I'm not prejudiced against R.C.s BUT...

But "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" isn't supposed to be the sort of command that makes one's head hurt.

 

What is making your head hurt ? laugh
The trinity or more christology?

 

My head's not hurting, since I know what the right answer is. I just feel bad for those who think they are compelled by Chalcedon to offer worship to something other than God.

 

Well I personally find it confusing to say you only worship the divinity of Christ.
What do you do when the human Jesus appears before you? Do you worship him or?

 

That is nestorianism.
The person of Christ is both divine and human

 

No, it is Nestorianism to say that Jesus is two persons - divine and human. It is Monophysitism to say that Jesus is one person, with the divine and human merged. Orthodox doctrine is that Jesus is a divine person with a human nature.

 

Well can you answer my question?
How do you react if the human Jesus appears before you?
How do you worship his divinity only when he’s standing in the flesh right in front of you?
It seems impossible to do this imo

 

Do you worship the person of Christ? Then you worship a divine person with a human nature. You cannot separate them.

 

I would probably collapse in terror like everyone else this happened to in the scriptures. That doesn't really tell us anything, though, only that the experience would be overwhelming. His deity wouldn't be what was "standing in front of me", just his humanity, and humanity is a created thing.

 

“The fullness of the deity dwells in Him”?

 

Metaphor, obviously. God doesn't have extension. It's true but not literal as a physical statement.

This whole discussion manifests a real problem, one which is obvious to everyone else, but often goes right over most Christians' heads (or in one ear and out the other). How can we credibly represent ourselves to the world as genuine monotheists - "We believe in one God"... - when we can't give a straight answer to the question, "Do you worship a man?", which is something the scriptures clearly prohibit?

 

Sophistries to me. I’ll let someone wiser than I respond.

 

Christianity has always taught that the divine nature is not physical. God is no more "in" one place than he is any other. It's only sophistry if one thinks something has to be physical in order for true statements to be made about it.

 

I’m sorry. That was probably rude. It is here that we must part ways. Colossians says ‘bodily’, ‘somatikos’. I believe that. I know you have your reasons, but I have mine.

 

John 1:14
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

This is true, there is an absolute distinction between reality and physicality. However we need to be sure that we do not think that the Incarnation is a metaphor, lest we ultimately conclude that salvation is metaphorical.

 

That doesn't mean that God has a body. God cannot be the "maker of all things, visible and invisible" if he is one of those "visible" (bodily) things; Jesus cannot be said to have become incarnate if was already a physical being. And one verse in Colossians doesn't negate all the other scriptures that clearly deny that God has a physical form. As the 39 Articles put it:

I. Of Faith in the Holy Trinity.
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions...

 

If the humanity of Christ presents an issue for you to worship, why doesn’t the trinity?
I mean, if you want to start with monotheism, 3 persons in one God cannot be easily explained away, just like God became man can’t be explained away.
I feel trinitarianism posits a bigger hurdle than than worshipping a human- God person

 

The "persons" are not independent centers of consciousness with distinct knowledge and will like human persons are. The persons are distinct only in their mutual relations, and each person just is the divine nature, with no composition. As the Athanasian Creed puts it:

[W]e are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by himself to be both God and Lord...

There is thus no question of polytheism in the classical form of the doctrine. (The Christian teaching of the Trinity - when understood correctly - is considerably less problematic with respect to monotheism than is either the Jewish kabbalah or the Sunni Islamic doctrine of the eternity of the Qur'an.)

Which leads us back to what we were originally discussing. It is fuzzy thinking about the Incarnation that led many Christians into the medieval errors against which the Reformers protested. The latter were simply reasserting biblical monotheism.

 

John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.​

The Son, Word, Jesus, 2nd Person of the Holy Trinity, predates the Incarnation. In the Incarnation Time and Eternity have embraced each other.

I sense you are acting as 'agent provocateur' in suggesting that someone else has a problem with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

The Nicene Symbol, the classic foundational expression of Trinitarian Belief begins, 'We believe in One God'. If you don't start with Monotheism, you run the risk of either Tritheism, or even worse 'God the Committee'.

 

But what does it mean God has different relations with himself? How can there be different relations in one Godhead? The persons of the trinity also have different roles in relation to themselves. How can one Godhead have 3 different roles?
I think this is more complicated than you’re making it seem

Also what do you mean by “medieval errors” of the incarnation?
Do you mean chalcedonian Christianity as a whole? Or just worshipping the Eucharist ?