Archive for the ‘The Trinitarian God’ Category

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Reading Selections from Trinity Spermatiké (1.1-1.4) by Giorgio Buccellati

May 22, 2013
We are, in other words, conditioned by the identity of the object towards which we tend. If so, it stands to reason to say that, God being the Trinity, every human relation to the divine sphere is “intentionally” Trinitarian . But how? You are drawn to these daffodils and they are part of a universal apprehension of the divine: in other words, the divine commands our attention, our intention. Reduced to its most universal common denominator, such intentionality is found in facing that which we cannot control but which de facto conditions, and limits, us. The recognition of such uncontrollable external conditions is and has ever been an objective factor in the life of every single human being.

We are, in other words, conditioned by the identity of the object towards which we tend. If so, it stands to reason to say that, God being the Trinity, every human relation to the divine sphere is “intentionally” Trinitarian. But how? You are drawn to these daffodils and they are part of a universal apprehension of the divine: in other words, the divine commands our attention, our intention. Reduced to its most universal common denominator, such intentionality is found in facing that which we cannot control but which de facto conditions, and limits, us. The recognition of such uncontrollable external conditions is and has ever been an objective factor in the life of every single human being.

GIORGIO BUCCELLATI is the director of IIMAS — The International Institute for Mesopotamian Studies, co-director of the Mozan/Urkesh Archaeological Project, director of the Mesopotamian Lab of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, and Professor Emeritus of the Ancient Near East and of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. This is all part of a much larger piece that has most recently been published in Communio and is available here. In these sections Professor Buccellati contrasts the monotheistic Trinity with polytheism and the significance of both, how they contrast and complement each other.

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“The Trinity is inevitably present in seed form wherever God is sensed.”

Non chiederci la parola che squadri da ogni lato l’animo nostro inform: …

Don’t ask of us the word that might our shapeless soul squarely and neatly frame.

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The Central Concept
One way to approach the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is to explore the experience through which the reality behind the dogma came to be apprehended in the New Testament; and that the Old Testament experience of Yahweh, already essentially Trinitarian, was as if a catechumenate that ultimately made such apprehension possible.

By way of contrast, I have also argued that the polytheistic stance towards the divine is essentially non-Trinitarian, because it emphasizes the aspect of control and ownership vis-à-vis the monotheistic stance that sees an interpersonal sharing within the absolute as fully real without implying fragmentation.

I will argue here for a converse point of view that will complement the considerations made in the second paper. While a pagan, or polytheistic ethos is indeed essentially non-Trinitarian in the articulation of its sensibilities and thought processes, it cannot, at the same time, escape from the deeper Trinitarian dimension of the divine reality.

A Polytheistic Opposition
The explicit polytheistic opposition to a monotheistic dimension is dramatically complemented, in my view, by a deeper, inescapable apprehension of what is ultimately the only proper configuration of the divine, i.e., the Trinity. The Trinity is inevitably present in seed form wherever God is sensed.

The Church Fathers spoke of a lógos spermatikós referring to the inevitability of Christ being present as seed in the human experience of the divine even when not so recognized explicitly. But recognizing the Logos as seed implies, inevitably, a seed-like Trinitarian apprehension — a Trinity spermatiké. The equivalent Latin term, semina verbi, “the seeds of the word” is also central to the understanding of the commonalities among world religions. We should then ask: what, if any, is the difference between the Old Testament catechumenate and such a veiled polytheistic perception of the Trinity?

And in turn, how does the fuller disclosure, as offered by Jesus, impact our human experience of divine reality? In other words, how is our basic human confrontation with God enriched as a result of being, through Christ, more explicitly Trinitarian?The thrust of this article aims to give an answer to this question.

Monotheism and Trinitarianism
Semantically, it would appear sufficient to say that Trinitarian is not three-theism: the three persons are not three gods. But there is a more subtle conceptual dimension that may easily hide behind the semantic veneer. It emerges when, in a converse (vocab: All S is P, the converse is All P is S) sort of way, monotheism comes to be understood as “one-theistic”: there is only one god, but with the emphasis on the numerability of the “one.” He is still subject of counting.

This means that conceptually he is seen as one in a series of units, a series that belongs to a broad set where everything is numerable. “One-theism” is not very different from henotheism, a term which refers to the process of rarefaction whereby pre-eminence is given to a single deity out of a pantheon of many, to the point where the other gods almost disappear. In such a perspective, the characteristic of oneness remains one of superiority rather than of utter otherness.

It is such utter otherness that is, instead, the hallmark of monotheism. Oneness means, in this case, a one that is not so much above a multitude of other ones as it is, rather, wholly set apart. The semantic trap to which I was alluding lies in assuming that the one is opposed to the many. Where polytheism admits many deities, monotheism is assumed to admit one.

It comes down to a matter of scale: the one is of the same order as the many, except that it is numerically limited. But it is a trap. The insight of monotheism lies in proposing an altogether different scale, a different plane of reality where, we might say, one is opposed to one. The “one” of polytheism is a mononumerical set, but remains a set within a series of numerical sets. The “one” of monotheism is outside any such series of sets.

Metábasis Eis Állo Génos
The notion of transcendence refers to just such an understanding. The monotheistic God transcends human concepts in the way described by Kierkegaard as a metábasis eis állo génos, a “rising to another genus,” using language borrowed from Aristotle. The “other genus” is not something higher within the same range. It is rather a distinct range altogether. Nor is it a truly parallel order of being, because it is wholly outside our concept of order, related to ours only analogically.

If we take seriously transcendence as metábasis, and parallelism as analogia entis, then the point made above, about the importance of considering the oneness of God outside of any notion of numerical sets, will become clearer. So will, also, the realization that there is no contrast between monotheism and Trinitarianism. The Trinity is not a set any more than the One God is a set.

We may think of the Trinity as the inner articulation of the altogether different order of being which we call absolute. An excessive conceptual reliance on the notion of oneness may easily work against the very impetus of monotheism, as if the reductiveness of the single count could give us control on transcendence, as if transcendence could in effect be imprisoned in the immanent function of the numeric concept.

“Understanding” God
If transcendence implies transference to an altogether different plane of reality, an állo génos, then how is it possible for humans to rise to this other level, how does the metábasis (vocab: a passing from one thing to another; transition.) take place? In particular, within our present context, what kind of basic human understanding is possible of the Trinitarian mystery?

Is the Trinitarian állo génos (other kind) so alien that there are no footholds in normal human experience on which to stand in order to reach for some kind of plain and simple human comprehension? Are we called to love what we can- not possibly understand? But if our love is to be genuine, how can it not be human, how can it be directed to what is alien to experience, to understanding?

These considerations are valid for any attempt to reach the divine sphere, but they are especially pertinent when reflecting on the Trinity. If revelation is seen as merely the acquisition of information, then we may develop the wrong feeling that knowing about the Trinity means that we can “explain” God. But we would be wrong in equating understanding with explanation.

