Beginning with the opinion of the Church Fathers indicate

 11. Beginning with the opinion of the Church Fathers indicate the “traces” of the Trinitarian mystery in the OT, the synthesis of what is revealed in the NT in this regard and the clarifications proposed and promulgated in Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381).

Introduction: Fundamental and central point of Christian theology is Trinity. This doctrine presupposes awareness of God, of God’s active and gracious presence in Jesus Christ. This awareness helps us to understand experience of God and experience of human and his limitations. This doctrine helps us to understand the uniqueness of Christ. Christ is consubstantial with Father. So, Father + Son man) + Holy Spirit = one God.

Trinity is derived from Latin Trinitas, meaning "the number three, a triad". This abstract noun is formed from the adjective trinus (three each, threefold, triple), as the word unitas is the abstract noun formed from unus (one). In the early century Tertullian, a theologian created the word “Trinity” to explain that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are “one in essence not one in person”.

The traditional statement of the doctrine of the Trinity is this: There are three persons within the Godhead; Father Son and Holy Spirit. These three persons have equal status and are equally divine. But the word person in this definition doesn't mean person in any sense that modern people understand it - it's an ancient technical philosophical term, which originally meant the mask worn by actors playing parts in an ancient Greek play. The ancient writers said that there were three distinct hypostases in one ousia.

In the doctrine of Trinity, each person is understood as having the identical essence or nature, not merely similar natures. From the council of Nicaea and Ephesus the following Christological doctrine was condemned as heresies: Ebionism, Docetism, Basilidianism, Alogism or Artemonism, Patripassianism, Sabellianism, Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, Monophysitism, and Monothelitism. In the beginning of the 3rd century the doctrine of the Trinity has been stated as “the one God exists in three Persons and one substance, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

The Trinity Defined: The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that there is one God, yet three distinct persons; each person is the same in substance and equal in glory and power. The Westminster Confession of Faith states: “In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.” St. Thomas Aquinas – “without faith in the trinity, for the mystery of Christ includes that the Son of God took flesh, that he renewed the world through the grace of Holy Spirit, and again, was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Trinity in the Bible: In the strict sense, however, God is not explicitly revealed as Trinity in the OT. In the New Testament the oldest evidence of this revelation is in the Pauline epistles, especia1ly 2 Cor. 13:13, and 1 Cor. 12: l-6. In the Gospels much of the evidence of the Trinity has to do with the revelation of the relation between the Father and the Son. The only direct statement of Trinitarian revelation is the baptismal formula of Mt 28:l9.

Revelation of God in the OT. The writers of the OT show that God intervened in the history of Israel. God revealed himself as Yahweh, Supreme authority, almighty. But Old Testament is pre-Christian and does not provide any Trinitarian understanding of God. The God of the OT is a living God, intimately involved in the history of the people of Israel, sending forth a word through the prophets and the signs of the time. In theologically unjustifiable to suggest some ‘foreshadowing’ of the trinity, in the OT, the personification of certain divine forces, e.g. the word, the wisdom, the spirit of God, provides a certain prelude to the Christian understanding of God as triune.

Gen. 18:1-3; 1:26 ...

On account of the polytheistic religions of Israel’s pagan neighbours, it was necessary for the teachers of Israel to stress the oneness of God. In many places of the OT, however, expressions are used in which some of the Fathers of the Church saw foreshadowing of the Trinity by referring to God's word, (Ps. 33:6) his spirit, (Is. 61:1) and Wisdom, (Prov. 9:1) as well as narratives such as the appearance of the three men to Abraham Gen. ch. 18). Some Church Fathers believed that a knowledge of the mystery was granted to the prophets and saints of the “Old Dispensation”, and that they identified the divine messenger of Genesis 16:7, 21:17, 31:11, Exodus 3:2 and Wisdom of the sapiential books with the Son, and "the spirit of the Lord" with the Holy Spirit.

