faith

• Is not
• Overcoming doubt, as in using belief to hold as
  true something that makes no sense.

• Is
• Belief in things that our finite intellects
  cannot grasp.
• We trust a credible source that has told us that
  these things are true.

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God One and Three

• God as one
• Supreme Being
• Love
• Goodness

• God as Three
• Father
• Son
• Holy Spirit

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Trinity

• A family of divine persons whose life is love.

• In the one divine Nature, there are three Persons
  - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
• The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the
  Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not the Father
  no one person is either of the others.
• The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy
  Spirit is God.
• There are not three Gods but one God.

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Trinity

• There are three persons in one nature.

There are three persons in one nature.
We need to understand the distinction between
person and nature.
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Person and Nature

• Person
• Think Who

• Nature
• Think What

• What is God?
• God
• One Nature

• Who is God?
• Father
• Son
• Holy Spirit

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Creation
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The Fall

• Anthropology
• Man is dependent on his Creator and subject to
  the laws of creation.
• Moral Law
• Gods fatherly instruction for happiness.
• Freedom
• Does moral law take away from our freedom?

• We are free, but we do not have absolute freedom
• We are free to live according to the reality that
  God created.
• We are free to rebel against the way God designed
  us.
• We are not free to determine good and evil.
• We have the freedom to make choices, but we do
  not have the freedom to control the consequences
  of those choices.

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Who was right?

• God
• Gen 217 - but of the tree of knowledge of good
  and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that
  you eat of it you shall die.

• Devil
• Gen 34-5 - You will not die. For God knows
  that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened,
  and you will be like god, knowing good and evil.

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Consequences of Original Sin

• Spiritual Death
• We lose Ruah, Gods life in us.
• Intellect and Will
• Concupiscence
• Dominated by passions
• Bodily Consequences
• Suffering, sickness and death.

• Universal Effects
• Grace was lost for entire human race.
• Adam and Eve cannot pass on what they do not
  possess.
• After the Fall and the loss of grace, our first
  parents transmitted to us a human nature deprived
  of grace.

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