WHAT Our Lord's first hearers, ignorant of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, made of His allusions to it we cannot know: we may guess that they were utterly puzzled. But there is a great profit for ourselves, knowing the doctrine, in listening to those same words of Our Lord.
Begin with the famous text Matthew xi. 27:
No one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son, and him to whom the Son shall reveal Him.
Here we have two capital points of the doctrine: first, that it can be known only by revelation, the power of the human mind cannot reach it without the aid of God: second, that the central point of the mystery of the relation of Father and Son, that in which its being as a mystery can be summarized, is the knowledge each has of the other?
Self-existence and the timeless present of eternity are in
Before Abraham was made, I am (John viii.58);
equality of nature in
All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine (John xvi.15);
distinction of persons and identity of nature in
I and the Father are one (John x. 30);
circuminsession in
The Father is in Me and I in the Father (John x.38).
Remembering that nature is the principle of operation? the person does what his nature allows?
My Father works until now and I work (John v.17); Whatsoever things He [the Father] does these the Son also does in like manner. (John v.19.)
Of the Third Person Our Lord says less: but it is enough.
When He, the Spirit of truth is come, he shall lead you unto all truth (John xvi.13);
He is equal to the Son, each is a paraclete:
I will ask the Father and He will give you another Paraclete (John xiv.16);
He is equal to Father and Son;
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost (Matthew xxviii.19).
To see just what that phrase means as to the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, try substituting any other name, however mighty. "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Archangel Michael." The thing would sound ridiculous. With all possible respect to the Archangel, one would feel that the company was too exalted
But there is another truth Our Lord makes clear: that though He, the Son, possesses the Divine Nature in total equality with the Father,
The Son cannot do anything of His own impulse, He can only do what He sees His Father doing (John v.19-23)
because the Divine Nature in which He lives and moves and has His Being is wholly received from His Father.
With this we may compare Our Lord's parallel phrase about the Holy Ghost:
He will not speak of His own impulse, He will utter the message that has been given to Him (John xvi.13).
For the Holy Ghost, too, has received that Divine Nature which is totally His? received it not from the Father only, but from the Son also, so that Our Lord can go on
It is from Me that He will derive what He makes plain to you.
This same truth about the procession of the Second Person from the First, and of the Third Person from the First and Second, is illuminated in another way as well. Our Lord speaks of Himself, the Second Person, as being SENT - always by the Father. He speaks of the Third Person as TO BE SENT - sometimes by the Father, sometimes by Himself. In this "sending" we must see no glimmer of subordination of the Son and the Holy Spirit. They come to us by the Divine Will, which is their own as totally as it is the Father's: but inasmuch as they received the nature in which that will is, they may be thought of as sent. That is why the Father, who possesses the Divine Nature as unreceived, is never spoken of as sent; that is why the Son, who receives the Divine Nature from the Father alone is spoken of as sent by the Father but not by the Holy Ghost; that is why the Holy Ghost, who receives the Divine Nature from Father and Son, is spoken of as sent by the Father and by the Son. But it must be repeated, the sending is not to be thought of as a command imposed, but as the free decision of a nature possessed in total equality by each.
What we have just had is not in any sense an exhaustive analysis of Our Lord's teaching on the Blessed Trinity: it is no more than an indication of how one might go about making such an analysis. But the last paragraph has brought us to a new stage in our study of the Trinity. So far we have been treating of God solely as He is in Himself. With the "sending", we see God in His action upon the universe He has created. We pass from the inner life of God to His operations upon things other than Himself. With these the rest of the book will be concerned.
The operations of the Divine Nature upon the created universe and everything within it are the operations of the Three Divine Persons acting as one principle, not of any one or other of them. Creation from nothing, conservation in being, sanctification, answer to prayer - the work of God in these and all other matters is the work of the Blessed Trinity, the Three in One. There is no external operation of the Divine Nature that is the work of one Person as
Yet both the New Testament and the Church's Liturgy are packed with phrases which do seem to attribute certain divine operations to Father or Son or Holy Ghost. The Nicene Creed leaps to mind with its reference to the Father as Creator, the Son as Redeemer, the Holy Ghost as Life-giver or Sanctifier. Now Redemption was (as we shall see in much detail later) not a work in the Divine Nature, but in the human nature which the Son of God made His own, therefore no question arises about the title of Redeemer given to the Son alone, for He alone assumed a human nature and in that nature suffered and died for us. But Creation and Sanctification are definitely operations in the Divine Nature: they are definitely, therefore, the work of the Blessed Trinity and not of the Father alone or the Holy Ghost alone (as Redemption is of the Son alone).
