MONOTHEISM AND THE MYSTERY OF THE TRIUNE GOD

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This synthesis of faith was not made to accord with human opinions,
but rather what was of the greatest importance was gathered
from all the Scriptures, to present the one teaching of the faith
in its entirety. And just as the mustard seed contains a great number
of branches in a tiny grain, so too this summary of faith encompassed
in a few words the whole knowledge of the true religion contained
in the Old and New Testaments.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem d. AD 386

There is one Body, one Spirit, just as one hope is the goal
of your calling by God. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
and one God and Father of all, over all, through all and
within all.
Ephesians 4:4-6 (NJB)

"We believe in One God" are the first five words of the Nicene-Constantinople Creed.¹ The Catholic Church's profession of faith in the unity of God is faithfully recited at every Lord's Day celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist. Throughout the centuries, the many peoples and nations, and cultures and languages, that comprise the covenant faithful of the Universal Church have constantly confessed this one faith, which was received from one Lord, transmitted by one Baptism through the one Holy Spirit, and given by the grace of one God. St. Irenaeus (177-202 AD), the bishop of Lyons, France, who was in his youth a disciple of St. Polycarp (a disciple of St. John the Apostle), affirmed the Church's continuing commitment to one faith professed in one God: Indeed, the Church, though scattered throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, having received the faith from the apostles and their disciples... guards this preaching and faith with care, as dwelling in but a single house, and similarly believes as if having but one soul and a single heart, and preaches, teaches, and hands on this faith with a unanimous voice, as if possessing only one mouth [...]. For though languages differ throughout the world, the content of the Tradition is one and the same. The Churches established in Germany have no other faith or Tradition, nor do those of the Iberians, nor those of the Celts, nor those of the East, of Egypt, of Libya, nor those established at the center of the world ... (the message of the Church) is true and solid, in which one and the same way of salvation appears throughout the whole world (Against Heresies, 1, 10, 1-2; 5, 20, 1).

The profession of belief in one God is the fundamental basis of our Christian faith. We express this belief in the word monotheism, which in Greek means "one" (mono) "god" (theos). It is the belief that only one God is the Creator of the universe and of all life. Not the belief in "a" god but in THE GOD. The whole Nicene-Constantinople Creed speaks of God, and when it speaks of creation and humankind, it does so in relation to God. The Nicene-Constantinople Creed clarifies the first statement of faith from the Apostles' Creed by a confession of God's oneness, a revelation made known in the sacred writings of the Old Testament. For example:

• In Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Moses expressed the oneness of God with the three times repetition of His covenant name: Listen, Israel: Yahweh our God is the one, the only Yahweh. You must love Yahweh, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength (New Jerusalem Bible/NJB; underlining added for emphasis).²
• The prophet Isaiah recorded God's words of assurance of salvation through the supremacy of the One and only God: Turn to me and you will be saved, all you ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other (Isaiah 45:22, NJB).

From the first revelation of God to man, His covenant people have understood that God is unique; there is only One God. Monotheism is as uncompromising in the New Testament as in the Old. Jesus repeated the Shema of the Old Covenant profession of faith from Deuteronomy 6:4-5b when He affirmed that the Lord our God is the One and only Lord whom we must love. He also affirmed that our love for Him must be uncompromising, for He commands us to love Him with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength "in other words, with our entire, undivided self (Mark 12:29-30; Matthew 22:34 and Luke 10:25-28).

At the same time, Jesus gave us the understanding that He is Himself, "the LORD." While teaching in the Jerusalem Temple, Jesus said: How do the scribes claim that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said: The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies your feet." David himself calls him lord'; so how is his son?" (Mark 12:35-37 quoting Psalm 110:1, New American Bible Revised Edition/NABRE). In this statement, Jesus was teaching what the heavenly elders revealed to St. John in Revelation 5:5, that Jesus the Messiah is not only a descendant of the great King David, but because He is the Lord God, He came before David: One of the elders said to me, "Do not weep. The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed (NABRE; underlining added for emphasis). Confessing that Jesus is Lord is distinctively part of the Christian faith. This is not contrary to belief in the One God, nor does believing in the Holy Spirit as "Lord and giver of life" introduce any division into the One God. Sacred Scripture supports this teaching from the words of Jesus Himself (NABRE):

• In John 10:30, Jesus said: "The Father and I are one."
• In John 8:57-58, the Jews said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM."
• John 5:16-18 records: Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a sabbath. But Jesus answered them, "My Father is at work until now, so I am at work." For this reason, the Jews tried all the more to kill him because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.

