Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Mon, 16 Nov 1992 02:42:18 EST
From:         Marty Helgesen <MNHCC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject:      The Trinity

It occurs to me that Arlie's question about Memo's post on the
Trinity really goes beyond an explanation of the specific texts Memo
quoted to what is meant by the idea that God is three in one.  In the
past I have posted an essay I wrote on the subject, but not recently, I
think, so this seems like a good time to post it again.

     The doctrine of the Trinity--that God is three in one--is one of
the central teachings of Christianity, but many Christians know
virtually nothing about it.  This situation is very unfortunate.  A
knowledge of the theology of the Trinity, apart from being useful
when witnessing to non-believers who think Christians believe the
mathematical absurdity that three equals one, can play an important
role in deepening our own spiritual life.  As Frank Sheed has pointed
out, God did not reveal the fact of the Trinity to test our faith,
our willingness to say, "Yes, Lord, if you say so."  He revealed it
out of love for us, in order to share with us the secret of His own
inner life.  We should respond by trying to understand this gift to
the best of our abilities, even though we can never grasp the full
richness of it.  The doctrine of the Trinity is a "mystery" in the
technical, theological sense of the word.  This does not mean it is a
doctrine that cannot be understood at all.  A mystery is a truth so
vast that however much we understand of it, we can never understand
it completely.

     To begin to understand the Trinity we have to make a distinction
which is vitally important, but which is so simple that nay child can
make it automatically.  If a child hears an unfamiliar noise, he will
ask, "What is that?"  But if he hears an unidentifiable voice or
other specifically human sound, he will ask, "Who is that?"  "Nature"
answers the question "What?"  A thing's nature tells us what it is
and what it can do.  The ability to fly is part of eagle nature, the
ability to breathe underwater is part of trout nature, and the abili-
ty to think about God is part of human nature.  "Person" answers the
question "Who?"  A more formal definition of "person" is "a rational
center of attribution."  This means that a person is a being to whom
we can attribute the rational acts of knowing intellectually and
choosing or loving with the will.  A being's nature determines what
it can do.  I cannot fly or breathe underwater because those abili-
ties are not part of human nature.  But when I am doing any of the
things a human can do, I--the person--am doing them.  A person acts
through his nature.  One would not say, "My human nature is writing
this essay," but, "I am writing this essay."  I am using aspects of
my human nature to write it--persons act through their natures--but
I--the person--am doing it.

     In our experience each person has one and only one nature be-
longing to him, through which he acts, and no nature is possessed by
more than one person.  (The psychiatric problem of "multiple person-
ality" involves a different definition of the word.)  However, there
is nothing in the concepts of "person" and "nature" that requires
this one-to-one correspondence, and we know from God's revelation
that there are other relationships.  There is one God--one Divine
Nature--but there are three Divine Persons, God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Spirit, each of whom fully possesses and acts
through the one Divine Nature.  Note that I said each fully possesses
the one Divine Nature.  They do not share it, with each of them being
one-third God.  Each of the Divine Persons is fully and completely
God.  This interrelationship is outside our human experience and
beyond our comprehension.  We know it only through God's revelation.
But at least it should be clear that the doctrine of the Trinity has
nothing to do with arithmetic, or with some absurd claim that one
equals three and three equals one.  "One" refers to the Divine Na-
ture, for there is only one God, and "three" refers to the Divine
Persons.

     Before going on to look at some of what God has told us about
the inner life of the Trinity, I want to point out that the distinc-
tion between person and nature  also is essential to understanding
the Incarnation.  God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, took
to Himself a created human nature, body and soul.  In Christ there
was one person, a Divine Person, and two natures, the one Divine
Nature, eternally possessed by God the Son, and a created human
nature.  Because God the Son had a human nature he could perform
truly human actions, but because the actions were performed by a
Divine Person they were truly acts of God.  This is why, for example,
we can say, despite the denial of Nestorius, that God died on the
Cross.  Not that God ceased to exist, nor even that God the Son
ceased to exist, but that God the Son experienced in His human nature
the separation of body and soul that is death.  This also is why in
A.D. 431 the Council of Ephesus could define against the Nestorian
heresy that the Virgin Mary is truly the Mother of God.  This does
not mean that she is equal to God or older than God.  Those interpre-
tations would be blasphemous and absurd.  It means that the person to
whom she gave birth was a Divine Person, God the Son being born in
His human nature.

     Now that I've defined some of the basic terms we can move on to
the theology of the Trinity.  But first I must give a warning.  Some
of the language I will use will carry the implication of progression
in time: that first there was just God the Father, then the Father
and the Son, and finally all three Persons.  This is completely
untrue.  It is an unavoidable result of having to use human language,
which is all we have, to discuss a reality beyond all human under-
standing and experience.  Any such implications should be excluded
from your understanding of what I say.  All three Persons are in fact
co-equal and co-eternal.  One could never exist without the others.

