Posted by Trinity Sunday
Today is Trinity Sunday. Since the middle ages the Western Church has marked the end of the Pentecost Octave with the Feast of the Holy Trinity. It is right that a day should be set aside to celebrate this doctrine, for (along with the Incarnation) it is the dogma that marks out Christianity from all other religions.
For many, the nature of God as Trinity seems obscure and unrelated to daily life. In fact, it is derived from God’s revelation of himself, first to the people of Israel, and then in the person of Jesus Christ. Whereas other peoples worshipped many gods, the people of Israel worshipped only one God, the maker of all things, visible and invisible. God was utterly transcendent and distinct from the world that he had created and yet also immanent within it. Describing God’s immanence within his creation, they spoke of his Word, his Wisdom, his Glory and his Spirit. God was utterly transcendent from the world he had created and yet nearer to us than we are to ourselves. He spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to a friend, and later he spoke by the prophets. They looked forward to a time when God’s purposes would be fully realised in a more complete revelation of himself.
Finally, his purposes were fully realised in the person of his Son. In many and various ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, and by whom he made the world (Hebrews 1:1-2). What most astonished Jesus’ contemporaries was the authority with which he acted. He went around not simply talking about God, like one of the prophets, but standing in God’s place, acting and speaking for him. He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes (Matthew 7:29). “What manner of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him” (Matthew 8:27). The prophets said, “Thus saith the Lord”, but Jesus said, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, but I say unto you”. He thus said in his own name what the Law of Moses said in God’s name. He was the full, final and definitive revelation of God’s will. In his coming the Kingdom of God is made present. He says that man’s attitude to him will decide God’s attitude to them on the last day. He proclaims rest for the weary and heavy laden, and that he alone truly knows the Father and the Father knows him (Matthew 11:27-30).
Jesus was condemned for blasphemy, for making himself equal with God. Jesus replied that he did not claim anything for himself on his own authority, but everything for what the Father was accomplishing through him. He and the Father are one, utterly identified, for they are one in action, but not identical, for the Father is Father and not Son. “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do; for what things soever he doeth these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son and sheweth him all things that he himself doeth… He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which sent him” (John 5:19-23). To have met him is to have been met and judged by God. To have seen him is to have seen the Father (John 14:9).
His coming is the coming of God in person to rescue the human race from sin and death. Through his resurrection and ascension he has been given the name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2: 9-11). Kyrios was the word used to translate God in the Septuagint (the translation of the Bible for Greek speaking Jews), and so in saying that Jesus Christ is Kyrios (Lord) he is shown to be given the divine name and to share in the divine sovereignty.
But this was not just from the resurrection, but from the beginning, for the redeemer is not distinct from the creator. “To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him: and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him” (1 Corinthians 8:6). In other words, he bore the divine name from the beginning. The divine Word, God’s self expression, who was in the beginning with God and indeed was himself God, was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. He fully shared the divine nature and work in both creation and redemption, and indeed was God in his self revelation, and yet the Father remained Father and not Son. They were really related, but really distinct.
Before he was risen, ascended and glorified he promised the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, whom the Father would send in his name. Just as the Father dwelt in him and he in the Father, so the Spirit would be sent from the Father in the name of the Son. It was through the Spirit that his disciples, the Body of Christ on earth, would be enabled to become by grace what he is by nature, “that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Galatians 4: 6). The Spirit shares in the divine nature of the Father and the Son, yet is distinct from the Father and the Son.
In the work of salvation in time and history God has made himself known in three Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, yet there is only one God.
The early Christians had great difficulty in formulating a language that adequately did justice to the Triune God, but it was necessary to do this to guard against errors that denied the Triune God. One error was known as Modalism, in other words there were not three Persons in one God, but rather three modes of being, the Father, God at work in creation, the Son, God at work in redemption and the Holy Spirit, God at work in sanctification. This preserved the unity of God, but failed to account for the distinction between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as revealing not just God’s work in the salvation history, but his own nature. Against Modalism it was necessary to affirm that the Son was eternally begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father.
At the opposite extreme was the error of Arianism, which denied the eternity of the Son, and thus in effect undermined the unity of God, because if the Son were not consubstantial with the Father, then the redeemer was not the creator. That was why at the Council of Nicea in 325 the phrase homoousios, of one substance, was added to the Creed, to assert that the Son was of the same divine nature as the Father. As St. Athanasias said, if the language of one substance was not in the Scriptures it explained the true sense of the Scriptures. St. Athanasias emphasised that the only distinction between the Father and the Son is that the Father is Father, and not Son. They both fully share the divine nature.
It is necessary to uphold the doctrine of the Trinity, not as an exercise in theological speculation, but to safeguard the work of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the work of creation, redemption and sanctification. They are neither three aspects of one God, nor three Gods, but rather three Persons in one God.
Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given to thy servants grace, in the confession of the true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of thy Divine Majesty to worship the Unity; grant that by stedfastness in the same faith we may evermore be defended from all adversities, through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who livest and reignest with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, without without end. Amen.