Fr Sean Fernandez: God is three, and one, and… love

Religions usually regard God as remote and unpersonal. Christianity alone knows God as a communion of persons which has revealed itself to us, to the point of becoming a human being. Furthermore, Christians believe, God is love. The belief in the Trinity really does make Christianity unique. Attadale parish priest Fr Sean Fernandez continues his reflection the nature of God.

“The greatest truth we learn about God is the Blessed Trinity,’ the Penny Catechism tells us; and what is the Blessed Trinity? ‘The Blessed Trinity is one God in three Divine Persons.” How do we reconcile this self-assured answer with the argument of the first article? You may recall that the axiom that was central to the first article was ‘we cannot know what God is’. I hope to demonstrate that there is no conflict for the doctrine of the Trinity does not pretend to tell us what God is.
Before proceeding, let me just clarify what I mean when I write of “the doctrine of the Trinity.” The doctrine or the Church teaching on the Trinity is simply that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God; and God is One. This teaching found formal expression in various Church councils beginning with the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.
The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that the Old Testament insistence that God is One is true and the New Testament proclamation that Jesus and the Spirit are God is also true. God has truly revealed Himself to humanity in the events to which the Scripture and the Tradition bear witness: The long history of the people of Israel; the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus; and the transforming experience of the Holy Spirit are all truly experiences of the living God.
The International Theological Commission puts it thus: “the Trinity which manifests itself in the economy of salvation is the immanent Trinity and it is the immanent Trinity which communicates itself freely and gratuitously in the economy of salvation.” The ‘immanent Trinity’ is a theological term for God as He is in Himself. Thus, the Commission is saying that our experience of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is truly an experience of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Does God tell us what He is? No, He does not. He draws us into relationship with Him. The name for this relationship is faith and St Thomas tells us that faith joins us to God as to one unknown (ST 1a.12.13 ad 1).
God reveals who He is as He shapes the history of the people He has chosen. God doesn’t reveal what He is, but who He is in relationship with His creation and those whom He chooses.
In the words and actions of His ministry, Jesus reveals the one He calls His Father and something of the relationship He has with His Father. He doesn’t tell us what He is or what the Father is; He brings people into a saving relationship. In the Spirit we enter into the new life of Christ, but the Spirit doesn’t tell us what God is; He brings us into relationship with the Father and the Son. Revelation is about saving relationship, not about quiddity or whatness.
If we look at salvation history, then we see that what comes first is the initiative of God who brings people into relationship with Him. The Scriptures bear witness to the initiative and faithfulness of God.
That relationship is enfleshed in the life of the peoples God forms, pre-eminently in the Church. Before the Church used the word ‘Trinity’ she was worshipping God the Father through His Son and in the Holy Spirit; new members were being baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Learned Christians were writing works of speculative theology exploring what God has done for human beings in giving us the Spirit of Jesus. Tertullian (c AD 160-220) was, as far as we know, the first Latin Father to use the word ‘Trinity’ to refer to the relationship which is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We cannot reduce God to our categories by claiming that there are three gods; there is only one who is eternal, ineffable, the Creator of all. The Old Testament is adamant on this point. So how does one do justice to the experience of the Son and the Spirit? The word ‘Trinity’ and the language of three persons in one God developed as people started reflecting critically and systematically on the nature of salvation and the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Trinitarian language found its way into Church teaching as the Church sought to prevent errors in interpreting what God has done for us in missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The language of Trinity tells us that God really has entered our history to raise us up so that we can actually share in the life of God.
The language of the Trinity tells us that God did not pretend to become one like us in Jesus and that God did not give us anything less than Himself in the Spirit. The relationship God wants with us is a real one and because God wants this real relationship He gives us Himself in sending the Son and Spirit into our history and lives.
I repeat that none of this tells us what God is; it really tells us how not to interpret the relationship to which Scripture and Tradition bear witness and which we enjoy here and now.
Let me illustrate this with two interpretations which the Church rejected as erroneous. The first is Arianism: this was actually a conservative stream of thought which could not accept that Jesus Christ was truly God. The second error is Sabellianism which claimed that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are just the modes in which the one God appears to us; Father, Son and Spirit are, if you like, the masks God puts on to appear to us.
Both errors fail to take seriously the radicalness of the life, actions and words of Jesus; both errors cannot accept that God has truly brought us into a real relationship with Him in the gift of the Spirit. The Church, in rejecting those theories, teaches that they do not do justice to the wonderful love and condescension of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who bring us into a real, life-giving and transforming relationship with them, the one, true God.
Theologising and doctrinal elucidation are important, but they are based on the primary realities of faith. What are these primary realities? The relationship of knowledge and love which God has made us capable of enjoying with Him through Jesus and the Spirit. What is primary is the life of faith, hope and love which is the shape eternal life takes here and now.
The primary words of faith are not the arid words of theologians, but the living words of prayer, worship and love; the teaching of the Trinity tells us that God has brought us into real relationship with Him through Jesus and the Spirit He gives.
Trinitarian teaching tells us that we must keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and attend to His Spirit to come to know God; we must enter into the dying and rising of God’s Son in the power of the Spirit to come to know the Father who is the source of all being.
The teaching of the Trinity tells us that we truly have become adopted sons and daughters of the living God.
I shall leave the final word to the great Apostle: “I pray that, according to the riches of His glory, He may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through His Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3.16-19).