Abraham Miguel Cardozo: Selected Writings by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616431655
Publisher: Paulist Press
Published: 2016-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter VIII: What the Christians and the Pagans Believe

The Christian belief is as follows: The First Cause is God, and He it is who has created all that exists. He is the God of Israel; He has revealed prophecy; He gave Moses the Torah.

The First Cause, they say, is one Deity in three Persons.76 The first of these Persons is called “Father.” He recognizes Himself, and He begets the Second Person, which is called “Son.” This latter remains in a perpetual state of recognizing and loving the Father, who in turn recognizes and loves the Son. The Third Person, called “Holy Spirit,” is emanated from this love.

The Christians’ error lies in this: They believe that the three Persons are equal in essence, in existence, and in power. They are eternal, moreover, none of them having any temporal beginning, such that the Father is in no way prior to the Son or to the Spirit. They have only one intellect and only one nature, so that they are three distinct Persons yet a single Essence; the First Cause is thus not three gods but One.

The Son, they say, created all that exists through the power of the Father and the agency of the Spirit. The mystery is that of the “Who” from the “Who,” in [the biblical verse] “Who created these?” [Isa 40:26].77 And [the Christians] permit no one, who is without training in logic, physics, psychology, and metaphysics, to discuss this mystery.78

[Cardozo here states the “mystery” of the Trinity in terms that sound more Kabbalistic than Christian. I am not certain what he has in mind. See the notes to the preceding and the following paragraph.]

Their doctrine—I have objected to them—necessarily requires either that we make three gods of the First Cause, or else that we concede the existence of only one single Person. Otherwise, there is no way the Spirit can have been emanated. Consider: If the Son loves the Father because He begets Him; and if the Father loves the Son because He is begotten from Him; and if the Spirit owes Its existence to their love—it must follow that the Father and the Son possess distinct intellects, in order that they can recognize and love one another. If there are two intellects, then the Christian faith will require that there be two gods. If there is only one intellect, then love and recognition cannot exist between Begetter and Begotten, and there is no possible way for the Spirit to be emanated. None of the Christian thinkers has found a way to answer my objection, and the source from which they have derived their false belief will be readily apparent to any Kabbalist.79

The crucified Jesus, according to Christian belief, had a body of flesh and blood. His soul was a mere created entity, of no more inherent importance than any sinner’s soul. But the Second Person (the Son) incarnated Itself in him, the Divine Nature unified itself with the human, and the man Jesus thus became a deity and a human being at the same time.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.