Doctrine of the Trinity ST506 LESSON 03 of 24 Peter Toon, DPhil Cliff College Oxford University King s College University of London Liverpool University This is the third lecture in the series on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. I begin this lecture with a devotion for Trinity Sunday used in the Western church over the centuries: Come let us adore the sacred Trinity, three persons, one God. To thee the eternal Father made by none, to thee the increated Son begotten by the Father alone, to thee the blessed Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, to this one holy, consubstantial, and undivided Trinity be ascribed all power and wisdom and glory now and forever, world without end, Amen. We have already distinguished the economic from the immanent or the ontological Trinity, and we have noted different approaches toward the doctrine of the Trinity in recent theology. There is one more major distinction that we need to be aware of, and we shall address that now. It is the difference between the Eastern and the Western approach to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. By eastern I mean of course the eastern end of the Mediterranean world, and by western I mean the western end of the Mediterranean world. And I am referring primarily to the patristic period and to what followed from then. To understand what we shall call the Eastern approach or the Eastern doctrine of the Holy Trinity, we need to go to that most famous of all creeds, the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed which is used in churches is not technically the creed of the Council of Nicaea of 325. It is rather the extension of the Nicene Creed which was made at the Council of Constantinople in 381. So when I say the Nicene Creed I m using that in the general sense. And it is technically the Niceno-Constaninopolitan Creed of the second ecumenical council of 381. This is the creed known as the Ecumenical Creed. And to this creed, as far as I know, all the major Christian denominations are committed. So let me read to you this brief creed, because this gives us what we may call the Eastern approach to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 1 of 11
The bishops there assembled, the Fathers there assembled confessed, We believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible. That is the first paragraph concerning the Father. And then the second paragraph is the longest. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the virgin Mary and was made man and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead whose kingdom shall have no end. That is the end of the second paragraph on the second person of the Holy Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ. And then the final paragraph is upon the person of the Holy Ghost. And we believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets. And I believe one catholic and apostolic church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, amen. That is the end of the third paragraph. You will notice that this most famous of all creeds and most used of all creeds has the three paragraphs. Each paragraph is devoted to one person of the Holy Trinity. The second paragraph is the longest one because, as we shall see in a later lecture, a certain heretical teaching had been abroad in the church concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. And so the second paragraph was longer to state the orthodox way over against the heresy. The critical word in that second paragraph, to which we shall return later, is the one which in Greek is homoousios and is translated either being one substance or consubstantial. That then is the Nicene Creed. Now I want to read you a specifically Western creed. This Western creed comes from the fifth century, and those who are familiar with the teaching of Saint Augustine of Hippo will recognize his influence in this creed. It is called in a familiar way the Athanasian Creed, although it has no connections with Saint Athanasius. It is better perhaps to call it by the first Latin word within the creed, which is quicunque, whoever, and then by the second word vult, desires. And so as scholars tend to refer to this creed as the 2 of 11
Quicunque Vult, whosoever desires. So let me now read to you this Western creed which, as I said, comes from the late fifth century and was much used in the West in my own church, the Church of England. This is required to be confessed publicly or sung within the liturgy on Trinity Sunday and on certain other days of the year. Here we go. It s very precise, and it has a tremendous appeal to it as literature if you like this kind of style. Whosoever desires to be saved must above all things hold the catholic faith. Unless a man keeps it in its entirety inviolate, he will assuredly perish eternally. Now this is the catholic faith that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity. Without either confusing the persons or dividing the substance. For the Father s person is one, the Son s another, the Holy Spirit s another. But the Godhead of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one. Their glory is equal, their majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, such also the Holy Spirit. The Father is increate, the Son increate, the Holy Spirit increate. The Father is infinite, the Son infinite, the Holy Spirit infinite. The Father is eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Spirit eternal. Yet there are not three eternals but one eternal just as there are not three increates or three infinities, but one increate and one infinite. In the same way the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, the Holy Spirit almighty. Yet there are not three almighties but one Almighty. Thus the Father is God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit God. And yet there are not three Gods, but there is one God. Thus the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, the Holy Spirit Lord. And yet there are not three Lords, but there is one Lord because just as we are obliged by Christian truth to acknowledge each person separately both God and Lord, so we are forbidden by the catholic religion to speak of three Gods or Lords. The Father is from none, not made nor created, nor begotten. The Son is from the Father alone not made nor created but begotten. The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made nor created nor begotten but proceeding. So there is one Father not three Fathers, one Son not three Sons, one Holy Spirit not three Holy Spirits. And in this Trinity there is nothing before or after, nothing greater or less, but all three Persons are coeternal with each other and coequal. Thus in all things as has been stated above, both Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity must be worshipped. So he who desires to be saved should think thus of the Trinity. 3 of 11
