Fresh Expressions of God as Trinity
Duns Scotus and St Bonaventure describe the Trinity
The doctrine of God as Trinity is foundational to how we should think of God but also how we should also see the world that comes into existence from the divine loving. The Trinity is about us as well as about God.
In defence of the Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the God as Trinity proceeded from the special revelation of God in the life of Jesus called “The Christ”. It is from what was written about Jesus in the gospels and in the early church writings that led the Church to define God as Trinity in the great councils of the Church.
Many past and modern day critics of the Christian faith and theology often make reference to the great church councils of Nicea and Chalcedon as being a departure from a simple faith in Jesus of Nazareth as Messianic prophet, claiming they were constructing a Greek philosophical view about and about God at odds with an original simple faith in the man from Nazareth.. However this is a mistaken view. Contrary to such a view Paul Tillich in his Systematic Theology, volume 3, even writing in terms of religious and existential symbols., defends the development of the doctrine of nature of God as Trinity and that it was not some alien development of something from outside of the early faith but rather attempted to define and defend that which was felt and experienced in the actual lives of the disciples as they experienced something utterly transcendent in Jesus, and which became present in their preaching. He writes that the Trinity was a rightful development of already established beliefs and practices in the Church. The councils sort a more plain and explicit faith that shows the reality of distinct presence of divine life in Jesus along with Spirit and the Father. Many others across the wide spectrum of church institutions have continued to find reasons to affirm a Trinitarian reality within God. This is something further referred to in Jesus as God and Man
https://www.cosmicscotus.com/the-divine-and-human-union/
Bonaventure – Multiplicity and Partnership
In the Breviloquium Bonaventure reflects on God as Trinity and of creation coming from the Trinity. In eternity the Father (as First Principle) comes first and then the Son (begotten of the Father) and then the Holy Spirit who “proceeds from the Father and the Son”.
Everything exists because of that love and partnership within God who is Trinity and Community. Partnerships within the cosmos stem from the original partnership in the Trinity. Many things in nature rely on each other and this points to the fact that each thing in the cosmos is a realised expression and thought of the love of God. Therefore, all creatures and parts of the cosmos are revealing the Word of God, the Son, and God’s love.
Although there is often the modern assumption that the order and patterns within what we observe in the universe are the result of random developments we should instead see that even this potential randomness that gives rise to the patterns and order of the universe is still from the intention of God who has made these potentials possible and actual. Even the apparent patterns of chance and chaos are a manifestation of the free plurality that the cosmos has been given as its character. Where there is chance it is part of the freedom that comes from love within the Trinity. (This is discussed further in “Good and Humble God”).
Duns Scotus –The Character of God as Trinity
Scotus defends the idea of three “persons” although such ideas of individual personhood we apply to people cannot apply to God because the divine essence and how it is expressed in God is different to our understandings of persons as independent rational beings. We have to deal with the fact of three expressions of Being that are differentiated but share a common nature. A nature that is both infinite and personal. Scotus tries to tease out the relations between the three persons, the production of the Word/Son and the “spiration” of the Spirit. He also discusses in what way the different persons may have different properties and roles related to them.
There is an emphasis on the love of the Divine Essence. Scotus writes, “God is to be loved” and this stems from the fact of the greatest love we can have here is love for the Divine Essence. We may love each other in a mutual way when the other person loves us and we respond to it. Because God is love God and wills that the creation should also be infused by this self giving love and going beyond the many prior causes and histories of existing, beyond the accidents of struggle and death and dominance of some things over others.
In further respect of creation, there appears to be a tension between God as lover wanting creation to have love and another aspect of typical traditional and medieval theology that God is “impassable” and cannot suffer. Scotus seems to want to say that God is impassable and needs no-one. Jurgen Moltmann is critical of such views of God. It is part of Christian faith that the Incarnate Word dwells in Jesus the man and in the fact of Jesus suffering does not the Word in conscious union also share in that suffering? Furthermore if the Holy Spirit as St Paul says “groans” within us then does not God have the fullest knowledge of human suffering and indeed all creation’s suffering? Is God really “unfeeling” or is our idea of fellow –feeling and suffering with us a step too far in theology? I rather think that Scotus is wrong and that God in the fullness of the divine nature knows and in some way shares the suffering of all creation that is made free and subject to hurt.
Further considerations
Karl Rahner
(from his Foundations of Christian Faith)
Rahner notes that often God is invoked in the singular and when we think of “God became man” we may also possibly imply something singular. Yet the church confesses the Trinity and we should always think that way. When it comes to the Incarnation it is specifically the Logos (Word) that undergoes the union in Christ and not the Father or the Spirit. So also, salvation comes from the Word who is in Christ (albeit with the union of the others as there can be no separation). Creation and Salvation are a co-operative act of the whole of the Trinity. God revealed as Trinity has left its mark in the Old Testament as well, as the Word spoke to the people of Israel as Adonai and the Angel of the Lord.
What we find in revelation in the Scriptures and as we have received it in Church teaching is the secret of the divine relations within the Trinity and with us. It is an existential discovery and not just a theoretical construct to boggle the mind. There is no distinction between the “economic” (how God has been known and manifest in the world) and the “immanent” (God’s hidden inner life). What has been revealed is what God is. The mystery of the Three persons is also the mystery in which we find our own origins and purpose in life. We discover what we are to be as the Word proceeds from the Father to come to us. The Spirit awakens us and empowers us and interacts with our will.
