CHAPTER FIVE: CHRISTIANITY
THE UNITY AND TRINITY OF GOD
5.1 New Testament teaching
In John, a series of passages points to the equality of Jesus, the Son, with the Father (8:24, 10:30, 17:5), while elsewhere, with reference to his human nature, especially before his resurrection, he is depicted as less than the Father (Jn 14:28). Paul only once used the word “God” of Jesus (Rom 9:5). The New Jerusalem Bible comment on the latter passage summarizes Paul's teaching:
Paul has always in mind the historical Christ in his concrete reality as God made man; see Ph 2:5, Col 1:15. For this reason he presents Christ as subordinated to the Father, 1 Co 3:23, 11:3, not only in the work of creation, 1 Co 8:6, but also in that of eschatological renewal, 1 Co 15:27ff; cf. Rm 16:27 etc. Nevertheless, the title “Lord”, Kyrios, received by Christ at his resurrection, Ph 2:9-11; see Ep 1:20-22, Heb 1:3ff., is the title given by the LXX to Yahweh in the OT, Rm 10:9:13, 1 Co 2:16. For Paul, Jesus is essentially “the Son of God”, Rm 1:3-4,9, 5:10, 8:29, 1 Co 1:9, 15:28, 2 Co 1:19, Ga 1:16, 2:20, 4:4,6, Ep 4:13, 1 Th 1:10; see also Heb 4:14, his “own Son”, Rm 8:3,32, “the Son of his love”, Col 1:13, who belongs to the sphere of the divine by right, the sphere from which he came, 1 Co 15:47, being sent by God, Rm 8:3, Ga 4:4. The title “Son of God” became his in a new way with the resurrection, Rm 1:4; cf. Heb 1:5, 5:5, but it was not then that he received it since he pre-existed not only as prefigured in the OT, 1 Co 10:4, but ontologically, Ph 2:6; cf. 2 Co 8:9. He is the Wisdom, 1 Co 1:24,30, and the Image, 2 Co 4:4, by which and in which all things were created, Col 1:15-17; cf. Heb 1:2, 1 Co 8:6; and have been re-created, Rm 8:29; cf. Col 3:10, 1:18-20, because into his own person is gathered the fullness of the godhead and of the universe, Col 2:9. In him God has devised the whole plan of salvation, Ep 1:3 and he, no less than the Father, is its accomplishment (see Rm 1:4, 8:11 & Ph 3:21) and judge (cf. Rm 2:16 & 1 Co 4:5, Rm 14:10 & 2 Co 5:10). In short, he is one of the three persons enumerated in the trinitarian formulae, 2 Co 13:13.
On the latter formula, referring to “God”, “the Lord Jesus Christ”, and “the Holy Spirit”, there is the note:
This trinitarian formula, probably derived from liturgical usage (see also Mt 28:19) is echoed in many passages of the epistles where the several functions of the three Persons are referred to as the various contexts suggest: 2 Co 1:21ff, Rm 1:4, 15:16,30, 1 Co 2:10-16, 6:11,14,15,19, 12:4-6, Ga 4:6, Ep 1:3-14, 2:18,22, 4:4-6, Ph 2:1, Tt 3:5ff, Heb 9:14, 1 P 1:2, 3:18, 1 Jn 4:2, Rv 1:4ff, 22:1, cf. Ac 10:38, 20:28, Jn 14:16,18,23. Note in 1 Co 6:11, Ep 4:4-6 the triple formulations emphasizing the trinitarian thought.
As for the Holy Spirit, John 14:16-26, 15:26 & 16:4-15 speaks of him in very personal terms. His divinity is also indicated by the expressions “whom the world can never accept since it neither sees nor knows him” (14:17) and “all he reveals to you will be taken from what is mine; everything the Father has is mine” (16:14-15), and by his inclusion in the Trinitarian formulas of 2 Cor 13:13, 1 Cor 12:4-6 and Mt 28:19.
5.2 Up to Nicaea and Constantinople I
Trinitarian formulas, of course, were used by the Apostolic Fathers, such as Clement of Rome and Ignatius, but only with the apologists of the 2nd century was any speculation attempted. In replying to the pagans, Justin and Tatian stressed the unity of God, saying that the Word and the Spirit are numerically other than the Father, but inseparable. Irenaeus insists on the coeternity of the Word and gave more attention to the role of the Spirit. Tertullian used the very words “trinity”, “person”, and “substance” while opposing Sabellius' modalism (the three are only different facets of one person) and monarchianism (the Father is greater than the Son and Spirit), but did not precisely define these words or the interrelationship of the persons.
In Alexandria Clement and Origen developed the notion of “generation” to explain the relationship of the Word to the Father, and Origen spoke of three “hypostases” which were “consubstantial” (homo-ousios). Yet Origen, using Plato's triad of the “One”, the Nous, and the World Soul as a model, did not show how the subordination of the Son, by generation, could be reconciled with his equality.
The Council of Nicaea (325) faced Arius' challenge that the Son, if subordinate, is created, and defined the Son as “consubstantial with the Father”. Constantinople I (381) extended the definition to the Holy Spirit, using the formula “Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one in substance (being - ousia), three hypostases”. Between these two councils, however, the word “consubstantial” was resisted by many, even foes of Arius, because it was not Biblical terminology. Athanasius of Alexandria urged its acceptance, even while others were proposing the term “homoi-ousios” (“of like substance”).
