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The Trinity

The Hospitality of Abraham by Andre Rublev (an icon of the Holy Trinity)

Introduction

It will be plain at this stage in the catechumenate that Orthodox Christians have an unusual (to some) but persuasive (to many) experience of God.  Let us assemble the pieces from the previous sessions.

1. God the Father sent the Son into the world as the Word made flesh, one Person; namely our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.

2. God the Father sent the Holy Spirit in His fullness at Pentecost upon the Church such that believers might share by grace what Christ has by nature; namely divinity.

3. God is one in nature in that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are co-equal in the one God.  Nonetheless, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are glorified one after the other and have differing but coordinated roles in the mutuality of their divine operations and attributes.

The first two statements are attested to in the first layer of the Apostolic Tradition, that is they are founded on the testimony of those who were witnesses personally to God's saving and sanctifying work in Christ from the Annunciation to the Mother of God by the Archangel Gabriel to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  However, properly speaking, it is both Pascha and Pentecost alone which enabled the disciples (now apostles) to appreciate exactly who Christ was and is and the significance of the coming of the Holy Spirit for the Church. 

Before the resurrection the disciples sometimes understood but more often they missed the point entirely.  This is why a truly Christian understanding of God can never be acquired by those who simply follow Jesus as the sublime teacher of religious and human truth but who stop short of Easter in their willingness to encounter the Living Christ.  (1) and (2) can only be affirmed by those who have had such an encounter (like St. Paul after the resurrection) or by those whose spiritual rebirth is mediated by the more general modes of Christ's appearing today in the life of the Church and most notably of course in the Holy Mysteries or Sacraments.

It will be see, therefore, that anyone who has come to (1) and (2) by personal experience in the Church necessarily and promptly moves on to embrace the second layer of Tradition (3) because, in its usual credal form, (rather than my summary here) we have here in the doctrine of the Trinity the only credible and persuasive account of how God can be both three in persons (Greek: hypostases) and one in being, essence or substance (Greek: ousia).  The technical language need not detain us here in this introduction; rather it is more important for now that we appreciate how the Trinity enables the Church to reconcile its experience of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit with its monotheistic belief in God.

Resources

Exploration

Pascha Cycle - "Knowing God"

Pentecost Cycle - "The Triad"

Holy Cross Cycle - "Energies and Essence"

Nativity Cycle - "Worship and Love"

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