St. Augustine restated the doctrine of the Trinity as we profess it in the Nicene Creed in 7 statements: (from: On Christian Doctrine):
The problem for the rational mind:
1.3. Some Quotations
“No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One. . . When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.”
- St. Gregory Nazianzen
“When I speak of God you must be illumined at once by one flash of light and by three. Three in Properties, or Hypostases, or Persons, if any prefer so to call them, for we will not quarrel about names so long as the syllables amount to the same meaning; but One in respect of … the Godhead. For they are divided indivisibly. . . and they are conjoined dividedly. For the Godhead is one in three, and the three are one. . .”
- St. Gregory Nazianzen
The doctrine of the Trinity is:
2. Approaching the Mystery of "One in Three" and "Three in One"
Two concepts useful in trying to approach the mystery of "one in three" and "three in one:"
Perichoresis (Greek) = circumincessio (Latin) = “mutual interpenetration:” the way the persons of the Trinity relate to each other
Describes “a community of being:” each person, maintaining a distinctive identity, “penetrates” the others and is penetrated by them, to the point that they have one will.
“I-You” relationship (Martin Buber):
The “mutual interpenetration” of the three persons of the Trinity should be thought of as involving a continuous (rather than a transitory) “I – You” relationship of each person of the Trinity with the other persons
All three persons of the Trinity are involved in every action of God.
Nonetheless, it is appropriate to think of some actions as distinctive actions of one person of the Trinity. For example:
Heresy = an inadequate or deficient understanding of some aspect of Christianity
Two understandings of the Trinity considered to be inadequate:
3.2.1. Chronological Modalism
Chronological Modalism (Sabellianism): the one supreme God acts in different ways at different points in history
3.2.2. Functional Modalism
Functional Modalism: the one supreme God acts in different ways (has different “functions”) at the same time in history:
Tritheism: Trinity consists of three equal, independent, autonomous beings, each of whom is divine
Through much of the development of their thinking on the Trinity, Western and Eastern Christianity have started with different assumptions about the relationship between the Immanent Trinity and the Economic Trinity:
This difference has had significant ramifications in other areas of theology, for example:
(We will explore the Eastern Doctrine of the Energies of God in a section below)
4.1.2. The Filioque Clause
Nicene Creed (p. 359 Book of Common Prayer):
“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”
However, Nicene Creed, as written by Eastern and Western bishops at the Ecumenical Council in 381 read:
“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.”
The additional phrase “and from the Son” is the “filioque” clause (filioque = Latin for “and from the Son”)
St. Augustine brought together several strands of thinking:
In this model, Love (the Holy Spirit) must of course proceed from the Father and Son, not merely from the Father. Scripture (John 20:22) provides further support: Jesus, appearing to his disciples after the resurrection, breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.
The Son is the Word of God, Spirit is the Breath of God, proceeding from the Father and the Son.
In Barth, God’s self-revelation to us is the root of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Immanent Trinity = Economic Trinity)
God moves out of God’s hiddenness (veiling) in two movements:
The movement of the Holy Spirit (imparting) is necessary because human beings are incapable of hearing the Word of God. God must effect a personal (subjective) response to the Word in each individual.
Barth gives the following scenario to explain this:
Consider two individuals walking outside Jerusalem in 30 A.D. They see three men on a cross.
Jesus as the objective revelation of God is not enough (first man); the Spirit as the imparting of a subjective recognition of that objective revelation, is also necessary (second man)
The movement of “imparting” = the Spirit = movement of “subjective reception,” logically follows (proceeds) from both:
(Thus Barth affirms the filioque clause that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son)
These movements are not merely “modes” of God’s “economic” activity, but reflect true “modes of being and existence” within the eternal Godhead (Economic Trinity = Immanent Trinity; “God for Us” = “God in Godself”)
Grace in Barth’s model:
Karl Rahner explicitly declares that Immanent Trinity is the Economic Trinity and visa versa. “The way God is revealed and experienced in history is the way God is.”
As in Barth, God’s self-revelation or self-communication is the root of the Doctrine of the Trinity
God’s self-communication occurs by way of four “double-aspects:
Rahner reduces these four “double aspects” to two fundamental modalities of God’s self-communication:
In Rahner's model of the Trinity:
God’s self-communication presupposes a personal recipient. Whereas Barth emphasizes Man's sinfulness and inability to hear the Word of God (requiring the Spirit in order to recognize the Word), Rahner emphasizes that God made human beings capable of receiving God’s self-communication. In particular, the four “double aspects” of God’s self-communication are also present in human beings ("traces of the Trinity"):
The presence of these “double aspects” of God’s self-communication in ourselves "allow a duality:
between ourselves and God
Grace in Karl Rahner’s Model:
We will here combine common elements of models of the Trinity in the works of Orthodox theologians Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky
Eastern models start with a sense of the radical transcendance of God. The nature or essence or inner being of God is absolutely:
“The super-essential nature of God is not a subject for speech or thought or even contemplation, for it is far removed from all that exists and more than unknowable . . . incomprehensible and ineffable to all for ever. There is no name whereby it can be named, neither in this age nor in the age to come, nor word found in the soul and uttered by the tongue, nor contact whether sensible or intellectual, nor yet any image which may afford any knowledge of its subject. . . None can properly name its essence or nature if he be truly seeking the truth that is above all truth.”
- St. Gregory Palamas
“God, then, is infinite and incomprehensible, and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility.”
- St. John Damascene
How then can we know God? What of those who say they have visions of God?
At the time of St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), hesychasts were claiming to have an unmediated vision of God:
Palamas proposed two forms of God’s existence:
The energies are:
It is possible to have an unmediated experience of God by participating in the energies of God. Palamas proposed this is what was happening to the hesychasts.
From the Eastern point of view, the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be based on how we experience God in creation (the starting point for both Barth and Rahner), for this would:
The Eastern view thus strongly declares that Immanent Trinity ¹ (not equal) Economic Trinity:
The nature / essence / inner being of God is a Trinity of three equal Persons. Only the following has been revealed to us of this inner being of God:
Grace in the Eastern Models = another name for the energies of God.