That is a very precise creed. And I only read to you the first half. The second half concerns the person of Jesus Christ. But since that is not our immediate subject I shall not read to you the second half. But it is in the second half just as precise as is the first half. And the first half, as we heard, is the Holy Trinity. I mention to you that one of the main minds behind this Quicunque Vult is the mind of that great early church father, Augustine of Hippo. And I would now like to read to you a couple of paragraphs from his De Trinitate. On the Holy Trinity, his famous book. This extract is from book 1, chapter 4, section 7 [1.4.7]. You will immediately recognize as I read the affinity between Saint Augustine and the creed Quicunque Vult. Saint Augustine writes, The purpose of all the catholic commentators may I interrupt here and make a comment on catholic so that we don t misunderstand it. The word here is not being used as it has been used since the Reformation period. It is a way of referring to the universal church in the early centuries. So it means universal of heaven and of earth and throughout the space and time in which the church had been existence up to this time. The purpose then of all the catholic commentators that I have been able to read on the divine books of both testaments who have written before me on the Trinity which God is has been to teach that according to the Scriptures the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the inseparable quality of one substance present a divine unity. And therefore there are not three Gods but one God. Although indeed the Father has begotten the Son, and therefore He who is the Father is not the Son. And the Son is 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 of the Son Himself coequal to the Father and the Son and belonging to the threefold unity. It was not however this same Trinity, the teaching of these commentators continues, that was born of the virgin Mary, crucified and buried under Pontius Pilate, on the third day rose again and ascended into heaven but the Son alone. That is the Son who was born of the virgin Mary. Nor was it the same Trinity that came down upon Jesus in the form of a dove at His baptism or came down on the day of Pentecost after the Lord s ascension with a roaring sound from heaven as though a violent gust were rushing down and in divided tongues as of fire but the Holy Spirit alone. That is the Holy Spirit came down upon Jesus 4 of 11
at His baptism and upon the waiting disciples in the upper room on the day of Pentecost. [Augustine continues] Nor was it this same Trinity that spoke from heaven thou art My Son either at His baptism by John or on the mountain when the three disciples were with Him or when the resounding voice was heard I have both glorified My name and will glorify it again. But it was the Father s voice alone addressing the Son. Although just as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are inseparable, so do they work inseparably. This is also my faith [says Saint Augustine] inasmuch as it is the catholic faith. And I myself as your lecturer want to add, this is also my faith insomuch as it is the catholic faith. I have read to you this classic Eastern statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, and I have read to you two classic statements of the dogma, the doctrine, of the Trinity from the Western church. And now what I want to do is to share with you the differences between the approaches. You will see that the differences arise because of different starting points. And I think this is very important to grasp that the classic differences sometimes people make fun of them between the East and the West on the dogma of the Holy Trinity arise simply because of different starting points for thinking about this mystery of all mysteries, this truth of all truths, is because of that different starting point. To formulate this mystery then you may start out from the unity of nature or the unity of the Godhead, as we might say, and add only later and as it were almost like a corrective, the Trinity of the persons. If you begin this way starting from the unity of the Godhead, which is the way that the Western church developed and is the style of the Western church, thus you will say that in God the nature of the Godhead is numerically one but that in this one Godhead, one nature, one essence, one being, there subsist three really distinct persons. It is the unity of the divine nature that is on the first level. It is the indisputable basis on which to rest. And this basis appears so much the more clear and certain because it has seemed in the West to be within reach of pure philosophical reasoning. If you do begin this way as the West in the main has begun and is indicated from that Athanasian Creed and from Saint Augustine, the Trinity of the persons remains in the background, and there is always the danger of not giving it enough importance at least in practice. There is the danger of thinking about God 5 of 11
only as a philosopher would think about God or as a Jew would think about God and not giving to each one of the divine persons and especially to the Father and the Holy Spirit the place which truly belongs to them. This method of approaching the mystery of the Trinity beginning with the unity of the nature, the unity of the essence and then coming secondly to the three persons, has prevailed in the West. And if you read the creeds of the Reformation (we ll get to them later on) you ll find that this type of approach is there, has been then in the West from the time of Saint Augustine right through to the modern day. It was given a certain precision first of all by that English theologian who was Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Anselm. And then it was put into marvelously clear shape and scholastic clarity by that greatest perhaps of all Western Christian minds, the mind of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Saint Thomas, by defining the divine persons as subsistent relations and by making a distinction in the question of the processions between the role played by the persons and the role played by the Godhead or by the nature, did bring to light what has been called a personalist aspect which the previously Augustinian and the Anselmian tradition had left in the shadow. But for all that, even though he accentuated the place of the three persons, he did not change what we may call the climate and the orientation of the Western approach, the Western theology of the Holy Trinity for which it has remained a major preoccupation to know how to arrive at three from one, to investigate the mystery of the Trinity rather than the mystery of the unity. So that then is the general way of the Western church under the influence of Saint Augustine, Saint Anselm, and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Now I want to switch directions and to go to the Eastern church and to what we find there as I said indicated by the Nicene- Constantinopolitan Creed and found in the teaching of the famous Cappadocian fathers, again to whom we shall come later. When we go to the Eastern approach, we find that there is no beginning here in the unity of the Godhead, but there is the beginning in the Father. All the thinking begins with the Father. And thus beginning from the Father, the next thought is the only-begotten Son of the Father. And then the third thought is the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father. 6 of 11
