Trinity

The most particular way in which Christians talk about God is as Trinity. This is the concept of God affirmed by the Nicene creed.

The designation “Trinity” as terminology began with Tertullian, but the concept of the Trinity was slowly worked out through councils of bishops that met when called together by the emperor. The history of this process lends itself to political interpretations of why Christians hold this doctrine, but that interpretation will not be my focus. Along with political calculation, there was genuine theological reflection going on. The concept of the Trinity is hard, if not impossible, to understand, but it preserves central ideas about how God works in the world and in our lives that deserve attention and should not be lost in the politics. The doctrine of the Trinity continued to be shaped after the meeting of the Council of Nicaea. I will return to some of these later issues when I take up Christology and Holy Spirit.

Many have pointed out that the doctrine of the Trinity is not in the Bible. Rather the doctrine is an interpretation of the Bible. It tries to make sense of how the Bible witnesses to the saving activity of God with the involvement of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in that activity. Because Christians affirm only one God, how does it make sense of this threefold witness about salvation? The developing liturgy of the church also used a threefold baptism. Converts affirmed in their baptism the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The pressure of retaining monotheism in the face of biblical and liturgical witness to multiple characters involved in salvation created a tension that resulted in alternative interpretations of the biblical witness. Competing ideas circulated among Christians in the empire, and emperor Constantine called the bishops together at Nicaea to try to work out a common understanding.

This understanding was worked out within the philosophical environment that predominated at the time. Using philosophical ideas was not some kind of betrayal of Scripture, using familiar ideas is simply what all of us do (mostly unconsciously) as we try to understand God’s Word for our lives. We understand it in connection with what we already know. Philosophers had been thinking about the “really real” for a long time. They had distinguished the ultimate reality that lies behind and supports everything from our daily reality. Our daily reality has appearances that can be deceiving, and we are threatened by loss, so to talk about ultimate reality they eliminated characteristics that make daily reality vulnerable. The “really real” must be permanent, not subject to loss, so the “really real” was understood to be without change. Because change happens in time (change from before to after) the unchanging really real must be outside of time. Although ideas were debated by different philosophical schools, the idea of a permanent, unchanging God who lies behind our daily changing world informed much of the discussion about how to interpret the Bible with regard to its witness to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Philosophy had also supplied the notion of Logos (the Greek word can be translated as both word and reason). The rational principle of the world was called Logos. The Bible itself connects Jesus to Logos (John 1:1-5) so this philosophical principle becomes a (debated) link between Jesus and God.

At the Council of Nicaea, one popular interpretation of the Bible’s witness (known as Arianism) was under discussion. There was a historical figure named Arius, but very little of his work has survived, and what we know of his writing comes mostly through what opponents said about it. The view was quite popular, though, and it is better to think of Arianism as a school of thought, rather than as the work of an individual theologian.

Arianism takes the Bible very seriously. In the Gospel according to John the Logos was linked to God as the Word spoken by God to bring about creation. The Bible in Proverbs spoke of another figure also involved in creation, namely Wisdom (sophia in the Greek translation of the Old Testament). In Proverbs 8:22, Wisdom says “the Lord created me at the beginning.” Arians made the connection between Logos and Wisdom (reason and wisdom both mental process words), and thought of the Logos as having a beginning in time. The title Son of God also influenced Arian thinking about the link between Logos and God. As the “Son of God” the Logos in Jesus was begotten by God, which implies a differentiation between God and the Son of God. So Arianism thought of the Logos as the first creature through whom all other creatures were created. In Arianism, the Son of God/Logos was the greatest of all things God made, but was nevertheless a creature.

As a creature, the Son/Logos belonged to the changeable world that we also belong to. Given the philosophical commitments that informed theological reflection at the time, this creatureliness made the Son/Logos different from the permanent and unchanging God. The Son/Logos was a mediator, but not fully divine–great, but something lesser than God. Because of this reasoning, Arianism has come to be known as subordinationism. The Son is subordinate to the Father.

