Newsgroup: it.cultura.ebraica
Titolo: Tema 4 - Parte 004 - The Trinity and the Incarnation

While Jews (and Muslims) are strictly monotheistic, nearly all Christians
have adopted the doctrine of Trinity, whose seeds can be spotted in the "New
Testament". For example, the baptismal formula in Matthew 28:19 names all
the Three Persons (the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit); the Gospel
according to John begins with an hymn to the Son, and its description of the
Last Supper describes the Holy Spirit at length.
But the first occurrence of the word "Trinity" dates to about 180 CE, in a
writing of Teophilus of Antioch, and the doctrine did not ripen fully until
the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE (the later "Filioque" controversy is of
comparatively lesser importance).
According to Christian dogmata, G%d is One, and the Three Persons (the
Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit) share a single substance; the Persons can
only be distinguished through their interrelationships, since the Father
generates the Son, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from both.
The Trinity acts as one, but each of the three Persons does his part: the
Father is the Creator of the World; but the World was created through Jesus,
and the Holy Spirit is what keeps the world running.
The concept of G%d as Father is of Jewish origin: humans are the Children of
G%d, and the People of Israel is G%d's Firstborn. Since firstborns were
charged with priestly duties before the giving of the Torah, Jewish
commentators infer that Israel's duty is to sanctify humanity.
Christians think differently: since they regard Jesus as the only Son of
G%d, humans can only be the adoptive children of G%d, and only if they
believe in Jesus. Jesus is also seen as the only mediator between the World
and G%d; Christianity does not rule out the salvation of non-Christians, but
they are nonethelessly saved through Jesus' intervention.
There is no "chosen people" in Christianity; there is a Church instead,
whose believers are deemed the inheritors of what had been promised to
Israel.
Some Christians see an affinity between the Torah and Jesus: the Gospel
according to John identifies Jesus with the Word of G%d, and a Jewish
tradition affirms that G%d created the Torah first, and used it as a
blueprint for the creation of the World. In my opinion, the affinity stops
here, since the Torah has never undergone Incarnation.
Christians believe that Jesus had to incarnate, i. e. to become a human
being, in order to provide humanity with the perfect victim whose sacrifice
would have atoned for the "original sin", i. e. the transgression of Eve and
Adam.
Jews do not underestimate the first sin, but they see its consequences
differently. What they share with Christians is the belief that such a
transgression had introduced decay and death in the world, and made easier
to sin than to lead a holy life; but Christians also believe that each and
every human being (except two) has been burdened with a sin inherited (in a
mysterious way) from his forefathers; and such an "original sin" can only be
atoned for through baptism.
The only people exempted from the original sin were Jesus and his mother
Mary, who is hailed by Christians as the model of humanity redeemed, and the
greatest of all saints.
The Incarnation was made possible by the intervention of the Holy Spirit,
who is the "glue" between the Father and the Son, and acts towards the world
by giving life and (prophetical) advice to humans.
The Incarnation has created the theological problem of the coexistence of a
human and divine nature in Jesus, which has been solved through the
philosophical concept of "hypostasis", i. e. an union which makes the divine
and human nature inseparable, but nonetheless distinct.
Therefore, Jesus is seen both as a true G%d and a true man, similar to all
men, with the exception of sin. An intriguing consequence is that Jesus also
had a human soul, which needed learning and experience to fully develop, and
a human will; but such a will, unconstrained by sin, always cooperated with
Jesus' divine nature.
Two people were exempted from the Original Sin, and two people escaped
death: Jesus and his mother. Jesus resurrected after death and then rose to
heaven; about his mother it is only said that she has been assumpted to
Heaven, although the New Testament says nothing about that.
Christianity promises resurrection to everybody, even the damned ones (while
Rabbinic Judaism states that some sinners are to be denied that, and Liberal
Judaism believes that Resurrection is absurd), and when it will happen Jesus
will judge everybody according to his own merits and guilts, for eternal
bliss or doom, before estabilishing the Everlasting Kingdom of G%d.
An interesting question is where does the doctrine of Trinity come from:
while most philosophers and theologians assume that it comes from the
interpretation of the New Testament through the categories of Greek
philosophy, some rabbis have assumed instead that Trinity is a vulgarization
of the theosophic-theurgic Qabbalah.
A book on the subject was written by R' Elia Benamozegh (1823-1900) in 1863
and has been recently published in Italy and France. It argues that the
Christian Trinity resembles two Sephirotic triads:
1) Chokhma - Tif-eret - Malkut (the prevalent one)
2) Keter - Chokhma - Binah
The book is very interesting, but it fails because it assumes that the
Zoharic Qabbalah was fully fledged in Jesus' time, and such an assumption is
untenable.
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 untenable.
E' possibile avere qualche notizia su questo libro di Benamozegh?
Oppure, se hai gią trattato l'argomento in passato, indicare 
dove posso trovare maggiori informazioni?
Grazie.
Alessio
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Il libro e' "L'origine dei dogmi cristiani", pubblicato poco tempo fa da
Marietti 1820.
Se ne e' parlato in news:it.cultura.ebraica ed in news:it.cultura.cattolica
.
Ciao.
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