Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Trinität: patriarchische Hierarchie (Wortbedeutung: hieros, archein); H.: heilige(r) Ordnung, Ursprung

Kurzinhalt: Therefore, the Trinity is not just a hierarchy or "sacred order"; it is a patriarchal hierarchy, or more simply put a patriarchy, because it is a sacred order whose sacred origin is the Father himself.

Textausschnitt: TRINITY: A PATRIARCHAL HIERARCHY (PATRIARCHY)

94a Most Catholics are taught that to say God is Trinity means that God is one being and three Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Little beyond this, however, is specifically taught about the Trinity. Most Catholics are therefore ignorant of the real character of the inner life of the Trinity and are unprepared to hear that it is, in fact, a patriarchal hierarchy. (Fs)

Sacred Order

94b The word "hierarchy" has two meanings. The first comes from two Greek words, hieros, meaning "sacred", and archein, meaning "to rule". Hierarchy, therefore, means a "sacred rule" or a "sacred order". If we examine carefully the revelation we have received in Christ, we discover that the Trinity is indeed a sacred order. (Fs)

First, the three Persons in the Trinity are subsistent relations. The Father is the relation of paternity, the Son of filiation and the Holy Spirit of passive spiration—spiration, because he is spirated from the Father and Son, passive because he does not do the spirating himself but is spirated by the Father and Son. (Fs)

94c Second, each of the Persons is distinct and irreducible to either of the other two, because each is in himself a unique and unrepeatable relation. Fatherhood is different from sonship and spiration is different from both of them. In other words, the three Persons of the Trinity are non-interchangeable. That is, the Father is defined by his paternity and cannot be the Son or Holy Spirit. By the same token, the Son is defined by his sonship and the Holy Spirit by his spiration. This may seem obvious, and yet the implications are seldom recognized. To say the three Persons are non-interchangeable means that, because the Father cannot be the Son, the Father literally cannot do anything which is bound up with sonship per se, just as the Son cannot do anything which is bound up with fatherhood per se, and so forth. In short, there are things the Father can do that the Son and Holy Spirit cannot, things the Son can do that the Father and Holy Spirit cannot, and things the Holy Spirit can do that the Father and Son cannot. This is reflected in Scripture, for example, in the fact that the Father always begets, commands and sends the Son. It is inconceivable in the revelation as we have received it to imagine the Son begetting, commanding or sending the Father. We have here three distinct, different, irreducibly singular Persons, because they are three distinct, different, irreducibly singular Relations. (Fs)

95a Third, and I cannot stress this enough, these three relations or Persons are ordered to one another. The Father is Person because he is the Father of the Son. He is ordered to the Son precisely insofar as he is Father. There is no question here of his having the ability to enter into whatever sort of relationship he would like to have with the Son. Each of them is related to the other in a specifically ordered way, because these ordered relations are precisely what constitute them as Persons. In the same fashion, the Holy Spirit is not called Spirit because he is immaterial (God is by nature immaterial), but because he is spirated from and therefore ordered to the Father and the Son by virtue of that spiration. The fact that they are ordered to one another allows us to speak of the circumincession of the Persons, by which they exist not only in distinction from one another but also in some fashion within one another. (Fs)

95b Fourth, within the Trinity, each of the Persons, although possessing the fullness of the divine substance and therefore enjoying the fullness of divinity, is nevertheless radically incomplete considered in himself and therefore equally radically dependent upon the other two Persons, since the full reality of the Godhead is realized only in the threeness of the communion. The Father, for example, is God, but God is not just the Father. In other words, there are no imperial, autonomous selves within the Trinity. (Fs)

Kommentar (25/11/11): zu oben: ".. is nevertheless radically incomplete considered in himself ..." Das wäre zu hinterfragen.

Sacred Origin

96a Hierarchy also means "sacred origin", from the Greek word arche, meaning "first" or "beginning" or something that has ontological or temporal priority. Although the Trinity is eternal, i.e., without any temporal beginning, the Trinity does have an ontological beginning or origin, the Father. He is the origin of the Trinity, because the Father begets the Son and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit has his origin in the Father and the Son, and the Son has his origin in the Father, but the Father has no origin. He is, as many of the Church Fathers pointed out, the unoriginated origin. He therefore has ontological priority within the Trinity (this is why he is always the First Person of the Trinity), because he is the absolute source of the order we find in the Trinity. Therefore, the Trinity is not just a hierarchy or "sacred order"; it is a patriarchal hierarchy, or more simply put a patriarchy, because it is a sacred order whose sacred origin is the Father himself.1