And thus you begin with the Father, and you ask, the Father of whom? The answer is, He is the eternal Father of the eternallybegotten Son of the Father begotten of the Father before all ages. And thus you speak of the Father and of the Son, and then you speak of the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father alone. You will notice that I said from the Father alone. That is to make a distinction between this way of thinking and that which developed in the West on the basis of beginning from the unity of the Godhead. If you begin from the unity of the Godhead, the unity of nature, as did Saint Augustine and the others, then you are logically required by that way of thinking to speak of the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father and the Son. And therefore, there was added to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in the West that Latin word which in translation makes more than one word in English, the word filioque, and from the Son. So while the original Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed spoke of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father, you will notice that the Western form of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed speaks of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and from the Son. The point is that if you follow the Western way of thinking with the unity of the nature beginning from the one Godhead, then if you think about it and we shall come back to these things later if you think about it you will see that you are logically required to have the Holy Spirit related in identical ways both to the Father and to the Son. And that is what you get in the Western form of the creed, and that is what you get in all the Reformation confessions of faith. But in the East, because they begin from what they call the monarchy of the Father or they begin from the Father as God, then their way of thinking requires that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. However, having said that they will then proceed to add words such as proceeds from the Father through the Son or proceeds from the Father and rests upon the Son. So they do want to make a very close and clear connection between the Son and the Spirit. But they do not want to do that at the loss of the primary relation, the relation of the Father and of the Spirit. As the Spirit proceeds from the Father, the Father spirates, breathes out as it were the Spirit. And so they speak of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And of course they always speak of the three persons in that order. That is the law of hierarchy, being translated hierarchy means holy order. The Father is always first. The Son is always second, and the Spirit is always third. That is true subordination, second in order, third in order. Now while there is holy order, there is at the same time total equality. For the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. I think today we find it very difficult to think in terms of the equality of 7 of 11
the persons and holy order, and within holy order, subordination. Because we use the word subordination not as meaning second or third in a logical order but rather as the order which is the order of inferiority. Now that was never intended in the classical formulations of the faith of the Holy Trinity. While there is holy order, there is total and absolute equality. For the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. It seems to me, if I may make here a personal judgment, that while I belong to the Western tradition of thinking culturally and in other ways, and while I would defend I believe by the grace of God with my life the classical Western doctrine of the Holy Trinity, I do believe that if we are working from Scripture first and foremost and if you like from Scripture only, then the more natural way to start is from the Father. Because as you read the New Testament, what do you find? You find it is the Father who sends the Son. It is the Father who sends the Holy Spirit. Prayer and adoration and praise arise to the Father through the Son. And in terms of looking back to the Old Testament, we think in terms of the Father being the one who is called God in the Old Testament. And in the New Testament whenever we get the word God, that is, theos in the Greek, invariably the context requires us to recognize that it is God who is the Father which is intended by that word. So it seems to me that the best way if we could start all over again, as it were, the best way is to go with the New Testament as the New Testament was developed by the Greek fathers, and also I may add, and I shall make this point later, by the early Latin fathers. It was only from the fifth century that we got this different approach developed in the West, that is, the approach from the unity of the Godhead, the unity of the nature of God rather than as in both Greek and Latin theology before then the movement from the Father to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. And if I may also add, it seems to me that if we are to recover, and recover we must, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit for the contemporary church, then I believe that coming to it through the Greek fathers and the early Latin fathers gives us a better chance for recovering the doctrine for the contemporary church than if we go the route of the Reformation confessions back through Thomas Aquinas and Anselm of Canterbury and Saint Augustine of Hippo. Now there s one qualification to that, and this will come out in a later lecture. We re going to find when we get to John Calvin that he had a great sense of affinity with the great Greek fathers and that his exposition of the Holy Trinity owes much to the Cappadocian fathers, the ones who developed the doctrine or the dogma of the 8 of 11
