Holy Trinity - God's Ultimately Perfect Nature

St-Irénée

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Aug 13, 2003
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Greetings, brothers and sisters in Christ!

The doctrine of the Trinity, defined by the early Church, is a powerful mystery not only hard to explain but very hard for our limited, human minds to comprehend fully.

In Matthew 28:19, Jesus instructs the apostles: "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."

Our Lord is tri-une not only because it is fitting for Him to be so, but because it is in this nature that He reveals His immensity and infinite glory.

In Hebrew, there is no "superlative" or way to intensify the meaning of an adjective other than to repeat it. Repeating a word twice is like putting an "-er" suffix on the end of a word ("great"- "greater") and repeating it three times is the ultimate fullness like adding the suffix "-est" to a word in English ("great" -- "greater"-- "GREATEST").

This is why the angels in Revelation praise Him by singing endlesssly "Holy, Holy, Holy..." (v. 4:8). The triple-Holy means "holiest" of all that is holy.

It goes without saying that the Lord would be ONE but more than just "one" in His Oneness -- fo rHe is the greatest, the holiest, and the most exalted. He is the omnipotent "Alpha and Omega" who is beyond description. No mere human words can describe Him, and thus He reveals Himself as Triune, as the ULTIMATE in greatness and being:

The FATHER, who is the creator of all....
The SON, who is not only creator of all, but the fullfillment of all that which God created...
The HOLY SPIRIT, who is the moving "breath" or "wind" of God, who permeates all
creation, inspiring, edifying, and interceding invisibly, inconspicuously, yet actively in our
minds, hearts and souls.

Through the Blessed, Holy Trinity, God reveals the fullness of His divine nature -- omnipotent, omnipresent, the source of all, the culmination of all. Indeed, the Beginning, the End, and all that is in between.

"'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord. 'the one who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty." (Rev. 1:8). The Lord Jesus Christ affirms He is God, one in being with the Father, when He repeats these words in Revelation 21:6.

The Father and the Son are the beginning and the end. God's eternal presence is reaffirmed in even the tri-une description of His omnipresence: "the one who is, and who was, and who is to come..." So indeed, once again, the Lord is perfect in time and space.

Similarly the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-9; Acts 28:25-27; Isaiah 6:8-10; 1 Cor. 2:10; Jer. 17:10; 1 Cor. 3:16, 6:19; Heb. 10:16; Jer. 31:33; Isaiah 9:6; John 14:16,26, 15:26, 16:7; Matt. 12:31; Luke 12:10; etc.). Eternally with God, eternally God, continuing the work of Salvation until the Son returns in glory.

In being Three, He is perfect in His Oneness. Being Three, our God is perfectly complete and completely perfect. Alleluia!

In Philippians 2:10–11, we read: "[A]t the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."

There Paul sites Isaiah 45:18–24, which says: "I, Yahweh, speak the truth . . . I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn. . . . To me every knee shall bow, every tongue confess. ‘Only in Yahweh,’ it shall be said of me, ‘are righteousness and strength.’ "

Here Paul applies the prophecy of every knee bending and every tongue confessing to Jesus, resulting in the prophecy that they will "confess that Jesus Christ is Yahweh." The stress on Christ as God is also picked up by the early Church Fathers (e.g., Ignatius, below).

Jesus himself declares that he is Yahweh ("I AM," in English translation). In John 8:58, when questioned about how he has special knowledge of Abraham, Jesus replies, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM." His audience understood exactly who he was claiming to be. "So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple" (John 8:59).

God is everlasting light (Isaiah 60:19) yet Jesus the Lamb is eternal light (Rev. 21:23). In Ezekiel 34:11-31, God the Father is the shepherd of the flock, and John 10:7-29 describes Jesus is the shepherd of the flock.

No matter where you go in the Sacred Scriptures, it is clear: Jesus is God.

The Apostle John's disciple, Ignatius of Antioch recognized that Jesus is God in his first Letter to the Ephesians (A.D. 110): "For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God’s plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of the Holy Spirit."

For as John the Apostle wrote in his Gospel: "The Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).

A difficult teaching to grasp, the Trinity is one of the blessed revelations God revealed in due time to His Church. For just as Israel awaited in joyful hope for the coming of the Messiah, only then would God reveal the fullness of His nature, through the Son (cf. John 14:6; ), then through the Holy Spirit's counsel (John 16:12-15).

Theologian Tertullian described the doctrine of the Trinity:

"We do indeed believe that there is only one God, but we believe that under this dispensation, or, as we say, "oikonomia", there is also a Son of this one only God, his Word, who proceeded from him and through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made. . . . We believe he was sent down by the Father, in accord with his own promise, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father and the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. . . . This rule of faith has been present since the beginning of the gospel, before even the earlier heretics...

"And at the same time the mystery of the "oikonomia" is safeguarded, for the unity is distributed in a Trinity. Placed in order, the three are the Father, Son, and Spirit. They are three, however, not in condition, but in degree; not in being, but in form; not in power, but in kind; of one being, however, and one condition and one power, because he is one God of whom degrees and forms and kinds are taken into account in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
(Against Praxeas 2 [A.D. 216]).

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end... AMEN!