Divine Presence in the Life of Jesus: The writers of the New Testament were convinced that they had encountered the divine presence in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and their ongoing experience of his spirit amongst them. As like as OT, NT does not fallow clearly and univocally the doctrine of the Trinity. But NT speaks simply of ‘God’ the same God who speaks in the OT such as the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. NT writers do not even ordinarily speak of Jesus as ‘God’; but other hand, the NT recognizes the divinity of the Son. He is the realm of the divine (Jn. 1:1; Phil. 2:6-11); he is the presence of the Kingdom (Mt. 12:28; Lk. 11:20); has lordship over the Sabbath (Mk. 1:23-28; 3:1-6); possesses the fullness of the spirit (Lk. 4:18). NT does not specially the terms of the relationship between Father & Son nor among Holy Spirit. But it assumes that there is same relationship (Mt. 11:27; Jn. 1:1; 8:38; 10:38; 1 cor. 2:10). Father sends the Son and the spirit (Jn. 14:16; 26; 17:3; Gal. 4:6) and gives the spirit through the Son (jn. 15:26; 16:7), other texts focus explicitly the Father-Son relationship (Mk. 12:1-12; 2 Cor 4:4), But not individually or together express a theology of the Trinity.

The revelation of the truth of the triune life of God was first made in the NT, where the earliest references to it are in the Pauline Epistles. The doctrine is most easily seen in St. Paul’s recurrent use of the terms God, Lord, and Spirit. What makes his use of these terms so significant is that they appear against a strictly monotheistic background.

In the Gospels. The only place in the Gospels where the three divine Persons are explicitly mentioned together is in St. Matthew’s account of Christ’s last command to His Apostles, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28.19). The passage clearly teaches that they are equally divine with the Father, who is obviously God. These words testify to the belief of the Apostolic Church in a doctrine of three Persons in one God.

In the Pauline Epistles. The clearest instance of this usage is found in 2 Cor. 13:13, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Another example of Paul’s probable reference to the Trinity by his use of the triad, Spirit, Lord, God, can be seen in 1 Cor. 12.21-6. Here, in speaking of the spiritual gifts or charisms that are bestowed upon Christians, he says, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit: and there are varieties of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all.” This passage witnesses to the doctrine of the Trinity by ascribing the various charisms

The Development of the Doctrine of the Trinity (90-325 AD): Post-Apostolic Age (AD 90-140): In the Epistle to the Corinthians, Clement of Rome confessed the deity of Jesus Christ, saying, “Our Lord Jesus Christ [is] the Sceptre of the majesty of God.” He did recognize a distinction between the Father and Son.  The only statement Polycarp made that would lend itself to the Trinitarianism states, “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ Himself, who is the Son of God, and our everlasting High Priest, build you up in faith and truth.” The Post-Apostolic Fathers maintained that there was one God, and that Jesus Christ was God. They did distinguish between the Father and Son, using language much like that of the NT.

The Trinitarian theology of the Fathers had its standing point in their reflection on the history of salvation, e.g. the theology of redemption. The basic unity of the patristic approach not with standing, difference between the theology of the Greek Fathers and the Latin Fathers. Greeks – Economic Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit as experienced in the history of salvation). Latins – immanent Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit as exist and interrelate).

Theophilus of Antioch defines the Trinity as God, His Word (Logos) and His Wisdom (Sophia) in the context of a discussion of the first three days of creation. The first defense of the doctrine of the Trinity was in the early third century by the early church father Tertullian. He explicitly defined the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and defended the Trinitarian theology against the “Praxean” heresy.

Greek Apologists (AD 130-180): This age is so called because it was characterized by Greek teachers/philosophers who wrote literary works to be read by pagans, in order to defend and explain the Christian faith to unbelievers. The primary author of this time period was Justin Martyr with Marcianus Aristides, Tatian, and Melito. The Apologists’ doctrine was anything but orthodox Trinitarianism. The Biblical doctrine of the Logos was explained in terms of Greek philosophical thought rather than that of Scripture. They spoke of a Jesus who was ontologically subordinate to the Father. They did not believe that the Father and Son were coeternal, consubstantial, and coequal. Their view of God as that of a triad, rather than a trinity. God is revealed through the Son, and through the Son the Holy Spirit. The Greek Fathers were content to define the relation between the one divine being or nature.

