The Trinity

An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune God

Gilles Emery, Matthew Levering

• Publisher: The Catholic University of America Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780813219035
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Denominaciones cristianas

"A sound introduction to a crucial doctrine. Emery's prose is scholarly yet widely accessible, at once traditional and constructive" ( Themelios ). Representing the highest quality of scholarship, Gilles Emery offers a much-anticipated exploration to Catholic doctrine on the Trinity. His extensive research combined with lucid prose provides readers a resource to better understand the foundations of Trinitarian reflection and addresses all who wish to benefit from an initiation to Trinitarian doctrine. The path proposed by this introductory work comprises six steps—from liturgical and biblical ways for entering into Trinitarian faith to the creative and saving action of the Trinity. The book concludes with a doctrinal exposition of the "missions" of the Son and Holy Spirit, that is, the salvific sending of the Son and Holy Spirit that leads humankind to the contemplation of the Father. "Trinitarian doctrine is not easy, but Emery (with his translator) has rendered it intelligible and attractive... Exegetes, theologians, historians, and liturgists alike will find the Trinity related to their discipline. Most importantly, The Trinity will prepare its readers to enter higher levels of discussion about the Trinity." — Sacra Pagina

1

Entering into Trinitarian Faith

Faith in the Trinity rests on God's revelation of himself in the economy of salvation. We do not have access to the Trinity outside what God revealed to us by sending his own Son and giving us his Holy Spirit. This point is crucial. Trinitarian faith is distinct from experiences that begin by observing nature, or studying cultural phenomena, or that start from arguments or human introspection. It rests exclusively on the gift that God makes when he enables believers to know him in faith. The revelation of the Trinity is accomplished by the coming of God himself into human history: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son (Jn 3:16); God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rm 5:5).

The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God.” To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel's faith before the incarnation of God's Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.¹

Two aspects of this affirmation merit special attention. First, the believer's knowledge of the Trinity rests on the revelation that takes place in the words and in the historical events to which the words are connected. These events are the incarnation of the Son of God and his life in our human condition, as well as the sending of the Holy Spirit to the Church at Pentecost. This manifestation of the Trinity is different from other forms of revelation (for example, the revelation that God can make simply by the interior inspiration of the mind of prophets), because the revelation of the Trinity takes place in events manifested to human eyes. Second, in these events God himself comes. God is not only at the origin of these events, but he also gives himself in them. Thus, in the incarnation, the Son of God in person becomes human and, by his life and his offering on the cross, he obtains salvation through love of his Father and through love of humankind. Similarly, at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit in person is given and comes to dwell in the heart of believers. And when, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, believers receive Jesus as the Son of God, the Father himself comes to dwell in their hearts, as Jesus promised: “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (Jn 14:23). In the events of salvation, God the Trinity gives not merely “some thing,” but rather he gives himself: God the Father sends his Son and pours out his Holy Spirit. These two aspects (God is revealed in historical events, and in them he really gives himself to believers) are at the center of the revelation of the Trinity. They constitute a fundamental and characteristic trait of the evangelical faith that distinguishes it from other forms of knowledge and of religious experience.

THE LITURGY

The liturgy of the Church—in particular the celebration of baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist—offers the best guide for understanding the depth of Trinitarian faith: in the paschal mystery of Christ, the Church recognizes and celebrates God the Trinity. The liturgy enables believers to receive the Trinitarian mystery and to live it. Concretely, it is through the liturgy that Christians enter into the mystery of God the Trinity and find the light to live out their lives with God.² In the liturgy, the Church proclaims the Word that reveals the mystery of God; she celebrates God and is united to him. The depth of Trinitarian faith can be understood within the home that is the celebration of the Eucharist. Through the Eucharist,

The faithful, united with their bishop, have access to God the Father through the Son, the Word made flesh, who suffered and has been glorified, and so, in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they enter into communion with the most holy Trinity, being made “sharers of the divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4).³