Understanding = An Inner Disposition Of Love
Understanding does not mean explicating in the sense of dissecting, analyzing, breaking down a composite into its constituent parts. In the traditional sense of wisdom, understanding means to apprehend the whole as meaningful apart from, or rather beyond, its being the sum of its components. When reflecting on the Trinity, we must, accordingly, relate to the mystery as a whole, without the tacit pretense that by describing it as a triadic sum we have exhausted its inner significance. Knowing about the Trinity is not a call to acquire and exchange information, it is not an explanation. It is, rather, a call to develop a relationship.

Ultimately, this means that “understanding” the Trinity entails an inner disposition of love. We cannot love without understanding the target of our love, nor can we understand without the inner thrust of a full and genuine human love. Not, however, as though love were an irrational feeling. True, it would be a sad day when we could “explain” why we love someone, for explanation would entail love as a necessary consequence.

But it would also be a sad day when we felt love to be irrational, i.e., wholly divorced from reason. Rather than in conflict, love and reason are in a mutual relationship of harmony, and it is through reason that we, lovers, “understand” our beloved.

The Role of Apologetics
It is in fact valid to say that explanation plays a propaedeutic [vocab: (of an area of study) Serving as a preliminary instruction or as an introduction to further study.] role in nurturing understanding, hence love. We cannot convince someone, through argument, that he or she must love someone else. On the other hand, arguments can direct the inner movement of souls to where, beyond the dissecting arguments, the whole explodes in its own clarity.

Analogously, no amount of analytical criticism can force you to enjoy a poem or a painting; but the same criticism can predispose your sensitivity so that it is trained to accept modalities and styles that might at first have seemed alien. It is in this sense that we can bridge the gap between positive and negative theology, by seeing the first as preparing the ground for the second, by seeing argument and explanation shaping our consciousness and preparing it for the explosion of understanding.

Knowing And Understanding
There is an analogous distinction between knowing and understanding. “Knowing” relates to capturing information, “understanding” to an inner disposition of apprehension and readiness. Thus it is that when we seek to do the will of God, we do not properly seek explicit orders or a clarification of situations, wherein we are told do A rather than B.

Explicit Divine Requests
Explicit divine requests are the exception. Consider the three fiats (vocab: a command or act of will that creates something without or as if without further effort):

  1. Only the first is Mary’s response to an explicit “word”: fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum (Luke 1:38).
  2. The second is the Our Father, where we are asked to accept a will that does not necessarily translate into any explicit word: fiat voluntas tua (Matthew 6:10).
  3. The third is Jesus’ own Our Father, when, in the agony at Gethsemane, he contrasts his own instinctive desire to avoid the Passion with the will of the Father that the Passion should take place, a will that is perceived but is not confirmed as an articulate command: fiat voluntas tua (Matthew 26:42) | non mea voluntas sed tua fiat (Luke 22:42).

A Christian Epistemology I
This last fiat is especially tragic and meaningful. It is preceded, in each of the two gospel narratives, by an if-clause that projects uncertainty. Jesus does not seem to “know” for sure what the Father’s will is: “Father, if it is possible, let this chalice go away from me — except, not as I wish, but as you do… . If this cannot go away unless I drink it, let your will take place” (Matthew 26:39.42); “Father, if you wish, remove from me this chalice — except, not my will, but let yours take place” (Luke 22:42).

It seems as though part of the agony is the obscurity that involves uncertainty about the Father’s precise intentions. Jesus’ surrender is more important, it would appear, than his acceptance of any specific marching orders. The will of the Father is not information to be articulated in words that one can “know,” but rather a creative power to be adhered to with understanding. The if-qualifications of the last fiat do not seem resolved as, in his agony, Jesus cries from the height the cross: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matthew 27:46 | Mark 15:34). No direct answer is forthcoming. No explicit explanation. No spoken word of comfort. Instead, the final understanding of the Father’s will comes to the dying Jesus, extraordinarily, through a fellow human being: one of the two men who have been crucified alongside him — Dismas, as tradition calls him.

There is a startling dimension to this episode (Luke 23:39–43), one that can nurture much awed reflection. Think about it: Jesus finds the strength to accept his final collapse (Luke 23:46) through the unexpected support of an unknown criminal. It is, mark well, the lowliest human on the social scale, one who had never received anything from Jesus, one whose name was unknown to even the few bystanders (Dismas being a later appellation).

It is this very man who is called to give the Father’s answer to the Son, to give Jesus the courage to die. Remember: Jesus had been asking for help from the three apostles he took near him at Gethsemane, and they fell asleep; there, he had asked the Father for direction, and had met with silence; as he is led to the summit of the skull, he sees his closest friends disappear (except for his mother and a young disciple), and it is the outsiders who then begin to rally around his loneliness.

In this darkness we can see how Jesus’ own fiat, his “understanding” of the Father’s will, is not rooted in the acquisition of a specific, overt, articulate command that might confirm his mission, but in his fundamental posture of availability and openness, ready to accept whatever sign may come his way. Any source, even the most unexpected, may be the effective conduit to an understanding of what we are to be available for. For Jesus, it was, first, a foreigner along the way (Simon of Cyrene, Matthew 27:32 | Mark 15:21 | Luke 23:26), and then, at the top, an unnamed confessed criminal.

Jesus lives a profoundly human situation as he seeks through uncertainty the will of the Father.

A Christian Epistemology II
So did his mother when facing the behavior of her adolescent son. Having found him in the Temple after an anguished search, and having heard his explanation as to why he had not alerted them regarding his whereabouts, we are told that Mary and Joseph “did not comprehend the spoken (explanation) (ou sunē’kan tò rē’ma)

[In the Annunciation, the “word” to which Mary assents is lógos in Greek. The term used here instead is rē’ma, which has more the connotation of “saying, speech, statement,” hence “explanation” and then even “event, fact.” The same term is used in the plural in what follows immediately in the text, where it is said that Mary pondered in depth “all the spoken (events) (pánta tà  rē’mata).”] which he had spoken to them” (Luke 2:50).

But reflect on it they did, after the fact, and intensely so: “His mother was watching-and-guarding-through-and-through (dietē’rei) in her heart all the spoken (events) (pánta tà rē’mata)” (Luke 2:51). She accepts and basically understands her son even when, offered an explanation, she does not fully comprehend it. At the root, and in a nutshell, this is the Christian epistemology, particularly when facing the Trinity.

“Intentionality”
It is also, in a way, the common Trinitarian epistemology, i.e., the non-Christian confrontation with the Trinity. The central question we are asking here concerns precisely the way in which, however veiled, the Trinity may be sensed outside of the framework unveiled through the Incarnation of the Logos. If even in the wake of that revelation our “understanding” is at once piercing and obscure; if even Mary and Joseph “did not comprehend the explanation” explicitly offered by Jesus; how then do the countless humans who are not privy to the same revelation face the inescapably Trinitarian dimension of the divine?

The phenomenological concept of “intentionality” is helpful in this respect. On the analogy of planets held in orbit by the pull of their sun, so are we tending towards objects that exert their attraction regardless of how explicit our perception of their precise identity may or may not be. We are, in other words, conditioned by the identity of the object towards which we tend. If so, it stands to reason to say that, God being the Trinity, every human relation to the divine sphere is “intentionally” Trinitarian . But how?

