Doctrine of the Trinity ST506 LESSON 16 of 24 Peter Toon, DPhil Cliff College Oxford University King s College University of London Liverpool University This is the sixteenth lecture in the series on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. I begin with a prayer from the ancient Latin service of the Holy Eucharist. This was prayed on Trinity Sunday: It is indeed and fitting, right, and for our lasting good that we should always and everywhere give thanks to thee, O Lord, Holy Father, almighty and eternal God who, with thy only begotten Son and the Holy Ghost, art one God, one Lord; not one as being a single person, but three persons in one essence. Whatsoever by thy revelation we believe touching thy glory, that too we hold without difference or distinction of thy Son and also of the Holy Spirit, so that in acknowledging the true eternal Godhead, we adore in it each several person, and yet a unity of essence and a coequal majesty. In praise of which the angels and the archangels, the cherubim, and the seraphim lift up their endless hymn day by day with one voice, singing Holy, Holy, Holy art thou, Lord God of hosts. Thy glory fills all heaven and earth. Hosanna in high heaven. And thus it continues. That prayer used in the liturgy on Trinity Sunday brings us to the Western formulation of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. We begin here with that giant of a theologian who towers over Western theology. I refer, of course, to Augustine, usually called Saint. You may well have read one or more of his writings. His Confessions is one of the most widely read books in the history of the Western world. But Augustine, who died in the year 430, has been called by many people at different times the greatest doctor of the church or the greatest philosopher of the patristic age and the most important and influential theologian of the church. It has been said that he is the one who gave the Western tradition its mature and final expression. It has been said that what Origen had been for the Greek church, for the scientific theology of the third and fourth centuries, Augustine became in much purer and more profitable form and way for the whole life of the church of the following centuries until modern times. 1 of 11
Yet, it has also been affirmed that the Greek fathers are more philosophical, alike in their treatment and in their aim, than their Latin contemporaries. Their doctrine, it has been said, is both more subtle and more profound. And while Saint Augustine s treatment of the subject is deeply religious and makes a quite invaluable supplement to the Greek definitions, it seems to possess less philosophical cogency. You can think about those claims and counterclaims after you have had time to read his books with reference to the Holy Trinity. His teaching on the Holy Trinity is found in various writings, which I won t here list; but it is found specifically in the fifteen books of his treatise entitled De Trinitate (On the Trinity). If you possess or have access to that Select Library of the Nicene and Post- Nicene Fathers, edited by Philip Schaff, and you can get volume 3, that volume is dedicated to the writings of Saint Augustine and includes this particular treatise De Trinitate in translation. This book De Trinitate was written over a period of between fifteen and twenty years. It wasn t something that he wrote in one go and it was finished with, but it was something to which he came back over and over. It represents his theological meditation; and, apparently, he made some major corrections in those meditations, or at least he expanded them in a new way after he had read the book by Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Orations, to which we have made reference several times in past lectures. It was the reading of these, around the year 413, that brought about a major change in the general approach and the ground plan of his work. When you look at the contents of De Trinitate, it seems naturally to divide into two parts. The first seven books formulate and defend what Augustine has received as orthodox teaching on the Trinity. His task is to explain that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit constitute a divine unity of one and the same substance in an indivisible equality. Within that first part of books 1 to 7, books 1 to 4 contain what we may call the biblical exposition of Saint Augustine. And it is in this section for those of you who are interested that he deals with the Old Testament. And he looks for the evidence of God the Holy Trinity as present in the Old Testament theophanies and in the descriptions of God with His people and unto His people in the Old Testament. If you re interested in the way in which the Latin fathers interpreted the Old Testament, you will gain much (from books 1 to 4) concerning their understanding of typology and allegory. If you want to enrich that understanding, by the way, of the Latin fathers interpretation of the Old Testament, then you also must pick up 2 of 11
