The Holy Trinity. Just as nature is said to abhor a vacuum so human beings balk at the idea of a mystery. We find it a bit of an insult to our intelligence to be told that there may well be some things which are simply beyond our reason; not against our reason nor contradictory, just beyond or above what we as human beings can fully understand. But is it, after all, so impossible that our intellect is limited? Trigonometry, DNA, the basics of a computer, the ‘simple’ mechanics of my human body and many, many other things are a mystery to me - but only because I am too thick or lazy or both to be able to understand them. Other human beings can and do understand these things. A real mystery is something which, in this life, no human intellect can clearly grasp and in our relationship with God there are quite a few things which are mysteries in that sense. Nowhere near as many as we think; some facts about God and ourselves and our relationship with him are just hard to grasp. But there are some facts which have been revealed to us which we simply cannot fully understand, no matter how brilliant the theological mind may be, but which we can ‘explain’ to a limited degree to show that they are not impossible, not a non-sense, not contradictory or against human reason - essential, since God is the source of both the revelation and our human reason. One such mystery in that very strict sense is the intimate nature of God as he has revealed it to us by revealing The Trinity. We believe that there are three Persons in one God. Or, as the Nicene Creed which we say on most Sundays expresses more fully: We believe in the Holy Spirit...who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. God made man - Our Lord - revealed this innermost and intimate part of God to us not to baffle us nor to give theologians through the ages the happy opportunity of writing volumes of speculations. He did it to show us that in the new dispensation, the New Testament, our relationship is that of friends rather than master and slaves. Friends have a closer insight into each others lives. The Jews, the chosen people, had no inkling of this true nature of God. The least we can do in return is to be grateful. Then to try and understand, as far as our human intellect allows, what the mystery is. If God reveals something to us then it follows he wants us to believe it. If we cannot fully understand it because of the limitations of our human intellect then we have to pinpoint where the mystery lies; the point beyond which we cannot go. At this point it has to be clear that what we are being asked to believe is not against human reason; that it is not a non-sense. In the Trinity we are told that the One God has - is - Three Persons - that there are Three Persons in One Nature. That these Persons are each fully God; not one inferior to another, subservient to another. All equally and truly God. Nature is the answer to the question: `What are you?' Person is the answer to the question: `Who are you?' Suppose you met God face to face. You would ask: `What are you?' and he would reply: ` I am God.' You would then ask: `Who are you?' and he would answer: `I am God the Father....God the Son....God the Holy Spirit' according as to who he actually is. Whoever he is, it would be the same, one God. He would fully possess the one, divine nature. He would not posses one third of it; or be less God than another divine Person. This is where the mystery lies. In our limited human knowledge we only understand how one human person can own, possess, one tiny part of humanity; human nature. In no way can any individual human being claim to own and posses, have the complete and whole of humanity in him or her. We share it with millions of others. God, however, does not have a third of divine nature - he is fully divine and exclusively so. But there is nothing intrinsically contradictory, against reason, in one nature being fully possessed by three persons. We simply find it way out of our experience and cannot fathom how this can be. If, however, these three divine persons fully possess the whole of the one divine nature, are they really different? Are they not all one and the same? What makes them different? Look at three identical pint mugs standing on a pub shelf. What makes them different is their relationship one to another. They look the same, made of the same material, weigh the same, contain the same amount of beer etc. But one is on the right of the other and the third is on the left of the first. They are related to one another; linked. This is what is meant, in the Creed, by saying that: `The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son'. The `processions in the Trinity' means that the three Persons are related one to another. This is what makes them one God but three separate Persons. God the Father is related to God the Son. God the Holy Spirit is related to both the Father and the Son. [NOT as a heresy has it: related to the Father through the Son.] Which is why the Trinity is depicted as a triangle: each Person related to, linked to the other directly. Not a straight line with three dots: Father related to Son; Son related to Holy Spirit; Spirit related to Father only through the Son. This ‘relationship’ is important because it also explains - as far as one can explain - why we do not call the three Persons simply Number 1, 2, 3. Never forget that there is only One God. That this God exists from all eternity - He Is. This the description he gave of himself when Moses, told to lead the chosen people out of Egypt, reasonably asked him: ‘Who shall I say sent me?’. There is no lapse of time in the `description' which follows; nor any gradation of dignity or importance. God exists from all eternity. Existing means that there must be activity. Something which does not `do' anything cannot be said to be existing, living. ( A cabbage which is not growing is a dead cabbage; it does not do anything) God is a spirit; not material. The activity which shows he is existing must be a spiritual activity. Thinking, intellectual activity, is the supreme and spiritual (non material) activity. So from all eternity God exists, acts and thinks. What does he think of, about? There is nothing [unless he creates it] to think about except himself. So from all eternity God thinks of and about himself. This thought, concept, of himself is the second Person of the Trinity. Because it is a concept, it is conceived, it is called The Son. He is there from all eternity. Equal to the Father who conceives the concept because this is the infinite God `thinking' about himself. From all eternity, with no lapse of time (which does not exist in eternity) we now have the thinker and the thought. Both equal and real and divine; the Father and the Son. How are they related, linked? The overwhelming attribute of God is goodness; love. This is what - from all eternity - links the thinker and the concept; the Father and Son. Mutual love of God for himself; infinite God. This link is so real, so divine that it is the third Person of the Trinity - the Spirit. Again, without lapse of time; without one coming before the other or one being more important than the other. In this way the actual names we give the Persons give us a glimpse - that's all - into how the three Persons in the one God are related, linked, `proceed' from and to one another. This, briefly and brutally, is some sort of description and explanation of the mystery of the Trinity. We must abstract from thinking of God in any sort of time or lapse of time; or any sequence; or any steps of importance or one depending on another. Imagination, in talking about mysteries, is fatal! It must be pure logic and reason. At the end of it all - we still have to take it on faith; on the word of God. The heresy mentioned above which relates the Spirit to the Father only through the Son is, basically, the difference between the western Catholic Church and the eastern orthodox Church. Way back in 860 all kinds of differences arose between east and west, mostly political. The nasty treatment by the emperor Michael the Drunkard of the Constantinople Patriarch Ignatius was the start of it all - and eventually resulted in this heresy of the `processions' in the Trinity. In practice; in our devotions and prayers; in the way we normally think of God; we can afford to be heretical but practical: Think of God the Father as God in his function of creating and conserving everything; God the Son as being the Redeemer when he became human and saved us from sin; God the Holy Spirit as the sanctifier and as God in his function of looking after the Church and every individual until the end of time. So long as we remember that where one Person is the other two Persons must also be - because there is only one God! When we pray we should try, now and then at least, to pray to God as He really is - to the Holy Trinity. But because we are human we usually have to restrict ourselves to praying to one Person at a time - according to the `functions' above; according as to how we think of God as acting and relating to us. Logically all the `arguments' and `explanations' of the Trinity above are correct and it would be hard to argue against them. In our daily life we take the mystery on faith because Jesus has revealed it to us: in the way he spoke about God:- " I and the Father are one"; "If you know me you also know the Father"; "The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, is one with the Father"; "unless I go he (Spirit) cannot come" etc etc. Our Lord never used the word `Trinity'. The Apostles did not preach about `nature and persons'. All the attempts to explain the revealed truth have come through the ages and through the work of theologians. The logic and language may persuade us - or not - that the revelation is not against reason. Eventually we have to make an act of faith; and gratitude to God that he has revealed his intimate nature to us. `We believe in the Holy Spirit', therefore, as we proclaim in the Creed, means we believe in the three Persons of the Trinity - and he is the sanctifier who took over from Christ to look after the Church - and you and me. |
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