Old Catholic Age (AD 170-325): Irenaeus, in his book Against Heresies (182-188), said that the curch’s belief is “in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, … and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit….”. Tertullian (150-225) was the first to speak of God as a trinity, and as three persons in one substance. Origen (185-254) was the greatest contributor to the development of the Trinitarian doctrine in the Eastern Church, as Tertullian was in the Western Church. He was the first to teach “an eternal trinity of persons”. He also said that God the Word is a separate being and has and essence of His own. He concluded that there are three hypostases [persons], the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Further Development: Augustine explained the Latin approach. TO explain the content and nature of triune God he said three persons functions for us in the history of salvation. He also argued that the inner life of God is necessary Trinitarian. Outside of the inner life of God, divine activity is common to all three persons since it proceeds from the one divine nature. The Cappadocians, put their main emphasis on the three distinct hypostases. Gregory of Nyssa had spoken of the Son as proceeding directly from the Father, but of the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father through the Son as intermediary. In 1215, the fourth Lateran council solemnly ratified the doctrine of personal properties. At the Council of Florence n 1442, in the bull Cantate Domino, the ratification was extended to the doctrine of relations. In Aquinas's theology, the ultimate reason, for the divine plurality is immanent procession. The divine essence is utterly simple and immutable guided by faith at every step of its analysis, is led to postulate in the divine essence the twofold activity and twofold procession of intellect and love.

The official teaching on the trinity

The trinity as absolute mystery: absolute because we do not understand it even after has been revealed. It is hidden in God, cannot be known unless revealed by God; it remains forever.

God as Triune: God is triune and it is clear and consistent teaching of the official magisterium of the church.

Council of Nicea (325) ‘one God, the Father Almighty ... and in one lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God ... and in the Holy Spirit’. Council of Constantinople (381) ‘Confirmed the faith of Nicea. Fourth Lateram council (1215) ‘There is only one true God ... Father, Son and Holy Spirit: three persons indeed but one essence, substance. During the great schism of East and West, the second council of Lyons (1278) and the council of Florence (1438-40) both reaffirmed the doctrine of the Trinity.

God as Father: This is the confession of Faith in Trinity. From Nicea (325) to Pope Paul VI, professions of faith begin – “We believe in One God”. The Father is ‘unbetgoten’, unity of the Son and the Holy spirit.

God the Son: The son is of the same substance with the Father. The son is coequal in divinity and coeternal with the Father. The Son is consubstantial with the Father. Nicean creed, We believe in one God......

God the Holy Spirit: Holy Spirit is the Father’s gift through the Son. Father communicates with us through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit has the same essence as the Father. The Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.

Council of Constantinople – we believe ... in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son,... one Holy catholic and apostolic church ... one baptism ... forgiveness of sins.

Processions, Relations, Persons and nature: The triune character of God – procession or mission. Hoy Spirit proceeds from the Father trough Son. Father sent Son and Holy Spirit through Son. There are two processions and two procession in God: generation & spiration. 4 relations: paternal, filiation, active spiration and passive spiration. One person (Father + Son + Holy Spirit) coequal and coeternal. Activity is different but divine and person. Nature: Son has two nature – 1. Divine and 2. Human nature.

Theological synthesis: Karl Rahner – the doctrine could be erased completely from the Christian treasury of faith and many Spiritual writings, sermons, pious expresses and even theological treaties could remain in peace with little more than minor verbal adjustment.

Theological and pastoral understanding of the trinity depends upon our perception of the identity between ‘economic trinity’ and immanent trinity’. The church acknowledges God as Triune. The doctrine of Trinity is already there given of our Christian experience, consciousness, faith. The primitive Christian community (the disciples, apostles, evangelists, 1^st faithful member of the church) the seeds of the doctrine where also given. God communicates with us through son and the son and Holy Spirit is really communication of God. The divine self-communication has two basic modes 1. Of truth (the logos) and 2. Of love (spirit). The beginning, the end and the center of all Christian theology is the doctrine of trinity.

Teaching of the Vat. II: The teaching of Vat. II, The basics and fundamental reality of Christianity is the faith in the one and triune God (Father + Son + Holy Spirit). Christian revealed the father and father express his love and revealed the great mystery of Trinity, the inner life through the Son and Holy Spirit. The purpose and the nature of revelation – God revealed Himself in order to meet him, dialogue with him and to share him, out of his love. That is why the mystery of the Trinity is saving mystery. The substance of this mystery is reunion with human beings, as Jesus said: glory to son, son to them ... (Jn. 17:21-23). The purpose of the revelation of the mystery of Trinity – God loves man and he has plan for salvation which was before the foundation of the world. It is manifested through the incarnation of his son, e.g. God became man, so that man become God, the ultimate goal is the praise and glory of the Trinity.

Father: L.G. 2: His plan dignifies men with a participation in his own divine life. A.D. 2: God the Father created everything out of this surpassing and merciful kindness.