the book by Saint Augustine on the Psalms, the Ennarationes, as it is called in literal translation, on the Psalms, where you get a wonderful Christological interpretation, a typological with some allegorical additions of the Psalter, so that you pray and read the Psalter through, with, and in Christ. So books 1 to 4, then, are the Augustinian presentation of biblical interpretation. Then in books 5 to 7, we get what we may call the specifically theological work, where he meditates upon the intradivine relations within the one Godhead. And here he uses what we familiarly call Aristotelian logic. Reading this section, you will notice that he is very conscious of Arianism, and he is out to combat it and to set it aside. So we see that around the year 400 the memory of, and even the presence of, the developed forms of Arianism was there. And this great doctor of theology believed it necessary to combat them. When we turn to the second half of the treatise, we find that there is a different emphasis; because, although Saint Augustine was passionately a theologian, he was not a theologian in the sense of being ideologically committed to propositional divinity and nothing else. He was a great meditator. He was a great contemplator of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And, furthermore, he was a great contemplator of the human being as made in the image and after the likeness of God. Therefore, because of this, and in terms of his own Neoplatonic type of background and thinking, Augustine believed that contemplating the image of God, that is, the image of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in the soul of man was a means of returning in contemplative prayer to the God whom the soul images. That is, by knowing itself, the soul knows God. Here there is a particular form of introspection, but it s not introspection in order to stay within oneself, as much modern so-called meditation does. Rather, with Saint Augustine it is entering into oneself to behold the image of the Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity upon the soul, and then to arise to the God who is imaged in the soul. So then, in the remaining eight books of this treatise, De Trinitate, from book 8 onwards, Augustine develops a reflexive method for contemplating the Holy Trinity. And it is in the course of this that he formulates those triadic, as we may call them, images of the Trinity, which he sees imprinted upon the soul. From these images, various other theologians have developed their own expression and exposition of the Holy Trinity, and we shall refer to those in the lectures that are to come. 3 of 11
Let me give you a fairly long quotation from Saint Augustine, which comes at the beginning of his De Trinitate, in order to give you the flavor of what he is seeking to do and, at the same time, to state his doctrine of the Holy Trinity. I m quoting: All the Catholic interpreters of the divine books, both the Old and the New Testament, whom I have been able to read, who wrote before me about the Trinity, which is God, had this purpose in view: to teach in accordance with the Scriptures that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit constitute a divine unity of one and the same substance in an indivisible equality. Therefore they are not three gods but one God, although the Father has begotten the Son, and therefore He who is the Father is not the Son; and the Son was begotten by the Father, and therefore He who is the Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and the Son. And He Himself is also co-equal with the Father and the Son, and belongs to the unity of the Trinity. Not that this Trinity was born of the virgin Mary and was crucified and buried under Pontius Pilate, nor rose again on the third day, nor ascended into heaven, but only the Son. Nor that this Trinity descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove when He was baptized; nor that this same Trinity on Pentecost, after the Lord s ascension, when a sound came from heaven as if a mighty wind were blowing, settled upon each of them with parted tongues of fire, but only the Holy Spirit. Nor that this same Trinity said from heaven, Thou art My Son, either when Jesus was baptized by John or when the three disciples were with Him on the mount, nor when the voice sounded saying, I have glorified, and I shall glorify again. But this was the word of the Father only, spoken to the Son. Although the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as they are inseparable, so they work inseparably. This is also my faith since it is the Catholic faith. So you will see there that Augustine is committing himself to what he believes to be the holy tradition, that is, the holy tradition of theology, the holy tradition of doctrine, which has come through the ecumenical councils and has come through the exposition of the faith by those bishops and teachers who have gone before 4 of 11
