The Trinity
The Mystery of Mysteries
When Catholics speak about mystery in reference to God it
does not mean that nothing can be known about Him. He is not a nebulous cloud
of Spirit that is impenetrable to human reason. It is quite the opposite,
plenty can and is known about God, but we will never be able to completely
understand Him and His ways. There are two ways we can use human reason to come
to an understanding of the attributes of God. The first we can arrive at is
through our observations of nature that surrounds us. We can use analogy to
gain an insight into the nature of God. This is called Metaphysics or
Philosophy. An example of this would be to see that there must be a Being that
is much more intelligent and powerful than man who created the universe which
surrounds us. We can come to the reasonable conclusion that this Being is not a
part of creation, but is separate from it and above it, because in order to
create something a being must not be a part of that which he creates. An
example of this is an artist and his sculpture. The artist may create the most
beautiful sculpture, but the artist remains separate from his creation and
above it because he is also the source of his creation. The sculpture cannot
create itself. So we can also deduce that this Being is also the Source of
creation.
The main reason we know as much as we do is because God wishes
us to reveal Himself to us and this is most especially true of the uniquely
Christian belief in the Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit, Three Persons possessing the One Nature of God) This dogma of faith stands
out as one of the most mysterious, but it is also the most fundamental and most
central: God’s innermost secret. As with many of the characteristics of God we
cannot know about this Innermost Mystery through human reason. Rather, God has
directly revealed this to us in Scripture and Apostolic Tradition. (Apostolic
Tradition is explained in my blog: Why Believe What the Catholic Church
Teaches on Faith and Morals.) Because of the Infinite Nature of God, the
limitations of human understanding, the shortcomings of human language and
vocabulary which cannot accurately convey eternal truths, the best we can hope
for is to use human vocabulary to give us “God is like…” analogies. The branch
of science that uses human reason and intellect to penetrate those Truths
revealed to us directly by God is called Theology.
When we speak about the attributes of God it is helpful for us to understand that, unlike created rational beings (Angelic and human beings with the ability to use reason), He does not merely possess that attribute, but He IS that attribute and is the source of that attribute in all of creation. So we cannot accurately say that God is intelligent, rather the way to describe Him would be to say He is Intelligence or Intellect Itself and the source of all created intellect. The same is true for love, God is Love (1 John 4:8) and the source of all love in created rational beings. Some other attributes of God are that He is All-Knowing, or Knowledge Itself, Truth Itself, and All-Powerful. This includes the Knowledge and Truth about Himself and the power to bring about all that does not deny His nature or is self contradictory (like a square circle.) It is also important to realize that there is no division in God either, so when we say God is Love, Intellect or Knowledge He is fully all of these. He is not fifty percent Love and thirty percent Intellect and twenty percent Knowledge or anything less than one hundred percent every attribute used to describe Him.
The Nature of Love
There are many ideas about love and what it consists of, but for our discussion we must speak about the giving nature of Love. In order for love to be love it must be given FULLY and FRUITFULLY, therefore a person must have another like himself in order to be able to love. We have an example of this in the story of creation: God said "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him. So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." (Gen 2:18-23 RSV)
Adam was shown many creatures, but none were found suitable for him, and then God shows him woman and you can sense Adam's joy as he cries out "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!" What he is saying is finally someone who is like me who I can give myself to fully...someone I can truly love! For Adam, this was not possible with the animals, as there can be no intimate conversation with a bird or any non-rational being, because this requires the ability to receive and understand what is being said and the ability to communicate what has been received back to the communicator. The bird simply does not have the ability to comprehend human thought, speech, meaning, etc...
It is the same with God in relation to creation. No created being or creature can ever receive the full expression of God's Love, because in order to receive Love from the Infinite, One would have to be able to infinitely receive that Love and all creatures are finite. Scripture tells us that one of the central attributes of God is Love. So by definition God the Father, in order to be able to communicate the fullness of His Divine Love to Another, there must be Another Divine Person to receive and return The Divine Communication of Love. This brings us to the Second Person of the Trinity.
The Perfect Idea
In the human intellect an idea, no matter how well thought out, is always imperfect. A human idea is our attempt to conceive of an object or concept in our mind. For example an architect can conceive of a beautiful Church and in his mind start to build and add detail to the idea of that Church. However, no matter how intelligent the architect is he is not able to perfectly conceive of and hold every single detail required to build that Church in his mind. This is not true of God as He is Intellect and Knowledge and thus has a perfect Knowledge of Himself and thus this perfect Idea of Himself contains all that is God.