This way of thinking about the Son/Logos incarnated in Jesus was compelling to many, but it also had its opponents, among them Athanasius. Opponents pointed out that the Arian position compromised salvation. For one thing, if the Son/Logos/ who was incarnate in Jesus was a creature he was limited and changeable. He could be fallible and could potentially have fallen into sin. He would be too much like us to be able to save us.

For another thing, if the Word (Logos) of God in Jesus was not of the same essence as God, then the Logos could not provide what was needed for salvation. Humans lost the image of God in the Fall, and only God can restore God’s image. If the Logos of Jesus is not truly God, this restoration cannot be accomplished. The argument at the council over homoousios (same substance) and homoiousios (similar substance) is not just (as has dismissively been said) over an iota (that is, about the spelling, in English the extra letter i). It is over what it takes to save us. Salvation can only be accomplished by the true God, not a lesser being. Nothing less than God can be Savior. So to be Savior Jesus had to be somehow fully God. (For more on the Arian controversy, see From Nicaea to Chalcedon by Frances Young with Andrew Teal, and The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God by RPC Hanson).

It may be important to introduce some technical points that do not always get conveyed (at least to Protestants) outside academic circles. In this concept of God as Trinity, God’s self is described as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Father in this case does not simply mean “God” but is one of the three in God. “Son” refers to the Logos that exists before Jesus is born and who is incarnated as Jesus. The preexistent (existing before Jesus) Son is eternally in God and eternally begotten by the Father within God’s own triune substance. The Holy Spirit has a similar eternal relation although the Spirit is eternally “spirated” rather than eternally “begotten.” So the Trinity is the very being of God, not three independently existing beings nor three separately acting beings. The language leads people to think of tritheism, but the doctrine is describing God’s very self as triune (three-in-one).

Because the issues that needed to be resolved at the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E. centered on how to understand Jesus Christ, this Council did not also take up questions about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was mentioned, but not elaborated as a doctrine. The creed produced at the first Council is not identical to the creed used in the Church today. More was elaborated at the Council of Constantinople as controversies continued.

The language used to express the relation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as equally God was worked out by three Eastern theologians commonly called the three Cappadocians (Basil the Great of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus). They established the formula in Greek: one ousia, three hypostases. This formula intended to express that there are three distinctives in the one God. Because Christianity in the West used Latin, this “formula” was translated as one substantia, three personae, and into English as one substance and three persons. There is debate over whether the Latin and English capture what the Greek intended, which leads to questions about how “person” should be understood. It is at least commonly accepted that three “persons” does not mean three “beings.” As explained above the doctrine claims that there is a threeness in the one God’s essence. God’s substance is triune (three-in-one). There is no fitting analogy in the world of our experience to grasp fully what this affirmation means. Analogies may convey something useful, but every analogy falls short in some way because the comparison is grounded in our empirical experience.

Christians make the claim Trinitarianism is essential to express the Bible’s witness to our salvation. God’s essence is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit so that no matter which distinctive is being referred to, salvation comes from God alone.

As a concept of God, the doctrine of the Trinity looks to many like a politically contrived description of the composition of God, but the motivating question that lies behind the concept is really about how God saves us to bring us to fullness of life. The theological meaning can only be understood in the context of that question. If you can’t wrap your mind around the concept (and who can?), at least consider the convictions that led to it: Christians worship and are saved by one God, but Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are rightly said to be involved in our salvation. This involvement indicates divinity because nothing less than God can save. Their involvement does not indicate more than one God. Christians will preserve these convictions even if the verbal and philosophical resources we have to express them are inadequate.

Roger Haight expresses the point of the doctrine in this way: “the point of the doctrine of the Trinity is that God is absolutely and uniquely one, that God’s saving action in Jesus and the Spirit are real, and that therefore God as such is a saving God.” (The Point of Trinitarian Theology, Roger Haight in Toronto Journal of Theology 4/2 1988).

In recent years a social analogy of a “community” in God has been embraced by many to call attention to the importance of Trinity as a model for mutual relationship and sharing in human community. This insight is important for reminding us that fullness of life includes our life together, not just as individuals. This analogy must be handled carefully so it does not convey tritheism.

For more on the theological ideas that shaped the doctrine of the Trinity, I recommend The Making of the Creeds by Frances Young.