him. However, in listening to this, you will have picked up that this is a Western, rather than an Eastern, way of speaking. What that amounts to and what we mean by saying that will become the clearer as we proceed in this lecture and in later lectures to reflect upon the Western doctrine of the Trinity. But let me, at this stage, remind you of what we ve said earlier and give some context to this. Looking at things from the Western point of view, because most of us, I think, are of the West. There won t be too many people listening to me who are from the Eastern end, as it were, of Christendom. Looking at it from the Western point of view, the way in which we set down the matter goes something like this: The dogma of the Trinity involves two elements. On the one hand there is the numerical unity of nature, and on the other hand there is the real distinction of the three persons. Therefore, bearing in mind these two elements, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity can be presented in one of two ways, both of which we may say are perfectly orthodox; but they come out in different ways and therefore create different mental frameworks of understanding and reference. One way, the way that we ve spent most time with up to now, is that of the Greek fathers, as well as of the Latin fathers before the time of the Council of Constantinople. This approach starts from the plurality of persons. Specifically, it starts from the Father and the only begotten Son of the Father and the Spirit who proceeds from the Father through the Son. So this approach, as I said, starts from the plurality of persons and proceeds to the assertion that the three truly and really distinct persons subsist in a nature in an ousia that is numerically one. Their problem, as we ve noted as we ve gone along, was how to arrive at one from three; how to move from the plurality of persons to unity of substance, the unity of nature. And the answer they gradually developed was in terms of the consubstantiality of one ousia of the Son and the Holy Spirit with the Father. Using this approach and working within this way of thinking, the danger they always had to face was that of subordinationism; that is, of saying, Yes, the Father is first. Yes, the Son is second; but is the Son equal to the Father in everything in all ways? Or is He less than the Father? The Arians said that He was less than the Father and went on to say that the Holy Spirit is less than the Son. So this approach of the Greek East and the early Latin [West] was in danger always of falling into subordinationism, because 5 of 11
by concentrating too much on the real distinction of the three persons, it was possible and one could easily endanger the unity of nature and endanger also the perfect equality in terms of the Godhead of the three. But the advantage of this way and it still remains as far as I can see an advantage is that when you work with this approach, you are thinking not of God as the God of the philosophers; that is, you don t have to think philosophically at all, because you are thinking specifically in biblical terms from the Old and the New Testament of the God Yahweh, whom we know through His self-revelation as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So that s the one way which we have become acquainted with. The other way, which we are going to now become more acquainted with, is the way of the Latin fathers, beginning specifically with Saint Augustine. This way starts out from the unity of nature and moves from within the unity of nature to the Trinity of persons. It first of all affirms that there is, numerically speaking, one and one only divine nature and then moves on to say that this one nature, the Godhead, subsists in three really and truly distinct persons. So on this Augustinian, Western approach, the unity of the nature is in the foreground. The Trinity of persons is, as it were, behind it; and you see the Trinity of persons through the unity of nature. In this case, the problem is not tritheism or subordinationism; the problem here and as I ve remarked earlier in these lectures, this has been a common problem through the centuries and remains a real problem today the danger here is that of modalism. That if we begin from the unity of the Godhead, the unity of the nature of God, then it is so easy to think of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as being like the three sides of the triangle, being merely the way in which we see God looking upon God through the way that He has made Himself known to us. And so often in the history of the church we have heard that the Old Testament is the revelation of God as Father. The New Testament adds to that by giving us the revelation of God as the Son. And then, from the day of Pentecost in the life of the church, we have the revelation of God as Holy Spirit. So God is one but yet is known under three images or three names, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; but the three are not distinct persons. They are three ways in which God shows Himself to us, or we experience God. So modalism, then, has always been a problem in the West. 6 of 11
Now we must say clearly and straightforwardly that Augustine is not a modalist, even though there are those in the history of academic writings certain German historians who have tried to make him so; but I don t think anyone who reads his writings, and especially De Trinitate, could ever think that he is a modalist. So then Augustine takes this second way that I ve been describing and, whereas the Greek theologians some of whom, of course, he d read thought primarily of three persons having the same divine nature, he thought, rather, of one single divine nature subsisting in three persons. Therefore he started his explanation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, not from the Father considered as the eternal, infinite source of the other two persons but, rather, from the one simple divine nature or essence which is the Trinity. And so he says things like, There is one God, one good, and one omnipotent, the Trinity itself. One God is this Trinity. The Trinity is the one, only, and true God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one and the same substance or essence. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit constitute a divine unity of one and the same substance in an indivisible equality, and so on and so forth. All those were quotations from De Trinitate, the early part. I think it s true to say that never before in the history of the patristic period had the divine unity been presented and set forth in such a clear and distinct way, in terms of the relation of the three divine persons, as you have in Saint Augustine; because, for Augustine, the Father is not ho theos, as with the Greeks. You ll remember that I ve said several times that in the New Testament, ho theos, God, is distinctly and the context each time makes this clear God who is the Father. But in the thought of Augustine in this treatise, for him ho theos, or its Latin equivalent, is rather the Godhead. The Godhead wherein are the three persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; or, rather better, the Godhead that is the basic deity or divinity which unfolds itself into three persons who are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Thus, Augustine emphasizes oneness, rather than threeness, and starts from the one divine substance, rather than from the saving work of God in Jesus Christ. In other words, he moves straight into what the early fathers came to call theology, theologia. By theology they meant holy meditation, theological consideration upon God primarily God as God is in Himself; that is, the ontological and the immanent Trinity. That was, for them, theology. The word that they used for God as God is toward us in creation, in 7 of 11
providence, in salvation, and so on, was the economy of God. When Saint Augustine is writing in De Trinitate concerning God, although he takes for granted what I have just called, and what they called in that period of time, the economy of God, he is reflecting upon the true theology; theology being, as I said, the contemplation of God as God is in Himself, which we know through what God has revealed unto us in that area we call the economy of God; that is, God as God is toward us in creation and in redemption. So we need to bear that in mind, and as I shall indicate in lectures to come, this is a point that is very important if you re going to understand where modern discussion of the Holy Trinity has gone and is going. There is a very strong tendency in modern theology to reject that which I ve just called theology and to go for, instead, what I ve just called the economy of God; that is, God as the Trinity as God so reveals God in creation and in revelation and in redemption; that is, God as God is toward us. We shall be coming back to that, but I point it out here again, because I think it is important that we realize what is the state of discussion today. So bearing in mind, then, that we are dealing here with theology in its classical meaning, let us note some of the things which Augustine has to say. I mentioned earlier that he could not be called a modalist. It would be wrong to read him that way, in fact, totally wrong. He does, actually, in the seventh book of De Trinitate mention the name of Sabellius, who is regarded as one of the most famous of the modalists. Let me quote to you from book 7: Sabellius fell into heresy. From the Scriptures we learn with absolute certainty that there is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; that the Son is not the same as the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is not the same as the Father and the Son. There are, he says, somehow three individualities in one essence within the Holy Trinity. And he says they are three persons of one essence but not as each individual man is one person. So we note here and we shall come back to this later that the word person as used in the late patristic period and especially on into the Middle Ages and by the Protestant Reforms of the sixteenth century, that the word person as used of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is not being used in the sense that you say an individual man is one person. And neither is this classic word being used in the way it is used today, with personality and psychology, as it were, contained within the modern use of the word. But as I said, back to that later. 8 of 11
Augustine, in fact, did not very much like this term persona, person, but he accepted it. Quoting him again from the fifth book: Since the formula three persons has been coined remember, it was coined way back by Tertullian not in order to give a complete explanation by means of it, but in order that we might not be obliged to remain silent. Once we are talking about theology, once we are doing theology, which is contemplation of God as God is in Himself, we do find words are being strained beyond their uttermost limits. And it is obvious that Saint Augustine used this word person because it was in the holy tradition of teaching that he received, but he would really have liked to have used some other word, but he couldn t find one. So he says we use it in order that we might not be obliged to remain silent. Of course, after him it was used rather more widely in the West, and major attempts were made by leading philosopher-theologians to define the term in its use with respect to the Holy