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Trinity

February 15, 2024

Several terms redirect here. For other uses, see Holy Trinity (disambiguation), Trinity (disambiguation), and God in Three Persons (album).

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (Latin: Trinitas, lit. 'triad', from Latin: trinus 'threefold')[1] is the central doctrine concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons:[2][3] God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons (hypostases) sharing one essence/substance/nature (homoousion).[4] As the Fourth Lateran Council declared, it is the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds.[5][6][7] In this context, one essence/nature defines what God is, while the three persons define who God is.[8][9] This expresses at once their distinction and their indissoluble unity. Thus, the entire process of creation and grace is viewed as a single shared action of the three divine persons, in which each person manifests the attributes unique to them in the Trinity, thereby proving that everything comes "from the Father," "through the Son," and "in the Holy Spirit."[10]

A compact diagram of the Trinity, known as the "Shield of Trinity". The Shield is generally not intended to be a schematic diagram of the structure of God, but it presents a series of statements about the correlation between the persons of the Trinity.

This doctrine is called Trinitarianism and its adherents are called Trinitarians, while its opponents are called antitrinitarians or nontrinitarians. Christian nontrinitarian positions include Unitarianism, Binitarianism and Modalism.

While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, the New Testament possesses a triadic understanding of God[11] and contains a number of Trinitarian formulas.[12][13] The doctrine of the Trinity was first formulated among the early Christians and fathers of the Church as they attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions.[14] There have been some different understandings of the Trinity among Christian theologians and denominations, including questions on issues such as: filioque, eternal functional subordination, subordinationism, eternal generation of the Son and social trinitarianism.[15][16][17][18]

Old Testament

The Old Testament has been interpreted as referring to the Trinity in many places. One of these is the prophecy about the Messiah in Isaiah 9. The Messiah is called "Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." Some Christians see this verse as meaning the Messiah will represent the Trinity on earth. This is because Counselor is a title for the Holy Spirit (John 14:26), the Trinity is God, Father is a title for God the Father, and Prince of Peace is a title for Jesus. This verse is also used to support the Deity of Christ.[19]

Another verse used to support the Deity of Christ is[20]

"I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed."

— Daniel 7:13–14 ESV

This is because both the Ancient of Days (God the Father) and the Son of Man (Jesus, Matt 16:13) have an everlasting dominion, which is ascribed to God in Psalm 145:13.[21]

Some also see

"Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven."

— Genesis 19:24 ESV

as Trinitarian since they think it is saying the Lord in heaven is different from the Lord on earth.

People also see the Trinity when the OT refers to God's word (Psalm 33:6), His Spirit (Isaiah 61:1), and Wisdom (Proverbs 9:1), as well as narratives such as the appearance of the three men to Abraham.[22] However, it is generally agreed among Trinitarian Christian scholars that it would go beyond the intention and spirit of the Old Testament to correlate these notions directly with later Trinitarian doctrine.[23]

Some Church Fathers believed that a knowledge of the mystery was granted to the prophets and saints of the Old Testament, and that they identified the divine messenger of Genesis 16:7, Genesis 21:17, Genesis 31:11, Exodus 3:2 and Wisdom of the sapiential books with the Son, and "the spirit of the Lord" with the Holy Spirit.[23]

Other Church Fathers, such as Gregory Nazianzen, argued in his Orations that the revelation was gradual, claiming that the Father was proclaimed in the Old Testament openly, but the Son only obscurely, because "it was not safe, when the Godhead of the Father was not yet acknowledged, plainly to proclaim the Son".[24]

Genesis 18–19 has been interpreted by Christians as a Trinitarian text. The narrative has the Lord appearing to Abraham, who was visited by three men.[25] In Genesis 19, "the two angels" visited Lot at Sodom.[26] The interplay between Abraham on the one hand and the Lord/three men/the two angels on the other was an intriguing text for those who believed in a single God in three persons. Justin Martyr, and John Calvin similarly, interpreted it such that Abraham was visited by God, who was accompanied by two angels.[27] Justin supposed that the God who visited Abraham was distinguishable from the God who remains in the heavens, but was nevertheless identified as the (monotheistic) God. Justin interpreted the God who visited Abraham as Jesus, the second person of the Trinity.[citation needed]

Augustine, in contrast, held that the three visitors to Abraham were the three persons of the Trinity.[27] He saw no indication that the visitors were unequal, as would be the case in Justin's reading. Then in Genesis 19, two of the visitors were addressed by Lot in the singular: "Lot said to them, 'Not so, my lord'" (Gen. 19:18).[27] Augustine saw that Lot could address them as one because they had a single substance, despite the plurality of persons.[a]

Christians interpret the theophanies, or appearances of the Angel of the Lord, as revelations of a person distinct from God, who is nonetheless called God. This interpretation is found in Christianity as early as Justin Martyr and Melito of Sardis, and reflects ideas that were already present in Philo.[28] The Old Testament theophanies were thus seen as Christophanies, each a "preincarnate appearance of the Messiah".[29]

New Testament

 
Russian icon of the Old Testament Trinity by Andrei Rublev, between 1408 and 1425

While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, the New Testament contains several Trinitarian formulas, including Matthew 28:19, 2 Corinthians 13:14, Ephesians 4:4–6, 1 Peter 1:2, and Revelation 1:4–6.[12][30] Reflection by early Christians on passages such as the Great Commission: "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" and Paul the Apostle's blessing: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all", leading theologians across history in attempting to articulate the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Eventually, the diverse references to God, Jesus, and the Spirit found in the New Testament were brought together to form the concept of the Trinity—one Godhead subsisting in three persons and one substance. The concept of the Trinity was used to oppose alternative views of how the three are related and to defend the church against charges of worshiping two or three gods.[31]

1 John 5:7–8

Modern Biblical scholarship largely agrees that 1 John 5:7 seen in Latin and Greek texts after the 4th century and found in later translations such as the King James Translation, cannot be found in the oldest Greek and Latin texts. Verse 7 is known as the Johannine Comma, which most scholars agree to be a later addition by a later copyist or what is termed a textual gloss[32] and not part of the original text.[b] This verse reads:

Because there are three in Heaven that testify – the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit – and these three are one.

This verse is absent from the Ethiopic, Aramaic, Syriac, Slavic, Armenian, Georgian, and Arabic translations of the Greek New Testament.

Jesus in the New Testament

 
God in the person of the Son confronts Adam and Eve, by Master Bertram (d. c. 1415)

In the Pauline epistles, the public, collective devotional patterns towards Jesus in the early Christian community are reflective of Paul's perspective on the divine status of Jesus in what scholars have termed a "binitarian" pattern or shape of devotional practice (worship) in the New Testament, in which "God" and Jesus are thematized and invoked.[33] Jesus receives prayer (1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 12:8–9), the presence of Jesus is confessionally invoked by believers (1 Corinthians 16:22; Romans 10:9–13; Philippians 2:10–11), people are baptized in Jesus' name (1 Corinthians 6:11; Romans 6:3), Jesus is the reference in Christian fellowship for a religious ritual meal (the Lord's Supper; 1 Corinthians 11:17–34).[34] Jesus is described as "existing in the very form of God" (Philippians 2:6), and having the "fullness of the Deity [living] in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). Jesus is also in some verses directly called God (Romans 9:5,[35] Titus 2:13, 2 Peter 1:1).

The Gospels depict Jesus as human through most of their narrative, but "[o]ne eventually discovers that he is a divine being manifest in flesh, and the point of the texts is in part to make his higher nature known in a kind of intellectual epiphany."[36] In the Gospels Jesus is described as forgiving sins, leading some theologians to believe Jesus is portrayed as God.[37] This is because Jesus forgives sins on the behalf of others, people normally only forgive transgressions against oneself. The teachers of the law next to Jesus recognizes this and said

"Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Mark 2:7

Jesus also receives προσκύνησις (proskynesis) in the aftermath of the resurrection, a Greek term that either expresses the contemporary social gesture of bowing to a superior, either on one's knees or in full prostration (in Matthew 18:26 a slave performs προσκύνησις to his master so that he would not be sold after being unable to pay his debts). The term can also refer to the religious act of devotion towards a deity. While Jesus receives προσκύνησις a number of times in the synoptic Gospels, only a few can be said to refer to divine worship.[38]

This includes Matthew 28:16–20, an account of the resurrected Jesus receiving worship from his disciples after proclaiming his authority over the cosmos and his ever-continuing presence with the disciples (forming an inclusion with the beginning of the Gospel, where Jesus is given the name Emmanuel, "God with us," a name that alludes to the God of Israel's ongoing presence with his followers throughout the Old Testament (Genesis 28:15; Deuteronomy 20:1).[39][40] Whereas some have argued that Matthew 28:19 was an interpolation on account of its absence from the first few centuries of early Christian quotations, scholars largely accept the passage as authentic due to its supporting manuscript evidence and that it does appear to be either quoted in the Didache (7:1–3)[41] or at least reflected in the Didache as part of a common tradition from which both Matthew and the Didache emerged.[42] Jesus receiving divine worship in the post-resurrection accounts is further mirrored in Luke 24:52.[43][44][43] Acts depicts the early Christian movement as a public cult centered around Jesus in several passages. In Acts, it is common for individual Christians to "call" upon the name of Jesus (9:14, 21; 22:16), an idea precedented in the Old Testament descriptions of calling on the name of YHWH as a form of prayer. The story of Stephen depicts Stephen invoking and crying out to Jesus in the final moments of his life to receive his spirit (7:59–60). Acts further describes a common ritual practice inducting new members into the early Jesus sect by baptizing them in Jesus' name (2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5).[45] According to Dale Allison, Acts depicts the appearances of Jesus to Paul as a divine theophany, styled on and identified with the God responsible for the theophany of Ezekiel in the Old Testament.[46]

The Gospel of John has been seen as especially aimed at emphasizing Jesus' divinity, presenting Jesus as the Logos, pre-existent and divine, from its first words: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).[47] The Gospel of John ends with Thomas's declaration that he believed Jesus was God, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28).[31] There is no significant tendency among modern scholars to deny that John 1:1 and John 20:28 identify Jesus with God.[48] However, in a 1973 Journal of Biblical Literature article, Philip B. Harner, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Heidelberg College, claimed that the traditional translation of John 1:1c ("and the Word was God") is incorrect. He endorses the New English Bible translation of John 1:1c, "and what God was, the Word was."[49] It should be noted however that Harner claim has been criticized by other scholars.[50] In the same article, Harner also noted that; "Perhaps the clause could be translated, 'the Word had the same nature as God". This would be one way of representing John's thought, which is, as I understand it, that the logos, no less than the theos, had the nature of theos," which in his case means the Word is as fully God as the person called "God".[51][52] John also portrays Jesus as the agent of creation of the universe.[53]

