The Trinity: the divine communion of love

The dogma of the Trinity is central to Christian faith. It was revealed by Christ to His disciples and is present in the early tradition of the church. Two biblical truths are revealed in the dogma of the Trinity:1. There is one God - Christianity shares this belief with the other monotheist religions. The central teaching of the Old Testament called the Shema proclaims: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” (Deut. 6:4).2. There are three distinct persons who are God: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:18). Since this dogma expresses the inner life of the triune God, it is beyond full human comprehension and cannot be proven by human reason. However, the dogma is not against reason. Here we attempt to give a rational approach based on the thought of St. Augustine (Doctor of Church, 5th century) followed by a reference to the dogma in the New Testament. Rational Approach When God was asked what His name was, He said “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). God does not become - He IS. He IS forever. He is all-holy and all-powerful...But can God be reigning one and alone for all eternity? The non-Christian monotheist religions believe He enjoys being alone and being powerful, but for how long? One year..one century..one thousand years..one billion years..then God would say: It’s boring to be God! Even if He has everything, He would still be missing the essential: love because love requires someone else to love (or else self-love becomes narcissism.) And the God of Christians is not only a God of love. He is Love. Unlimited Love. He is perfect and unlimited in all the other attributes: unlimited in His power, in His justice and in His holiness. But His essential being or His essence is love. Without love, God would not be God. Here is a simplified way of describing it as a story: From eternity God poured out Himself in love and thus begot His Son, an image of Him. God became a father when He poured out Himself and at this point He looked at his Son and experienced love. In his act of unlimited love, He emptied Himself and gave His divinity totally to His Son. What did the Son do with the gift of divinity? The Son received His Father’s love and discovered that He has everything from His Father and He could not live without love, because life is love and nothing else but love. So the Son emptied Himself and gave all He has - all the divinity - back to the Father. Neither the Father wants the gift of divinity nor the Son wants it. Why? Because love is giving and giving away oneself! In order to realize His fatherhood, the Father has to empty Himself - the Son after listening to the love whispering in Him, gives back His filial love to His Father. This dynamic force of love that pushes the Father to love and the Son to return His Father’s love with love is the Holy Spirit. Now, the true story is that this dynamic movement of love continues from eternity to eternity. There was no time when the Father was alone (or else He would not be in love and would not then be God). There was no moment when the Son did not exist. The Creed says about Christ “begotten of the Father before all ages. God from God ..of one substance (or of one being) with the Father.” The Father begets the Son in self-emptying love and the Son receives His Father’s love and returns the self-emptying love to the Father, and the Holy Spirit, who is Love binds them in unity and brings them together. God is one in His essence but there are three distinct persons in God. Everything that the Father has, the Son also has and the Holy Spirit also has except the differentiation in the relationship. The Father alone is the source (or principle) and Father; the Son alone is the Son begotten; and the Spirit alone is breathed and proceeds from the Father and the Son (or from the Father through the Son.) Each person is distinct yet they share a common nature and are inseparable. As the word comes out from the mind but still remains inseparable from the mind, the Son is also called the Word of God. This expression “Logos” or Word was used to refer to the Son in the Gospel of John. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). A simple physical illustration involves the Sun together with its light and heat that emanate from it. The three elements are not separate and each of them can be referred to as the Sun. Thus the Trinity is not a remote dogma added to the Christian faith. The Trinity is at the centre of Christianity. Now all the acts of God can be seen in light of the Trinity: a divine communion of self-emptying love. God's act of creation is an act that reflects His love. God's act of redemption in Christ is an act of self-emptying love. Even when God permits suffering and death, He is still in love with His creation. Even when God permits evil, it is because He respects the free will of His creation and so it is still part of His love. Are there implications for the Trinity in our life? “The most profound reason for my being a Christian is the Trinity. This is because I find in the faith of the Triune God not only the most sound conclusions based on the Scriptural data but also the most profound vision of human existence known to man. That the God of the universe is fundamentally love, not arbitrary power, is incredible. That the appearance of God in this world was in the form of a lowly “servant” of the world Who gave His life on the Cross, is the most incredible scandal thinkable. At its heart, however, the Christian Gospel affirms what every heart needs and longs for. We need to “die to ourselves.” We need to live by love. We need to come to understand the