Trinity. Another aspect of Augustine that we need to remember and consider is his doctrine of relations. Here we must be careful. In modern American English the word relationship is used so often where truly the word relation ought to be used. I do urge you to get a major dictionary and to look up the word relation and the word relationship, and notice what is the difference in meaning between them. When Augustine is speaking of that which is between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, he is not talking about relationships, but he is talking about relations. The Latin word is virtually identical with the English, because the English is just a straight transliteration of it. But please look it up in major dictionaries, and note the difference in meaning. It has been said, then, that for Augustine the three the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are real or, another technical word, subsistent relations. And relations that are not identical with the substance or the nature since they are not something absolute. Well, is that way of putting it being fair? Is that being accurate with respect to what Augustine believed about the relations between the Father and the Son, the Father and the Spirit, the Son and the Spirit? 9 of 11
Augustine does not actually say that the three persons are relations, but what he does say is that they are distinguished one from another by their unchangeable relations to one another. And the three words he uses to indicate the relations are: paternity (of the Father), filiation from filios (of the Son), and gift, with respect to the Holy Spirit. These relations are three somethings, but they are not identical with the persons. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are named in the sacred Scriptures and distinguished from one another, not in terms of accidents here this is an Aristotelian term for in God there are no accidents. Nor are they in terms of substance, as if there were three substances, for there is only one substance; but in terms of unchangeable, originational relations. To put it in terminology that was developed in the Middle Ages, the three persons are three subjects of one divine activity, who are not accidentally nor substantially, but relationally, distinct; or three relationally distinct subsistence in one intellectual divine nature. Perhaps you are now remembering that the Cappadocians were the ones who developed this concept of relations. And you will remember that earlier I indicated that Augustine had been reading the Cappadocians and that this, in fact, affected his own presentation. And so the divine relations are that which Augustine speaks of when he wants to distinguish the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in their equality within the one Godhead. Thus the relations of paternity, filiation, and gift indicate that the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, that the Holy Spirit is not the Son. The Holy Spirit is not the Father. Their equality, their sharing the one identical Godhead, would perhaps make them strictly one. But the doctrine of relations points out how this is a trinity in unity, and a unity in trinity, by indicating the relation of the one to the other. That is a deep and difficult subject, and you may want to investigate that further. Another important part of the contribution of Augustine is what later became called the filioque. You ll remember that in the Creed of Constantinople the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father. In the writing of Saint Augustine that is not denied; it is rather, as we may say, expanded. Saint Augustine maintains explicitly that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but he adds that principally from the Father. He from whom the Holy Spirit principally proceeds is God the Father. I have added principally, he says, therefore, because the Holy Spirit is 10 of 11
also found to proceed from the Son. But the Father also gave this to Him that s the Son for He so begot Him that the common gift and that s the Holy Spirit should also proceed from Him and that the Holy Spirit should be the Spirit of both. In another place, in chapter 15, he declares that just as the Father has in Himself that the Holy Spirit should proceed from Him, so He has given to the Son that the same Holy Spirit should proceed from Him, and both apart from space and time, which consists of before and after, because time does not exist there at all. And so Augustine adds, We have to confess that the Father and the Son are the principal of the Holy Spirit, not two principals, but as the Father and the Son are one God, and relation to the creature are one and the same Creator and Lord, so they are one principal, as they are one Creator and one Lord. You can see what he s doing there. He is saying that the Father is the principal source of the Holy Spirit; but since the Father and the Son are one, thus the Spirit also is said to proceed from the Father and from the Son. We shall be coming back to the filioque. What I do not have time to do in this lecture, which we shall return to in the next, is the use of what are called often the psychological analogies in the soul. So we shall leave that to next time, and we ll stop at this point, having looked at the beginnings of his doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 11 of 11