I don’t care what you say, but for most people—even most Christians—the concept of the Trinity is one of those things that receives quizzical looks and isn’t really understood. I remember in high school Bible class occasionally talking about it as if it were some kind of algebraic puzzle: How is it possible to have three things be one thing? Although there would be the occasional analogy, like “The Trinity is like an egg—the shell, the yoke, and the egg white—three things, but still one egg,” the end result would more than often be the kids slightly nodding, saying, “Okay, that sort of makes sense,” but still not “getting it.”
And that really gets to the core of the problem. If you treat the Trinity as some sort of puzzle to intellectually figure out, you’re never going to be satisfied. Why? Because the Trinity isn’t a puzzle. The Trinity isn’t a math problem. As it stands, God as Trinity is the second chapter in Bishop Kallistos Ware’s book, The Orthodox Way. That is the topic of this post.
God as Mutual Love
The first thing Ware emphasizes is that the oneness of God affirmed in the Creed speaks to the genuine diversity and true unity within God. Being three-in-one, the oneness of God is analogous to society. He isn’t a single person, but rather a triunity: “Three equal persons, each one dwelling in the other two by virtue of an unceasing movement of mutual love.” If Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am,” a proper description of God would be, “I love, therefore I am,” for the only way for love to exist is for more than one person to exist.
Given that, as Ware points out, there is a fundamental difference between the way in which Judaism and Islam view God, on one hand, and the way Christianity does, on the other hand. In those religions, God is wholly other, Jesus is viewed as no more than a man, and the Spirit really isn’t seen as distinct, but rather as just another way to speak about God. Only in Christianity is it claimed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three persons within a single unity. To even begin to understand this requires, as Ware says, “a true change of mind and heart.” He first points out that a person is not the same as an individual. An individual is little more than “a bare unit as recorded in the census,” whereas to be a true person requires entering into relation with other persons. As Ware states, “Egocentricity is the death of true personhood.” Stemming from that, there is the reality that love cannot exist in isolation, but rather presupposes the existence of another.
If that is the case, if the essence of God is love, then God simply cannot be a single individual being, for that would mean that before creation, love couldn’t exist because there was no “other” with which to be in relationship. If God is love and if God is eternal, then God cannot be a solitary individual—He must be a person, indeed, persons living within a single communal relationship and unity. This realization has a further implication for the way in which we understand God, for it means we should not conceive of God as some sort of stillness of unchanging perfection. After all, personhood and love signify life, dynamic movement, and discovery. And although many analogies have been used to explain the Trinity, the favorite one of the early Church Fathers was that of three torches burning with a single flame.
Still, it is only an analogy that can never fully capture the essence of the Trinity, for as we saw in the last post, God is ultimately a mystery who is beyond human understanding. That should not surprise us, though, for as Ware says, “The Trinity is not a philosophical theory but the living God whom we worship; and so there comes a point in our approach to the Trinity when argumentation and analysis must give place to wordless prayer.” Or, if we can go back to the analogy of three torches and one flame, there comes a time when sitting by a campfire, the best thing to do is just quietly stare at the fire, feel its warmth, and take comfort in the other persons who are enjoying the campfire around you.
Personal Characteristics
All that said, there still is more that can be articulated about the Trinity. After all, anyone who knows anything about Church history knows full well that one of the major causes for the split between the Orthodox and Catholic churches has been the controversial filoque clause. For those who don’t know, here is the controversy in a nutshell. In the original creed from the Council of Constantinople of AD 381, when describing the Holy Spirit, it said, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father….” At some point, though, the Bishop of Rome adopted a variation of that line that had become popular in the western part of the empire: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son….”
Although it might seem like an insignificant insertion, Orthodoxy rejects it for two reasons. First, the creed cannot be changed based on the whims of as single bishop. The creed was formulated by a Church Council, and the Bishop of Rome had no right or authority to change it. Second, it sees this “doctrine of double procession” a theologically wrong and spiritually harmful. Ware puts it this way: The Son is begotten by the Father, while the Spirit proceeds from the Father. In this sense, the Son and the Spirit are the two hands of God who, in their own ways, reveal God to us. Although both the Son and the Spirit co-operate with each there in that revealing of God, they both can only be properly understood in relationship (there’s that personhood again!) to the Father. There’s more…
Christ is called the Word of God—the Logos. The Greek word here connotates the underlying principle of order that permeates all things. In that sense, since all creation was made through the Creator-Logos relationship, everything within creation can relate to God. Or to put it another way, every created thing has within it its own indwelling logos (i.e. inner principle) that makes it uniquely itself, while at the same time relates itself back to God. Given that, as Ware states, “Our human task…is to discern this logos dwelling within each thing and to render it manifest: we seek not to dominate but to co-operate.” And who is it who helps us discern this? The Holy Spirit.
Or if I could simplify it further: The Son works with the Father to bring about the creation. And since the Son is the Logos of God, everything in creation has its own logos (small “l”) that derives its own uniqueness from the Son/Logos of God. And since the Son/Logos of God is the Image of God, we are created in the image of God, insofar that we are related to the Son/Logos. It is then the Spirit who proceeds from the Father who thus “proceeds” to make the Son present to us and who empowers us to live in relationship with the Son, and by extension the Father. And as we live in relationship with the Son, the Spirit transforms us more into God’s image. Yeah, that’s simple!