St. Paul and other inspired New Testament writers professed the same belief in the Trinity of the Godhead by using a Trinitarian formula in many passages of their letters:

• St. Paul professed the Trinity in his closing statement of his second letter to the Christians of Corinth: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you (2 Corinthians 13:13 NABRE).
• St. Paul also used Trinitarian references in Romans 1:3-7; 15:16, 30; 1 Corinthians 2:10-16; 6:11, 14, 15, 19; 12:4-6; 2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Galatians 4:6; Ephesians 1:3-14; 2:18, 22; 4:4-6; Philippians 2:1; Titus 3:5; Hebrews 9:14; etc.
• The Trinitarian unity of God is expressed in Acts of Apostles 10:38; 20:28; in the letters of St. Peter in 1 Peter 1:2; 3:18; and by St. John in 1 John 4:2; and Revelation 1:4-20. In the last chapter of the New Testament books, Revelation 22:1 acknowledges "the river of life" (the Holy Spirit), the throne of God (the Father), and the Lamb (Jesus Christ).

In defense of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the Universal Church proclaimed at the fourth Lateran Council in 1215: We firmly believe and confess without reservation that there is only one true God, eternal, infinite, and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty, and ineffable, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, three persons indeed, but one essence, substance or nature entirely simple.³

The Triune nature of God is a mystery revealed to the Church through God the Son, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. The word "Trinity" is not found in Sacred Scripture. Yet, God's Triune nature was hidden in the Holy Spirit-inspired writings of the Old Testament and revealed to the Apostles by Jesus Christ in the New Testament.⁴ After His Resurrection and before His Ascension, Jesus instructed His disciples to baptize believers using the Trinitarian formula: "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.": Then Jesus approached and spoke to them, "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:18-20a, NABRE). In this passage, Jesus's statement refers to God's oneness and the unique relationship of "threeness" of the Most Holy Trinity. The command is to baptize in "the name," singular, of the three Persons of the unity that is the Most Holy Trinity. This is the same profession of belief in the Trinity that Christians confess when making the Sign of the Cross and saying: "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen!"

The dogma (truth) of the Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and the dogma that, above all others, makes the Christian faith unique among world religions (CCC 232, 234, 237, and 261). Three crucial elements make up the dogma of the Trinity:

• First, God is One substance or being and three Persons (CCC 202, 252-55). There is only One God because there is only one divine substance. The three Persons constitute one God because each is consubstantial with the other two, which means each fully possesses one and the same divine substance.
• Second, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct Persons within the Godhead (CCC 257-60). Because all three possess the fullness of the divine substance, all three are coequal and coeternal. They are distinct in that each possesses the fullness of divinity in a way different from the other two. Still, they are inseparable from one another because they share the same divine substance or being (CCC 253).
• Third, the word "Person" regarding the Trinity is a technical term designating three distinct subsistent relations within the Trinity: the paternity (the Father), the filiation (the Son), and the passive spiration (the Paraclete = the Holy Spirit). These three relations are rooted in two acts or, as Church doctrine calls it, "processions," that make up the inner life of the Trinity. The first act or "procession" is that by which the Father eternally begets the Son. The second act or "procession" is that by which the Holy Spirit is "spirated by" or proceeds from the Father and the Son. The three Persons of the Trinity are, therefore, differentiated from one another by the different relations they have to one another (CCC #232-255).

Some Christians tend to ignore the differentiations within the Godhead, either by treating only the Father or the Father and the Son as God and ignoring the Holy Spirit altogether or by treating the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as though they were God identically the same way. How do you respond to the Holy Trinity? What is the relationship between the sacred Persons of the Most Holy Trinity?