The Eucharist, which fortifies one's union with Christ, strengthens and nourishes the gift obtained by baptism and confirmation: believers are united to the Father through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. When they commune in the flesh of Christ and receive the Holy Spirit, believers are united to the Father: they are a “new creation” (Gal 6:15). The fruit of the sacraments is not only of the moral order, but rather it concerns first and foremost the being of believers. By the coming of the Son of God and the gift of the Holy Spirit, believers are renewed and transformed in their very being. The eternal Son of the Father is born in time in order to give us a share in his own life: “God was made man, so that man might be made God.”⁴ The sacraments of faith, which unite us to Christ by the gift of the Holy Spirit, obtain for us a new being destined to bloom in moral sanctity. “Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17). The Eucharist gives a participation in the very mystery of the Trinity: it is “divinization,” in which we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4).

Faith in the Trinity is intimately connected to this “new creation” that the sacraments effect. By receiving the Holy Spirit, by communing in Christ, believers enter into the divine life. They are led to the Father by the divine power of the Son and Holy Spirit who renew them interiorly. Thus, faith in the divinity of Christ, who is the only-begotten Son of the Father, and in the divinity of the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of the Father and the Son, is expressed in an exemplary manner in the sacraments that bring about communion in the divine life. The “stake,” so to say, of faith in the Trinity is salvation itself, the participation of the Church in the Trinitarian life. The revelation of the Trinity is ordered to this participation in the Trinitarian mystery that constitutes the Church. The structure or “disposition” of this revelation is well expressed by the collect of the feast of the Holy Trinity:

God the Father, you who by sending into the world the Word of truth and the Spirit of sanctification have manifested to men your admirable mystery, give us in confessing the true faith to recognize the glory of the eternal Trinity, and to adore the Unity in the power of majesty.⁵

The mystery of God has been revealed to us by the Father himself. This revelation is accomplished by the sending of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. By designating the Son as “Word of truth,” the prayer of the feast of the Holy Trinity signifies that the Son is sent into the world in order to make known the mystery of God. It belongs to the “Word” as such to make manifest and to reveal the true face of God, by a knowledge that transforms hearts. By designating the Holy Spirit as the “Spirit of sanctification” (cf. Rom 1:4), the Church signifies that the revelation of God is accomplished in the gift of new life that is obtained by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The revelatory and sanctifying action of the Son and of the Holy Spirit finds its origin in the Father himself, because the Father is the Source of the sending of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in such a way that the Son and the Holy Spirit reveal the mystery of the Source itself: the mystery of the Father.

This prayer likewise indicates the two aspects of our understanding of the mystery of God the Trinity in faith: the relations of the persons and their unity of being. The relations are signified by the theme of mission: the Son and the Holy Spirit come forth from the Father who “sends” them. The unity is especially associated with the divine power. The actions of the Son and of the Holy Spirit manifest their equality in power with the Father. The Son and Holy Spirit reveal, sanctify, and save. They perform actions that God alone can accomplish. Their divinity is revealed particularly in this power: the works of God make visible “his eternal power and deity” (Rom 1:20). The prayer of the feast of the Holy Trinity also signifies that the sending of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, which takes place in time, leads the Church to lift up its gaze toward the mystery of God who is above time, that is to say to recognize “the glory of the eternal Trinity.” The word glory evokes the transcendent mystery of God the Trinity, in all its “weight,” manifested by Christ and by the gift of the Holy Spirit, and recognized by the Church's faith and love. In the teaching of the Fathers of the Church about the Trinity and about Christ, the divine glory is associated with manifestation, with light and its rays, with renown, with royalty and power; hence, the word “glory” (gloria) has come to designate the divine nature proper to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.⁶

The liturgy of the Church especially proclaims the glory of the Trinity in the “doxologies” (from the Greek doxa: glory). The doxology constitutes a special form of praise. In the strict sense, one calls “doxologies” the formulas in which the word “glory” is attributed to God by means of a turn of phrase expressing possession. The doxologies do not regard an action of God, as do other liturgical forms of expression, but rather they are focused directly on the glory of God and his sanctity. They do not express a wish, but rather they declare the reality of God. One finds a good example in Revelation 5:13: “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!” One observes here three fundamental elements that constitute a doxology. First, the doxology names the one to whom it acknowledges glory: here, God who sits on the throne, and the Lamb. Second, it proclaims that glory belongs to him. Third, it includes a phrase that signifies eternity (“for ever and ever”). One can add a fourth element: the “Amen” pronounced by the four living creatures (Rev 5:14).⁷

