The Holy Trinity

Today is the octave day of Pentecost, or Trinity Sunday. In the older liturgical calendar every Sunday from now until the last before Advent would be dated from today. Since the liturgical reforms of the last century these Sundays have been counted from Whitsunday. Next Sunday, for example, is now generally called the second after Pentecost rather than the first after Trinity. There were reasons for this change, but there are also reasons for preferring the older tradition. These have less to do with what the Sundays in Ordinary Time are called than with the way in which we look at the period that has now drawn to a conclusion. Do we wish to see it culminating in a day that commemorates an event, however important, or in the day that specifically honours all three divine Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?

One reason to prefer the older liturgical emphasis in the Trinity is the disturbing decline among professing Christians in both a basic grasp of this doctrine and an appreciation for how essential it is to the orthodox Christian faith. The last couple of centuries have seen the rebirth of most, if not all, of the theological and Christological heresies that the Church Fathers contended with in the period before, including, and just after that of the first two ecumenical councils which gave us the Eucharistic Creed. In the nineteenth century, for example, Charles Taze Russell founded a well-known sect that preaches a revived version of Arianism. Since the 1960s the standard reference book for evangelical Protestants with regards to this and similar heretical sects was The Kingdom of the Cults, first published in 1965. Its author, the late Dr. Walter Martin, the original "Bible Answer Man" on radio, was a Baptist minister but, ironically, he was not sound on the Trinity himself. He taught the doctrine of Incarnational Sonship - that prior to His Incarnation, Jesus Christ as the second Person of the Trinity was the eternal Word of God, the divine Logos, but that He only became the Son of God through the Incarnation in which He was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. That neither Dr. Martin, nor the many evangelical leaders who considered his views to be orthodox, could grasp why this is inconsistent with the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is even more indicative of the decline in question than the revival of these ancient heresies. The reason is that the Holy Ghost is identified in Scripture and Creed as the Agent in the Incarnation. If Christ's Sonship is derived from the Incarnation, logically the Holy Ghost must be His Father, which confuses the first and third Persons. Orthodoxy neither divides the substance of the Godhead, nor confuses the Persons.

Don't mistake what I am saying here. Last century's liturgical reforms are obviously not the cause of the decline into sloppy theology which began long before the reforms were introduced. Indeed, the aforementioned Dr. Martin belonged to a denomination that was not likely to be much affected by said reforms. If any liturgical shift contributed to the theological decline it was the tendency to abandon use of the Athanasian Creed, to which the last sentence in the previous paragraph makes allusion. In Charlotte Bronte's novel Shirley, first published in 1849, when the title character, a young heiress who has moved back to the neighborhood, first encounters the Reverend Mr. Helstone, the local rector, he quizzes her about her Christian upbringing. She recites the Apostles' Creed easily enough, and then the rector says "Now for St. Athanasius's: that's the test!" She turns her attention to her flowers and dog and the minister's niece Caroline, and when asked again admits "I can't remember it quite all." The Rev. Helstone's expecting anyone to be able to recite the Quicumque Vult would have been considered very eccentric even in the period in which Miss Bronte was writing. That is rather the joke intended by the passage. A century later the Creed had fallen into such disfavour that a movement to remove it from the liturgy altogether had formed. It was against this movement that C. S. Lewis wrote the defences of the Creed that can be found in his writings, such as God in the Dock. While the primary objection to the Creed are the threats of damnation which it alone of the Creeds contains, there was also the complaint that it was too formulaic.

God, of course, is greater than any formula. He cannot be contained in a formula, and any "god" who can be so contained is an idol made in our own image, rather than the True and Living God Who created us in His image. The purpose of a Creed, however, is not to contain God or to define or even explain Him. It is to affirm our faith in the truths that He has revealed about Himself in the Holy Scriptures. The purpose of the Athanasian Creed, which is not a Creed proper so much as an exposition of or commentary on the Apostles' Creed, is to guard the faith we confess against error and heresy.

God has revealed in the Scriptures that He is One. The best known example of this is found in Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one Lord". This verse, known as the Shema Yisrael after the Hebrew words for "Hear, O Israel", is ritually recited by observant Jews twice a day. The unity of God is contrasted in the Scriptures with the multiplicity of the idols made by men.