The Patriarchal Hierarchy of the Trinity

When the Advocate [Paraclete] comes whom I shall send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify.
John 15:26, NABRE

For if I do not go, the Advocate [Paraclete] will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.
John 16:7b, NABRE

Jesus said: "I and the Father are one (Jn 10:30, NABRE), and I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him" (Jn 14:6-7, NABRE). Jesus also said: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?" (Jn 14:9b-10a, NABRE). Each statement affirms Jesus's unity and equality with God the Father. However, Jesus also said:

• "In all truth [Amen, amen], I tell you, by himself the Son can do nothing; he can do only what he sees the Father doing: and whatever the Father does, the Son does too (Jn 5:19, NJB).
• By myself I can do nothing; I can judge only as I am told to judge, and my judging is just because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me (Jn 5:30, NJB).
• For I have not spoken on my own authority; but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and what to speak (Jn 12:49, NJB).
• Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works (Jn 14:10, NABRE).
• ... for the Father is greater than I (Jn 14:28, NABRE).

Also, see the two quotations at the beginning of this article concerning Jesus's relationship with the Holy Spirit.

How do we reconcile what appears to be a contradiction between these various statements? Some professing Christian communities that do not have the teaching authority of the Catholic Church have either misconstrued these conflicting statements to assume that Jesus was lacking divinity (i.e., Christina Scientists) or that there were three gods with unequal power (i.e., Mormonism and the Jehovah Witnesses reject the doctrine of the Trinity)? The answer to what appears to be conflicting statements by Jesus lies in our understanding of the patriarchal hierarchy of the Most Holy Trinity "not only in the sense of God's perfect unity and equality but also in the sense of the missions of the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity and in the procession of the Godhead in the formula statement Jesus gave us in Matthew 28:19, telling us to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit "in that order.

When we respond to the three Persons of the Godhead as though the three persons are God identically in the same way, we fail to appreciate the Trinity's hierarchical character. Hierarchy has two meanings. The first comes from two Greek words hieros and archein. Hieros means "sacred," and archein means "to rule or order." In this sense, the word hierarchy means "a sacred rule or order." The Trinity is a hierarchy in the sense of the mission of sacred order for three reasons:

1. Each of the Persons is distinct and different from the other two Persons, and each Person, in a different way, relates to the other two Persons.
2. The three Persons of the Trinity are ordered to one another by their relationship to each other.
3. The three Persons of the Trinity are dependent on one another.

Each of the Persons is distinct and different from the other two Persons, and each Person, in a different way, relates to the other two Persons: Each Person is unique or singular, and "Each relation is different from the other two; indeed, each relation is unique because each Person enjoys a different way of relating to the other two Persons and to the divine substance itself" (Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine, "Trinity," page 683).

The Father possesses the divine substance in himself, the Son receives from the Father, and the Holy Spirit receives from the Father and the Son (Jn 14:26; 16:13-14). Each of the Persons fully possesses the divine substance, but each does so differently. Each Person also enjoys a unique relationship with the other two Persons since each is defined by his specific relationship with the others. The relation of the Father is different from the relation of the Son and the relation of the Holy Spirit. This means that the three Persons, though inseparable, are not interchangeable or identical. The Father does only those things appropriate to Fatherhood, the Son those things relevant to Sonship, and the Holy Spirit those things that are appropriate to spiration. The Father, therefore, does not do anything specifically bound up with Sonship or spiration, the Son does not do anything specifically bound up with Fatherhood or spiration, and the Holy Spirit's mission is not directed toward anything specifically bound up with Fatherhood or Sonship (CCC 258). For example, the Father always commands, sends, and gives to the Son. The Son always obeys, is sent, and receives from the Father. The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit to teach and guide.

The three Persons of the Trinity are ordered to one another by virtue of their relationship to each other: The Father is the relation of paternity because He is ordered to the Son as Father. The Son is the relation of filiation because he is ordered to the Father as Son. The Holy Spirit is the relation of passive spiration because he is spirated by the Father and the Son and ordered to them accordingly. The three Persons are defined as "Persons" by their relationship to one another, a relationship eternally rooted in the two-fold procession of the Son from the Father and the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (CCC 246). They exist not only in distinction from one another but also within one another.

Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) made this point in Introduction to Christianity when he wrote: "In St. John's gospel Christ says of himself: The Son can do nothing of his own accord' (5:19, 30)... On the face of it, a contradiction arises when the same Christ says of himself in St. John: I and the Father are one' (10:30). But anyone who looks more closely will see at once that in reality the two statements are complementary. In that Jesus is called "Son" and is thereby made relative to the Father, and in that Christology is ratified as a statement of relation, the automatic result is the total reference of Christ back to the Father. Precisely because he does not stand in himself, he stands in him [the Father], constantly one with him" (page 133).

The three Persons of the Trinity are totally dependent on one another: Although each possesses the fullness of the divine substance, each is not and cannot be God except in relationship to the other two. Each is incomplete without the unity of the other two, meaning that while it is proper to say, for example, that the Father is God, it is not proper to say that God is just the Father.

But in another sense, the word archein, formed from the root of the Greek word arche, can mean "first," "beginning," or "priority." Therefore, hierarchy in the sense of patriarchy also means "sacred origin." Because the three Persons of the Trinity are coequal and coeternal, we cannot speak of the Trinity as having a temporal beginning. But we can address an ontological beginning or source of the Trinity. That source is the Father, who begets the Son and who, together with the Son, spirates the Holy Spirit, but who himself is unbegotten or ingenerate. For this reason, we can speak of the Father as the source of everything, including the Trinity. He is, as the Church Fathers (the successors of the Apostles) pointed out, the "un-originated origin." God the Father, therefore, has priority within the procession of the Most Holy Trinity, which is why He is always designated as the FIRST Person of the Trinity and also enables us to understand why Jesus (the Second Person) tells us that "the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28).

Summing up, we can make seven statements in an attempt to grasp the great mystery that is the dogma (truth) of the Most Holy Trinity with the dogma (truth) of the Oneness of God:

1. The Trinity is the ultimate reality of the One True God.
2. God is a community of love. The Apostle St. John, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, affirmed that God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). God loves us, and God is love in Himself. The Father gives all He has to the Son, and the two of them, in turn, give all They have to the Holy Spirit. St. Pope John Paul II wrote that God, in His deepest mystery, is a family because the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the love that binds the mystery of love that is the Most Holy Trinity.
3. The Trinity reveals that personhood is closely associated with relationship. To be a person in the Trinity is to be a relation ordered to another Person or relation. There is no singleness, aloneness, or individualism in the Trinity. Not even the Father can be known as a person in his own right, but only in relation to the Son who makes him known and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
4. The Trinity is a revelation of the meaning and significance of hierarchy. The ultimate reality is a sacred order. However, hierarchy does not mean inequality; the three Persons of the Trinity are hierarchical and coequal. The opposite of hierarchy is not equality. The opposite of hierarchy is anarchy "the absence of order. The hierarchical character of God is the guarantor of the hierarchical or ordered character of creation.
5. Although God is eternal and unchanging, He is not static. God's inner life is comprised of those two processions by which the Son is begotten and the Holy Spirit spirated. These processions are eternal and can only be expressed in the present tense because there is no before' or after' in God. God is unceasingly and eternally dynamic!
6. The two processions within the Trinity are the source of the two Trinitarian "missions" made manifest in redemption. First, the Father's begetting the Son is the source for the Father's sending of the Son for our salvation. Second, the procession of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son is the source for the sending of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son to the Apostles and the Church so that the grace and truth of Christ might be manifest throughout the world. Through these two missions, God continually renews the whole of creation.
7. The related missions of the Trinity reveal that we do not simply have one relationship with God; we have a three-fold relationship with Him, as St. Paul expressed to the Christians in Ephesus: He has let us know the mystery of his purpose, according to his good pleasure which he determined beforehand in Christ, for him to act upon when the times had run their course: that He would bring everything together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth (Ephesians 1:9-10, NABRE). By the power of the Holy Spirit, we share in the Sonship of Jesus Christ and so have become sons and daughters of God the Father, whose plan to bring all things in heaven and on earth into union with himself is revealed and initiated by the Son and brought to completion in the Holy Spirit.