So, God the Father is all-Knowing and this perfect Knowledge also includes Knowledge of Self and He has an Idea about Himself that is perfect. Since God is also All-Powerful He is able to make this Idea of Himself into a Reality in the "begetting" of a Son. (This is an example of how human vocabulary that is bound by the experience of time falls short of giving us an accurate understanding of Eternal Truths.) The only way this Son could be the Son of the Father is if He possessed ALL of the attributes of the Father and the only way this can be true is if the Son is God as well. The Son is the Second Person of the Trinity.
The closest human idea we have to help explain this Divine "event" is a blending of the human generation of a child through the marital embrace and the concept of cloning (the copying and growing of a fully adult creature.) God the Father is pure Spirit and thus has no physical parts, so when He generates a Son from the Divine Idea of Himself this more resembles cloning than the marital embrace, as the Son is an exact “copy” of the Father. However, it is also like the human generation of a son in that the Son receives His Divine Nature from the Father as a human son receives his nature from his parents. (Human parents beget human children with human natures, not puppies or kittens.) God the Father generates God the Son who possesses all the Father has including the Divine Eternal Nature, so God the Son is a true Son and true God. This Divine Generation of the Son is like both human procreation and cloning in that God the Son is a Person distinct from the Father just as a human person is distinct from his parents or his clone. It is different in that the distinct Person of the Son FULLY possesses the SAME Divine Nature of the Father, whereas a human person is distinct, but possesses a SEPARATE human nature.
So the Son is in Full possession of the Divine Intellect, Love, Power. Presence, etc... God the Son along with God the Father is the "Supreme All-Everything." If God the Son did not possess ALL that the Father possesses then the Son would be unable to be Loved fully and fruitfully by the Father and be able to give back ALL that He has received. The Son would not be God. Indeed, if the Son lacked the FULLNESS of ANY of the attributes of God, He could not be God. A way to conceive of God is as the possessor of “All-Everything that is True, Good, and Beautiful” we can see if there is a being that does not possess the “Supreme All Everything…” attributes of God he must be less than God. On the other hand we can analogously understand that there can only be one who is the best. There can only be ONE person who is the most intelligent, the best free throw shooter, the greatest classical artist, the best violinist, the greatest architect, etc… With God it is the same in that the can only be ONE who Nature is the “Supreme All Everything…”
The Spirit of Love
God the Holy Spirit "came in Being" in a different manner. Whereas the Son was generated in the "mind" of God, the Holy Spirit is the impulse of Love flowing from the Father to the Son and the Son back to the Father. The Love of the Father was poured into the Divine Idea that is the Son and the Son gave the Love He received from the Father back to the Father. The Love of God that flows between God the Father and God the Son carries the fullness of the Divine Being with Him. He is God the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity and He too is the "Supreme All-Everything..." In order for the Son to receive the fullness of the Love of the Father what is received must be God as well for it has already been revealed that God is Love. Here we can again see a different aspect of the analogy of the marital embrace. When husband and wife come together they become a gift of love for each other and this exchange of love sometimes bears the fruit of a child. In God, this eternal exchange of Love is eternally fruitful and is called God the Holy Spirit.
God as Father
There are two understandings of God revealed to us as Father. The first and more obvious one is that all creation came from Him. This was the Jewish understanding of God as Father. We can again touch on the marital embrace to shed light on the relationship between God and His creation. God is akin to the husband in this analogy and the wife is akin to creation. In the marital act the seed for procreation of the child issues forth from the husband and the wife receives this gift. This is similar to God issuing forth the seed of all creation and the universe can only receive this gift from God, it cannot bring itself into being, just as the wife cannot bring forth life without the gift from the husband.
The other understanding concerns the life and relationships within the Trinity. A proper understanding of each of the three Persons of the Trinity is that all of them possess the Eternal Infinite Nature of God and each has always existed. For us who have only experienced time, we can only get a glimpse of what Eternity is like. It stands outside the bounds of time. Eternity has no past and no future.
So God the Father is eternal, God the Son is co-eternal with the Father, as is God the Holy Spirit. However the relationship WITHIN the Trinity is one of procession and reception. God the Father is the Origin of the Divine Nature and since the essence of the Divine Nature is Love, God the Father had to have another Person with a Divine Nature to give His Love to. He did not have a choice to "beget or not to beget," since the essence of love is to give itself fully and fruitfully. Therefore the Son possesses the RECEIVED the Eternal Infinite Nature of God from the Father. The Father possesses the UNRECEIVED Eternal Infinite Nature and both are fully the Divine Nature of God. It can also be stated that the Son proceeds from the mind of the Father. The Holy Spirit RECEIVES His Eternal Infinite Nature from the eternal exchange of Love between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, so all procession within the Trinity also originates from the Father.
© Copyright Chip Awalt 2012
Chip Awalt graduated Cum Laude from Ave Maria University's Institute for Pastoral Theology with a Masters in Theological Studies degree.
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