hedrick@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Charles Hedrick) (09/22/86)
It appears to be time for my annual lecture on the Trinity. This doctrine is not a mathematical mystery. At least in the Western tradition, we not trying to bend your mind to the point where you think 3 = 1 (as unfortunately presentations of the doctrine all too often try to do). In the West, the Trinity is seen primarily as a matter of relationship. (Lest you think I am preaching some modern Liberalism, let me note that this all goes back to Augustine, shortly after 400 A.D.) That is, we say God is love. But how could there be love within a single entity? Of course a unitary God could love human beings. But that would imply that love was in some sense "foreign" to God, i.e. that it was not possible for him until something outside of him existed to love. However Christians believe that God is calling us into a relationship of love that is an eternal part of God's own life. Consider also the gift that Christ gives us. We are called to a life of joyful obedience. Again, it might be that this obedience is something that entered the universe only when creatures appeared, since until then there was nobody who needed to obey. But Christians believe that our entire relationship with God is itself a gift from God. Christ is the only one who could really carry out the human role fully. We do so only to the extent that we live through him. But Christians see Christ as God made visible. So what are we to conclude? It is that God must not be as simple as one might first think. He has within him the relationship of love. He has within him that which obeys as well as that which is master. In short, the relationship of love into which he calls us is something that is intrinsic to him. For Augustine, and much of the Western tradition, this is the heart of the Trinity. We tend to start with the concept of God as one, and add just as much internal definition as it takes to get the ability to have a relationship within God. Unfortunately, when Augustine was writing (around 400), the concept "relationship" was not as well understood as it is now (either in mathematics or in human relationships). So he spends a lot of time talking around his subject and giving analogies. But it is fairly clear that for him the 3 Persons are defined solely by their mutual relationship. Consider: "It was shown that not all that is predicated of God denotes substance, as do the predicates "good" and "great" and any others denoting what he is in himself; but that there are also predicates of relation, denoting not what he is in himself but what he is in relation to something which is not himself; as he is called Father in relation to the Son, or Lord in relation to the creature that is subject to him." (De Trinitate, XV, 5 (iii), summarizing the argument of chap V) So "there is a trinity of mutually related persons and a unity of equal substance." (De Trinitate, IX, 1) The rest of book IX meanders about trying to give us a better idea of what he means by things being mutually related. It is that they are constituted only by their relationship to each other. The argument so far might seem to lead to a binity, rather than a trinity. However the Holy Spirit is also part of the relationship. To characterize him in a single sentence, I would quote Augustine: "..his being suggests to us that mutual charity whereby the Father and the Son love one another." (De Trinitate, XV, 27 (xvii)) I should warn you that the explanation I have just given is in some sense an extremist Western explanation. As the West tends to start with one God and derive the Persons from relationship, the East tends to start with three Persons, and show that they constitute a single God. It seems to me that the 3 = 1 arguments are far more appropriate in the Eastern context. However I am so far from being able to understand the Eastern view that I am not even going to try to summarize it. Any time I try it comes out as tritheism, but I have it on good authority that it was not intended that way.
cc100jr@gitpyr.UUCP (Joel Rives) (09/24/86)
Which Eastern view were you referring to?
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Joel Rives
gatech!gitpyr!cc100jr
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There is no place to seek the mind;
It is like the footprints of the birds in the sky.
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