Jesus in later Christian theology

Some have suggested that John presents a hierarchy[54][55] when he quotes Jesus as saying, "The Father is greater than I", a statement which was appealed to by nontrinitarian groups such as Arianism.[56] However, Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas argued this statement was to be understood as Jesus speaking about his human nature.[57][58]

Holy Spirit in the New Testament

Prior Israelite theology held that the Spirit is merely the divine presence of God himself,[59] whereas orthodox Christian theology holds that the Holy Spirit is a distinct person of God the Father himself. This development begins early in the New Testament, as the Spirit of God receives much more emphasis and description comparably than it had in earlier Jewish writing. Whereas there are 75 references to the Spirit within the Old Testament and 35 identified in the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, despite its significantly shorter length, mentions the Spirit 275 times. In addition to its larger emphasis and importance placed on the Spirit in the New Testament, the Spirit is also described in much more personalized and individualized terms than earlier.[60] Larry Hurtado writes;

Moreover, the New Testament references often portray actions that seem to give the Spirit an intensely personal quality, probably more so than in Old Testament or ancient Jewish texts. So, for example, the Spirit "drove" Jesus into the wilderness (Mk 1:12; compare "led" in Mt. 4:1/Lk 4:1), and Paul refers to the Spirit interceding for believers (Romans 8:26–27) and witnessing to believers about their filial status with God (Romans 8:14–16). To cite other examples of this, in Acts the Spirit alerts Peter to the arrival of visitors from Cornelius (10:19), directs the church in Antioch to send forth Barnabas and Saul (13:2–4), guides the Jerusalem council to a decision about Gentile converts (15:28), at one point forbids Paul to missionize in Asia (16:6), and at another point warns Paul (via prophetic oracles) of trouble ahead in Jerusalem (21:11).[60]

The Holy Spirit is described as God in the book of the Acts of the Apostles

But Peter said, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God". Acts 5:3–4

Peter first says Ananias is lying to the Holy Spirit, he then says he is lying to God.

In the New Testament, the Spirit is not portrayed as the recipient of cultic devotion, which instead, is typically offered to God the Father and to the risen/glorified Jesus. Although what became mainstream Christianity subsequently affirmed the propriety of including the Spirit as the recipient of worship as reflected in the developed form of the Nicene Creed, perhaps the closest to this in the New Testament is in Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 which describe the Spirit as the subject of religious ritual.[61]

Holy Spirit in later Christian theology

As the Arian controversy was dissipating, the debate moved from the deity of Jesus Christ to the equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and Son. On one hand, the Pneumatomachi sect declared that the Holy Spirit was an inferior person to the Father and Son. On the other hand, the Cappadocian Fathers argued that the Holy Spirit was equal to the Father and Son in nature or substance.

Although the main text used in defense of the deity of the Holy Spirit was Matthew 28:19, Cappadocian Fathers such as Basil the Great argued from other verses such as "But Peter said, 'Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.'" (Acts 5:3–4).

Another passage the Cappadocian Fathers quoted from was "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host" (Psalm 33:6). According to their understanding, because "breath" and "spirit" in Hebrew are both "רוּחַ" ("ruach"), Psalm 33:6 is revealing the roles of the Son and Holy Spirit as co-creators. And since, according to them,[62] because only the holy God can create holy beings such as the angels, the Son and Holy Spirit must be God.

Yet another argument from the Cappadocian Fathers to prove that the Holy Spirit is of the same nature as the Father and Son comes from "For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:11). They reasoned that this passage proves that the Holy Spirit has the same relationship to God as the spirit within us has to us.[62]

The Cappadocian Fathers also quoted, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16) and reasoned that it would be blasphemous for an inferior being to take up residence in a temple of God, thus proving that the Holy Spirit is equal with the Father and the Son.[63]

They also combined "the servant does not know what his master is doing" (John 15:15) with 1 Corinthians 2:11 in an attempt to show that the Holy Spirit is not the slave of God, and therefore his equal.[64]

The Pneumatomachi contradicted the Cappadocian Fathers by quoting, "Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?" (Hebrews 1:14) in effect arguing that the Holy Spirit is no different from other created angelic spirits.[65] The Church Fathers disagreed, saying that the Holy Spirit is greater than the angels, since the Holy Spirit is the one who grants the foreknowledge for prophecy (1 Corinthians 12:8–10) so that the angels could announce events to come.[62]

Early Christianity

Further information: Trinitarianism in the Church Fathers

Before the Council of Nicaea

 
Detail of the earliest known artwork of the Trinity, the Dogmatic or Trinity Sarcophagus, c. 350 (Vatican Museums) Three similar figures, representing the Trinity, are involved in the creation of Eve, whose much smaller figure is cut off at lower right; to her right, Adam lies on the ground[66]

While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, it was first formulated as early Christians attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions.[14]

An early reference to the three "persons" of later Trinitarian doctrines appears towards the end of the first century, where Clement of Rome rhetorically asks in his epistle as to why corruption exists among some in the Christian community; "Do we not have one God, and one Christ, and one gracious Spirit that has been poured out upon us, and one calling in Christ?" (1 Clement 46:6).[67] A similar example is found in the first century Didache, which directs Christians to "baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit".[68]

Ignatius of Antioch similarly refers to all three persons around AD 110, exhorting obedience to "Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit".[69] Though all of these early sources do reference the three persons of the Trinity, none articulate full divinity, equal status, or shared being as elaborated by Trinitarians in later centuries.[citation needed]

The pseudonymous Ascension of Isaiah, written sometime between the end of the first century and the beginning of the third century, possesses a "proto-trinitarian" view, such as in its narrative of how the inhabitants of the sixth heaven sing praises to "the primal Father and his Beloved Christ, and the Holy Spirit".[70]

Justin Martyr (AD 100 – c. 165) also writes, "in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit".[71] Justin Martyr is the first to use much of the terminology that would later become widespread in codified Trinitarian theology. For example, he describes that the Son and Father are the same "being" (ousia) and yet are also distinct faces (prosopa), anticipating the three persons (hypostases) that come with Tertullian and later authors. Justin describes how Jesus, the Son, is distinguishable from the Father but also derives from the Father, using the analogy of a fire (representing the Son) that is lit from its source, a torch (representing the Father).[72] At another point, Justin Martyr wrote that "we worship him [Jesus Christ] with reason, since we have learned that he is the Son of the living God himself, and believe him to be in second place and the prophetic Spirit in the third" (1 Apology 13, cf. ch. 60).

 
The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Dürer (1511) From top to bottom: Holy Spirit (dove), God the Father and Christ on the cross

The first of the early Church Fathers to be recorded using the word "Trinity" was Theophilus of Antioch writing in the late 2nd century. He defines the Trinity as God, his Word (Logos) and his Wisdom (Sophia)[73] in the context of a discussion of the first three days of creation, following the early Christian practice of identifying the Holy Spirit as the Wisdom of God.[74]

The first defense of the doctrine of the Trinity was by Tertullian, who was born around 150–160 AD, explicitly "defined" the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and defended his theology against Praxeas,[75] although he noted that the majority of the believers in his day found issue with his doctrine.[76]

 
The "Heavenly Trinity" joined to the "Earthly Trinity" through the Incarnation of the Son–The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities by Murillo (c. 1677)

St. Justin and Clement of Alexandria referenced all three persons of the Trinity in their doxologies and St. Basil likewise, in the evening lighting of lamps.[77]

Origen of Alexandria (AD 185 – c. 253) has often been interpreted as Subordinationist – believing in shared divinity of the three persons but not in co-equality. (Some modern researchers have argued that Origen might have actually been anti-Subordinationist and that his own Trinitarian theology inspired the Trinitarian theology of the later Cappadocian Fathers.)[78][79]

The concept of the Trinity can be seen as developing significantly during the first four centuries by the Church Fathers in reaction to theological interpretations known as Adoptionism, Sabellianism, and Arianism. Adoptionism was the belief that Jesus was an ordinary man, born of Joseph and Mary, who became the Christ and Son of God at his baptism. In 269, the Synods of Antioch condemned Paul of Samosata for his Adoptionist theology, and also condemned the term homoousios (ὁμοούσιος, "of the same being") in the modalist sense in which he used it.[80]

Among the nontrinitarian beliefs, Sabellianism taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are essentially one and the same, the difference being simply verbal, describing different aspects or roles of a single being.[81] For this view Sabellius was excommunicated for heresy in Rome c. 220.

First Council of Nicaea (325)

Main article: First Council of Nicaea
 
The Glory of Saint Nicholas, by António Manuel da Fonseca; Nicholas of Myra, a participant in the First Council of Nicaea, achieves the beatific vision in the shape of the Holy Trinity.

In the fourth century, Arianism, as traditionally understood,[c] taught that the Father existed prior to the Son who was not, by nature, God but rather a changeable creature who was granted the dignity of becoming "Son of God".[82] In 325, the First Council of Nicaea adopted the Nicene Creed which described Christ as "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father", and the "Holy Ghost" as the one by which "was incarnate ... of the Virgin Mary".[83][84] ("the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us"). About the Father and the Son, the creed used the term homoousios (of one substance) to define the relationship between the Father and the Son. After more than fifty years of debate, homoousios was recognised as the hallmark of orthodoxy, and was further developed into the formula of "three persons, one being".

The Confession of the First Council of Nicaea, the Nicene Creed, said little about the Holy Spirit.[85] At the First Council of Nicea (325) all attention was focused on the relationship between the Father and the Son, without making any similar statement about the Holy Spirit. In the words of the creed:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father [the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God,] Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; ... And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost. ...

First Council of Constantinople (381)

Main article: First Council of Constantinople

Later, at the First Council of Constantinople (381), the Nicene Creed would be expanded, known as Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, by saying that the Holy Spirit is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and the Son (συμπροσκυνούμενον καὶ συνδοξαζόμενον), suggesting that he was also consubstantial with them:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; ... And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets ...[86]

The doctrine of the divinity and personality of the Holy Spirit was developed by Athanasius in the last decades of his life.[87] He defended and refined the Nicene formula.[85] By the end of the 4th century, under the leadership of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (the Cappadocian Fathers), the doctrine had reached substantially its current form.[85]

Middle Ages

Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil the Great account for the Trinity saw that the distinctions between the three divine persons were solely in their inner divine relations. There are not three gods, God is one divine Being in three persons.[88] Where the Cappadocian Fathers used social analogies to describe the triune nature of God, Augustine of Hippo used psychological analogy. He believed that if man is created in the image of God, he is created in the image of the Trinity. Augustine's analogy for the Trinity is the memory, intelligence, and will in the mind of a man. In short, Christians do not have to think of three persons when they think of God; they may think of one person.[89]

In the late 6th century, some Latin-speaking churches added the words "and from the Son" (Filioque) to the description of the procession of the Holy Spirit, words that were not included in the text by either the Council of Nicaea or that of Constantinople.[90] This was incorporated into the liturgical practice of Rome in 1014.[91] Filioque eventually became one of the main causes for the East–West Schism in 1054, and the failures of the repeated union attempts.

