(urth) Shadow, Chapter X

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes]

On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>wrote:


> In the Christian Trinity, if I understand right, The Father is The
> Uncreated, and the source of the Son and Spirit.  Yet they are One.
>  Severian is clearly a metaphoric analog to the Son, so in a sense Severian
> is just one hypostasis of The Increate. The Father IS the Son, though we, of
> seeming necessity, often conceptualize them as separate entities. yet they
> are one.
>

To be precise: they are _all_ Uncreated. The Father does not "create" but
"begets" the
Son, and the Holy Spirit "proceeds" from them both. (This is slightly
different for the
Eastern churches.) The Father IS NOT the Son; they are both God, and there
is only
one God. It is not a matter of us conceptualizing them separately, but that
there is,
in one Godhead, three Persons. The classic formula (from the Athanasian
creed) is
that we "neither divide the Essence, nor confound the Persons."

The easiest analogy I know is the strangely-carved block on the cover of
Godel
Escher Bach. It is carved so that one side of it *IS* a G, one side *IS* an
E, and one
side *IS* a B, yet they are all one block.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
http://www.danehyoakes.com

I once absend-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant
and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and
a bottle of chili sauce. -- T. Pratchett
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