reason for being in this universe is that we might share the divine life which is, at its heart, self-giving. You see, the Trinity is not only a dogma of Christian faith, but is a source of the most profound practical truths imaginable. The Trinity has implications for how I treat my family. The Trinity has implications for how I look at all other human beings. The Trinity has implications for the profession that I choose to spend my few days in this world practicing and how that will be done. The Trinity has implications for what I will consider the goal and purpose of my existence.” (Mark McNeil). The Holy Trinity is the love which made us. This is why we are relational creatures, because we were made in God’s image; we were made for communion by a God who is communion. The early Christians experienced themselves as worshipping the one God of their Jewish ancestors. They also realized that when they looked at Jesus, they saw God. They further realized that because of Jesus Christ, their lives had been placed in the Holy Spirit. In the 4th century the Church defended and proclaimed the divinity of Christ (at the Council of Nicea, 325 A.D. against Arius), and the divinity of the Holy Spirit (1st Council of Constantinople, 381 A.D. against Macedonius). The Trinity is not only a central doctrine but a living experience for the Christian faith based on the ineffable love of God. The Trinity in the New Testament* Christ only made the great truth known to the Twelve step by step. First He taught them to recognize in Himself the Eternal Son of God. When His ministry was drawing to a close, He promised that the Father would send another Divine Person, the Holy Spirit, in His place. Finally after His resurrection, He revealed the doctrine in explicit terms, bidding them "go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:18). The force of this passage is decisive. That "the Father" and "the Son" are distinct Persons follows from the terms themselves, which are mutually exclusive. The mention of the Holy Spirit in the same series, the names being connected one with the other by the conjunctions "and . . . and" is evidence that we have here a Third Person co-ordinate with the Father and the Son.The phrase "in the name" (eis to onoma) affirms alike the Godhead of the Persons and their unity of nature. Among the Jews and in the Apostolic Church the Divine name was representative of God. He who had a right to use it was invested with vast authority: for he wielded the supernatural powers of Him whose name he employed. The use of the singular, "name," and not the plural, shows that these Three Persons are that One Omnipotent God in whom the Apostles believed. There are many other passages in the Gospels which refer to one or other of the Three Persons in particular and clearly express the distinct personality and Divinity of each. In regard to the First Person it will not be necessary to give special citations: those which declare that Jesus Christ is God the Son, affirm thereby also the distinct personality of the Father. The Divinity of Christ is not only in the Gospel according to St. John but also in the Synoptic Gospels: _ He declares that He will come to be the judge of all men (Matthew 25:31). In Jewish theology the judgment of the world was a distinctively Divine, and not a Messianic, prerogative. _ In the parable of the wicked husbandmen, He describes Himself as the son of the householder, while the Prophets, one and all, are represented as the servants (Matthew 21:33 sqq.). _ He is the Lord of Angels, who execute His command (Matthew 24:31). _ He approves the confession of Peter when he recognizes Him, not as Messiah - a step long since taken by all the Apostles -- but explicitly as the Son of God: and He declares the knowledge due to a special revelation from the Father (Matthew 16:16-17). _ Finally, before Caiaphas He not merely declares Himself to be the Messiah, but in reply to a second and distinct question affirms His claim to be the Son of God. He is instantly declared by the high priest to be guilty of blasphemy, an offense which could not have been attached to the claim to be simply the Messiah (Luke 22:66-71). St. John's testimony is yet more explicit than that of the Synoptists. He expressly asserts that the very purpose of his Gospel is to establish the Divinity of Jesus Christ (John 20:31). In the prologue he identifies Him with the Word, the only-begotten of the Father, Who from all eternity exists with God, Who is God (John 1:1-18). The immanence of the Son in the Father and of the Father in the Son is declared in Christ's words to St. Philip: "Do you not believe, that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?" (14:10), and in other passages no less explicit (14:7; 16:15; 17:21). The oneness of Their power and Their action is affirmed: "Whatever he [the Father] does, the Son also does in like manner" (5:19, cf. 10:38); and to the Son no less than to the Father belongs the Divine attribute of conferring life on whom He will (5:21). In 10:29, Christ expressly teaches His unity of essence with the Father: "That which my Father hath given me, is greater than all . . . I and the Father are one." The words, "That which my Father hath given me," can, having regard to the context, have no other meaning than the Divine Name, possessed in its fullness by the Son as by the Father. In regard to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, in Luke 12:12, "The Holy Spirit shall teach you in the same hour what you must say" (Matthew 10:20, and Luke 24:49), His personality is clearly implied. These passages, taken in connection with Matthew 28:19, postulate the existence of such teaching