Gregory of Nazianzus would say of the Trinity, "No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Three than I am carried back into the One. When I think of any of the Three, I think of Him as the Whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light."[92]

Devotion to the Trinity centered in the French monasteries at Tours and Aniane where Benedict of Aniane dedicated the abbey church to the Trinity in 872. Feast days were not instituted until 1091 at Cluny and 1162 at Canterbury and papal resistance continued until 1331.[77]

Theology

"Trinitarian" redirects here. For other uses, see Trinitarian (disambiguation).

Trinitarian baptismal formula

Main article: Trinitarian formula
 
The Baptism of Christ, by Piero della Francesca, 15th century

Baptism is generally conferred with the Trinitarian formula, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit".[93] Trinitarians identify this name with the Christian faith into which baptism is an initiation, as seen for example in the statement of Basil the Great (330–379): "We are bound to be baptized in the terms we have received, and to profess faith in the terms in which we have been baptized." The First Council of Constantinople (381) also says, "This is the Faith of our baptism that teaches us to believe in the Name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. According to this Faith there is one Godhead, Power, and Being of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."[94] may be taken to indicate that baptism was associated with this formula from the earliest decades of the Church's existence. Other Trinitarian formulas found in the New Testament include in 2 Corinthians 13:14, 1 Corinthians 12:4–6, Ephesians 4:4–6, 1 Peter 1:2 and Revelation 1:4–5.[12][30]

Oneness Pentecostals demur from the Trinitarian view of baptism and emphasize baptism "in the name of Jesus Christ" only, what they hold to be the original apostolic formula.[95] For this reason, they often focus on the baptisms in Acts. Those who place great emphasis on the baptisms in Acts often likewise question the authenticity of Matthew 28:19 in its present form.[citation needed] Most scholars of New Testament textual criticism accept the authenticity of the passage, since there are no variant manuscripts regarding the formula,[41] and the extant form of the passage is attested in the Didache[96] and other patristic works of the 1st and 2nd centuries: Ignatius,[97] Tertullian,[98] Hippolytus,[99] Cyprian,[100] and Gregory Thaumaturgus.[101]

Commenting on Matthew 28:19, Gerhard Kittel states:

This threefold relation [of Father, Son and Spirit] soon found fixed expression in the triadic formulae in 2 Corinthians 13:14[102] and in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6.[103] The form is first found in the baptismal formula in Matthew 28:19 Did., 7. 1 and 3. ... [I]t is self-evident that Father, Son and Spirit are here linked in an indissoluble threefold relationship.[104]

One God in three persons

In Trinitarian doctrine, God exists as three persons but is one being, having a single divine nature.[105] The members of the Trinity are co-equal and co-eternal, one in essence, nature, power, action, and will. As stated in the Athanasian Creed, the Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, and the Holy Spirit is uncreated, and all three are eternal without beginning.[106] "The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" are not names for different parts of God, but one name for God[107] because three persons exist in God as one entity.[108] They cannot be separate from one another. Each person is understood as having the identical essence or nature, not merely similar natures.[109]

According to the Eleventh Council of Toledo (675) "For, when we say: He who is the Father is not the Son, we refer to the distinction of persons; but when we say: the Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, and the Holy Spirit that which the Father is and the Son is, this clearly refers to the nature or substance".[110]

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) adds: "Therefore in God there is only a Trinity, not a quaternity, since each of the three persons is that reality – that is to say substance, essence or divine nature-which alone is the principle of all things, besides which no other principle can be found. This reality neither begets nor is begotten nor proceeds; the Father begets, the Son is begotten and the holy Spirit proceeds. Thus there is a distinction of persons but a unity of nature. Although therefore the Father is one person, the Son another person and the holy Spirit another person, they are not different realities, but rather that which is the Father is the Son and the holy Spirit, altogether the same; thus according to the orthodox and catholic faith they are believed to be consubstantial. "[111][112]

Clarification of the relationships among the three Trinitarian Persons (divine persons, different from the sense of a "human self") advanced in the Magisterial statement promulgated by the Council of Florence (1431–1449), though its formulation precedes the council: "These three persons are one God and not three gods, for the three are one substance, one essence, one nature, one Godhead, one infinity, one eternity, and everything (in them) is one where there is no opposition of relationship [relationis oppositio]".[d] Robert Magliola explains that most theologians have taken relationis oppositio in the "Thomist" sense, namely, the "opposition of relationship" [in English we would say "oppositional relationship"] is one of contrariety rather than contradiction. The only "functions" that are applied uniquely to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit respectively in Scripture are the following: "Paternity" to the Father, "Filiation" (Sonship) to the Son, and "Passive Spiration" or that which is "breathed out", to the Holy Spirit. Magliola goes on to explain:

Because such is the case (among other reasons), Karl Rahner rejects the "psychological" theories of Trinity which define the Father as Knower, for example, and the Son as the Known (i.e., Truth). Scripture in one place or another identifies Knowing with each of the three Persons all told. Which is to say, according to the relationis oppositio, Knowing (in our example) does not define the Persons [qua individual Persons] at all, but the Unity of God instead. (Scripture's attribution of Knowing to any one Person at any one time is said to be just "appropriated" to the Person: it does not really belong to that unique Person).[113]

Magliola, continuing the Rahnerian stance, goes on to explain that the Divine Persons necessarily relate to each other in terms of "pure negative reference", that is, the three "Is Not" relations represented in the Scutum Fidei diagram are in each case a pure or absolute "Is Not". This is the case because the relationis oppositio clause disallows the Persons to "share", qua Persons, the unique role that defines each of them. Lest he be misunderstood, Magliola, in a subsequent publication, makes sure to specify that each of the three Persons, while unique as a Person, is nonetheless—because of the Divine "consubstantiality" and "simplicity"—the one Reality that is God.[114]

Perichoresis

Main article: Perichoresis
 
A depiction of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, at which the Deity of Christ was declared orthodox and Arianism condemned

Perichoresis (from Greek, "going around", "envelopment") is a term used by some scholars to describe the relationship among the members of the Trinity. The Latin equivalent for this term is circumincessio. This concept refers for its basis to John 10:38,14:11,14:20,[115] where Jesus is instructing the disciples concerning the meaning of his departure. His going to the Father, he says, is for their sake; so that he might come to them when the "other comforter" is given to them. Then, he says, his disciples will dwell in him, as he dwells in the Father, and the Father dwells in him, and the Father will dwell in them. This is so, according to the theory of perichoresis, because the persons of the Trinity "reciprocally contain one another, so that one permanently envelopes and is permanently enveloped by, the other whom he yet envelopes" (Hilary of Poitiers, Concerning the Trinity 3:1).[116] The most prominent exponent of perichoresis was John of Damascus (d. 749) who employed the concept as a technical term to describe both the interpenetration of the divine and human natures of Christ and the relationship between the hypostases of the Trinity.[117]

Perichoresis effectively excludes the idea that God has parts, but rather is a simple being. It also harmonizes well with the doctrine that the Christian's union with the Son in his humanity brings him into union with one who contains in himself, in Paul's words, "all the fullness of deity" and not a part.[e] Perichoresis provides an intuitive figure of what this might mean. The Son, the eternal Word, is from all eternity the dwelling place of God; he is the "Father's house", just as the Son dwells in the Father and the Spirit; so that, when the Spirit is "given", then it happens as Jesus said, "I will not leave you as orphans; for I will come to you."[118]

Economic and immanent Trinity

The term "immanent Trinity" focuses on who God is; the term "economic Trinity" focuses on what God does. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,

The Fathers of the Church distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia). "Theology" refers to the mystery of God's inmost life within the Blessed Trinity and "economy" to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life. Through the oikonomia the theologia is revealed to us; but conversely, the theologia illuminates the whole oikonomia. God's works reveal who he is in himself; the mystery of his inmost being enlightens our understanding of all his works. So it is, analogously, among human persons. A person discloses himself in his actions, and the better we know a person, the better we understand his actions.[119]

The whole divine economy is the common work of the three divine persons. For as the Trinity has only one and the same natures so too does it have only one and the same operation: "The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three principles of creation but one principle." However, each divine person performs the common work according to his unique personal property. Thus the Church confesses, following the New Testament, "one God and Father from whom all things are, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things are, and one Holy Spirit in whom all things are". It is above all the divine missions of the Son's Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit that show forth the properties of the divine persons.[120]

The ancient Nicene theologians argued that everything the Trinity does is done by Father, Son, and Spirit working in unity with one will. The three persons of the Trinity always work inseparably, for their work is always the work of the one God. The Son's will cannot be different from the Father's because it is the Father's. They have but one will as they have but one being. Otherwise they would not be one God. On this point St. Basil said:

When then He says, "I have not spoken of myself", and again, "As the Father said unto me, so I speak", and "The word which ye hear is not mine, but [the Father's] which sent me", and in another place, "As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do", it is not because He lacks deliberate purpose or power of initiation, nor yet because He has to wait for the preconcerted key-note, that he employs language of this kind. His object is to make it plain that His own will is connected in indissoluble union with the Father. Do not then let us understand by what is called a "commandment" a peremptory mandate delivered by organs of speech, and giving orders to the Son, as to a subordinate, concerning what He ought to do. Let us rather, in a sense befitting the Godhead, perceive a transmission of will, like the reflexion of an object in a mirror, passing without note of time from Father to Son.[121]

According to Thomas Aquinas the Son prayed to the Father, became a minor to the angels, became incarnate, obeyed the Father as to his human nature; as to his divine nature the Son remained God: "Thus, then, the fact that the Father glorifies, raises up, and exalts the Son does not show that the Son is less than the Father, except in His human nature. For, in the divine nature by which He is equal to the Father, the power of the Father and the Son is the same and their operation is the same."[58] Aquinas stated that the mystery of the Son cannot be explicitly believed to be true without faith in the Trinity (ST IIa IIae, 2.7 resp. and 8 resp.).[122]

