Robert Luna
speaker
62 appearances
11 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 7 Jun
Robert Luna’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
One thing I would say in response to your question is the logos being talked about here is the interior word of the Father. So the word of creation is more of a word that goes out. But within the Godhead itself, there's an interior word. The Father has an imago of himself that we call the Son. The Father and Son fall in love with each other. The mutual love is the Holy Spirit.
So we would see from the beginning, this very text, there's a Trinitarian overtone. But it's the Word that, in a way, precedes the Word of creation. It's interior to God Himself. So the Word was God, as it says.
Why did I jump in? I completely agree with what you're saying. And you're very close to Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. He said, Trinitarian doctrine turned upside down the classical view. It said substance is primordial, relationship is accidental, just the opposite. Ultimate reality is a relationship, hence the importance of in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God.
And take the next step, Aquinas says this. that a creature is, he says, , it's a kind of relationship to the Creator. It has to be. If it's coming into being every moment from nothing, the creature is a relationship. Then I'd link it to Jesus' ethical teaching. Why do you love even your enemies?
Because it's not so much substance against substance, but all of us are, whether we like it or not, connected to each other through God. So I think that's really an absolutely right intuition. And it's the metaphysics of this opening line.
The other thing you need is that the world is not God. So the world has to be intelligible for science to get off the ground, but also it can't be God. If it's God, you're going to worship it or you'll keep it at a distance. If it's not God, you know you can experiment, you're going to analyze and so on. And both those are contained here. It's radically intelligible and it's not God.
It's been made by God. I think those two things have got to be in place for the sciences to emerge.
And it's layered, like it's layered in all these different ways. Can I just add something to that? Because that's, I think, the right framework. And I'd add the temple perspective, the very fact he's introduced as the son of a temple priest, his mother's from a priestly clan. So the question is, why isn't John the Baptist in the temple?
And part of what I think is there's a really pronouncing of judgment on the temple. He's proposing a kind of new temple out in the desert, a new washing. There are people seeking forgiveness of sins, not in the temple, but from him. And then his announcement in the Gospel of John when Jesus comes is, behold the Lamb of God.
Part of the Messianic expectation was the renewal of the temple, right? So he would gather the nations, he would reign as Lord, and he would renew the temple. So I think it's the beginning of a temple renewal program. And then when Jesus comes, he goes, well, here's the Lamb of God. Here's the one who's meant to be sacrificed in the true temple.
Then, of course, Jesus picks that up with, you know, I will tear this place down in three days, rebuild it, referring to the temple of his body. So I think that's the liminal thing, too. He's the end of the old temple, the beginning of the new, right?
Well, he does, he says he does it. Can I try to answer John's question about baptism? I think it draws a lot of the themes together. Our sins are forgiven in the cross of Jesus. They're forgiven in that great act. And when the soldier pierces a side, out comes blood and water. And the church fathers read that as the blood of the Eucharist, but the water of baptism.
And they further linked it to Ezekiel's great prophecy that, you know, the Shekinah of the Lord had left the temple and it'll come back someday. And when it does, that's when water flows forth from its side for the renewal of the world and of the human heart and all that. And I think that's how they read it, is from the side of the renewed temple.
So when John the Baptist, this priestly figure, says, behold, there's the Lamb of God, there's the one who will be sacrificed, and whose very body is the new temple, that's what the baptismal water symbolizes. It's the water coming from the redemptive act of Christ on the cross. I bring all those themes together.
When that's the scandal of it, so from the beginning, And even scholars today recognize that the fact that it's in the Gospels is scandalous. Why would Jesus, the Son of God, have to seek a baptism of repentance? So the fact that it's there means that, boy, this really happened. It's one of the stronger arguments.
He's the icon of the invisible God. Now, what's going on inside his own psychology, his own human psychology, is a famously, you know, controverted issue. He grows in wisdom and understanding. Right, it says that.
So I think that's really fine to say that in his human nature, to use more technical language, sure, he grows.
go into the desert and encounter satan and begin his ministry as a concept well in its human nature and i think that's part of the baptism is the identification with the sinner so he stands shoulder to shoulder with sinners in the muddy waters of the jordan and anyone walking by would say oh there's another one of those sinners but that's anticipating the cross that's right becomes sin on the cross and that also explains the question of why do we need john the baptist because
I agree. I mean, one of the earliest fights the church had was against Marcion. That's right. So the Marcionite heresy that tried to divide the New Testament from the Old. And the church, by a very deep and correct instinct, led by St. Irenaeus, said, no, you cannot understand Jesus apart from the Old Testament. So that's a very bad instinct to say, just read the gospel, you'll be fine.
You won't get the gospel apart from the Old Testament.
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