Understanding the Trinity


Who God is, possibly the most foundational doctrine of the Christian faith and yet many Christians do not understand the doctrine of the Trinity. Here are the basics as explained by the first 4 ecumenical councils Nicaea 1, Constantinople 1, Ephasus and Chalcedon. A brief summary is found in the  Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed .

 The definition of the Trinity is given as: We believe in one God and there are three persons that share that one being (essence) that is God, The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. This singular being of God can also be called the divine nature/divine essence and the three persons share the divine essence. As stated by the Nicene creed " The Son is Homoousios (of one substance) with the Father". Now this one divine nature (or essence) is what makes God, God. It is Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, etc. and because of the shared divine nature the members of the trinity share one divine will. Meaning they all desire the same things and will the same things and are never in disagreement. However they are distinct persons so the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit etc. What distinguishes them from each other is their relationship to one another, being: the Father is only the Father because he has a Son and the Son is only the Son because he has a Father and the Spirit because he is the love between the Father and the Son as stated by Saint Augustine of Hippo.


The problem of analogies 

Many people have thought of analogies that one can be used to describe the Trinity such as: solid, liquid and gas being different states but being one substance (H20) or the three leaf clover showing that its one clover but possesses three different heads. The problem with analogies is that most often if you take them to their logical conclusions they lead to heresy. For example the Father does not turn into the Son and the Son does not turn into the Holy Spirit, like water does, this is the heresy of Modalism which was condemned by the church in the 4th century . The clover is also problematic because it suggests that each member of the Trinity makes up one third of the God which once again is heretical because all member's of the Trinity are fully God, this heresy is called Partialism. It can be helpful to know what the Trinity isn't to help approximate what it is. The only time one should use analogies is not when trying to define the Trinity but rather when trying to show someone who thinks it is logically impossible to have 3 persons in 1 God without ending up with 3 Gods. You can then use an analogy like the states of water to illustrate that simply because water has 3 different states does not mean that we now have 3 different substances. Indeed showing people examples in nature where a single entity is 3 in one sense but 1 in another, can help demonstrate the evident logical possibility of the Trinity but don't use the analogy to define the Trinity lest you become a heretic.

The 2 Natures of Christ


Jesus Christ being the Theanthropos (God man) took on a human nature during his incarnation by the blessed virgin Mary. This human nature co-exists with and is subject to his divine nature which he has always had from eternity unlike his human nature. This is why Jesus could feel hungry, grow in knowledge, not know things, be tired etc. It was due to his human nature that he experienced these things however this does not mean that Christ is now 2 persons because he has 2 natures. This is the heresy of Nestorianism condemned at the council of Ephesus 431. Christ is 1 person with both a human nature and a eternal divine nature that are without mixture or confusion (Chalcedon 451). This is called the hypostatic union whereby one can refer to an attribute of the nature as belonging to the person without needing to qualify the statement. For example one can say "God died for me" without qualifying that it was only the human nature that died on the cross not the divine nature or that Mary is the mother of God even though she only produced the human nature of Christ and not the divine nature. We do this so that we do not start speaking of Christ as though we are speaking of 2 different people with one person with a divine nature and another with a human nature. So we simply refer to an attribute of a nature as an attribute of the person. 

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