To God be the glory "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit "forever! Amen!

Endnotes:
1. The original Nicene Creed was composed by the bishops of the Universal Church in 325 AD at Nicaea. At the Council of Nicaea, the Church Fathers confronted Arianism, a heresy that denied the divinity of Jesus Christ and, therefore, denied belief in the Trinitarian unity of God. At least 220 bishops from across Christendom signed the creed that affirmed the divinity of Christ. The Nicene Creed began with the statement: We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father; God from God, light from light, true God from true God; begotten, not created, consubstantial [Greek = homo ousion] with the Father. The first Nicene Creed was relatively short and ended with the phrase and in the Holy Spirit. This creed was amended in 381 AD at the first ecumenical Council of Constantinople, and the result was the creed the Church recites as its profession of faith, the Nicene-Constantinople Creed. The additions to the Nicene Creed helped to clarify the dogma of the Trinity by adding more about the person of Christ, omitting the phrase "from the substance of the Father," including more about the Holy Spirit, adding the articles on the Church, on baptism, the resurrection, and eternal life. The first creed also included anathemas against Arianism, which were dropped in the Nicene-Constantinople Creed.

2. The declaration in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 was repeated by Jesus with a slight variation in Matthew 22:37 when He said: You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind (New Jerusalem Bible).

3. John A. Hardon, S. J., page 117: Doctrine is any truth taught by the Church as necessary for acceptance by the faithful. The truth may be either formally revealed (as the Real Presence), or a theological conclusion (as the canonization of a saint), or part of the natural law (as the sinfulness of contraception). In any case, what makes it doctrine is that the Church authority teaches that it is to be believed. This teaching may be done either solemnly in ex-cathedra pronouncements or ordinarily in the perennial exercise of the Church's Magisterium or teaching authority. Dogmas are those doctrines which the Church proposes for belief as formally revealed by God. (Etym. Latin: doctrina, teaching).

4. Several Old Testament passages hint at the Triune nature of God. A few of those passages are:

• The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is hidden in the first three verses of Genesis: In the beginning, God [God the Father] created heaven and earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep with a divine wind [God the Holy Spirit] sweeping over the waters. God said, Let there be light, and there was light [God the Son who is the Word and the Light]. See the Gospel of John 1:1-5: In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came into being, not one thing came into being except through him. What has come into being in him was life, life that was the light of men; and light shines in darkness, and darkness could not overpower it. Also, see John 1:9.
• The cry of the heavenly creatures surrounding God's throne reveals that God is three times holy (see Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8).
• Also, in Genesis 1:26, God says: Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves. The verse cannot refer to God and the angels because nowhere in Scripture is it stated or even suggested that the heavenly servants of God were partners with God in the Creation event. However, St. John in the prologue to his Gospel and St. Paul in Colossians 1:15-18 definitely identifies Jesus Christ as the active force of the Creation event: for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth (Colossians 1:16).
• The literal translation of the ancient profession of faith of the Old Covenant people of God begins: Hear O Israel: Yahweh our God is one Yahweh; and you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might, expressing both the oneness and the threeness of God with the three times repetition of His covenant name (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Interlinear Bible Hebrew-English, Vol. I, page 478). Also, see the command to use the priestly benediction (Numbers 6:22-23) in which the Divine Name is used three times in the Hebrew text (Numbers 6:24-26).

Resources:
1. Catechism of the Catholic Church, citations 232-267; 683-716; 2663-2672
2. E. Forman, The Triune God: An Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity.
3. J. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines.
4. Joseph Ratzinger (Pope St. Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, chapter 5.
5. New American Bible Revised Edition, Catholic Book Publishing Corp, New Jersey, 1986.
6. New Jerusalem Bible, Doubleday, 1985.
7. The Interlinear Bible Hebrew-English, Vol. I, Hendrickson Publishers, 1985.
8. The Jewish Study Bible, Tanakh Translation, Oxford University Press, 1999 edition.

Michal Hunt, Copyright © 1991, revised 2024 Agape Bible Study. Permissions All Rights Reserved.