There is, in the first place, a universal apprehension of the divine: in other words, the divine commands our attention, our intention. Reduced to its most universal common denominator, such intentionality is found in facing that which we cannot control but which de facto conditions, and limits, us. The recognition of such uncontrollable external conditions is and has ever been an objective factor in the life of every single human being.

There is, however, a fundamental difference in how we articulate our perception of this reality, a difference that comes down to two basic alternatives. Common to both is the realization that we can progressively gain an ever greater measure of control over what could not previously be controlled — for instance, control of the outer spaces through astronomy, of disease through medicine, of our own remote past through paleontology and archaeology.

Peculiar to the first mode of thought is the belief that this “progress” is, itself, unconditional. In other words, nothing will ultimately condition progress because progress will achieve full ultimate control on whatever external conditions seem to limit us now (see in the next installment, 4.3).

Peculiar to the second mode of thought is instead the belief that there is an ultimate “beyondness” that conditions us in ways that escape all possibility of control on our part. The intentional aspect is the same: in both cases the existence of conditioning factors that cannot be controlled is undeniable, and un-denied. The difference is in the perceptual resolution, both positions being a matter of belief.

We either believe, in the polytheistic frame of mind (the first mode of thought), that full ultimate accretion is possible (there is an ultimate explanation of everything, the last bit of which will come from the ultimate accumulation of all previous knowledge). Or else we believe, in the monotheistic frame of mind (the other mode of thought), that accretion is itself conditioned, that our own ability of control is framed by uncontrollable conditions. Neither belief can be demonstrated. But both are the result of an objective, “intentional” confrontation with a reality which we experience: a conditioning that is beyond our control.

The point I wish to stress in this context is that there is a Trinitarian dimension even to the polytheistic perception of the “beyondness.” Therein humans face, “intentionally,” a dynamics at work in the divine reality, through the very paradox of progress understood as the ultimate goal. The paradox lies in the notion that a never ending progress may in some way end. Progress entails the capturing, along the line, of fragments of a dynamic absolute, yet progress will, by necessity, come to an end when there are no more fragments — at which point the dynamics ends.

The paradox, then, is in the belief that stasis is the final outcome of forward movement, that this dynamics can be seized — do we not, in fact, gradually appropriate an ever greater share of the universal progress? In this light, the death of god appears in an even more tragic light: at the very moment that we appropriate the dynamics of the absolute, we nullify the absolute. The death of god (as in Nietzsche) is the final stasis: what we presume to kill is, in reality, the dynamics of the absolute. We kill, in fact, that veiled perception of a Trinitarian reality wherein we saw the absolute as endowed with an inner vitality and particularity. The death of god is, in fact, the abrogation of the Trinitarian dimension within the absolute.

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The God of Jesus Christ III — by Jean Daniélou

March 16, 2012

The Holy Spirit 1750 by Corrado Giaquinto

In this concluding piece of his meditation on the God of Jesus Christ. Cardinal Jean Daniélou brings together the theology of the Holy Spirit that we find in the Old and New Testaments. A tour de force, a companion piece of which you can find here (The God of the Philosophers).

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It is first of all in the order of creation that the activity of the Spirit is revealed. It is the Creator Spiritus; and indeed it makes its first appearance in verse 2 of Genesis: “The spirit (ruah) of God was stirring above the waters.” The image is that of the eagle beating the air above its nest to make the eaglets fly. So the Spirit of God arouses creation from nothingness. This theme appears again and again in the Old Testament:

If he were to take back his spirit to himself,
withdraw to himself his breath,
All flesh would perish together,
and man would return to the dust
Job 34:14-15.

The liturgy takes this up, applying it justly to the cosmos renewed by grace, in the verse that the Psalms apply to the first creation:

When you send forth your spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
Psalms 103(104):30

The action of the Spirit is later revealed in history. It is to be exercised in two ways: first it is the Spirit of Yahweh who seizes upon certain people to arouse them by superhuman power to the accomplishment of certain great works of God. This appears especially in the Book of Judges, which refers to the conquest of Canaan. “The Spirit of the Lord enveloped Gideon, and he blew the horn” (Judges, 6:34); thus he aroused the courage of the troops and led them to victory. It was the same Spirit that “came upon” Samson, giving him strength to rend a young lion with his bare hands, and to slay thirty men single-handedly (Judges, 14:6-19), to break, “as flax that is consumed by fire”, the new cords that bound his arms, and then, armed with the jawbone of a donkey, to slay a thousand Philistines (Judges 15:14-15).

Elsewhere the Spirit gives certain men knowledge of God’s plan. We say in the Creed, “He has spoken through the prophets.” The prophet is he to whom the Holy Spirit shows the secret of his ways. It is the Holy Spirit alone who fathoms the depths of God and shows us his mystery. In other words, the Holy Spirit leads history through his anointed and explains it through his prophets; but it is he who is here the primal cause.

We should have to quote all the prophets at this point. Thus David: “The Spirit of the Lord hath spoken by me: and his word by my tongue” (2 Sam [2 Kings] 23:2). Thus Ezekiel: “The spirit entered into me … and he set me upon my feet: and I heard him speaking to me” (Ezek 2:2). The Second Epistle of Peter recalls this doctrine: “Holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Spirit” (1:21).

Pagan antiquity also had a doctrine of prophecy and divination, but among the Ancients divination was based on another phenomenon; it was connected with the idea of pneuma; but it is a question here of a material breath, emanating from the earth, which in trances enters into the diviner, puts him in relation with unknown cosmic forces, and enables him to perceive connections that escape ordinary consciousness.

Verbeke gives a useful account of this process: “The power to predict coming events is allied to universal sympathy, to the interdependence of cosmic events; all the happenings of the cosmos are elements in a great whole, among which there is continual interaction. However, all men are not able to discover these secret connections. Yet there are certain privileged men who can attain divinatory enthusiasm.” [La Doctrine du Pneuma, p. 529] We see here the difference between the two conceptions: for pagan thought, it is a matter of hidden energies in the cosmos that must be tapped; in the biblical perspective the action of ruah raises man above his nature, bringing him into the world of God.

This action of the Spirit, which directs sacred history, is to appear in all its fullness in the third stage of the magnalia of God, that of the Incarnation. It is the Holy Spirit that is the agent here. The archangel Gabriel says to Mary, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee”;[ Luke Ch.35] and in Matthew: “Before they came together, she was found with child, of the Holy Spirit.” [Matthew 1:18] At the Baptism, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus in the form of a dove, to inaugurate his public life and his prophetic ministry: “And Jesus being full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the desert.” [Luke 4:1] Jesus applies to himself the words of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord … hath anointed me”, [Luke 4:18] and “I cast out devils by the Spirit of God.” [Matthew 12:28]

Thus the Incarnation opened a new age in the history of the world, that in which the Holy Spirit was plenteously spread abroad through the manhood of Jesus. After the Ascension, the Spirit that was in him was communicated to the Church, which is his Body. This outpouring of the Spirit took place on the day of Pentecost: “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting…. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak with divers tongues.” [Acts 2:2, 4]

The result of this descent of the Spirit is twofold. On the one hand, it aroused the Apostles, those weak men who had been scattered on Good Friday, with a new, superhuman power. They went forth now to bear witness, to perform the great acts of God. There came upon them a divine power whereby they spoke with authority, and with an effect beyond that of human words; they performed miracles, they converted hearts.

