Our catechetical series continues, drawn now from the second section of the book, I am His : Learning from the Prayer Book Catechism, All that a Christian ought to Know and Believe to his Soul’s Health
Question. What dost thou chiefly learn in these Articles of thy Belief?
Answer. First, I learn to believe in God the Father, who hath made me, and all the world. Secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me, and all mankind.
Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me, and all the [elect[1]] people of God.
The One and the Three
It is one of the most astonishing discoveries of modern natural science that every elementary particle of matter exhibits the properties of particles, but also of waves – simultaneously. As Einstein said, “we have two contradictory pictures of reality: separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do”[2]. Early Christians had a not dissimilar problem. On the one hand, they inherited from the prophets of Israel and retained a deep conviction that God is One Lord alone to be loved, worshipped, and served (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, 13). The “many gods” of the Gentiles were in fact nothing more than creatures, and thus false gods. Yet at the same time, in the humanity of Jesus Christ, and in the gift of the Holy Spirit, they had known God the Creator fully present and active also.
There was, and never has been, any question, of “three gods” in rivalry with one another, but of one God revealing himself in three distinct ways. Jesus is related to God as Son to the Father; and the Spirit is related to the Father and the Son as the Spirit of both, sent by both. The idea that in God there is both “one-ness” and “three-ness” we find throughout the New Testament. It is there when Jesus commissions his apostles to “baptize in the name [singular] of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost [plural]”. It is there when St. Paul prays for the Corinthians that “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost” might be with them all evermore (2 Corinthians 13:14) – thus treating them with implicit equality. But it runs through longer discourses (like Matthew 11:25-30; John 14-17, or 1 Corinthians 12).
What to make of this? How can God be One and Three? As Einstein might have said, “we have two contradictory pictures of reality: separately neither of them fully explains God, but together they do”. The early church developed a short-hand technical language to preserve this Biblical witness. In the 4th and 5th centuries, they settled on a way of speaking about God’s oneness – as Substance (or essence, or nature); God’s threeness – as Person. That God is One in Substance and Three in Person is the mystery of the Trinity in Unity, or that God is triune. It is usually referred to as the Trinity.
The Author, The Story, The Characters
It is the eternal Trinity, and his work in time and history, which the Catechism addresses. Brief as its explanation of the Creed is, the Catechism goes straight to the core of its teaching. First there is a teaching about the author of salvation history: God in himself – God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the immanent or theological Trinity. Second, there is a teaching about the history this author shapes and governs, and into which, indeed, he enters by his Incarnation: his works of creation, redemption, and sanctification. Theologians call these works the divine “economy” – literally God’s good house-keeping, his wise management of his plan of salvation. Third, we are taught to recognize ourselves as characters interacting with one another in this history: the Christian in relation to the triune God, to the divine economy, and also to the other dramatis personae – all creatures, all mankind, all the elect.
In the Creeds we acquire the first principles for making sense of who God is, what he has done, and therefore what we are in relation to him, and what we may expect from him. It is all too common for Christians to think of their religion in terms of things we ought to do – “good works”, whether these be the churchly good works of the Middle Ages, or the worldly good works of our own time – but it is futile to think of the good works we ought to do, without first thinking of the good work which God has done as set forth in his Word for us to receive by faith. Unless we have received the love of God for us by means of faith, we cannot serve our neighbour in love; if we have received nothing from God, we have nothing to share.
The Three and the One
When we speak of the Triune God – the Trinity – we mean that God is both Three (in some sense) and One (in another). We may discard right away the notion that God is three and one in exactly the same sense – for this would be nonsense. Even God, with whom all things are possible, cannot be nonsense! We may well ask, however, in what respect is God three, and in what respect is he one? Now it is the easiest thing in the world to infer from the Creed that the persons of the Triune God are to be identified with the operations ad extra (outside himself), as if Father means no more than Creator, Son nothing else than Redeemer, Spirit the same as Sanctifier: but this would be a mistake. Although each person of the Trinity has a special prominence in each of the three operations ad extra, this is not to the exclusion of the other two persons. The Father creates by means of his Word (the Son) and Spirit; the Son is sent by the Father and anointed by the Spirit for the work of redemption; the Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son for the work of sanctification; and the Spirit’s work is precisely to incorporate us in the Son that we may know and love the Father. God is triune in himself, quite apart from the world he creates or the men he redeems or the elect he sanctifies; and his operations ad extra are designed to make us partakers indeed of the divine life. The Spirit we have received by faith in Jesus Christ is nothing else than “the Spirit of adoption”, the Spirit of Sonship, “whereby we cry, Abba, Father – the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and join theirs with Christ” (Romans 8:15-17), heirs of everlasting life, “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).