as we find in the discourses reported by St. John (14-16). We have in these chapters the necessary preparation for the baptismal commission. In them the Apostles are instructed not only as the personality of the Spirit, but as to His office towards the Church. His work is to teach whatsoever He shall hear (16:13) to bring back their minds the teaching of Christ (14:26), to convince the world of sin (16:8). It is evident that, were the Spirit not a Person, Christ could not have spoken of His presence with the Apostles as comparable to His own presence with them (14:16). Again, were He not a Divine Person it could not have been expedient for the Apostles that Christ should leave them, and the Paraclete take His place (16:7). Moreover, not withstanding the neuter form of the word (pneuma), the pronoun used in His regard is the masculine ekeinos. The distinction of the Holy Spirit from the Father and from the Son is involved in the express statements that He proceeds from the Father and is sent by the Son (15:26; cf. 14:16, 26). Nevertheless, He is one with Them: His presence with the Disciples is at the same time the presence of the Son (14:17, 18), while the presence of the Son is the presence of the Father (14:23). In the remaining New Testament writings numerous passages attest how clear and definite was the belief of the Apostolic Church in the three Divine Persons. In 2 Corinthians 13:13, St. Paul writes: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all." Here the construction shows that the Apostle is speaking of three distinct Persons. Moreover, since the names God and Holy Spirit are alike Divine names, it follows that Jesus Christ is also regarded as a Divine Person. So also, in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11: "There are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord: and there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who works all [of them] in all [persons]." (Cf. also Ephesians 4:4-6; I Peter 1:2-3.) In regard to Christ, the Apostles employ modes of speech which, to men brought up in the Hebrew faith, necessarily signified belief in His Divinity. Such, for instance, is the use of the Doxology in reference to Him. The Doxology, "To Him be glory for ever and ever" (cf. 1 Chronicles 16:38; 29:11; Psalm 103:31; 28:2), is an expression of praise offered to God alone. In the New Testament we find it addressed not alone to God the Father, but to Jesus Christ (2 Timothy 4:18; 2 Peter 3:18; Revelations 1:6; Hebrews 13:20-21), and to God the Father and Christ in conjunction (Revelations 5:13, 7:10). Not less convincing is the use of the title Lord (Kyrios). This term represents the Hebrew Adonai, just as God (Theos) represents Elohim. The two are equally Divine names (cf. 1 Corinthians 8:4). In the Apostolic writings Theos may almost be said to be treated as a proper name of God the Father, and Kyrios of the Son (see, for example, I Corinthians 12:5-6); in only a few passages do we find Kyrios used of the Father (1 Corinthians 3:5; 7:17) or Theos of Christ. The Apostles from time to time apply to Christ passages of the Old Testament in which Kyrios is used, for example, I Corinthians 10:9 (Numbers 21:7), Hebrews 1:10-12 (Psalm 101:26-28); and they use such expressions as "the fear of the Lord" (Acts 9:31; 2 Corinthians 5:11; Ephesians 5:21), "call upon the name of the Lord," indifferently of God the Father and of Christ (Acts 2:21; 9:14; Romans 10:13). The profession that "Jesus is the Lord" (Kyrion Iesoun, Romans 10:9; Kyrios Iesous, I Corinthians 12:3) is the acknowledgment of Jesus as Yahweh. The texts in which St. Paul affirms that in Christ dwells the plenitude of the Godhead (Colossians 2:9), that before His Incarnation He possessed the essential nature of God (Philemon 2:6), that He "is over all things, God blessed for ever" (Romans 9:5) tell us nothing that is not implied in many other passages of his Epistles. The divinity of the Holy Spirit is equally clear. He reveals His commands to the Church's ministers: "As they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said to them: Separate me Saul and Barnabas . . ." (Acts 13:2). He directs the missionary journey of the Apostles: "They attempted to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not" (Acts 16:7; cf. Acts 5:3; 15:28; Romans 15:30). Divine attributes are affirmed of Him. _ He possesses omniscience and reveals to the Church mysteries known only to God (I Corinthians 2:10); _ it is He who distributes charismas (I Cor., 12:11); _ He is the giver of supernatural life (2 Cor., 3:8); _ He dwells in the Church and in the souls of individual men, as in His temple (Romans 8:9-11; 1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19). _ The work of justification and sanctification is attributed to Him (1 Cor., 6:11; Rom., 15:16), just as in other passages the same operations are attributed to Christ (1 Cor., 1:2; Gal., 2:17). To sum up: the various elements of the Trinitarian doctrine are all expressly taught in the New Testament. The Divinity of the Three Persons is asserted or implied in passages too numerous to count. The unity of essence is not merely postulated by the strict monotheism of men nurtured in the religion of Israel, to whom "subordinate deities" would have been unthinkable; but it is, as we have seen, involved in the baptismal commission of Matthew 28:19, and, in regard to the Father and the Son, expressly asserted in John 10:38. That the Persons are co-eternal and coequal is a mere consequence from this. Excerpts from a lecture by Fr. Henri Boulad in Toronto, 2003 * Summary of The Trinity in the New Testament is based on excerpts from the Catholic Encyclopedia, (c) 1910.