But all these facts that continue the action of the Spirit in the Old Testament only translate this action in an outward manner; for the new event of Pentecost is the coming of the Spirit into souls, to communicate to them the new life, that of grace. As the Spirit at the beginning brooded upon the waters, arousing in them biological life, so now the Holy Spirit performs a new act of creation, that of the spiritual life in the strict sense of the word. This life is superior to the forces of nature and intellect, for it shares in the life of God himself. The chief text here is that of the Epistle to the Romans: “You have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba” (Father). [Romans 8:15] Only the Holy Spirit can permit us to know in faith “the deep things of God”. [1 Corinthians 2:10]

In this new activity, which is that of the creation of the cosmos of grace, the Holy Spirit is revealed with greater clarity. First it appears as divine; it is the Holy Spirit, that is, its function is, strictly speaking, the divinization of the soul; it brings us into the sphere of God, and that is the whole purpose of Christianity. Already, from the beginning, it has appeared to us as performing works beyond the power of man. But here it appears as performing a work that is strictly holy and divinizing. Henceforth, the nature of ruah is revealed in this way. It is truly a divine force working in history to achieve the transfiguration of the world and the edification of the Body of Christ. The Spirit is the living, working soul of the Church, edifying the mystical Christ through the centuries.

But a further aspect, of hidden origin, now makes its appearance: this is the personal character of the Spirit. It is not only a question of an impersonal power, as the Old Testament might lead us to suppose. Christ presents the Spirit as a new intercessor and puts it on the same level as himself — and his own personality is beyond question. The Acts attribute to it personal activity; it bears witness, it teaches, it feels sorrow at unfaithfulness, it dwells in the soul; it is thus a personal presence, a presence more intimately concerned with man than the general presence of God in creation, and even connected with the nature of grace. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit, says St. Paul (1 Corinthians 3:16). Thus man is fully entitled to pray,

Veni Creator Spiritus,
Mentes tuorum visita.

We began by discussing the activity of the Holy Spirit in the life of the cosmos; then we saw how it operated in history, and finally in the world of grace. In this way it is revealed in all its reality, as God and as a Person. But elsewhere we have seen that the Word was also revealed to us as God and as a Person. Before them, the Father appeared to us as the original principle, he also being both God and a Person. Thus, little by little, the mystery has been unveiled before us of a God in whom there are Three Persons. This result is obtained by studying the evidence presented by the facts recorded in the Old and New Testaments.

But now comes the final question — that of the relationships between these Persons. For we see that, before they are revealed in nature and history, they exist eternally in God. Therefore there must be eternal relationships between them. These relationships are to be seen reflected in the mirror of the missions of the Trinity. It will be the task of theologians — and St. John is their leader — to begin with the biblical data that have an essential bearing on the activity of the Three Persons in time, and to try to contemplate and express their eternal relationships. Thus theology will rise toward primordial reality, shrouded in darkness and forbidden to human sight, but accessible to man’s understanding through its activity in the world.

The life of the Trinity is a perfect unity. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are but a single God. “I and the Father are one”, says Christ in St. John (10:30). This implies the joint possession of the same single divine nature: “All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine” (John 16:1 5). For “the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things which himself doth” (John 5:20). He communicates to the Son the life that is his: “For as the Father hath life in himself, so he hath given to the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:26). And as he has the power of judgment, he “bath given him power to do judgment” (John:27). Thus Christ can say of the Father, “All my things are thine, and thine are mine” (John 17:10). This perfect unity is the pattern and source of all unity: “That they may be one, as we also are one” (John 17:22).

However, this union is not the communication by the Father of a life that he first possessed alone. As Pere Lebreton has written, St. John insists on the eternal character of this union and on the perfect mutuality that it implies. He expresses this through the doctrine of the immanence of the divine Persons in one another, which implies their eternal coexistence: “I am in the Father, and the Father in me” (John, 14:10). And Christ continues, “The words that I speak to you, I speak not of myself. But the Father who abideth in me, he doth the works. Believe you not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?” (John 14:10-11).

This mutual immanence of the Persons is the seal of their coeternity. It constitutes the insurmountable barrier between the doctrine of the Trinity and any philosophy of emanation. It makes the Trinity of Persons constitute the very being of God, and not a secondary feature in the unity of nature.

It follows from this that the Son was perfectly with the Father; he who knows him knows the Father in him in his perfect likeness, since there is nothing that distinguishes the Father except the being of the Son. This is the meaning of Christ’s reply to Philip, who asked Him, “Lord, shew us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Christ replies, “Have I been so long a time with you; and have you not known me? Philip, he that seeth me seeth the Father also” (John 14:8-9). Accordingly, he that honors the Father honors the Son also (John 5:23). Conversely, the Jews reject Christ “because they have not known the Father, nor me” (John 16:3). “He who honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father” (John 5:23); and “what things soever he doth, these the Son also doth in like manner” (John 5:19).

But this unique Godhead, the object of a unique worship, is possessed by each Person according to his distinguishing property. This node of possession is what formally constitutes him as a Person, since this alone is proper to him. The Son is he who is begotten by the Father. Throughout St. John’s Gospel, this generation is expressed by the dependence of the Son in relation to the Father, which implies no inferiority, but only a certain order: “Amen, amen, I say unto you, the Son cannot do anything of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing: for what things soever he doth, these the Son also doth in like manner” (John 5:19).

As Pere Lebreton again points out, it is not a question here of the human actions of Christ, but of his eternal, divine activity. [Origines du dogme de la Trinite, 1, 523] Similarly this eternal preexistence of the Word “in the beginning with God” was stated in the Prologue. St. John returns to this theme in his Gospel, when he reports Christ as speaking of “the glory which I had, before the world was, with thee” (John 17:5).

Just as the Son is the One God with the Father, so is he with the Spirit. As the Son perfectly knows the Father, “For the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God…. So the things also that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God.” (1 Corinthians 2: 10-11). But its own character is that it possesses this fullness of the divine Being by receiving it both from the Father and the Son. On the one hand, St. John tells us that the Spirit “proceedeth from the Father” (John 15:26) and is “the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name” (John 14:26). But elsewhere St. John shows us the Spirit as a river of living water whose source is in the Son: “He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).

Similarly, in most cases, the Spirit is presented as proceeding both from the Father and the Son. This appears in a series of texts that are seldom brought together, describing the mysterious counsels of the Three Persons during the ten days that separate the Ascension of Christ from the outpouring of the Spirit — texts that are full of a silence like that which preceded the creation of the world.

But these passages enable us to glimpse something of that “hidden mystery accomplished in the silence of God”. The only begotten Son, raised to the right hand of the Father in his glorified humanity, prays to the Father that “he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you forever” (John 14:16). The equivalence of these two Comforters already signifies that they belong to the same nature. Elsewhere, we have already seen that the Spirit can only be given by the Father, from whom it proceeds, but not without the mediation of the Son.