The “lesser doxology” (“lesser” on account of its brevity) that concludes the liturgical prayer of the psalms offers a familiar example: “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.”⁸ This doxology reflects the baptismal formula conferred “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). In the baptismal formula, the “name” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is much more than a “word.” By invoking the “name” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one signifies the tri-personality of God who manifests himself to human beings, who enables them to enter into a covenantal relationship with him, and to whom one can address oneself. The “name,” in the singular, also suggests the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The phrase “in the name of” does not mean “by the mandate of” but rather indicates that, by the action of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the baptized pass from the domination of sin to the sovereignty of the triune God whom they can invoke in a personal relationship, in view of the communion with the Son in the Kingdom of his Father, through the Holy Spirit. In reference to the baptismal formula, the Trinitarian doxology expresses the equal greatness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are not three glories, nor three portions of glory shared among three persons, but it is the same undivided glory that one proclaims in the Three. To acknowledge in the Son and Holy Spirit the same glory as in the Father, is to confess their equal divinity. At the same time, the doxology signifies the personal distinctiveness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: they have the same glory but they are not blended.

The Gloria, the “greater doxology” chanted in the Mass, likewise expresses this shared dignity of the Son and Holy Spirit with the Father, in their distinction: “You alone are the Most High: Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of the Father. Amen.” And the doxology that concludes the eucharistic prayers renders glory to the Father through the Son, Christ Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. The doxologies, either in the form of a “co-ordinate” address (Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit) or following a “mediatorial” pattern (Glory to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit), are a central expression of Trinitarian faith. The former (“co-ordinate” address) ranks the three persons together as equal, while the latter (“mediatorial” pattern) makes clear the order of the divine persons in the economy of salvation.

Let us listen to the witness of an ancient Christian writing, the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, which presents a beautiful Trinitarian doxology. In this writing, the holy martyr addresses this prayer to God the Father: “For this, and for all else besides, I praise thee, I bless thee, I glorify thee; through our eternal High Priest in Heaven, thy beloved Son Jesus Christ, by whom and with whom be glory to thee and the Holy Spirit, now and for all ages to come. Amen.”⁹ Other ancient writings present such Trinitarian doxologies. Thus, for example, the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome: “To you be glory, to the Father and to the Son with the Holy Spirit in the holy Church, both now and for ever and into all the ages of ages.”¹⁰ In this doxology, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are “enumerated,” so to say, each in his place but on the same level. This means that the Three have the same dignity and belong to the same order: that of divine persons. Sometimes also, in the doxology, the Father, Son, and Spirit are united under the name “Trinity.” An example is found in this antiphon of the first vespers of the feast of the Holy Trinity: “Glory to you, equal Trinity, one Deity, from before all ages, and now and forever more.”¹¹ Trinitarian doctrine—the exposition of faith in the Trinity—makes explicit what the doxologies express under a liturgical form that always remains primary.

At times one finds opposed to Trinitarian faith a rather superficial argument: the word “Trinity” is absent from the Bible; the Trinity is therefore unscriptural. Certainly, the word Trinity only appears later, in Greek (trias) from the second century and in Latin (trinitas) toward the beginning of the third century, in Christian authors. But the reality signified by the word “Trinity” is exactly that which the baptismal formula and the doxologies—themselves found in Scripture—express: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are “co-numbered” or “numbered together,” they are mentioned or “counted one with the other” (the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit) because they belong to the same order of reality.¹² The creed likewise repeats this baptismal and doxological order of the divine persons. The Church professes her faith in the same way that she renders glory: “We believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:

From the beginning, the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity has been at the very root of the Church's living faith, principally by means of Baptism. It finds its expression in the rule of baptismal faith, formulated in the preaching, catechesis and prayer of the Church. Such formulations are already found in the apostolic writings, such as this salutation taken up in the Eucha...