Substance and Person
So it is not enough to speak of the ‘economic’ trinity – God’s threefold activity as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. The “threeness” is not just God ad extra, in his operations in the world; it is found in God in himself. So theologians also speak of the ‘immanent’ or ‘theological’ Trinity, a trinity of persons in unity of substance. “Person” is the word used to speak of the “threeness”
in God; “substance” (or “nature” or “essence”) is the word used to speak of the “oneness” of God. The most succinct definition of the Trinity is that contained in the Proper Preface of Trinity Sunday, which gives praise to the Father, “who with thine only-begotten Son, and the Holy Ghost, art one God, one Lord, in Trinity of Persons and in Unity of Substance. For that which we believe of thy glory, O Father, the same we believe of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, without any difference of inequality”. Whatever we may say of the Godhead of the Father, we must also say of the Godhead of the Son, and of the Spirit, for it is in fact one and the same Godhead, one divine nature and substance. The Athanasian Creed[3] is insistent on this point: there is but one God, not three:
Now the Catholic Faith is this, / that we worship one God in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity;
4 Neither confusing the Persons, / nor dividing the Substance.
5 For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, / another of the Holy Ghost;
6 But the Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one, / the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.
7 Such as the Father is, such is the Son, /
and such is the Holy Ghost;
8 The Father uncreated, the
Son uncreated, the Holy Ghost uncreated;
9 The Father infinite, the Son infinite, the Holy Ghost infinite;
10 The Father eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Ghost eternal;
11 And yet there are not three eternals, but one eternal;
12 As also there are not three uncreated, nor three infinites, /
but one infinite, and one uncreated.
13 So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, /
the Holy Ghost almighty;
14 And yet there are not three almighties, but one almighty.
15 So the Father is God, the Son God, the Holy Ghost God;
16 And yet there are not three Gods, /
but one God.
17 So the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, /
the Holy Ghost Lord;
18 And yet there are not three Lords, /
but one Lord.
19 For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity /
to confess each Person by himself to be both God and Lord;
20 So are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion /
to speak of three Gods or three Lords.
The Distinction of Persons
There is but one God – this is the faith of Israel and of the Church, and each of the persons is fully God. So what is the difference of the persons? The distinction of the consubstantial, co-eternal, coequal Persons lies purely in their relations with each other as Father, as Son, and as Spirit:
21 The Father is made of none, / nor created, nor begotten.
22 The Son is of the Father alone; / not made, nor created, but begotten.
23 The Holy Ghost is of the Father and the Son; /
not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.
24 There is therefore one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; /
one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts.
25 And in this Trinity there is no before or after, / no greater or less;
26 But all three Persons are co-eternal together, / and co-equal.
27 So that in all ways, as is aforesaid, /
both the Trinity is to be worshipped in Unity, and the Unity in Trinity.
28 He therefore that would be saved, / let him thus think of the Trinity.
The distinction of persons lies in their relations – the manner in which each person shares in the one Godhead. The Father shares in the Godhead as its (paternal) origin and source; the Son shares in the Father’s Godhead by way of filiation (sonship), and the Spirit shares in the Godhead of the Father and of the Son by way of (double) procession (the term used by Jesus of the Spirit in John 15:26). These distinctions and terms are indeed arid technicalities – but as a short-hand way of summarizing the Bible’s own testimony to the nature of God, they are an indispensable instrument for precise and careful thinking about the work of God. It is because God is Triune, for instance, that the Father’s giving the Son to die for our sins is not divine child abuse. God is not a family – nor is he a committee (a group of three gods) nor is he a pie (cut into three portions), but one God in three Persons.