Thus the Spirit is sent by the Father, but in the Name of the Son — and this is a new term, referring to its twofold procession: “But the Paraclete … the Father will send in my name” (John 14:26). We may note here that the Father is always present as the origin, but the Son is always associated with him, in a procession resembling the mission of the Spirit, and this makes it clear that the Spirit proceeds from both these Persons, but according to the proper nature of each of them.

Another text, not this time from St. John, describes the Pentecost itself as the sending of the Spirit by the Son, in dependence on the Father: “Being exalted therefore by the right hand of God, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath poured forth this which you see and hear” (Acts 2:3 3).

But the words of Christ in St. John’s Gospel already announced this outpouring of the Spirit in its twofold relationship with the Father and the Son: “When the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall give testimony of me” (15:26). We return again and again to this twofold dependence and this order in dependence, whose primary origin is always hidden in the Father, though it is nevertheless the Son who is immediately responsible for sending the Spirit. This order of mission is a reflection of that of possession.

So it is with justice that, in the vision that we have been quoting and which dominates the Johannine writings, the Spirit is presented in the eternal outpouring of its existence and not merely in its Pentecostal descent, which is the created reflection of the “a river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Revelation 22:1).

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The God of Jesus Christ II — by Jean Daniélou

March 15, 2012

Allegory of Wisdom and Strength 1580 by Paolo Veronese

These are the properties of the Persons, of which we must now speak. We shall do this by turning first to the testimony of Scripture, in which each of the Persons is revealed through the pattern of salvation. Only later shall we be able, by reflecting on the facts as given there, to understand something of the eternal relationships between the Persons. I shall chiefly emphasize the Word and the Spirit, the understanding of which is vital to the New Testament.

The first revelation is that of the Father. He is the principle, the origin, the archè of the Trinity. Thus in creation, which is the joint work of the Three, like all their works ad extra, the Father reveals himself in a special manner. It is he who proffers the creative Word: “God said, Let there be light.” And it is he who is well pleased when he surveys the accomplished work: “God saw that it was good.”

Here Gregory of Nazianzen is right in saying that the Old Testament is a revelation of the Father, although, strictly speaking, it is the revelation of the One God, and everything in it is the joint work of the Three Persons. But insofar as it is a question of origination, of the origin of creation, the origin of election, the origin of mission, the Old Testament refers especially to him.

It shows him to us also as the Father. This fatherhood with regard to creation seems to be a reflection, in the order of mission, of the eternal relationships. Thus when Christ speaks of “your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust,” [Matthew 5:45] he is not speaking of the Father in the eternal relationship that he has with his only begotten Son, but in the paternal Providence that is the continuation of creation.

Similarly, when Hosea says of God, “Because Israel was a child, and I loved him: and I called my son out of Egypt” (Hosea11: 1), he refers, as we have seen, to the relationship created by election and the covenant between Yahweh and Israel, which is a visible theophany of his Fatherhood in relation to his own begotten Son.

Thus the Person of the Father appears in the Old Testament in the reflection of his creative, providential action. But it will be fully revealed only in the New Testament, for it cannot openly appear except in relation to the Son, whom only the New Testament reveals in his personal reality. But even so, it is not at first revealed directly, but in relation to the Son in his Incarnation. So again it is through the redemptive pattern that the Fatherhood is revealed.

It is through the works he accomplishes that Christ appears in relation to his Father, when he is singled out for approval at the Baptism, when he beseeches him to let the cup pass at the Passion, when he commends his Spirit into the Father’s hands. The Trinity appears here in the mirror of the divine economy.

This becomes still clearer in the Second Person. The Old Testament reveals him darkly as the Word of the Father. The phrase here must again be carefully interpreted. The Hebrew dabar, which the Greek translates as logos and the Latin as verbum, has a well-defined content. For the Greeks, the logos is chiefly the word as intelligibly enunciated; this is how the expression comes to mean the inward law of things, their reason. But the Hebrew dabar has quite another meaning, as Gerhard Kittel has noted. [Theological Works, N.T., IV, 89 ff] The word appears here as performing what it enunciates, as the speech of blessing or cursing. It is an act, not merely a meaning. 

Applied to the divine sphere, the Word of God is revealed, above all, as a force. It is, first of all, a creative force. “By the words of the Lord are his works”, says the son of Sirach. [Sirach 42:15] St. John, too, proclaiming the identity of the creative Word with that of the Incarnate Word, says: “All things were made by him.” The efficacy of the Word of God is clearly shown in Isaiah:

And as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
And return no more thither,
But soak the earth, and water it, and make it to spring,
And give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
So shall my word be, which shall go forth from my mouth .. .
But it shall do whatsoever I please.
Isaiah 55:10-11

It is this creative Word, by whom all was made, and by whom every moment of time is provided, that St. John, by a foreshortening that throws into relief the staggering paradox of Christianity, shows to be none other than Jesus of Nazareth: “And the Word was made flesh.” For it is in fact the same Word on whose pattern the Father made man in the beginning, who, according to St. Irenaeus, came to touch again this plasma that was his (though it had strayed far from him), and to restore it in himself in a conclusive manner.

But the work of the Word is not only that of creation. He is also the Word who judges, the sharp sword that divides, that saves and condemns. Thus the Book of Wisdom shows him to us:

For while all things were in quiet silence,
And the night was in the midst of her course.
Thy almighty word leapt down from heaven …
With a sharp sword carrying thy unfeigned commandment.”
Wisdom 18:14-16

The Roman liturgy applies this text to the Incarnation of the Word in the introit to the Mass for Sunday in the Octave of Christmas; and Tauler comments on the eternal generation of the Word in the soul of the saints. St. John likewise applies this theme to the Incarnate Word: “And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called faithful and true, and with justice doth he judge and fight … And he was clothed with a garment sprinkled with blood; and his name is called, The Word of God…. And out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp two edged sword.” [Revelations 19:11-15]; The Epistle to the Hebrews cries in its turn, “For the Word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword; and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit.” [Hebrews 4:12]

Finally, the Word of God is a revealing Word. It is to this that the Book of Samuel (1Kings) refers when it tells us that the child Samuel did not recognize him, because “the word of the Lord was precious in those days, there was no manifest Vision.” [1 Kings 3:1] It is this Word that is delivered to the prophets, and is the principle, as we have said, by which the revelation comes to them. But this revelation that is made to men is only a created reflection of that eternal manifestation by which the Father proffers the eternal Word, who is his perfect in-age, in whom he acknowledges his whole presence, and in whom he rejoices infinitely. Through the mission of the Word, it is eternal generation that is revealed.

If St. John shows us in the Second Person the creative, illuminative Word, St. Paul prefers to describe him as subsistent wisdom. Here again it is by reference to the Old Testament that the Second Person is characterized. Wisdom, hohkma, which the Greeks translated as sophia, meant, for the peoples of the East, prudence in the conduct of life, such as they found in the sayings of wise men.

Thus the princes of Oriental monarchies compiled books of wisdom for the education of their subjects. When Solomon made Israel a great monarchy in the Oriental style, he wished likewise to endow his people with a monument of sagacity. “Solomon also spoke three thousand parables: and his poems were a thousand and five”, as we are told in the Book of Kings. [3 Kings 4:32]  For this reason the Bible puts his name to the Books of Proverbs and Wisdom.