From the New Testament to Constantinople I we witness a doctrinal development from elemental trinitarianism to an explicit dogma that offers an answer to the questions an elemental trinitarianism inevitably raises. The validity of these councils is based not merely on the scholarly ingenuity of the theologians who formulated the doctrine, or the political factors favouring such a consensus, but on the Holy Spirit working in the Church to lead it to the complete truth (cf. Jn 14:26, 16:13).
5.3 From Constantinople I to Thomas Aquinas
Once speculation on the Trinity started, one question led to another and the teaching continued to develop. The Cappadocian Fathers, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa, used the terminology of John 3:42, ,>Z82@< (“came forth”) and, in reference to the Spirit, ,6B@D,b,J"4 (“proceeds”) to introduce the notion of procession to throw light on the eternal interrelationships of the persons. For them, all that was Father, Son and Spirit is one and the same except what distinguishes them. These are the peculiarities (idiotes) of each. The Son proceeds from the Father as Word, and the Spirit as breath from the Father through the Son)so the Greeks maintained, while the Latins insisted on the Spirit's procession from the Father and the Son. This difference was one pretext for the split between the Greek Church and Rome in 1054. The reunion councils of Lyons II in 1274 and Florence in 1439 came to an agreed solution to this problem (Thomas Aquinas admitted either formula if rightly understood[1]), but political differences prevented the union of the Churches from holding.
Augustine wrote a book De trinitate in which he used his psychological model of three powers, the intellect, the memory and the will, to illustrate the relationships of the three persons. This psychological model had a long-time influence in many areas of theology and is a stamp mark of Augustinian influence. Yet Augustine pursued the theme that the divine persons differ only by relative relations, a teaching that was recognized by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and the Council of Florence in 1442. Father, Son and Spirit do not differ as God, but in the way each is God with respect to the others. The significance of this distinction, which makes it non-contradictory, is that what is personal in the Godhead is not something absolute, but something purely relative.
It remained for Thomas Aquinas to systematize this teaching in a coherent way. He did not attempt to prove the Trinity from reason, or even to show, once it was revealed, that it is what we should have expected all along, but to understand what is possible to understand about the Trinity, using human intelligence enlightened by faith.
With an Aristotelian psychological model that admitted only the intellect and the will as spiritual powers (the memory being a function of the intellect), he posited only two processions: that of the Word, based on God's self-knowledge, which is called “generation” in the sense that the Word is somehow born from its speaker, and that of the Spirit, based on God's love of himself which, for convenience, he calls “spiration”. This we have two actions, each with two contrasting terms:
<Speaker – speaking – Word> & <Breather – breathing -- Breath>.
These two processions imply four relations: 1) fatherhood, 2) sonship, 3) spiration (breathing out) and 4) procession (or being breathed out). The first, second and fourth belong to the Father, Son and Spirit respectively. The question is to whom does the third belong? The act of breathing, for Thomas, belongs to the Father and the Son jointly, because of the principle that nothing belongs exclusively to one person except by reason of a contrasting relationship.
Thomas finally considers the missions of the Son and the Spirit as depicted in Scripture.
5.4 Modern times
The Reformation did not challenge the Trinitarian teaching of the Church councils but, in rejecting the use of philosophical speculation in theology, returned to a more “elemental” approach to the mystery.
In this century the emphasis has not been on any change in speculative theology but on the development of Biblical theology. In this area considerable advance has been made.
5.5 Our knowledge of the one God
The New Testament takes for granted the strict monotheism of the Old Testament. Origen originated in a systematic way the approach of “negative theology”: God who is beyond matter is beyond our understanding and beyond “being” itself.
Pseudo-Dionysius (Denis the Areopagite) initiated the three moments of thinking about God: The first is affirmative theology. We affirm what Scripture says, that he is One, Lord, Powerful, Just etc. The second moment, negative theology, comes from the realization that these notions cannot apply to God in the same way as to creatures. The third moment, superlative theology, reconciles the two previous ones in saying that God deserves these names in a way incomparably higher than the way they apply to creatures. So God is super-being, super-goodness etc. These are ideas that would be taken up later by Thomas Aquinas.
One of Pseudo-Dionysius' most famous works is the Divine names, on which Aquinas wrote a commentary. After discussing the Trinity, he takes up a series of names and shows how they do or do not apply to God: good, light, beautiful, love, ecstasy, zeal (where he also treats of evil), existence, exemplar, life, wisdom, mind, order, truth, faithfulness, power, justice, salvation, liberation, large & small, same & different, like & unlike, standing & sitting, moving & resting, omnipotence, “Ancient of days”, eternity & time, peace, “Holy of the saints”, “King of kings”, “Lord of lords”, “God of gods”, perfect, and one.
In his Summa theologiae Thomas Aquinas devotes a whole question (I, q.13) to the divine names. He distinguishes: 1) negative names, 2) names which describe God's relation to creatures, both of which types do not say anything positively real about God; 3) metaphorical names, which apply first of all to creatures and are used to depict some aspect of God, and 4) names used absolutely and affirmatively of God, such as “good”, “wise” etc., which designate a perfection existing in God before it exists in a diluted way in creatures. The latter names or attributes all designate the one being of God which contains these perfections in a simple undivided unity. They are different only because they represent different concepts in our intellect, which cannot describe God by one simple name.
Of all the divine names, the greatest is the name “Who is”, or “Yahweh”, the name given to Moses (Ex 3:13). This indicates the plenitude of being, since only in God is essence and existence the same thing, and he is the cause of all participated being in creatures. We cannot know God's essence in this life, but the name which is most universal and common (“being”) depicts him better than other names, any of which designates some particular kind of being.
[See on this site my Names of Jesus.]