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The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation

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Richard Rohr
Richard Rohr

Richard Rohr is an American theologian, writer, and priest, born in 1943. He is known for his profound insights into Christian spirituality and his critical thinking about contemporary society. more

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“God's high freedom in Jesus Christ is His freedom for LOVE. The divine capacity which operates and exhibits itself in that superiority and subordination is manifestly also God's capacity to bend downwards, to attach Himself to another and this other to Himself, to be together with him. This takes place in that irreversible sequence, but in it is completely real. In that sequence there arises and continues in Jesus Christ the highest communion of God with man. God's deity is thus no prison in which He can exist only in and for Himself. It is rather His freedom to be in and for Himself but also with and for us, to assert but also to sacrifice Himself, to be wholly exalted but also completely humble, not only almighty but also almighty mercy, not only Lord but also servant, not only judge but also Himself the judged, not only man's eternal king but also his brother in time. And all that without in the slightest forfeiting His deity! All that, rather, in the highest proof and proclamation of His deity! He who DOES and manifestly CAN do all that, He and no other is the living God.”

“The divine persons do not assert themselves, but one bears witness to another. It is for this reason that St. John of Damascus said that 'the Son is the image of the Father, and the Spirit the image of the Son.' It follows that the third person of the Trinity is the only one not having his image in another person. The Holy Spirit, as person, remains unmanifested, hidden, concealing himself in his very appearing... The Holy Spirit is the sovereign unction upon the Christ and upon all the Christians called to reign with him in the Age to come. It is then that this divine person, now unknown, not having his image in another member of the Trinity, will manifest himself in deified persons: for the multitude of the saints will be his image.”

“Christians do not believe that there is one God and three Gods. Nor do we believe that God is one person and three persons. That would clearly be contradictory and therefore logically impossible. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity is that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct persons. We believe that The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit are each individual persons in their own right, but they all share the same divine essence. Saying that "God is one being who consists of three persons" is no more contradictory than saying that "There's one triangle that consists of three corners”

“The Ontological Argument shows us that in order for God to be maximally great, He must be morally perfect. Being all loving is a part of good morality, but before the creation of humans, God had no one to love, so how could He be loving? He couldn’t be. If He isn’t loving, He isn’t morally perfect, and if He isn’t morally perfect, He isn’t maximally great. How do we resolve this? The doctrine of The Trinity provides the answer. God needs to be a Trinity in order to be love. For love requires three things: 1; a lover 2; a beloved 3; a relationship between them.”

“For Schopenhauer, the world is an idea. Although in a way distinct from the will, this idea implies will and therefore equates it. If the world itself is an idea and if nothing exists beyond this world and this idea, then there is no place in Schopenhauer’s philosophy either for noumenon or metaphysics. If everything is the world and the world itself is an idea and the will, then the whole world is a phenomenon: subject and object, cause and effect, purpose and meaning. Although there is a distinction between the idea and matter, this distinction is only on the surface, since even if the world is an idea or an appearance of a hidden idea, this ultimate idea is not beyond the world but is the world itself, which annihilates the substantial distinction between mind and body (matter and idea).”