But the idea of “wisdom” takes on a new character when it is transplanted into Yahwist religion. It is no longer simply human prudence, but the conduct of life according to the ways of Yahweh. For Israel, the sole rule governing man’s existence is the Law of God revealed to Moses and the prophets. Wisdom is thus identified with the Torah, the Law, and it comes to mean, not merely the Law of God, such as existed in his communication with man, but the very thought of God, the underlying archetype of that law. Thus it is Wisdom that presides over the whole divine scheme; in Wisdom God has formed the plan of his mighty works, and in Wisdom he watches over their completion.

The Wisdom literature devotes some noble passages to the praise of this aspect of divinity. Proverbs contains this description:

The Lord begot me, the first-born of his ways,
the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago;
From of old I was poured forth, at the first, before the earth ..
Before the mountains were settled into place,
before the hills, I was brought forth…
Then was I beside him as his craftsman,
and I was his delight day by day,
Playing before him all the while,
playing on the surface of his earth
[and I found delight in the sons of men].”
Proverbs 8:22-31

Wisdom presides over God’s creation, but precedes it, being founded from eternity. This is one of the texts that are most often quoted by subsequent theologians.

Wisdom is described in turn by the Book of Wisdom as presiding not only over creation, but also over the destiny of God’s people. It shows Wisdom saving Noah at the time of the Flood and Lot at the destruction of Sodom. It is Wisdom who leads Joseph “in the right way” and delivers Israel from the Egyptian captivity. Here we find the sources of Irenaeus’ conception of the function of the Word in the history of salvation. Through these manifestations Wisdom reveals her essence:

For she is an aura of the might of God
and a pure effusion of the glory of the Almighty;
therefore nought that is sullied enters into her.
For she is the refulgence of eternal light,
the spotless mirror of the power of God,
the image of his goodness…
indeed, she reaches from end to end mightily
and governs all things well.”
Wisdom 7:25-8:1

Thus Wisdom appears in her eternal reality as the perfect image of God, as the complete expression of his infinite perfection.

Moreover, it is with this language that St. Paul and the whole tradition after him describe the Second Person. In Jesus there is revealed the subsistent personal reality of that Wisdom which the Old Testament described in her manifestations, though without showing them as subsistent. Thus, at the outset of the Epistle to the Colossians, Paul writes of the Son, “who is the image (eikon) of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For in him were all things created in heaven and on earth.” [Colossians 1:15-16] So, too, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, inspired by St. Paul, in a text that is the leitmotif of our present chapter, applies to the Second Person the language of Wisdom:

God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world. Who being the brightness of his glory, and the figure of his substance and upholding all things by the word of his power, making purgation of sins, sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high.
Hebrews 1:1-3

Here is expressed the whole basic theology of the Word, such as the New Testament itself inaugurates. The Apostles were confronted with the fact of Christ, who claimed divine authority and power. This was the basic, elemental, fundamental datum of revelation.

When they sought for language in which to express this fact, the Apostles turned to the Old Testament and borrowed their terminology from it. That is why this basic theology is an entirely biblical theology, showing the presence, in the Person of Christ, of that Wisdom of which the Old Testament only provided glimpses, but which is revealed in the New Testament in all its personal subsistence.

However, the term that brings us deepest into the understanding of the Second Person is that of “the Son” — an expression frequently used in the Old Testament in various senses. But its use in the New Testament, and especially by Christ himself, proves, as Vincent Taylor says, that it belongs to the knowledge that Jesus had of himself, that he was in a special sense the Son of God. [The Names of Jesus, p. 65] The first text in which the word appears makes this clear. It comes from Matthew: “All things are delivered to me by my Father. And no man knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither doth any one know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal him.” [Matthew 11:27] It is clear from this that there is between the Son and the Father a unique relationship, that they belong to the same sphere of existence, that there is complete mutual contact between them.

This is the theology of the Son that pervades the Gospel according to St. John, while that of the Word appears only in the Prologue. The Son comes from the Father: “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world.” [John 16:28] He belongs to the same order of existence as the Father. He alone knows the Father, and this is why he alone can make him known. He is the object of the Father’s love, and this love is concentrated in him. He is the Son in whom the Father is well pleased. He has one thought and one will with the Father: “The Son cannot do anything of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing.” [John 5:19] His likeness to the Father is such that he who has seen him has seen the Father. Between the Father and him there is mutual immanence: “Thou, Father, in me, and I in thee.” [John 17:21]

Thus, according to St. John, the relations between the Father and the Son in the order of the divine economy make transparently clear the perfect unity of their divine nature and the perfect distinction between their Persons. Never will human eyes penetrate more deeply into the innermost relationship between the Father and the Son than did those of the Apostle who lay upon Jesus’ breast.

The revelation of the Spirit presents a similar development, with the addition, as Gregory of Nazianzen well understood, that the Gospels are only a small part of the Spirit’s activity, and that this activity is set forth in the time of the Church, beginning at Pentecost. The Hebrew word that the Greek has translated pneuma is ruah. More than anywhere else, we must be careful here to find the exact meaning, for the word esprit is susceptible of a multitude of ambiguities that give entirely distinct meanings, as we shall see first in a frequent image, that of “breath”.

The Greeks preserved here the idea of a subtle form of matter; thus it serves to describe the nonmaterial element in man, the soul as contrasted with the body. Such is the familiar philosophical contrast. [See Verbeke, La Doctrine du Pneuma]

But for the Hebrews ruah means a breath of wind as it appears in the storm. The ideas connected with it are not those of non-materiality, but of power, of irresistible force. Consequently the idea of esprit, applied to God, does not mean his non-materiality, but his irresistible power, by which he accomplishes his mighty works. Thus in the scene at Pentecost, the outpouring of the Spirit is accompanied by a shaking of the whole house.

Applied to man, it refers to that in him which is the work of God’s power. Thus the Pauline contrast between spirit and flesh does not by any means cover that of soul and body. It is the contrast between the whole man, soul and body, when it is enlivened by divine energy, and the whole man, soul and body, when it is abandoned to its own misery. It is thus that for St. Paul there are spiritual bodies and carnal spirits, which would be a contradiction if body were contrasted with spirit.

We see how many false problems may be resolved in this way. Christians are often accused of despising the body, and it is true that we often encounter this depreciation; but this error is due to substituting Platonic opposites for Christian opposites. This can be a source of grave errors in spirituality. Similarly, Christians may give the impression that they are on the side of the world of intellect against that of matter. Again, even the word “spirituality” is ambiguous. When we speak of “Eastern spirituality”, we speak of the possession of its true inwardness; when we speak of Christian spirituality, we speak of the supernatural works of the Holy Spirit in the soul.

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The God of Jesus Christ — by Jean Daniélou

March 14, 2012

God the Father (top), and the Holy Spirit (represented by a dove) depicted above Jesus, painting by Francesco Albani 1600s

The Mosaic revelation, as compared with the cosmic revelation, represents a great advance in the knowledge of the true God; but it represents, nevertheless, nothing more than a stage. It is only in Jesus Christ that the hidden God is truly revealed: “No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” [John 1:18]

The Epistle to the Hebrews describes the sequence of revelations: “God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by his Son.” [Hebrews 1:1-2] This revelation is that of the last days, after which there can be no further manifestations, for God has expressed his fullness in the Word.

