The mystery of the one
God in three persons
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| Icon of the Holy Trinity, by Andrei Rublev |
It
is very appropriate that the feast honoring the Holy Trinity occurs the Sunday
after Pentecost. On Pentecost we heard Jesus’ promise that the Holy Spirit
would guide the disciples ‘into all truth.’ In the early centuries of the
Church, God’s people examined the Scripture and meditated upon the Lordship of
Jesus and his prayer to his Father. In examining Scriptures such as the ones we
will read today, the Church was guided by the Holy Spirit into the mystery of
the Trinity – one God in three persons, the Son being made human for the sake
of the world.
We
confess the Athanasian Creed every Trinity Sunday. This creed was first used in
the early sixth century. It can be intimidating because of its length and because
of the condemnations of those who do not hold to the Trinitarian faith.
However, these very condemnations indicate just how important the Church
believes faith in the Trinity to be.
The
creed was written in order to counter many errors in understanding the Trinity.
Chief among these beliefs was that the Son was a creature of the Father, the
first of his works in time. While this would seem to guard the uniqueness of
God, the creed insists that the unity of God is seen in the relationship of
three eternal ‘persons’ (an imperfect translation of a Greek word, hypostasis.)
These three persons share
one divine essence or ‘being,’ and in their unity of love are coeternal and
coequal.
For
if the Son of God is truly eternal with his Father, begotten, not made, then in
his incarnation God himself has entered into our existence: in Jesus, God himself
has become a human being and lived a human life. Some believed that God could
not become a human being, and even among those who did, there was disagreement
about the particular mode of his humanity. Were these disagreements mere
theological hair-splitting? Not according to the Church, which held to the
argument ‘What has not been assumed cannot be redeemed.’ If God the Son does
not assume humanity, then his obedience to his Father and his acceptance of
death do not count for us. But if Jesus takes up humanity for the world’s sake,
then we are truly brought into his eternal life and given a share in the Spirit
which he shares with the Father. We too may pray to his heavenly ‘Abba,’ his Father, believing that we are his children and Christ's brothers or sisters.
Do
we have trouble understanding the mystery of the Holy Trinity, or do we have
doubts? Does this mean we are among those who are ‘condemned?’ We take comfort
in the fact that even the most learned and subtle theologians of the Church
cannot fully exhaust or understand God’s mystery. I personally agree with
Pastor Frank Senn, a renowned historian of creeds and liturgy, who writes that
a lack of full understanding is not what is condemned in the Creed. Rather, it
is the outright rejection of the Trinitarian faith by those who do understand it (perhaps especially by
theologians responsible for teaching the faithful) which is condemned.