 
A Greek fresco of Athanasius of Alexandria, the chief architect of the Nicene Creed, formulated at Nicaea

Athanasius of Alexandria explained that the Son is eternally one in being with the Father, temporally and voluntarily subordinate in his incarnate ministry.[123] Such human traits, he argued, were not to be read back into the eternal Trinity. Likewise, the Cappadocian Fathers also insisted there was no economic inequality present within the Trinity. As Basil wrote: "We perceive the operation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be one and the same, in no respect showing differences or variation; from this identity of operation we necessarily infer the unity of nature."[124]

The traditional theory of "appropriation" consists in attributing certain names, qualities, or operations to one of the Persons of the Trinity, not, however, to the exclusion of the others, but in preference to the others. This theory was established by the Latin Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, especially by Hilary of Poitiers, Augustine, and Leo the Great. In the Middle Ages, the theory was systematically taught by the Schoolmen such as Bonaventure.[125]

Trinity and love

Augustine "coupled the doctrine of the Trinity with anthropology. Proceeding from the idea that humans are created by God according to the divine image, he attempted to explain the mystery of the Trinity by uncovering traces of the Trinity in the human personality".[126] The first key of his exegesis is an interpersonal analogy of mutual love. In De trinitate (399–419) he wrote,

We are now eager to see whether that most excellent love is proper to the Holy Spirit, and if it is not so, whether the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Trinity itself is love, since we cannot contradict the most certain faith and the most weighty authority of Scripture which says: "God is love".[f][127]

The Bible reveals it although only in the two neighboring verses 1 John 4:8.16, therefore one must ask if love itself is triune. Augustine found that it is, and consists of "three: the lover, the beloved, and the love."[g][128]

Reaffirming the theopaschite formula unus de trinitate passus est carne (meaning "One of the Trinity suffered in the flesh"),[129] Thomas Aquinas wrote that Jesus suffered and died as to his human nature, as to his divine nature he could not suffer or die. "But the commandment to suffer clearly pertains to the Son only in His human nature. ... And the way in which Christ was raised up is like the way He suffered and died, that is, in the flesh. For it says in 1 Peter (4:1): 'Christ having suffered in the flesh' ... then, the fact that the Father glorifies, raises up, and exalts the Son does not show that the Son is less than the Father, except in His human nature. For, in the divine nature by which He is equal to the Father."[130]

In the 1900s the recovery of a substantially different formula of theopaschism took place: at least unus de Trinitate passus est (meaning "not only in the flesh").[131] Deeply affected by the atomic bombs event,[132] as early as 1946 the Lutheran theologian Kazoh Kitamori published Theology of the Pain of God,[133] a theology of the Cross pushed up to the immanent Trinity. This concept was later taken by both Reformed and Catholic theology: in 1971 by Jürgen Moltmann's The Crucified God; in the 1972 "Preface to the Second Edition" of his 1969 German book Theologie der drei Tage (English translation: The Mystery of Easter) by Hans Urs von Balthasar, who took a cue from Revelation 13:8 (Vulgate: agni qui occisus est ab origine mundi, NIV: "the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world") to explore the "God is love" idea as an "eternal super-kenosis".[134] In the words of von Balthasar: "At this point, where the subject undergoing the 'hour' is the Son speaking with the Father, the controversial 'Theopaschist formula' has its proper place: 'One of the Trinity has suffered.' The formula can already be found in Gregory Nazianzen: 'We needed a ... crucified God'."[135]

But if theopaschism indicates only a Christological kenosis (or kenotic Christology), instead von Balthasar supports a Trinitarian kenosis:[136] "The persons of the Trinity constitute themselves as who they are through the very act of pouring themselves out for each other".[137] The underlying question is if the three Persons of the Trinity can live a self-love (amor sui), as well as if for them, with the conciliar dogmatic formulation in terms that today we would call ontotheological, it is possible that the aseity (causa sui) is valid. If the Father is not the Son or the Spirit since the generator/begetter is not the generated/begotten nor the generation/generative process and vice versa, and since the lover is neither the beloved nor the love dynamic between them and vice versa, Christianity has provided as a response a concept of divine ontology and love different from common sense (omnipotence, omnibenevolence, impassibility, etc.):[138] an oblative, sacrificial, martyrizing, crucifying, precisely kenotic concept.

Trinity and will

Benjamin B. Warfield saw a principle of subordination in the "modes of operation" of the Trinity, but was also hesitant to ascribe the same to the "modes of subsistence" in relation of one to another. While noting that it is natural to see a subordination in function as reflecting a similar subordination in substance, he suggests that this might be the result of "an agreement by Persons of the Trinity – a 'Covenant' as it is technically called – by virtue of which a distinct function in the work of redemption is assumed by each".[139]

Trinity and Christian apologetics

Today, several analogies for the Trinity abound. The comparison is sometimes made between the triune God and H2O.[140][141] Just as H2O can come in three distinct forms (liquid, solid, gas), so God appears as Father, Son, Spirit.[140][141] The mathematical analogy, "1+1+1=3, but 1x1x1=1" is also used to explain the Trinity.[140]

Political aspect

According to Eusebius, Constantine suggested the term homoousios at the Council of Nicaea, though most scholars have doubted that Constantine had such knowledge and have thought that most likely Hosius had suggested the term to him.[142] Constantine later changed his view about the Arians, who opposed the Nicene formula, and supported the bishops who rejected the formula,[143] as did several of his successors, the first emperor to be baptized in the Nicene faith being Theodosius the Great, emperor from 379 to 395.[144]

Nontrinitarian Christian beliefs

Main article: Nontrinitarianism

Nontrinitarianism (or antitrinitarianism) refers to Christian belief systems that reject the doctrine of the Trinity as found in the Nicene Creed as not having a scriptural origin. Nontrinitarian views differ widely on the nature of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Various nontrinitarian views, such as Adoptionism, Monarchianism, and Arianism existed prior to the formal definition of the Trinity doctrine in AD 325, 360, and 431, at the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus, respectively.[145] Following the adoption of trinitarianism at Constantinople in 381, Arianism was driven from the Empire, retaining a foothold amongst the Germanic tribes. When the Franks converted to Catholicism in 496, however, it gradually faded out.[82] Nontrinitarianism was later renewed in the Gnosticism of the Cathars in the 11th through 13th centuries, in the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, and in some groups arising during the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century.[h]

Arianism was condemned as heretical by the First Council of Nicaea and, lastly, with Sabellianism by the Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople, 381 CE).[146] Adoptionism was declared as heretical by the Ecumenical Council of Frankfurt, convened by the Emperor Charlemagne in 794 for the Latin West Church.[147]

Modern nontrinitarian groups or denominations include Christadelphians, Christian Science, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Dawn Bible Students, Iglesia ni Cristo, Jehovah's Witnesses, Living Church of God, Members Church of God International, Oneness Pentecostals, La Luz del Mundo, the Seventh Day Church of God, Unitarian Christians, United Church of God, and The Shepherd's Chapel.

As pointed out by Jonathan Israel,[148] the 17th Century Dutch Republic was more religiously tolerant than other European countries of the time, but its dominant Calvinist Church drew the line at groups who denied the Trinity; this was considered an intolerable aberration, and such groups were subject to various forms of persecution in the Netherlands.

Other religions' views

Judaism

See also: God in Judaism, Judaism's view of Jesus, and Shituf

Judaism maintains a tradition of monotheism that excludes the possibility of a Trinity.[149] In Judaism, God is understood to be the absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable being which is the ultimate cause of all existence.

Some Kabbalist writings have a Trinitarian-esque view of God, speaking of "stages of God's being, aspects of the divine personality", with God being "three hidden lights, which constitute one essence and one root". Some Jewish philosophers additionally saw God as a "thinker, thinking and thought", taking from Augustinian analogies.[150] The Zohar additionally says that "God is they, and they are it".

Philo of Alexandria recognized a threefold character of God, but had many differences from the Christian view of the Trinity.[151] John William Colenso argued that the Book of Enoch implies a Trinitarian-esque view of God, seeing the "Lord of the spirits", the "Elected one" and the "Divine power" each partaking of the name of God.[152]

Islam

Main articles: Islamic view of the Trinity, Haqq–Muhammad–Ali, and Shirk (Islam)

Islam considers Jesus to be a prophet, but not divine,[149] and God to be absolutely indivisible (a concept known as tawhid).[153] Several verses of the Quran state that the doctrine of the Trinity is blasphemous.

Indeed, disbelievers have said, "Truly, Allah is Messiah, son of Mary." But Messiah said, "Children of Israel! Worship Allah, my lord and your lord." Indeed, whoever associates partners with Allah, surely Allah has forbidden them from Heaven, and fire is their resort. And there are no helpers for the wrongdoers. Indeed, disbelievers have said, "Truly, Allah is a third of three." Yet, there is no god except One God, and if they do not desist from what they say, a grievous punishment befalls the disbelievers. Will they not turn to Allah and ask His forgiveness? For Allah is most forgiving and merciful. Is not Messiah, son of Mary, only a messenger? Indeed, messengers had passed away prior to him. And his mother was an upright woman. They both ate food. Observe how we explain the signs for them, then observe how they turn away (from truth)!