Observe that the thing is no accident, the attribution is not haphazard. The Church does it of set purpose, as we find St. Paul doing it of set purpose, upon a system learnt from Our Lord Himself. The theological name for it is Appropriation. We are encouraged to attribute this or that external operation of the Blessed Trinity to that Person to whom the corresponding operation within the Godhead belongs. Thus the works of origination and of omnipotence are appropriated to the Father; the works of knowledge or wisdom to the Son, who subsists by the way of knowledge;
That Our Lord Himself willed us to do this is clear. Consider one fact only. Our sanctification is to be by the indwelling in our souls of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
If anyone love Me he will keep My word, and my Father will love him, and We will come to him and will make our abode with him
thus showing that the indwelling is to be of Father and Son, too. But for the most part, it is the Holy Spirit that will come and abide in our souls, it is of the Holy Spirit that we are to be the temples. Once given Appropriation, the reason is obvious: the gifts of God to the soul are an outpouring of love and the Holy Ghost is subsistent Love. But why have Appropriation at all? Apparently in order to bring home to us the reality of the distinction between the Three, and what we may call the hypostatic character of each: so urgently does God want to be known by us. If we always thought of the operation of God upon us as the operation of all three Persons, we should be in danger of regarding the three Persons as only a form of words, with no distinction of one from another: and so God's purpose in revealing the central living fact of His own infinite life would be frustrated. Whereas appropriation to one Person or another continually reminds us of the distinction: and the specific appropriations that we make remind us that the Father is Origin and Power, the Son Knowledge or Wisdom, the Holy Ghost Love. Thus each Person is for us a distinct reality, and the reality that He really is. Provided we keep clear in our minds the complementary truth that the action appropriated to each Person is in fact the action of all Three,
The principle of appropriation thus taught by Our Lord is adopted with great thoroughness in the remaining books of the New Testament and especially by St. Paul.
Thus we find that, while teaching with great clarity that all Three Persons are God, he usually keeps the name God for the Father, the Second Person being Lord (Κύριος - Kyrios, Dominus ) and the Third Spirit. As we have seen, this was not to question the identity of nature, but to bring into relief the distinction of the persons. Nor does he keep to these terms invariably. But usually he writes of the Three as God, Lord, Spirit. And so we find it in many early Christian writers. This accounts for a curiosity which has occasionally puzzled the faithful in the Nicene Creed: which speaks of "one Lord Jesus Christ" and then speaks of "the Holy Ghost, Lord and giver of life". The reason is that in the original form of the Creed, the Second Person is called "one Lord" in accord with our present formula, and the Third "Spirit". Later the word Lord was added after Spirit to assert the equality of
But to return to St. Paul.
There is one famous text (i Cor..4) in which he uses his three titles, and appropriates certain things to each:
There are different kinds of gifts, though it is the same SPIRIT who gives them, just as there are different kinds of service, though it is the same LORD we serve, and different manifestations of power, though it is the same GOD Who manifests His power everywhere in all of us.
On the same principle, St. Paul has given (Rom.xi.36) us another formula:
FROM the Father, THROUGH the Son (that is through the Divine Wisdom or according to the Divine Idea) UNTO the Holy Spirit (that is .... ?)
and the liturgical form of prayer
TO the Father, THROUGH Jesus Christ, IN THE UNITY OF the Holy Spirit,
keeps similarly close to the hypostatic character of the Three Persons.
We shall see more of all this in the remaining two parts of this book. But before embarking on the troubled story of creation, let us glance once more at the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity as it enables us to see into the blissful life of God Himself.
God IS, the infinite fullness of Existence, wholly Himself in one infinite act of being, utterly fulfilled in infinite knowledge and infinite love, utterly simple, utterly single: yet not solitary. Men have always feared the solitary God. In flight from that terrifying idea the Pagans imagined a multitude of Gods: it was the wrong answer, but to the right question, or perhaps better to the right quest. The Trinity was the right answer. God is one, but it is not the oneness of infinite solitude: it is the oneness of one infinite Godhead triply uttered: a communication of infinite truth and infinite love among three, infinite self-revelation, infinite self-donation,
Contemplating it, we find that the concept of infinite love comes to life for us. God lives a life of infinite love. But whom does He love? What is an adequate object for a love that is infinite? Not men, nor angels. If God has only these to love, then His love never has an object worthy of it, for they cannot conceive infinite love and they cannot return it. If that is all, God is forever loving His inferiors, as He is doomed to the companionship of His inferiors. The only adequate object of infinite love is an infinite being, God Himself. Certainly there is a real truth in the concept of God loving Himself infinitely, but it is not a truth we can make much of: it does not issue in anything: we know that it is not an infinite egoism, but we cannot be rid of that feeling about it. But with the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity that feeling vanishes: there is an otherness within the Godhead. Infinite love among three who are infinite with one same infinity means infinite love,
It may be that the glory of the doctrine does not shine for us at once. We see it, perhaps, as immense, but not as satisfying anything particular in ourselves, touching no nerve in us. We accept it, but in all honesty we cannot feel that it makes any great difference to our spiritual or mental life, to our love of God or to our comprehension of reality. But the prime question about a doctrine is not what does it do to us but is it so. The doctrine of the Trinity is reality about God. If we thrill to it, so much the better. But thrill or no thrill, let us keep hold of it and mentally live with it, for it is reality, and whether we perceive its effects on us or not, reality nourishes and nothing else does.