Testimonies to the Trinity
All very mysterious of course! – and why should it be otherwise? God is infinite in power, wisdom, and goodness; it would be mere folly to pretend that the finite human mind can fully comprehend him. But we can know him as Triune, because he has revealed himself to faith, to be known as such. By Scriptural warrant, we are baptized “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” – one “name” for all, because one God; because three persons in equality. And our prayer is that “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost might “be with us all” evermore – and what is the grace of Jesus but the love of God? And what is the love of God but the fellowship of the Holy Ghost? These scriptural testimonies (which could be multiplied) correspond to the reality we experience in prayer, of God within us, the Holy Ghost, lifting us up through God beside us, God the Son, to God above us, God the Father. However dry these dogmatic bones may seem to be, the Trinity is the God who lives in Christians, it is the very shape and structure of Christian experience.
An Image of the Trinity in Man
It is Saint Augustine who suggests one of the most helpful ways of thinking about the Trinity. Since Scripture says man is made in the image of God, he suggests that in the human soul or personality there is a (‘psychological’) image of the Trinity. There are three distinct activities in the soul – memoria, intellectus, voluntas, or memory, reason, and will; remembering, knowing, and loving – each distinct, each related to each other, yet also one. The Father therefore is in a sense the memoria Dei, the ground of knowledge and love; the Son, who is the Word of God, is the intellectus Dei, God’s knowing himself; the Spirit, “which is given unto us”, and by whom “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts” (Romans 5:5), is in a sense the voluntas Dei, God’s willing or loving himself. Our remembering, knowing and loving God is therefore a participation by grace in God’s own memory, knowledge of and delight in his own infinite and eternal being. As we grow in remembrance, knowledge, and love of God, so we are remade, reformed, renewed in the image and likeness of God.
Man’s Life in the Trinity
There is of course much more to be said: but the Catechism’s practical perspective is one that we can already take to heart: it is as we come to know the Triune God in his threefold economy of salvation, that we come to know ourselves, and are able to think rationally and realistically about the direction of our lives. We must learn to think of ourselves in terms of the triune God and his works of creation, redemption, and sanctification. Here is how George Herbert does so, in “Trinity Sunday”:
Lord, who hast form’d me out of mud,
And hast redeem’d me through thy blood,
And sanctif’d me to do good;
Purge all my sins done heretofore: For I confess my heavy score, And I will strive to sin no more.
Enrich my heart, mouth, hands in me,
With faith, with hope, with charity;
That I may run, rise, rest with thee.
In faith we run the race that is set before us by God the Father, “who hath made me, and all the
world”. In hope we rise from death to life, by the grace of God the Son, “who hath redeemed me, and all mankind”. In charity we attain our rest by God the Holy Ghost, “who sanctifieth me, and all the elect people of God”.
Further Reading
• Matthew 28:18-19 – The Great Commission
• 2 Corinthians 13:14 – The Grace
• John 14 – the Holy Ghost, which the Father will send in my Name.
• Article I, Prayer Book, p. 603 – Of Faith in the Holy Trinity.
• Collect for Trinity Sunday, Prayer Book, p. 186
Questions for Review
• What is the relation of believing and doing in the Christian life?
• What term is used for the mysterious being of the God of the Bible?
• What is the difference between God and the salvation which he manages? What is similar?
• What unites the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost? (What do they share?)
• What distinguishes them?
• What technical term does the Nicene Creed use to describe this “one-ness”?
• What technical term does the Athanasian Creed use to describethe “three-ness”?
• What scriptural basis is there forthis doctrine of God?
• What experiential basis in theChristian life is there for this doctrine of God?
• What is the pyschological imageof the Trinity developed by Saint Augustine?
• What does it say about God? What does it say about men?
Questions for Discussion
• The doctrine of the Trinity is not easy to grasp, and often makes use of various technicalities. Why do you think it is important for Christians to believe and know it?
• Read Genesis 1:1-2:3, John 14, or Acts 2, or Galatians 4:1-7 and identify the activity of the three persons in each passage.
• “It is because God is Triune, for instance, that the Father’s giving the Son to die for our sins is not divine child abuse. God is not a family – nor is he a committee (a group of three gods) nor is he a pie (cut into three portions), but one God in three Persons”. Why do you think this is so?