The object of this revelation is the Trinity of Persons — that is, strictly speaking, the mystery of God, wholly inaccessible to human reason, hidden in darkness. All forms of knowledge and all comparisons that we bring to bear on this subject are deceiving, even those of the greatest theologians. They are justified in the sight of reason only insofar as they more or less clarify its apophatic nature, hidden as it is, and transcending all reason. For it will always remain true that the requirement of human reason, when it follows its inclination, is that of reducing everything to unity and seeing in all differences a secondary, subsidiary stage.

This is so true that theologians like Eckhardt have tended to see in the Trinity a manifestation of primordial, unfathomable unity. But in reality the paradox is that the Three is as primitive as the One. It participates in the structure of absolute Being. Without doubt the master key to Christian theology, which distinguishes it utterly from all rational theodicy, is contained in the statement that the Trinity of Persons constitutes the structure of Being, and that love is therefore as primary as existence.

At the same time, this inaccessible mystery is the whole of Christianity — not merely a single aspect, but its very essence. For Christianity is the appeal addressed to man by the Father, inviting him to share in the life of the Son through the gift of the Spirit. This constitutes the very essence of Christianity. The first words that a child hears the Church speak over him are: “I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” He is thrown, as a creature of flesh and blood, into the abyss of Trinitarian life, to which all life and all eternity will have no other object than to accustom him. It is in the gift that it makes of its own life that the Trinity at the same time communicates and reveals itself, estranging man from his own ways and views in order to transfer him into itself.

Thus it remains true of this supreme revelation of God that, as we said of the preceding revelations, it is through his action in the world and in man that God makes himself known. Here again, Scripture confronts us with facts; and it is on these facts that theology is to reflect. But while the Old Testament showed us God the One making a covenant with Israel and drawing it away from idols, the New Testament confronts us with God the Three revealed in Jesus Christ.

This progressive revelation corresponds to a course of divine instruction, whose development Gregory of Nazianzen has well described: “The Old Testament has clearly, though darkly, revealed the Father and the Son. The New Testament has revealed the Son and provided a glimpse of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Now the Holy Spirit dwells among us and is revealed more clearly.” [Theological Discourses, v, 2] It was first necessary that faith in the unity of God, in monotheism, should be profoundly rooted in a human race always inclined toward polytheism, in order that, at the heart of that unity, the Trinity of Persons could be revealed without any danger. This revelation of the oneness of God fills the Old Testament to overflowing. The New Testament reveals chiefly the divinity of the Word. According to the excellent view of Gregory, the revelation of the Holy Spirit fills the time of the Church, which is the manifestation of its mighty works.

Gregory of Nazianzen continues by saying, “It was necessary to proceed by successive perfectings, by `degrees’, in David’s phrase; it was necessary to advance from radiance to radiance, through ever more luminous movements of advance, in order that the light of the Trinity might finally be seen to shine forth.” The brightness of the Trinity is such that man’s sight could not have borne it. According to the ancient view of Irenaeus, it was necessary that God should acclimatize man gradually to the vision of his unendurable glory.

The light that blazes from the countenance of the Father is already too overwhelming a sight for men of flesh and blood. It is by gradual stages that the divinity of the Word appears darkly in the Old Testament, and clearly in the Gospel. The Holy Spirit in its turn crowns the education of mankind with the Trinitarian vision. Thus man goes on from glory to glory, and the whole history of salvation may be considered as a gradual unveiling of the ineffable Trinity.

But if the New Testament alone gives us knowledge of the Three Persons, at the same time it throws light upon the wholeness of God’s plan and displays it as being entirely the work of the Trinity. It appears, in fact, to be a history of the divine missions; all the works of God are fulfilled by the Three Persons, but each acts in a particular manner. St. Irenaeus explains this clearly when he writes, “The Father is well pleased and commands, the Son works and creates, the Spirit nourishes and gives increase, and man moves little by little towards perfection.” [Against Heresies., iv, 38, 3] The Father is He who sends; the Word and the Spirit are sent. Thus the divine missions are like a reflection of the eternal relationships between the Persons; their economy appears as theology, and it is through this epiphany of the Trinitarian life that man glimpses something of its eternal existence.

So again we follow the very order of revelation, when we begin our account of the Trinity of Persons with their action in the world. The New Testament is in fact essentially a testimony borne to this action; it shows us Christ, who is God, and who is distinct from the Father; it shows us the Spirit, who is God since he bestows the life of God, and who is sent by the Father and the Son. It is through the divine works carried out by the Three Persons that theology is to discover little by little, in an endless task of contemplation, what they are in themselves. That is why we shall speak of the Trinity as revealed in Scripture — above all as a series of missions. Later we shall develop theologically the mystery of their relationship. Before speaking in particular of the Word and the Spirit, we shall speak of these missions in general.

They begin, we said, with creation. All is the work of the Three Persons. St. John says of the Word, “All things were made by him” [John 1:3] and the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the sequel to the passage we quoted above, declares that God “in these days hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he bath appointed heir of all things.” [Hebrews 1:2] Against the Gnostics, who contrasted the God of creation with the God of redemption, St. Irenaeus insists on the unity of God’s plan. Christ is that same Word of God who created the world and man in the beginning, and who, in the fullness of time, came down to earth to reawaken his creature, to restore him and grant him incorruptibility.

We have already had occasion to encounter the theme of creation, both in relation to cosmic religion and to Mosaic revelation. But each of these revelations shows us new wonders. On the level of cosmic religion, the theme appeared as a sign of the fundamental distinction between God and the creature, and of the creature’s subsistence in his basic dependence on God. On the level of Mosaic revelation, we encountered the theme as the first phase in the history of salvation, of God’s plan which began with time (since it is time itself), but whose content remained veiled. From the beginning, the Three Persons created in their own image a human being, called to share in their life and to be led by them into Paradise.

Thus the light of the New Testament comes to illuminate, retrospectively, the Old. In Origen’s phrase, it “whitens the fields of the Scriptures for the harvest,”[Commentary Job., XIII, 46] by bringing forth what was only a seed. In the beginning, says St. Irenaeus, the gift of the Spirit was still tentative, for the hand of God, which is the Word, had not yet grasped man in that everlasting grip which was to be known one day as the Incarnation.

But meanwhile these beginnings of mankind were bathed in a supernatural light, and the artists of the Middle Ages were right to show us Adam and Eve talking with the Three Persons. Since man appeared, formed by the Three Persons, he has been called to share in their life. Paradise is the place where the divine energy is at work, and where that tree of life is to be found which communicates incorruptibility. In all this there is a foreshadowing of the Church.

This is expressed by the Fathers of the Church in the doctrine of “man created in the image and likeness of God”. Faithful to the literal meaning of the biblical text, Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa do not see in the image and likeness two different realities, but two aspects of the same reality. [R. Bernard, L'Image de Dieu d'apres SaintAthanase, pp. 22-38; Jean Danielou, Platonisme et theologie mystique, pp. 48-61.] For them, this reality is not reason, which is simply nature, but that sharing in the life of the Trinity which is grace.