— Quran 5:72–75

Interpretation of these verses by modern scholars has been varied. Verse 5:73 has been interpreted as a potential criticism of Syriac literature that references Jesus as "the third of three" and thus an attack on the view that Christ was divine.[154] Another interpretation is that this passage should be studied from a rhetorical perspective; so as not to be an error, but an intentional misrepresentation of the doctrine of the Trinity in order to demonstrate its absurdity from an Islamic perspective.[155] David Thomas states that verse 5:116 need not be seen as describing actually professed beliefs, but rather, giving examples of shirk (claiming divinity for beings other than God) and a "warning against excessive devotion to Jesus and extravagant veneration of Mary, a reminder linked to the central theme of the Qur'an that there is only one God and He alone is to be worshipped."[153] When read in this light, it can be understood as an admonition, "Against the divinization of Jesus that is given elsewhere in the Qur'an and a warning against the virtual divinization of Mary in the declaration of the fifth-century church councils that she is 'God-bearer'." Similarly, Gabriel Reynolds, Sidney Griffith and Mun'im Sirry argue that this quranic verse is to be understood as an intentional caricature and rhetorical statement to warn from the dangers of deifiying Jesus or Mary.[156][157] It has been suggested that the Islamic representation of the doctrine of the Trinity may derive from its description in some texts of Manichaeism "where we encounter a trinity, consisting of a Father, a Mother of Life / the Living Spirit and the Original Man".[158]

Artistic depictions

Main article: Trinity in art

The Trinity is most commonly seen in Christian art with the Spirit represented by a dove, as specified in the Gospel accounts of the Baptism of Christ; he is nearly always shown with wings outspread. However depictions using three human figures appear occasionally in most periods of art.[159]

The Father and the Son are usually differentiated by age, and later by dress, but this too is not always the case. The usual depiction of the Father as an older man with a white beard may derive from the biblical Ancient of Days, which is often cited in defense of this sometimes controversial representation. However, in Eastern Orthodoxy the Ancient of Days is usually understood to be God the Son, not God the Father (see below)—early Byzantine images show Christ as the Ancient of Days,[160] but this iconography became rare. When the Father is depicted in art, he is sometimes shown with a halo shaped like an equilateral triangle, instead of a circle. The Son is often shown at the Father's right hand (Acts 7:56). He may be represented by a symbol—typically the Lamb (agnus dei) or a cross—or on a crucifix, so that the Father is the only human figure shown at full size. In early medieval art, the Father may be represented by a hand appearing from a cloud in a blessing gesture, for example in scenes of the Baptism of Christ. Later, in the West, the Throne of Mercy (or "Throne of Grace") became a common depiction. In this style, the Father (sometimes seated on a throne) is shown supporting either a crucifix[161] or, later, a slumped crucified Son, similar to the Pietà (this type is distinguished in German as the Not Gottes),[162] in his outstretched arms, while the Dove hovers above or in between them. This subject continued to be popular until the 18th century at least.

By the end of the 15th century, larger representations, other than the Throne of Mercy, became effectively standardised, showing an older figure in plain robes for the Father, Christ with his torso partly bare to display the wounds of his Passion, and the dove above or around them. In earlier representations both Father, especially, and Son often wear elaborate robes and crowns. Sometimes the Father alone wears a crown, or even a papal tiara.

In the later part of the Christian Era, in Renaissance European iconography, the Eye of Providence began to be used as an explicit image of the Christian Trinity and associated with the concept of Divine Providence. Seventeenth-century depictions of the Eye of Providence sometimes show it surrounded by clouds or sunbursts.[163]

Image gallery

  •  
    Depiction of Trinity from Saint Denis Basilica in Paris (12th century)
  •  
    The Father, The Holy Spirit, and Christ crucified, depicted in a Welsh manuscript c. 1390–1400
  •  
    The Holy Trinity in an angelic glory over a landscape, by Lucas Cranach the Elder (d. 1553)
  •  
    God the Father (top), and the Holy Spirit (represented by a dove) depicted above Jesus Painting by Francesco Albani (d. 1660)
  •  
    God the Father (top), the Holy Spirit (a dove), and the child Jesus, painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (d. 1682)
  •  
    Pope Clement I prays to the Trinity, in a typical post-Renaissance depiction by Gianbattista Tiepolo (d. 1770)
  •  
    Atypical depiction The Son is identified by a lamb, the Father an Eye of Providence, and the Spirit a dove; the painting is by Fridolin Leiber (d. 1912).
  •  
    13th-century depiction of the Trinity from a Roman de la Rose manuscript
  •  
    Renaissance painting by Jerónimo Cosida depicting Jesus as a triple deity Inner text: The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God
  •  
    Representation of the Trinity in the form of the mercy seat (epitaph from 1549)

Trinity in architecture

The concept of the Trinity was made visible in the Heiligen-Geist-Kapelle in Bruck an der Mur, Austria, with a ground plan of an equilateral triangle with beveled corners.[164]

Trinity in literature

The Trinity has traditionally been a subject matter of strictly theological works focused on proving the doctrine of the Trinity and defending it against its critics. In recent years, however, the Trinity has made an entrance into the world of (Christian) literature through books such as The Shack, published in 2007 and The Trinity Story, published in 2021.

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Augustine had poor knowledge of the Greek language, and no knowledge of Hebrew. So he trusted the Septuagint, which differentiates between κύριοι ('lords', vocative plural) and κύριε ('lord', vocative singular), even if the Hebrew verbal form,נא-אדני‎ (na-adoni), is exactly the same in both cases.
  2. ^ See, for instance, the note in 1 John 5:7–8
  3. ^ Very little of Arius' own writings have survived. We depend largely on quotations made by opponents which reflect what they thought he was saying. Furthermore, there was no single Arian party or agenda but rather various critics of the Nicene formula working from distinct perspectives.(Williams 2001, pp. 95–, 247–)
  4. ^ Denzinger, Heinrich (1962), Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, Herder, p. 1330 English trans. Dupuis & Neuner 2001, p. 111
  5. ^ See also Divinization (Christian)
  6. ^ (in Latin) Veluti nunc cupimus videre utrum illa excellentissima caritas proprie Spiritus Sanctus sit. Quod si non est, aut Pater est caritas, aut Filius, aut ipsa Trinitas, quoniam resistere non possumus certissimae fidei, et validissimae auctoritati Scripturae dicentis: 'Deus caritas est'.
  7. ^ (in Latin) Tria ergo sunt: amans, et quod amatur, et amor.
  8. ^ See also Binitarianism

Citations

  1. ^ . Oxford Dictionaries – English. Archived from the original on 26 December 2012.
  2. ^ Daley 2009, pp. 323–350.
  3. ^ Ramelli 2012.
  4. ^ Definition of the Fourth Lateran Council quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church §253. Latin: substantia, essentia seu natura divina (DS 804).
  5. ^ . Archived from the original on 7 July 2019. Retrieved 7 July 2019.
  6. ^ "Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit | EWTN". EWTN Global Catholic Television Network. Retrieved 24 December 2022.
  7. ^ Fathers, Council (11 November 1215). Fourth Lateran Council : 1215 Council Fathers. Retrieved 24 December 2022.
  8. ^ . Ignatiusinsight.com. Archived from the original on 30 July 2018. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  9. ^ Sheed, Frank J. (11 January 1978). Theology & Sanity. Bloomsbury Publishing (published 1978). ISBN 9780826438829. Retrieved 21 December 2021. Nature answers the question what we are; person answers the question who we are. [...] Nature is the source of our operations, person does them.
  10. ^ «Catechism of the Catholic Church, 253–267: The dogma of the Holy Trinity»
  11. ^ Hurtado 2010, pp. 99–110.
  12. ^ a b c Januariy 2013, p. 99.
  13. ^ Archimandrite Janurariy (Ivliev) (9 March 2013) [2003]. "The Elements of Triadology in the New Testament". In Stewart, Melville Y. (ed.). The Trinity: East/West Dialogue. Volume 24 of Studies in Philosophy and Religion. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media (published 2013). p. 100. ISBN 9789401703932. Retrieved 21 December 2021. Trinitarian formulas are found in New Testament books such as 1 Peter 1:2; and 2 Cor 13:13. But the formula used by John the mystery-seer is unique. Perhaps it shows John's original adaptation of Paul's dual formula.
  14. ^ a b Hurtado 2005, pp. 644–648.
  15. ^ "Filioque | Christianity | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 1 May 2023.
  16. ^ English, Lance. "Why We Must Reject Social Trinitarianism: It is neither Nicene nor Biblical – Credo Magazine". credomag.com. Retrieved 1 May 2023.
  17. ^ "Trinitarian Agency and the Eternal Subordination of the Son: An Augustinian Perspective". The Gospel Coalition. Retrieved 1 May 2023.
  18. ^ "Subordinationism | Christianity | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 1 May 2023.
  19. ^ "For to Us a Child Is Born: The Meaning of Isaiah 9:6". Zondervan Academic. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
  20. ^ "Doctrine of the Last Things (Part 1): The Second Coming of Christ". Reasonable Faith. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
  21. ^ "Bible Gateway passage: Psalm 145:13 – New International Version". Bible Gateway. Retrieved 31 July 2022.
  22. ^ Cross & Livingstone 2005, p. 1652.
  23. ^ a b Joyce 1912.
  24. ^ Gregory Nazianzen, Orations, 31.26
  25. ^ Genesis 18:1–2
  26. ^ Genesis 19
  27. ^ a b c Watson, Francis. Abraham's Visitors: Prolegomena to a Christian Theological Exegesis of Genesis 18–19
  28. ^ Hurtado 2005, pp. 573–578.
  29. ^ "Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology: Angel of the Lord". Studylight.org. Retrieved 2 January 2012.
  30. ^ a b Fee 2002, p. 52.
  31. ^ a b Metzger & Coogan 1993, pp. 782–783.
  32. ^ Metzger & Ehrman 1968, p. 101.
  33. ^ Hurtado 2010, pp. [1].
  34. ^ Hurtado 2005, pp. 134–152.
  35. ^ "Is Jesus God? (Romans 9:5)". billmounce.com. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
  36. ^ Litwa 2019, p. 53.
  37. ^ CS Lewis (2001). Mere Christianity. HarperCollins. pp. 51–52.
  38. ^ Kupp 1996, p. 226.
  39. ^ Hays 2014, pp. 44–45.
  40. ^ Hurtado 2005, pp. 337–338.
  41. ^ a b Ferguson 2009, pp. 134–135.
  42. ^ Sim & Repschinski 2008, pp. 124–125.
  43. ^ a b Hurtado 2005, p. 345.
  44. ^ Bauckham 2017, pp. 516–519.
  45. ^ Hurtado 2005, pp. 194–206.
  46. ^ Allison 2016, pp. 807–826.
  47. ^ "The Presentation of Jesus in John's Gospel". h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition. 10 January 2008. Retrieved 2 January 2012.
  48. ^ Brown 1970, pp. 1026, 1032.
  49. ^ Philip B. Harner, "Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1", Journal of Biblical Literature 92, 1 (March 1973),
  50. ^ Hartley, Donald. "Revisiting the Colwell Construction in Light of Mass/Count Nouns". bible.org. Retrieved 1 November 2022.
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  52. ^ Rhodes, Ron. "Reasoning from the Scriptures with the Jehovah's Witnesses" Harvest House Publishers, 2009, p. 104-105.
  53. ^ Hoskyns 1967, p. 142.
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  55. ^ Polkinghorne 2008, pp. 395–396.
  56. ^ Simonetti & Oden 2002.
  57. ^ St. Augustine of Hippo,De Trinitate, Book I, Chapter 3.
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  59. ^ Goodman & Blumberg 2002, p. 36.
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  62. ^ a b c Basil of Caesarea 1980, Ch. 16.
  63. ^ Basil of Caesarea 1980, Ch. 19.
  64. ^ Basil of Caesarea 1980, Ch. 21.
  65. ^ Arendzen 1911.
  66. ^ Milburn 1991, p. 68.
  67. ^ Ehrman, Bart D. The Apostolic Fathers. Vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library, 2003, 119. Ehrman further notes (fn. 97) Clement is alluding to Ephesians 4:4–6. Also see 1 Clement 58:2.
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  73. ^ Theophilus, Apologia ad Autolycum, Book II, Chapter 15
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    Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, pg. 5
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  78. ^ Ramelli 2011a.
  79. ^ Barnard 1970, pp. 172–188.
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  86. ^ See Creeds of Christendom.
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  88. ^ Shelley, Bruce L. (2013). Church History in Plain Language. p. 113.
  89. ^ Shelley, Bruce L. (2013). Church History in Plain Language. p. 113.
  90. ^ For a different view, see e.g. Excursus on the Words πίστιν ἑτέραν
  91. ^ Greek and Latin Traditions on Holy Spirit. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
  92. ^ Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 40.41
  93. ^ Mt 28:19
  94. ^ Matthew 28:19
  95. ^ Vondey 2012, p. 78.
  96. ^ 7:1, 3 online
  97. ^ Epistle to the Philippians, 2:13 online
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  105. ^ Grudem 1994, p. 226.
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  122. ^ John Took (15 May 2016). Conversations with Kenelm: Essays on the Theology of the Commedia. Ubiquity Press. p. 66. ISBN 9781909188082. OCLC 1054304886. Quote (in Latin): "mysterium Christi explicite credi non potest sine fide Trinitatis..."
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  131. ^ (in Latin) DS 401 (Pope John II, letter Olim quidem addressed to the senators of Constantinople, March 534).
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  141. ^ a b Seamands, Stephen (20 August 2009). Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service. InterVarsity Press. p. 97. ISBN 9780830876358. Christians have always used various analogies to help make sense of the Trinity. Water, for example, can exist in three different states, as liquid, steam or ice. It is once substance (H2O) yet appears in three distinct forms.
  142. ^ Harvey & Hunter 2008.
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  146. ^ Olson 1999, p. 173.
  147. ^ Meens 2016, p. 64.
  148. ^ Jonathan Israel, "The Dutch Republic, Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806"
  149. ^ a b Glassé & Smith 2003, pp. 239–241.
  150. ^ "Trinity > Judaic and Islamic Objections (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 23 August 2022.
  151. ^ The Jewish Quarterly Review. Macmillan. 1895.
  152. ^ Colenso, John William (2022). The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua: Critically examined. Part 3. Part 4 (2 ed.). BoD – Books on Demand. ISBN 978-3-375-00420-0.
  153. ^ a b Thomas 2006, "Trinity".
  154. ^ Griffith 2012, p. 8, note 7.
  155. ^ Zebiri 2006, p. 274.
  156. ^ Sirry 2014, p. 47.
  157. ^ Neuwirth & Sells 2016, pp. 300–304.
  158. ^ Van Reeth, Jan M. F. (31 December 2012). "Who is the 'other' Paraclete?". The Coming of the Comforter: When, Where, and to Whom?. Gorgias Press: 440–441. doi:10.31826/9781463234812-014. ISBN 9781463234812.
  159. ^ Schiller 1971, figs 1; 5–16.
  160. ^ Cartlidge & Elliott 2001, p. 240.
  161. ^ Schiller 1971, pp. 122–124 and figs 409–414.
  162. ^ Schiller 1971, pp. 219–224 and figs 768–804.
  163. ^ Potts 1982, pp. 68–78.
  164. ^ "Sanierung Heiligen-Geist-Kapelle, Bruck an der Mur" (in German). Bruck an der Mur. Retrieved 27 May 2020.