Son: L.G. 3: Come on mission from his father – incarnation saving act. A.D. 3: Mediator – for God and man – New Adam.

Spirit: L.G. 4: Spirit is sent by Father through the son to accomplished the work on the earth. A.D. 4: Carry out his saving work inwardly.

Controversies on Trinity: The controversies that occasioned the early Councils stemmed partly from the difficulty of the subject-the Trinity and Christology-and partly from the lack of an accepted terminology. When Cyril of Alexandria spoke of “one physis of the Incarnate Word” he meant “one Person of the Incarnate Word,” but his statement could be taken in Antioch to mean “in the Incarnate Word there is only one nature”. There were similar difficulties about ousia and hypostasis.

A word formed from ousia played a key role in the first four Councils. The word was Hommoousios (of the same nature or substance). The Council of Nicaea (325) defined against Arius that the Son is homoousios Patri (of the same substance as the Father), but many bishops. This misunderstanding plagued the Church for 50 years after Nicaea.

Errors in regard to the Trinity took the form of (l) denying the real distinction of Persons (Monarchianism. Anti-Trinitarianism, and Unitarianism); (2) denying the divinity of the Second or Third Person (Subordinationism); or (3) denying the unity of the divine nature (Tritheism). Early controversy concerned chiefly the first two.

Different heresies

Monarchianism: A famous Monarchianist, Sabellian, claimed the three persons of God are three facets of one personality, in the way that the sun is simultaneously hot, round, and bright.

The Monarchians made the unity of God and the divinity of the Word their starting point, and as they could not deny either, they denied the distinct personality of the Son. To their opponents it seemed easier to deny the equality and consubstantiality of Son at a time when the implications of divinity, eternal generation, and the Incarnation had not been fully worked out.

Modalist Monarchianism: God was a single being, and that Father / Son / Spirit were simply three modes of the same being, only one being possible at a time. It would have been impossible for the Spirit to descend as a dove and God’s voice to be heard during Christ’s baptism.

Subordinationism: The heresy of the Judaizers, underrating the dignity of Christ and the efficacy of His Redemption contained the seeds of Subordinationism.

Tritheisrn. The Law of Contradiction states that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same relationship. Tritheists deny God's unity and profess three essences of natures as well as three Persons in God. Their error is due to failure to distinguish between nature and person, so that to admit three Persons is to accept three divine natures.

John Philoponus (d. -565), taught that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct individuals of the species “God” as Peter, Paul, and John are three of the species “man” three part substances in one common abstract substance.

Roscelin of Compifgnen (d. c. 1120) taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct substances as three angels or three men. He was opposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury and his teaching was condemned at Soissons (1092).

The Abbot Joachim Da Fiore, Calabria (d. 1202), taught that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have one essence, but in reality he denied the unity of divine nature because he conceived the oneness of the three Persons as a mere collective or generic unity. His teaching was condemned at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215).

Anton Gunthit (d. 1873) taught that the Absolute determined itself three times in a process of self-development, thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The divine substance is trebled, and the three substances attracted to one another through consciousness make a formal Trinity. This was condemned by Pius IX (1857).

Subordinationism: In the condemnation of Monarchianism considerable progress had been made toward the formulation of the doctrine of three divine persons distinct and equal, but early in the fourth century Arius fell into the heresy of Subordinatonism. He accepted, against Sabellianisrn, three distinct Persons but he denied the divinity and eternal generation of the Son. The Word, he taught, is a creature made freely by the Father out of nothing; not the Son of God by nature but by adoption only; not equal lo God but a being intermediary between God and creation.

Macedonianism: (named for Macedonius) Denied the deity of the Holy Spirit, asserting it was a servant, similar to the angels.

Mysticism: The Catholic nun Anne Catherine Emmerich said that as a child she had visions, in which she had seen the core of the Holy Trinity in the form of three concentric interpenetrating spheres – the biggest but less lit sphere represented the Father core, the medium sphere the Son core, and the smallest and brightest sphere as the Holy Spirit.

Unitarianism: “Unitarianism” is the doctrine of the oneness of God, with the resultant denial of the Trinity. According to this doctrine, there is only one God in three persons. Each person is God, whole and entire. They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: as the Fourth Lateran Council declared, “it is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds”. While distinct in their relations with one another, they are one in all else. The whole work of creation and grace is a single operation common to all three divine persons, who at the same time operate according to their unique properties, so that all things are from the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.