In any case, Ware ends his chapter by showing how both the Son and the Spirit act as the “two hands of God” throughout Scripture:
- (1) Creation: God the Father creates through his “Word” (Logos) and through his “Breath” (Spirit).
- (2) Incarnation: The Father sends the Holy Spirit to Mary and she conceives the eternal Son of God.
- (3) Christ’s Baptism: The Father’s voice bears witness to the Son and the Holy Spirit descends like a dove.
- (4) Christ’s Transfiguration: The Father testifies that Jesus is his beloved Son and the Holy Spirit descends upon the Son in the form of a cloud of light.
- (5) The Eucharistic Invocation: In the Orthodox Liturgy, these words are spoken: “We offer to you this worship without shedding of blood, and we pray, beseech, and implore you: Send down your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here set forth; and make this bread the precious Body of your Christ, and what is in this cup the precious Blood of your Christ, transforming them by your Holy Spirit.
Living the Trinity
C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity that in salvation, the believer is ultimately taken up into the life of the Trinity. No, that doesn’t mean we become God, but it does mean that the eternal life that is shared among the persons of the Trinity is made available to us, and thus we, through the Son and through the empowering of the Spirit, we now share in that eternal life. That is why is it so crucial to have a proper understanding of the Trinity. Ware puts it this way, “So far from being pushed into the corner and treated as a piece of abstruse theologizing of interest only to specialists, the doctrine of the Trinity ought to have upon our daily life an effect that is nothing less than revolutionary.”
If one realizes that God, in His essence, is a Triunity and community of persons, one realizes that individual human beings bear His image only inasmuch as they live in loving relationship with others. Individuals become people through relationships of love, and thus, as Ware states, every social unit, be it the family, a school, a workshop, or a parish, “is to be made an icon of the Trinity.” As Saint John Chrysostom said, “I cannot believe that it is possible for a man to be saved if he does not labor for the salvation of his neighbor.”
Why is that? Because as the Spirit helps us relate to our neighbor, we relate to Christ the Son, who is the image of the Father. Salvation is the eternal life of the Trinity permeating all creation, and our vocation as image-bearers and “little Christs,” so to speak, is to spread that Good News through our relationships.
Dr. Anderson, have you read Fr. Richard Rohr’s **he Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation*?
That might be a good book to review, esp. to compare/contrast his Catholic Franciscan theology with Orthodox theology.
Pax.
Lee.
No, I haven’t read it. Maybe I’ll get to it, but in the immediate future I’m going to do a few Orthodox books.
So many books, so little time . . .
Pax.
Lee.
With apology for being inconvenient, I’m compelled to point out that the trouble with the Trinity is that people made it up to explain the unexplainable. Trinity doctrine is ancient, popular, and attested by educated people. But I think this partial explanation of God distracts people from what the Bible says plainly: Jesus is God with us; the Spirit is God in us; the church is the body of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, identified both as the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9).
Scripture reveals that the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father. It may be logical to make corresponding assertions about the Spirit, but that’s just philosophy. The logic that God must be more than one person for love to exist is just another solution to a “puzzle” that has no precedent in scripture. That logic also neglects the infinity of ignorance we have regarding what and who exist outside of our physical universe. Scripture never refers to God as person or trinity. “I AM” does not fit in any category we may identify. Orthodoxy is a sort of consensus, not Truth.
Peace from our Father, in Christ, by the Holy Spirit.
Well, I think your first sentence highlights the difference between the Orthodox East and the Catholic/Protestant West. I don’t think the Orthodox would ever say the doctrine of the Trinity “explains the unexplainable.” They are quite insistent that God CANNOT be fathomed. I think in the West, though, it is treated as sort of a mathematical puzzle that to which you have to mentally assert (even though nobody really understands it) if you want to be a Christian–it’s a doctrinal box you have to check off if you want “in.”
But what the doctrine tries to preserve is the clear teaching in the New Testament that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all, at some point or another referred to equally as God. Yes, it is ultimately unexplainable and BEYOND human logic, but it the doctrine was developed to safeguard against teachings (like Arianism) that clearly were perverting what the New Testament and Church Tradition had taught. In some sense, the Son is equal with the Father. The Son is NOT the highest creature in the Father’s created order. Arius didn’t think it was “logical” to say Jesus was actually EQUAL with the Father, so he tried to define things in “logical” terms–but the early Church Fathers (and the early councils), by developing the doctrine of the Trinity, were essentially saying what you are saying: God CAN’T be comprehended by our limited human logic and reason. The doctrine of the Trinity makes that point. We CAN’T logically understand it, but the New Testament is insistent nonetheless that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all spoken equally as God, and (especially in many of Paul’s letters) spoken of together. Can we truly understand it? No. But the doctrine of the Trinity is sort of a placeholder, in terms we can KIND OF understand, that bears witness to a reality we cannot fully grasp, but is nevertheless testified to in Scripture.