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Further reading

  • Alfeyev, Hilarion (2013). "The Trinitarian Teaching of Saint Gregory Nazianzen". In Stewart, M. (ed.). The Trinity: East/West Dialogue. Springer. ISBN 978-9401703932.
  • Bates, Matthew W. (2015). The Birth of the Trinity. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0191045875.
  • Bellarmine, Robert (1902). "Trinity Sunday: The Holy Trinity." . Sermons from the Latins. Benziger Brothers.
  • Beeley, Christopher; Weedman, Mark, eds. (2018). The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology. Catholic University of America Press. ISBN 978-0813229966.
  • Emery, Gilles, O.P.; Levering, Matthew, eds. (2012). The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0199557813.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
  • Grillmeier, Aloys (1975) [1965]. Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451). Vol. 1 (2nd revised ed.). Atlanta: John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0664223014.
  • Fiddes, Paul, Participating in God : a pastoral doctrine of the Trinity (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 2000).
  • Johnson, Thomas K., "What Difference Does the Trinity Make?" (Bonn: Culture and Science Publ., 2009).
  • Hillar, Marian, From Logos to Trinity. The Evolution of Religious Beliefs from Pythagoras to Tertullian. (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
  • Holmes, Stephen R. (2012). The Quest for the Trinity: The Doctrine of God in Scripture, History and Modernity. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 978-0830839865.
  • La Due, William J., The Trinity guide to the Trinity (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003, ISBN 978-1563383953).
  • Morrison, M. (2013). Trinitarian Conversations: Interviews With Ten Theologians. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
  • Letham, Robert (2004). The Holy Trinity : In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship. P & R. ISBN 978-0875520001.
  • O'Collins, Gerald (1999). The Tripersonal God: Understanding and Interpreting the Trinity. Paulist Press. ISBN 978-0809138876.
  • Olson, Roger E.; Hall, Christopher A. (2002). The Trinity. Wm. B. Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0802848277.
  • Phan, Peter C., ed. (2011). The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521877398.
  • Ramelli, Ilaria (2011). "Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology in Illud: Tunc et ipse filius. His Polemic against Arian Subordinationism and the ἀποκατάστασις". Gregory of Nyssa: The Minor Treatises on Trinitarian Theology and Apollinarism. Leiden-Boston: Brill. pp. 445–478. ISBN 978-9004194144.
  • So, Damon W. K., Jesus' Revelation of His Father: A Narrative-Conceptual Study of the Trinity with Special Reference to Karl Barth. (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006). ISBN 184227323X.
  • Spirago, Francis (1904). "Lesson 3: On the Unity and Trinity of God" . Anecdotes and Examples Illustrating The Catholic Catechism. Translated by James Baxter. Benzinger Brothers.
  • Reeves, Michael (2022), Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith, InterVarsity Press, ISBN 978-0830847075
  • Tuggy, Dale (Summer 2014), "Trinity (History of Trinitarian Doctrines)", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Weedman, Mark (2007). The Trinitarian Theology of Hilary of Poitiers. Leiden-Boston: Brill. ISBN 978-9004162242.
  • Webb, Eugene, In Search of The Triune God: The Christian Paths of East and West (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2014)

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Holy Trinity.
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Trinity.
  • Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Trinity"
  • "Trinity" entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • – A brief historical survey of patristic Trinitarian thought
  • "Trinity" article at Theopedia
  • Eastern Orthodox Trinitarian Theology
  • Doctrine of the Trinity Reading Room: Extensive collection of online sources on the Trinity (Tyndale Seminary)