Trinity in the Eastern church. So we may say that John Calvin is the one who has gone before us to a certain extent in what I ve just been trying to say. Having said that, let me now proceed to read to you, to go back to Scripture now to read to you this marvelous passage at the beginning of Paul s letter to the Ephesians, because here we get what we may call the doctrine of the Trinity perfectly united to the doctrines of salvation, the doctrines of grace. We get it, and I regard this as highly important, we get it within this prayer, this movement of adoration, this movement of praise. It seems to me that so much theology would be better done if it were done as we find with the great early Fathers, done as meditation, done as a consideratione, done as a meditatio, done as a contemplatio, done, that is, as an act of prayer, an act of meditation, an act of praise, an act of adoration before God. You may know that Saint Augustine s treatise on the Holy Trinity is itself a meditation. It is not what today would be called a theological book, a systematic theology book at all. Although it has systems of thought in it, it is a meditation. So with that in mind and recognizing that Paul here is offering praise and prayer to God, let me read to you Ephesians 1:3 following. And I invite you to join with me in your imagination and in your ratiocination, your consideration, and to note just how the Holy Trinity is here portrayed in this act of praise. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has conferred on us in Christ every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. Before the foundation of the world, he chose us in Christ to be his people, to be without blemish in his sight, to be full of love. And he predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ. This was his will and pleasure in order that the glory of his gracious gift so graciously conferred on us in his beloved, might redound to his praise. In Christ our release is secured, and our sins forgiven through the shedding of his blood. In the richness of his grace, God has lavished on us all wisdom and insight. He has made known to us his secret purpose in accordance with the plan which he determined beforehand in Christ to be put into effect when the time was ripe, namely that the universe, everything in heaven and on earth, might be brought into a unity in Christ. In Christ indeed, we have been given our share in the heritage as was decreed in his design whose purpose is everywhere at work. For it 9 of 11
was his will that we who were the first to set our hope on Christ should cause his glory to be praised. And in Christ you also once you had heard the message of the truth, the good news of your salvation and had believed it, in him you were stamped with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit. And that Spirit is a pledge of the inheritance which will be ours when God has redeemed what is his home to his glory and praise. Here in this very moving passage you encounter that which I called in an earlier lecture God as God is toward us. Here we get the movement of God the Father through God the Son in and by God the Holy Spirit. That movement is portrayed, and that movement is praised. That movement we call reconciliation, salvation, redemption. But you will also notice as I read and as you now think about it, you will notice that there is also the pointing toward what we may call the eternal thoughts of God. That is, before the creation, before there was even need practically speaking for redemption and salvation, God in His eternal thoughts was planning that which He would do. And thus we get an indication here, and of course further indications of this are found in such a gospel as the gospel of Saint John and the other writings of Saint Paul. But we get an indication here of God as God is within Himself. That is the relation of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in the unity of the one nature, the one Godhead, the unity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit as the creeds say, A Trinity in unity and a unity in Trinity. I ve looked at this passage from Ephesians not to expound it. I don t have either the time or the expertise to do that. But I ve looked at it in order to cause you to begin to ponder as you read sacred Scripture the place of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity within it. You ll remember that in the last lecture I raised the question for your consideration. And I raised it on the basis of recent theology. Is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity there as it were as the fundamental basis of the self-revelation by God? Is it there as it were as that holy structure which binds together the very content of sacred Scripture and therefore of God s self-revelation to us of which Scripture is the holy record? Is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity that the very structure, the very undergirding, the very as it were mindset, to use a modern American word, of sacred Scripture? Is it that, or is it rather that final doctrine to which one comes as one studies and engages in holy meditation and contemplation of that which is recorded in holy Scripture? 10 of 11
I gave you those two options in contemporary theology. And you remember that I indicated that Karl Barth, who does not see Scripture as the written Word of God but rather sees holy Scripture as those human writings which in the providence and guidance of God witness to the Word, and the Word is of course the eternal Son of God. He from his perspective sees the self-revelation of God to which Scripture is the primary witness. He sees that in such a way that for him the Trinity God self-revealing as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the very basis, the very inner content of the revelation. That is one way of doing it. The way which I prefer, if I now may state my own judgment in this, I prefer that position which accepting the full authority of the Scriptures as the Word of God written, I believe that these holy books, these holy writings set forth for us the Holy Trinity as the foundational structure, the foundational mindset, if you like, of God s self-revelation. So there is a correspondency between what I m saying and what Karl Barth is saying. But of course I am saying it in a rather different way. And the difference between the great Swiss man and myself will become clearer later. But I would like you to ponder these matters, because they need to be pondered. This is no easy way of thinking. It requires of us holy concentration, holy commitment. It requires not only that we think with ratiocinative clarity, but it also requires that we meditate with holy fervency. We need both to know about God and to know personally our Lord Jesus Christ and through Him the Father and the Spirit. So when you meditate upon your Bibles each day as you pray and meditate, I ask you to be aware of the God whom you worship, to be aware that He is the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, one God, and to see what difference that makes in your daily meditation as you come to Scripture aware of the primacy of this holy doctrine, the doctrine of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit to whom be glory in the church and in the world, world without end, amen. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 11 of 11