God has also revealed in the Scriptures that He is Three. Jesus Christ told the Jews of His day that His Father was the God they professed to worship. He spoke of God as "My Father" and to His disciples as "your Father", but never as "Our Father" in a way that would include both Himself and His disciples as being God's children in the same way. The Lord's Prayer or "Pater Noster" (Our Father) was a form prayer that He prescribed for His disciples, not one that He prayed on their behalf. His relationship as Son to His Father was different than any other sonship to God that can be predicated of men. Men are sometimes said to be children of God by creation, redeemed believers are said to be God's children by regeneration and adoption. Jesus, however, said of Himself that He was the "Only-Begotten" Son of God. The significance of this is that any father who begets a son, begets a son after his own kind. Therefore, the Only-Begotten Son of God, must Himself be God. On the night of His betrayal, Jesus told the Apostles that after He returned to the Father, the Father would send to them another Comforter. This Comforter, Whom He identified as the Holy Ghost, is also said to be God. These Three Persons were manifested at the baptism of Jesus, when the Father spoke from Heaven claiming Jesus as His Son and when the Holy Ghost descended upon Him like a dove. It is in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost that Jesus commissioned His disciples to baptize the nations. Clearly the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are distinct, yet they are each God. Therefore God is Three.

How can God be Three and One at the same time?

The Church has never professed to be able to explain this perfectly. All illustrations - and there have been many - fail at some point. Obviously, God is not One in the same way that He is Three, nor is He Three in the same way that He is One. The Church struggled in the early centuries to find the right words in Greek to describe both the way in which God is One and the way in which He is Three, and this struggle carried over into Latin and English. "Substance", "Being" and "Essence" are among the words we use in English to denote that which is One about God. "Person" is the word that we, or rather the Latin Church from which we borrowed it, settled upon for denoting that about God which is Three.

None of these words fully do justice to the matter. But then, words seldom if ever perfectly capture things as they are in themselves. This brings us back to the old question from Plato's Cratylus of whether words have any essential relationship to the things they denote or are merely conventional. Socrates' middle answer, that words are crafted to be appropriate to the things they denote and vary in their degrees of accuracy but are accepted by convention in the absence of anything better has never been improved upon.

The Creed named after St. Athanasius guards against heresies which would confuse or, in the English of Cranmer's day "confound" the Persons:

For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son: and another of the Holy Ghost.

It also guards against heresies which would divide the Substance:

But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal.
Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost.
The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated.
The Father incomprehensible; the Son incomprehensible; and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.(1)
The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal.
And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal.
As also there are not three uncreated; nor three incomprehensibles, but one uncreated; and one incomprehensible.
So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty.
And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty.
So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God.
And yet they are not three Gods; but one God.
So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord.
And yet not three Lords; but one Lord.

Finally, it guards against heresies that would compromise either the unity of Substance or distinctness of the Three Persons by erring with regards to the relationships between the Persons within the unity:

The Father is made of none: neither created nor begotten.
The Son is of the Father alone: not made, nor created, but begotten.
The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son: neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

The Eastern Church would take issue with the last sentence in the above wording. As with the Nicene Creed, in which the Greek original says that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father without adding the filioque or "and the Son" that appears in Western versions of the Creed, so here the Greek version, which in this case is probably the translation of a Latin original, has the Holy Ghost proceeding only from the Father. This was the primary theological disagreement which divided the Western from the Eastern Church in the eleventh century. Eastern theology would see the above wording as contradicting itself. It says that the Father possesses the Godhead - the divine Substance or Essence - in and of Himself and not of or from the other Persons - but is the Source from which the other two Persons possess the Godhead through the begetting of the one and procession of the other. The Eastern theologians maintain that to say the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son as well as the Father is inconsistent with what is asserted of the Father. Western theologians, obviously, have traditionally disagreed. Some on both sides have suggested that the issue could be resolved if "through" were to replace "and" for this would be more consistent with what is seen to be unique about the Father. Both sides certainly agree that the words "begotten" and "proceeding" here denote eternal relationships rather than temporal events akin to the "making" or "creating" with which they are contrasted, for all Three Persons are eternal.

That which we cannot know or understand about our Triune God is far greater than the little we do know. We have a duty, however, to hold faithfully the truths that have been entrusted to us, and for that end the Athanasian Creed is a most appropriate instrument. Perhaps we should consider reviving its liturgical use. In this day and age of abounding error, we could do with more orthodox Trinitarian truth.

(1) Incomprehensible here means "unlimited" or "infinite."