February 15, 2024
trinity, several, terms, redirect, here, other, uses, holy, disambiguation, disambiguation, three, persons, album, christian, doctrine, latin, trinitas, triad, from, latin, trinus, threefold, central, doctrine, concerning, nature, most, christian, churches, wh. Several terms redirect here For other uses see Holy Trinity disambiguation Trinity disambiguation and God in Three Persons album The Christian doctrine of the Trinity Latin Trinitas lit triad from Latin trinus threefold 1 is the central doctrine concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches which defines one God existing in three coequal coeternal consubstantial divine persons 2 3 God the Father God the Son Jesus Christ and God the Holy Spirit three distinct persons hypostases sharing one essence substance nature homoousion 4 As the Fourth Lateran Council declared it is the Father who begets the Son who is begotten and the Holy Spirit who proceeds 5 6 7 In this context one essence nature defines what God is while the three persons define who God is 8 9 This expresses at once their distinction and their indissoluble unity Thus the entire process of creation and grace is viewed as a single shared action of the three divine persons in which each person manifests the attributes unique to them in the Trinity thereby proving that everything comes from the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit 10 A compact diagram of the Trinity known as the Shield of Trinity The Shield is generally not intended to be a schematic diagram of the structure of God but it presents a series of statements about the correlation between the persons of the Trinity This doctrine is called Trinitarianism and its adherents are called Trinitarians while its opponents are called antitrinitarians or nontrinitarians Christian nontrinitarian positions include Unitarianism Binitarianism and Modalism While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament the New Testament possesses a triadic understanding of God 11 and contains a number of Trinitarian formulas 12 13 The doctrine of the Trinity was first formulated among the early Christians and fathers of the Church as they attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions 14 There have been some different understandings of the Trinity among Christian theologians and denominations including questions on issues such as filioque eternal functional subordination subordinationism eternal generation of the Son and social trinitarianism 15 16 17 18 Contents 1 Old Testament 2 New Testament 2 1 1 John 5 7 8 2 2 Jesus in the New Testament 2 2 1 Jesus in later Christian theology 2 3 Holy Spirit in the New Testament 2 3 1 Holy Spirit in later Christian theology 3 Early Christianity 3 1 Before the Council of Nicaea 3 2 First Council of Nicaea 325 3 3 First Council of Constantinople 381 3 4 Middle Ages 4 Theology 4 1 Trinitarian baptismal formula 4 2 One God in three persons 4 3 Perichoresis 4 4 Economic and immanent Trinity 4 5 Trinity and love 4 6 Trinity and will 4 7 Trinity and Christian apologetics 4 8 Political aspect 5 Nontrinitarian Christian beliefs 6 Other religions views 6 1 Judaism 6 2 Islam 7 Artistic depictions 7 1 Image gallery 8 Trinity in architecture 9 Trinity in literature 10 See also 11 References 11 1 Notes 11 2 Citations 11 3 Sources 12 Further reading 13 External linksOld TestamentThe Old Testament has been interpreted as referring to the Trinity in many places One of these is the prophecy about the Messiah in Isaiah 9 The Messiah is called Wonderful Counselor Mighty God Everlasting Father Prince of Peace Some Christians see this verse as meaning the Messiah will represent the Trinity on earth This is because Counselor is a title for the Holy Spirit John 14 26 the Trinity is God Father is a title for God the Father and Prince of Peace is a title for Jesus This verse is also used to support the Deity of Christ 19 Another verse used to support the Deity of Christ is 20 I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples nations and languages should serve him his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed Daniel 7 13 14 ESV This is because both the Ancient of Days God the Father and the Son of Man Jesus Matt 16 13 have an everlasting dominion which is ascribed to God in Psalm 145 13 21 Some also see Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven Genesis 19 24 ESV as Trinitarian since they think it is saying the Lord in heaven is different from the Lord on earth People also see the Trinity when the OT refers to God s word Psalm 33 6 His Spirit Isaiah 61 1 and Wisdom Proverbs 9 1 as well as narratives such as the appearance of the three men to Abraham 22 However it is generally agreed among Trinitarian Christian scholars that it would go beyond the intention and spirit of the Old Testament to correlate these notions directly with later Trinitarian doctrine 23 Some Church Fathers believed that a knowledge of the mystery was granted to the prophets and saints of the Old Testament and that they identified the divine messenger of Genesis 16 7 Genesis 21 17 Genesis 31 11 Exodus 3 2 and Wisdom of the sapiential books with the Son and the spirit of the Lord with the Holy Spirit 23 Other Church Fathers such as Gregory Nazianzen argued in his Orations that the revelation was gradual claiming that the Father was proclaimed in the Old Testament openly but the Son only obscurely because it was not safe when the Godhead of the Father was not yet acknowledged plainly to proclaim the Son 24 Genesis 18 19 has been interpreted by Christians as a Trinitarian text The narrative has the Lord appearing to Abraham who was visited by three men 25 In Genesis 19 the two angels visited Lot at Sodom 26 The interplay between Abraham on the one hand and the Lord three men the two angels on the other was an intriguing text for those who believed in a single God in three persons Justin Martyr and John Calvin similarly interpreted it such that Abraham was visited by God who was accompanied by two angels 27 Justin supposed that the God who visited Abraham was distinguishable from the God who remains in the heavens but was nevertheless identified as the monotheistic God Justin interpreted the God who visited Abraham as Jesus the second person of the Trinity citation needed Augustine in contrast held that the three visitors to Abraham were the three persons of the Trinity 27 He saw no indication that the visitors were unequal as would be the case in Justin s reading Then in Genesis 19 two of the visitors were addressed by Lot in the singular Lot said to them Not so my lord Gen 19 18 27 Augustine saw that Lot could address them as one because they had a single substance despite the plurality of persons a Christians interpret the theophanies or appearances of the Angel of the Lord as revelations of a person distinct from God who is nonetheless called God This interpretation is found in Christianity as early as Justin Martyr and Melito of Sardis and reflects ideas that were already present in Philo 28 The Old Testament theophanies were thus seen as Christophanies each a preincarnate appearance of the Messiah 29 New Testament nbsp Russian icon of the Old Testament Trinity by Andrei Rublev between 1408 and 1425While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament the New Testament contains several Trinitarian formulas including Matthew 28 19 2 Corinthians 13 14 Ephesians 4 4 6 1 Peter 1 2 and Revelation 1 4 6 12 30 Reflection by early Christians on passages such as the Great Commission 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 and Paul the Apostle s blessing The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all leading theologians across history in attempting to articulate the relationship between the Father Son and Holy Spirit Eventually the diverse references to God Jesus and the Spirit found in the New Testament were brought together to form the concept of the Trinity one Godhead subsisting in three persons and one substance The concept of the Trinity was used to oppose alternative views of how the three are related and to defend the church against charges of worshiping two or three gods 31 1 John 5 7 8 Modern Biblical scholarship largely agrees that 1 John 5 7 seen in Latin and Greek texts after the 4th century and found in later translations such as the King James Translation cannot be found in the oldest Greek and Latin texts Verse 7 is known as the Johannine Comma which most scholars agree to be a later addition by a later copyist or what is termed a textual gloss 32 and not part of the original text b This verse reads Because there are three in Heaven that testify the Father the Word and the Holy Spirit and these three are one This verse is absent from the Ethiopic Aramaic Syriac Slavic Armenian Georgian and Arabic translations of the Greek New Testament Jesus in the New Testament nbsp God in the person of the Son confronts Adam and Eve by Master Bertram d c 1415 In the Pauline epistles the public collective devotional patterns towards Jesus in the early Christian community are reflective of Paul s perspective on the divine status of Jesus in what scholars have termed a binitarian pattern or shape of devotional practice worship in the New Testament in which God and Jesus are thematized and invoked 33 Jesus receives prayer 1 Corinthians 1 2 2 Corinthians 12 8 9 the presence of Jesus is confessionally invoked by believers 1 Corinthians 16 22 Romans 10 9 13 Philippians 2 10 11 people are baptized in Jesus name 1 Corinthians 6 11 Romans 6 3 Jesus is the reference in Christian fellowship for a religious ritual meal the Lord s Supper 1 Corinthians 11 17 34 34 Jesus is described as existing in the very form of God Philippians 2 6 and having the fullness of the Deity living in bodily form Colossians 2 9 Jesus is also in some verses directly called God Romans 9 5 35 Titus 2 13 2 Peter 1 1 The Gospels depict Jesus as human through most of their narrative but o ne eventually discovers that he is a divine being manifest in flesh and the point of the texts is in part to make his higher nature known in a kind of intellectual epiphany 36 In the Gospels Jesus is described as forgiving sins leading some theologians to believe Jesus is portrayed as God 37 This is because Jesus forgives sins on the behalf of others people normally only forgive transgressions against oneself The teachers of the law next to Jesus recognizes this and said Why does this fellow talk like that He s blaspheming Who can forgive sins but God alone Mark 2 7Jesus also receives proskynhsis proskynesis in the aftermath of the resurrection a Greek term that either expresses the contemporary social gesture of bowing to a superior either on one s knees or in full prostration in Matthew 18 26 a slave performs proskynhsis to his master so that he would not be sold after being unable to pay his debts The term can also refer to the religious act of devotion towards a deity While Jesus receives proskynhsis a number of times in the synoptic Gospels only a few can be said to refer to divine worship 38 This includes Matthew 28 16 20 an account of the resurrected Jesus receiving worship from his disciples after proclaiming his authority over the cosmos and his ever continuing presence with the disciples forming an inclusion with the beginning of the Gospel where Jesus is given the name Emmanuel God with us a name that alludes to the God of Israel s ongoing presence with his followers throughout the Old Testament Genesis 28 15 Deuteronomy 20 1 39 40 Whereas some have argued that Matthew 28 19 was an interpolation on account of its absence from the first few centuries of early Christian quotations scholars largely accept the passage as authentic due to its supporting manuscript evidence and that it does appear to be either quoted in the Didache 7 1 3 41 or at least reflected in the Didache as part of a common tradition from which both Matthew and the Didache emerged 42 Jesus receiving divine worship in the post resurrection accounts is further mirrored in Luke 24 52 43 44 43 Acts depicts the early Christian movement as a public cult centered around Jesus in several passages In Acts it is common for individual Christians to call upon the name of Jesus 9 14 21 22 16 an idea precedented in the Old Testament descriptions of calling on the name of YHWH as a form of prayer The story of Stephen depicts Stephen invoking and crying out to Jesus in the final moments of his life to receive his spirit 7 59 60 Acts further describes a common ritual practice inducting new members into the early Jesus sect by baptizing them in Jesus name 2 38 8 16 10 48 19 5 45 According to Dale Allison Acts depicts the appearances of Jesus to Paul as a divine theophany styled on and identified with the God responsible for the theophany of Ezekiel in the Old Testament 46 The Gospel of John has been seen as especially aimed at emphasizing Jesus divinity presenting Jesus as the Logos pre existent and divine from its first words In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God John 1 1 47 The Gospel of John ends with Thomas s declaration that he believed Jesus was God My Lord and my God John 20 28 31 There is no significant tendency among modern scholars to deny that John 1 1 and John 20 28 identify Jesus with God 48 However in a 1973 Journal of Biblical Literature article Philip B Harner Professor Emeritus of Religion at Heidelberg College claimed that the traditional translation of John 1 1c and the Word was God is incorrect He endorses the New English Bible translation of John 1 1c and what God was the Word was 49 It should be noted however that Harner claim has been criticized by other scholars 50 In the same article Harner also noted that Perhaps the clause could be translated the Word had the same nature as God This would be one way of representing John s thought which is as I understand it that the logos no less than the theos had the nature of theos which in his case means the Word is as fully God as the person called God 51 52 John also portrays Jesus as the agent of creation of the universe 53 Jesus in later Christian theology Some have suggested that John presents a hierarchy 54 55 when he quotes Jesus as saying The Father is greater than I a statement which was appealed to by nontrinitarian groups such as Arianism 56 However Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas argued this statement was to be understood as Jesus speaking about his human nature 57 58 Holy Spirit in the New Testament Prior Israelite theology held that the Spirit is merely the divine presence of God himself 59 whereas orthodox Christian theology holds that the Holy Spirit is a distinct person of God the Father himself This development begins early in the New Testament as the Spirit of God receives much more emphasis and description comparably than it had in earlier Jewish writing Whereas there are 75 references to the Spirit within the Old Testament and 35 identified in the non biblical Dead Sea Scrolls the New Testament despite its significantly shorter length mentions the Spirit 275 times In addition to its larger emphasis and importance placed on the Spirit in the New Testament the Spirit is also described in much more personalized and individualized terms than earlier 60 Larry Hurtado writes Moreover the New Testament references often portray actions that seem to give the Spirit an intensely personal quality probably more so than in Old Testament or ancient Jewish texts So for example