Contemporary approach: Recent theology has attempted to get back the doctrine of the Trinity. Previously, the doctrine preserved its imposing role in Christian thought but was handed on in an unquestioned way in a spirit of dogmatisrn. The dogma expressed in propositional from overshadowed the revelation that was its source and whence its salvific relevance for Christian life came. By the time of Friedrich Schleiermacher the doctrine had been reduced to a mere appendix in his the Christian Faith, and Kant was able to remark that from it “taken literally, nothing whatsoever can be gained for practical purposes, even if one believed that one comprehended it.”

Neo-modalism: Reformed theologian Karl Barth (d. 1968) conceived of God as event, that event which is revelation, whose very structure in turn is Trinitarian: God is the subject (Father), the content (Son), and the very happening (Spirit) of revelation. And on the Catholic side by Karl Rahner’s (d. 1984) version of this same insight conceives God as self-communicating and is encapsulated in his axiom “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity.” God is ultimately grasped as uni-personal; the plural term “persons” (Greek hypostases) in the confessional formula signifies “three distinct modes of existing” (Barth) or “three distinct modes of subsisting” (Rahner), of the one Godhead.

Neo-economic Trinitarianism: This understanding of the Trinity was further radicalized by Jurgen Moltmann. Flans Urs von Balthasar represents a modified version of Mfoltmann’s Trinitarian thought from a Catholic standpoint. His strong endorsement of the doctrine of pre-existence safeguards him from introducing temporality into the Godhead and collapsing the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity as Moltmann appears to do. Yet the identity of the Second Person in God is that of Son, of a filial relationship of obedience to the Father. And in the Incarnation, the humanity assumed is that of a sinful, alienated humanity. The suffering on the cross-caused by the evil already unleashed in the world by men and nowise attributable to God-is Jesus’ obedience to the Father seeking to reconcile mankind to himself. As such, it is a reflection of the eternal Sonship within the Trinity.

Trinity as community: This Trinitarian concept of the divine Persons as three independent subjects (which owes much to Hegel) does away with any notion of the divine unity as numerical in favor of an organic Trinity that results from “the co-workings of the three divine subjects” (Moltmann). Joseph Bracken argues boldly that the Persons “possess separate consciousnesses which nevertheless together form a single shared consciousness”. Bernard de Margerie (The Christian Trinity in History l982) attempted to rehabilitate the familial model in which father/mother/ child is seen as remotely, analogous to Father/Son/Spirit (an analogy rejected by both Augustine and Aquinas on the ground that then the individual would image, not the Trinity, but one of the divine Persons) by exploiting the value given to inter subjectivity in contemporary thought.

“Persons” in God: Wolfhart Pannenberg has also called for reconceiving the meaning of “person” as predicated of God, and thus as a Trinitarian category. He opposes any analogical transfer of human personality onto the divine where it becomes (as in the atheist claim) a mere anthropomorphic projection. Jesus is thus no longer the preexistent logos existing as a distinct hypostasis alongside the Father. As for the Spirit, He “shows himself to be personal reality by not extinguishing the personal character of human action through his activity” (Jesus God and Man). He is not to be conceived as a third preexistent and distinct hypostasis in God.

Filioque: In 1978, the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches addressed the question at a conference of Eastern and Western theologians convened just outside Strasbourg, France. At its conclusion, two proposals were advanced: first, the “Filioque” was to be dropped from the official Nicene-Constantinople Creed because this had been added in the West without the acquiescence of the Eastern Churches for whom the clause continued to cause deep offense; second, this was not to be understood as an abandonment of the filioquist theology in favor of Eastern Trinitarianism.  Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov (d. 1970) sees that Filioque as entailing also a doctrine of Scripture in which the spirit plays a role in the generation of the Son – not only in the economy of salvation but within the immanent Trinity.

Pneumatology: Other developments have centered on recovering the forgotten Person, the Holy Spirit. Emphasis has shifted in Soteriology from created grace to the gift of the Holy Spirit as co-founder of the Church (Yves Congar). Some theological speculation wishes to recognize the Spirit as the “person” of the believing community analogous to the way in which the Word is the person of Jesus’ humanity (Heribert Muhlen). By this is meant something more than is conveyed in the doctrine of “appropriation”; indwelling the souls of the just is proper to the Spirit in his role, and indeed his hypostatic identity, as unitive love within the Trinity.