Kalistos Ware
From an Orthodox Church perspective the doctrine of the Trinity is not just a piece of theology reserved for scholars but is something that is about living for every Christian. It contains a social program for us and all society. God is Trinity and hence, as we are “created” (evolved) in the image of God ” to be the image of the Trinity. We are to be people of the Trinity. Only in the light of this dogma can we be what we are intended to be as people. Our personal and social lives depend on such a right understanding of the Trinity because it is about what we are called to be. It is an ever new way of thinking about God and the world.
In Orthodox faith there is a difference between the “essence” of God (that is beyond all) and the “energies” of God (found in interaction with the world). God’s energies come to us and we see them while the essence remains beyond us. We have a Trinitarian God who is hidden but who acts and intervenes. God as Trinity is a ”personal God” and we are brought to face a God who is not some vague and impersonal force, but personal, indeed a Trinity of persons. Each “person” of the Trinity dwells “in” the others with a perpetual movement of love, such is their closeness and union. So the Trinity is not simply a unity of persons but a union of persons. God is a God who becomes Incarnate.
Wolfhart Pannenberg
(Notes from Systematic Theology Vol 1. Writing from a Reformed tradition)
Jesus in His talk about the Kingdom of God and His own discourses about God calls God “Father” (actually Abba), caring, loving and forgiving. Elements of Jewish religion had also called God “Father” but not as personally as Jesus. For Jesus “Father” is proper title and designation of God. It cannot be eliminated from the message of Jesus because it is about divine love and relations. It is expressed His closeness to the Father, linked to Him but differentiated from Him. He is the Son in nearness and subject to the Father’s will. The Resurrection confirms this relationship and an eternal relationship that is also about a pre-existing state. Jesus deity is also linked to the title “Kyrios” (Lord) that implied the deity of God and divine lordship.
The Spirit is also found acting in Jesus and having a role in His resurrection. There is the early baptismal formula found at the end of the gospel of Matthew that was about Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Hence in the early Church these associations were already found in the profession of the Church and not created later. St Paul may have sometimes seemed to have blurred the distinctions between Jesus and the Holy Spirit as the “Spirit of Jesus”. But St John was quite clear that the Spirit was “another advocate”. The Word and Spirit come to be seen as two distinct divine agencies of the Father. Thus the Word and Spirit co-operate in the work of mediating God to the world and a joint participation of Father, Son and Spirit in all divine activity. This then in the biblical texts is the foundations of the revelation of the inner life of God and an inner life that actually comes before everything that God has done and does.
Reformed theology inherited this tradition about the Trinity but wanted to go back beyond the church traditions and creeds back to the biblical texts to justify it all. Some biblical textual analysis led to some anti-trinitarian movements and discarded the scholastic arguments. However, it was shown that a thorough Trinitarian doctrine could be maintained from scripture even without the later Orthodox and Catholic elaborations.
Conclusion
From Christian and indeed Franciscan theology we need to think today of the origin of the cosmos and all life on earth having a grounding and purpose that stems from the God who is Trinity. The great diversity of life and the interconnected evolved ecosystems are the bi-products of the divine love and partnerships, in which there is a unity and need one for the other. Rational creatures like us that developed within the cosmos are destined and desired by God to be creatures who will better make manifest that same love from its origin. That at least is the divine intention and the divine goal. It is in relation to this love and intention of love that humanity is to be seen and measured as good or against that intention that becomes sin and remains unfulfilled.
The Trinity relations and Cosmic relations are further elaborated in Chapter 3 of my book Cosmic Franciscans .
Devotional : Professing the Trinity
Based on the 1662 Book of Common prayer Nicene Creed
My dearest and Beloved God. I do profess that you are the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen, whose very nature is overflowing love in the essence of your being.
Next I do affirm that I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, who is the only Son of God, eternally coming from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not created, of one Being and essence with the Father. Through the Son all things were initiated and evolved in the cosmos.
I whole heartedly affirm most Beloved God that the Son for us and for our salvation and for the whole of growing creation, came and entered into our physical existence by the power of the Holy Spirit
He became a union of flesh and divinity in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and was made a fully human person, sharing out human nature but joined inseparably to His divinity.
For our sake and the remaking of unity of all things He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures;
He ascended into back to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
I do also affirm with all my heart and mind that I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son the Spirit is worshiped and glorified.
The Spirit has spoken through the Prophets.
Getting into the picture
There is a famous Russian icon of the visit of the three angels to Abraham, seated around a table (shown above). It is often used to symbolise the Trinity. We are to see them as the God who is united as Three, together as the origin of our life and all life and all that we know. There is the cup of fellowship on the table that is also the chalice of Christ’s blood shed for our salvation and completion of God’s purpose for the whole cosmos.
There is a space at the front of the table where the onlooker is invited to sit and to share their meal. The vacant seat awaits us, in our adoration, our joyful union with them in sharing their life. There is the cup of divine salvation and fellowship to drink from.
If we allow ourselves we may join them and be changed to be more like them.
Or we may walk on by and miss the invitation, and miss our true focus and purpose in life. The Trinity is not just some abstract philosophy about God, it is an invitation in the greatest of all relationships to be known and involved with.
Come to the table! Come sit and eat and drink and enjoy!
Further discussion about God as Trinity , related to evolution and the Cosmos is found in my book Cosmic Franciscans