     God is a spirit, and like all spirits has the faculties of
intellect and will, the ability to know and to love.  But what does
God think about?  What does He know?  An obvious answer is us and the
rest of the universe in which we live.  This answer is true, but
inadequate. The universe has not always existed.  But more fundamen-
tally, the universe is not enough.  However vast and incomprehensible
it may seem to us, the universe is elementary, even trivial, to God.
The only adequate object of knowledge for God's infinite intellect is
an infinite reality:  the infinite reality of God.  God the Father
knows Himself with an infinite, perfect knowledge.  When we know
something it exists, in a sense, in our minds, but only in a limited
way because our knowledge is limited.  God's knowledge of Himself is
not limited in any way.  There is nothing in the object known (i.e.
God) that is not present in God's idea of Himself.  God the Father's
idea of Himself includes everything in God, including personhood.
The Father's idea of Himself is the Second Person of the Trinity, God
the Son.  This is expressed in the first verse of St. John's Gospel,
"In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God and the
Word was God."  It should be noted that although an idea or mental
word, is distinct from the knower, it is within the knower's intel-
lect.  The two Divine Persons are distinct, but not separate.  There
is still only one Divine Intellect as an aspect of the one Divine
Nature.

     The First and Second Persons of the Trinity are often referred
to as the Father and the Son.  This analogy is to bring out other
aspects of the relationship.  The act of generation, the begetting or
conceiving of offspring, is defined technically as "the origin of a
living thing from another living thing by communication of substance
unto likeness of nature."  "Communication of substance" simply means
that the offspring is produced in some way from within the parent, as
human parents produce within their bodies the sperm and ovum that
unite to form a new human being.  "Likeness of nature" means that
armadillo parents have armadillo offspring, human parents have human
offspring, etc.   In the Trinity, the Son is the Word, and is eter-
nally produced from within the Father.  "Likeness of nature" in this
case means that as the Father is God, so the Son is God.  In the case
of a human father and son each one possesses his own individual human
nature, but the Father and Son do not possess their own individual
Divine Natures, because there is only one God and one Divine Nature.

     It is sometimes objected that a father must be older than his
son.  This is true in our experience, but it is not essential to the
concept of generation.  It is true for us because we do not possess
all of our powers at every moment of our existence.  A human baby
must grow and mature before he or she is physically capable of beget-
ting or conceiving.  But God the Father has always possessed the full
use of the Divine Intellect, and has always known Himself and uttered
this knowledge as the eternal Word.

     God, as a spirit, has the faculty of intellect, which we have
just considered, and the faculty of will, the ability to love.  In
our human experience love is directed outward from the person loving
to the beloved.  But love also produces a state of warmth or loving-
ness within the will of the lover.  God the Father and God the Son
look at each other and see each other and infinitely perfect and
lovable.  The love each other with an infinite love which produces a
state of lovingness within the Divine Will.  The Father and the Son
give of themselves totally in this love.  They express everything of
themselves, including their personhood, so this state of lovingness
is so complete as to be a person, the Holy Spirit, the Third Person
of the Trinity.  With human lovers there are two acts of love because
each lover has his own individual will.  But in God there is only one
Divine Will, which is fully possessed by both the Father and the Son.
Therefore there is only one act of love which results in only one
Person.

     There are various further precisions that can be made, but this
should do for an introduction.  Anyone interested in the Trinity
should become familiar with the scriptural passages from which theo-
logians have distilled the foregoing explanation.  These passages
will not only cast additional light on the subject, they will make it
clear that the Church did not invent this doctrine just to make life
complicated.  In the Bible we have clear statements that there is
only one God, along with equally clear statements that there are
three distinct persons, each of whom is referred to as God.  The
theology of the Trinity is an attempt to reconcile these statements
in the light of what God has told us about the relationship of the
three Persons.  These texts appear throughout the New Testament, but
the greatest concentration of them is in Christ's discourse at the
Last Supper (John 13-17).  I will also recommend three books, all by
F. J. Sheed.  They all were published in paperback, and are available
in many libraries.  The first two are general discussions of Catholic
theology, and cover more than the Trinity, but there are extensive
discussions of this doctrine.  The basic, easiest to understand, book
is A MAP OF LIFE.  THEOLOGY AND SANITY is more comprehensive and
detailed, but still understandable by an intelligent layman.  THE
HOLY SPIRIT IN ACTION: WHY CHRISTIANS CALL HIM "THE LORD AND GIVER OF
LIFE" is the most recent, and concentrates on the Holy Spirit, but
necessarily in the context of the Trinity.  The above essay draws
heavily on these books, although I have read other discussions of the
doctrine.

Marty Helgesen
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