Made in the image of the only begotten Son, who is the perfect image of the Father, the first Adam is already called in the Son to be the child of the Father and the temple of the Spirit. Thus the creation of man appears, in the light of the New Testament, already to be plunged in the sphere of Trinitarian grace.

The history of God’s people, Israel, in its turn sheds fresh light on the subject, for it becomes the place of the magnalia of the Trinity [vocab: the magnalia dei, the great deeds God has done for us in creation and redemption.]. For if it is the shape of God’s total plan that it should be through the Word and the Spirit that the Father should accomplish his mysterious designs, this was also true in the time of the Old Covenant. St. Paul already states this when he shows us in the desert rock, from which a stream arises, a foretelling of Christ — that is, an act of the Word in the history of the world. St. Irenaeus is faithful to this spirit when he sees in the history of Israel the action of the Word and the Holy Spirit, by whom man was created, and who acclimatize him gradually to the life of the Trinity in order to prepare him for that inwardness of human and divine nature that is to be fulfilled in due time in the Incarnation. In this way the Fathers of the Church acknowledged the theophanies of the Old Testament as revelations of the Word.

No one has expressed this view more profoundly than St. Irenaeus. “All the visions of the Old Testament”, he writes, “represent the Son of God speaking with men and living in their midst. He did not leave the human race, but remained with them, foretelling what must happen and teaching men the things of God. Thus He foreshadowed in our terms, and showed us through imagery, what was to come.” [The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, V] So, like creation, the covenant shines, in the light of the Old Testament, with the brightness of the Trinity. We said that the covenant foreshadowed the Incarnation, insofar as it was a sign of a God who comes to meet man and establish with him a living kinship. But now, to be more accurate, it is the Word of God who, according to Irenaeus, foreshadows his Incarnation by making himself familiar with the ways of men.

This familiarizing of the Word of God with the ways of men prepares for the Incarnation, insofar as the latter is a movement of God toward man. But Irenaeus notices, too, another aspect: the Word of God at the same time familiarizes man with the things of God, in order to make him fit to enter, through the Incarnation, into full communion with him: “God created man from the beginning, because of His munificence; He chose the patriarchs for their salvation; He educated His restless people, by teaching them to serve God; He sent His prophets into the world, accustoming man to bear His Spirit and live in communion with God.” [Against Heresies, IV, 14, 2]

And later Irenaeus says, “Thus the Word of God, traversing all times, educated His people, calling them through secondary things to primary things, through imagery to reality, through things temporal to things eternal, through the carnal to the spiritual.” [Against Heresies, IV, 14, 3]

But only the light of Christianity enables us to see in the Old Testament this manifestation of the Trinity, whereas it is the very subject matter of the New Testament, whose purpose is to bear witness to the Incarnation of the Word and the outpouring of the Spirit, and which through these two missions teaches us to distinguish them from the Father. All these mysteries of Christ appear as the work of the Three Persons. St. Luke shows us the Holy Spirit descending on Mary to arouse in her the humanity of Christ, and St. John shows us the Word of God becoming “flesh”, that is, taking human nature.

It is the Spirit who leads Zechariah to the Temple and Jesus to the desert. It is he whom the Incarnate Word, present in Mary, shows forth in John the Baptist at the Visitation. Above all, the Three Persons appear in the great theophany of the Baptism, when the voice of the Father bears witness that Christ, who plunges in the waters of Jordan, is his beloved Son, while the Spirit descends upon him in the likeness of a dove. On two further occasions, the voice of the Father is to bear witness to Christ — at two solemn moments, that of the Transfiguration, and that of the Agony, according to St. John.’ [John 12:27-28]

This revelation, which remains veiled in the Synoptics, appears in all its fullness in St. John’s Gospel. The only begotten Son, distinct front the Father, shares completely in his divine nature: “I and the Father are one.” The work of salvation is the joint work of the Father and the Son: “For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things which himself doth.” [John 5:20]

The Son is sent by the Father. He fulfills the work that the Father has given him. His mission is to make known the Father and communicate his life. But, as he does nothing save with the Father, he who sees him sees the Father, and he who believes in him has eternal life. Thus, through the mission of the Word, the Trinity of Persons is revealed at the same time as their unity; eternal life, which is the life of God, draws near to man through him, to take hold of man and awaken him.

For this work of redemption is not only Threefold insofar as it leads mankind, through the mediation of Jesus, to share in the life of the Three Persons; it is the mystery of filial adoption that is the boundary of the divine work, that design hidden in God which St. Paul describes: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath … [chosen] us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in his sight in charity … hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the purpose of his will: unto the praise of the glory of his grace.” [Ephesians 1:3-6] This adoption as children, accomplished in substance by the Incarnation of the Word, is conveyed by the gift of the Spirit, which is “the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father).” [Romans 8:15]

This outpouring of the Spirit is granted in baptism. The time of the Church continues to be that of the great works of the Trinity. These are the sacraments that are strictly divine works, effecting a divine life in man. Thus in the time of the Church the Trinity continues to be revealed through its works. Baptism, as St. Paul has shown, conforms man to the death and Resurrection of Christ. [Romans 6:3] Thus he conveys spiritual life to man through the gift of the Spirit; and man is led through baptism to intimate contact with the Father, in the freedom of the sons of God. Thus to be a Christian is to be born into the life of the Trinity, which is the incorruptible life of God, possessed by the Three Persons and conveyed by them in a pattern of incomprehensible love.

None has described better than St. Irenaeus this birth in the Trinity:

When we are born again through baptism in the Name of the Three Persons, we are enriched, by a second birth, with the good things that are in God the Father, by means of His Son, with the Holy Spirit. Those who are baptized receive the Spirit of God, who gives them to the Word, that is, the Son; and the Son takes them and offers them to the Father, and the Father grants them incorruptibility.

Therefore without the Holy Spirit we cannot see the Word of God, and without the Son no one can come to the Father; since the knowledge of the Father is the Son, and the knowledge of the Son of God is gained by means of the Holy Spirit; but it is the Son whose function it is to distribute the Holy Spirit, according to the good pleasure of the Father, to those whom the Father chooses and in the way that the Father chooses.
Against Heresies, IV, 20, 7

But all this is a mystery that is wholly spiritual and forbidden to carnal man. Only the Holy Spirit gives us understanding of it. Carnal man has no means of grasping it by himself. This is why it remains alien to him, since it is in truth alien to him; yet the reality of the Trinity is revealed through this very strangeness. It is the hidden life of the transcendent God; and if it became accessible to carnal man it would not be one and the same.

In conveying it to man, the Trinity remains a mystery. It is not to man that it adapts itself, it is man whom it raises above himself and adapts to itself. This is why the Christian life, which is the life of the Trinity, is itself an incomprehensible mystery and a stumbling block to those who see it from outside. The darkness that conceals the Trinity from profane sight also conceals from it the mysterious acts of the Trinity in the soul of the saints.

Just as it is through the covenant that the ways of the living God are revealed to us, and that he appears to us as justice, truth, and love, so it is through adoption that the Persons are revealed to us as Father, Son, and Spirit.

Posted in Fr. Jean Daniélou, The Trinitarian God | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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