the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness Mk 1 12 compare led in Mt 4 1 Lk 4 1 and Paul refers to the Spirit interceding for believers Romans 8 26 27 and witnessing to believers about their filial status with God Romans 8 14 16 To cite other examples of this in Acts the Spirit alerts Peter to the arrival of visitors from Cornelius 10 19 directs the church in Antioch to send forth Barnabas and Saul 13 2 4 guides the Jerusalem council to a decision about Gentile converts 15 28 at one point forbids Paul to missionize in Asia 16 6 and at another point warns Paul via prophetic oracles of trouble ahead in Jerusalem 21 11 60 The Holy Spirit is described as God in the book of the Acts of the ApostlesBut Peter said Ananias why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land 4 While it remained unsold did it not remain your own And after it was sold was it not at your disposal Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart You have not lied to man but to God Acts 5 3 4Peter first says Ananias is lying to the Holy Spirit he then says he is lying to God In the New Testament the Spirit is not portrayed as the recipient of cultic devotion which instead is typically offered to God the Father and to the risen glorified Jesus Although what became mainstream Christianity subsequently affirmed the propriety of including the Spirit as the recipient of worship as reflected in the developed form of the Nicene Creed perhaps the closest to this in the New Testament is in Matthew 28 19 and 2 Corinthians 13 14 which describe the Spirit as the subject of religious ritual 61 Holy Spirit in later Christian theology As the Arian controversy was dissipating the debate moved from the deity of Jesus Christ to the equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and Son On one hand the Pneumatomachi sect declared that the Holy Spirit was an inferior person to the Father and Son On the other hand the Cappadocian Fathers argued that the Holy Spirit was equal to the Father and Son in nature or substance Although the main text used in defense of the deity of the Holy Spirit was Matthew 28 19 Cappadocian Fathers such as Basil the Great argued from other verses such as But Peter said Ananias why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land While it remained unsold did it not remain your own And after it was sold was it not at your disposal Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart You have not lied to men but to God Acts 5 3 4 Another passage the Cappadocian Fathers quoted from was By the word of the Lord the heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth all their host Psalm 33 6 According to their understanding because breath and spirit in Hebrew are both רו ח ruach Psalm 33 6 is revealing the roles of the Son and Holy Spirit as co creators And since according to them 62 because only the holy God can create holy beings such as the angels the Son and Holy Spirit must be God Yet another argument from the Cappadocian Fathers to prove that the Holy Spirit is of the same nature as the Father and Son comes from For who knows a person s thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God 1 Corinthians 2 11 They reasoned that this passage proves that the Holy Spirit has the same relationship to God as the spirit within us has to us 62 The Cappadocian Fathers also quoted Do you not know that you are God s temple and that God s Spirit dwells in you 1 Corinthians 3 16 and reasoned that it would be blasphemous for an inferior being to take up residence in a temple of God thus proving that the Holy Spirit is equal with the Father and the Son 63 They also combined the servant does not know what his master is doing John 15 15 with 1 Corinthians 2 11 in an attempt to show that the Holy Spirit is not the slave of God and therefore his equal 64 The Pneumatomachi contradicted the Cappadocian Fathers by quoting Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation Hebrews 1 14 in effect arguing that the Holy Spirit is no different from other created angelic spirits 65 The Church Fathers disagreed saying that the Holy Spirit is greater than the angels since the Holy Spirit is the one who grants the foreknowledge for prophecy 1 Corinthians 12 8 10 so that the angels could announce events to come 62 Early ChristianityFurther information Trinitarianism in the Church Fathers Before the Council of Nicaea nbsp Detail of the earliest known artwork of the Trinity the Dogmatic or Trinity Sarcophagus c 350 Vatican Museums Three similar figures representing the Trinity are involved in the creation of Eve whose much smaller figure is cut off at lower right to her right Adam lies on the ground 66 While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament it was first formulated as early Christians attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions 14 An early reference to the three persons of later Trinitarian doctrines appears towards the end of the first century where Clement of Rome rhetorically asks in his epistle as to why corruption exists among some in the Christian community Do we not have one God and one Christ and one gracious Spirit that has been poured out upon us and one calling in Christ 1 Clement 46 6 67 A similar example is found in the first century Didache which directs Christians to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit 68 Ignatius of Antioch similarly refers to all three persons around AD 110 exhorting obedience to Christ and to the Father and to the Spirit 69 Though all of these early sources do reference the three persons of the Trinity none articulate full divinity equal status or shared being as elaborated by Trinitarians in later centuries citation needed The pseudonymous Ascension of Isaiah written sometime between the end of the first century and the beginning of the third century possesses a proto trinitarian view such as in its narrative of how the inhabitants of the sixth heaven sing praises to the primal Father and his Beloved Christ and the Holy Spirit 70 Justin Martyr AD 100 c 165 also writes in the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe and of our Saviour Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit 71 Justin Martyr is the first to use much of the terminology that would later become widespread in codified Trinitarian theology For example he describes that the Son and Father are the same being ousia and yet are also distinct faces prosopa anticipating the three persons hypostases that come with Tertullian and later authors Justin describes how Jesus the Son is distinguishable from the Father but also derives from the Father using the analogy of a fire representing the Son that is lit from its source a torch representing the Father 72 At another point Justin Martyr wrote that we worship him Jesus Christ with reason since we have learned that he is the Son of the living God himself and believe him to be in second place and the prophetic Spirit in the third 1 Apology 13 cf ch 60 nbsp The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Durer 1511 From top to bottom Holy Spirit dove God the Father and Christ on the crossThe first of the early Church Fathers to be recorded using the word Trinity was Theophilus of Antioch writing in the late 2nd century He defines the Trinity as God his Word Logos and his Wisdom Sophia 73 in the context of a discussion of the first three days of creation following the early Christian practice of identifying the Holy Spirit as the Wisdom of God 74 The first defense of the doctrine of the Trinity was by Tertullian who was born around 150 160 AD explicitly defined the Trinity as Father Son and Holy Spirit and defended his theology against Praxeas 75 although he noted that the majority of the believers in his day found issue with his doctrine 76 nbsp The Heavenly Trinity joined to the Earthly Trinity through the Incarnation of the Son The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities by Murillo c 1677 St Justin and Clement of Alexandria referenced all three persons of the Trinity in their doxologies and St Basil likewise in the evening lighting of lamps 77 Origen of Alexandria AD 185 c 253 has often been interpreted as Subordinationist believing in shared divinity of the three persons but not in co equality Some modern researchers have argued that Origen might have actually been anti Subordinationist and that his own Trinitarian theology inspired the Trinitarian theology of the later Cappadocian Fathers 78 79 The concept of the Trinity can be seen as developing significantly during the first four centuries by the Church Fathers in reaction to theological interpretations known as Adoptionism Sabellianism and Arianism Adoptionism was the belief that Jesus was an ordinary man born of Joseph and Mary who became the Christ and Son of God at his baptism In 269 the Synods of Antioch condemned Paul of Samosata for his Adoptionist theology and also condemned the term homoousios ὁmooysios of the same being in the modalist sense in which he used it 80 Among the nontrinitarian beliefs Sabellianism taught that the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit are essentially one and the same the difference being simply verbal describing different aspects or roles of a single being 81 For this view Sabellius was excommunicated for heresy in Rome c 220 First Council of Nicaea 325 Main article First Council of Nicaea nbsp The Glory of Saint Nicholas by Antonio Manuel da Fonseca Nicholas of Myra a participant in the First Council of Nicaea achieves the beatific vision in the shape of the Holy Trinity In the fourth century Arianism as traditionally understood c taught that the Father existed prior to the Son who was not by nature God but rather a changeable creature who was granted the dignity of becoming Son of God 82 In 325 the First Council of Nicaea adopted the Nicene Creed which described Christ as God of God Light of Light very God of very God begotten not made being of one substance with the Father and the Holy Ghost as the one by which was incarnate of the Virgin Mary 83 84 the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us About the Father and the Son the creed used the term homoousios of one substance to define the relationship between the Father and the Son After more than fifty years of debate homoousios was recognised as the hallmark of orthodoxy and was further developed into the formula of three persons one being The Confession of the First Council of Nicaea the Nicene Creed said little about the Holy Spirit 85 At the First Council of Nicea 325 all attention was focused on the relationship between the Father and the Son without making any similar statement about the Holy Spirit In the words of the creed We believe in one God the Father Almighty Maker of all things visible and invisible And in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God begotten of the Father the only begotten that is of the essence of the Father God of God Light of Light very God of very God begotten not made being of one substance with the Father And we believe in the Holy Ghost First Council of Constantinople 381 Main article First Council of Constantinople Later at the First Council of Constantinople 381 the Nicene Creed would be expanded known as Niceno Constantinopolitan Creed by saying that the Holy Spirit is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and the Son symproskynoymenon kaὶ syndo3azomenon suggesting that he was also consubstantial with them We believe in one God the Father Almighty Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible And in one Lord Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God begotten of the Father before all worlds aeons Light of Light very God of very God begotten not made being of one substance with the Father And in the Holy Ghost the Lord and Giver of life who proceedeth from the Father who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified who spake by the prophets 86 The doctrine of the divinity and personality of the Holy Spirit was developed by Athanasius in the last decades of his life 87 He defended and refined the Nicene formula 85 By the end of the 4th century under the leadership of Basil of Caesarea Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus the Cappadocian Fathers the doctrine had reached substantially its current form 85 Middle Ages Gregory of Nazianzus Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great account for the Trinity saw that the distinctions between the three divine persons were solely in their inner divine relations There are not three gods God is one divine Being in three persons 88 Where the Cappadocian Fathers used social analogies to describe the triune nature of God Augustine of Hippo used psychological analogy He believed that if man is created in the image of God he is created in the image of the Trinity Augustine s analogy for the Trinity is the memory intelligence and will in the mind of a man In short Christians do not have to think of three persons when they think of God they may think of one person 89 In the late 6th century some Latin speaking churches added the words and from the Son Filioque to the description of the procession of the Holy Spirit words that were not included in the text by either the Council of Nicaea or that of Constantinople 90 This was incorporated into the liturgical practice of Rome in 1014 91 Filioque eventually became one of the main causes for the East West Schism in 1054 and the failures of the repeated union attempts Gregory of Nazianzus would say of the Trinity No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three no sooner do I distinguish Three than I am carried back into the One When I think of any of the Three I think of Him as the Whole and my eyes are filled and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest When I contemplate the Three together I see but one torch and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light 92 Devotion to the Trinity centered in the French monasteries at Tours and Aniane where Benedict of Aniane dedicated the abbey church to the Trinity in 872 Feast days were not instituted until 1091 at Cluny and 1162 at Canterbury and papal resistance continued until 1331 77 Theology Trinitarian redirects here For other uses see Trinitarian disambiguation Trinitarian baptismal formula Main article Trinitarian formula nbsp The Baptism of Christ by Piero della Francesca 15th centuryBaptism is generally conferred with the Trinitarian formula in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit 93 Trinitarians identify this name with the Christian faith into which baptism is an initiation as seen for example in the statement of Basil the Great 330 379 We are bound to be baptized in the terms we have received and to profess faith in the terms in which we have been baptized The First Council of Constantinople 381 also says This is the Faith of our baptism that teaches us to believe in the Name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit According to this Faith there is one Godhead Power and Being of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit 94 may be taken to indicate that baptism was associated with this formula from the earliest decades of the Church s existence Other Trinitarian formulas found in the New Testament include in 2 Corinthians 13 14 1 Corinthians 12 4 6 Ephesians 4 4 6 1 Peter 1 2 and Revelation 1 4 5 12 30 Oneness Pentecostals demur from the Trinitarian view of baptism and emphasize baptism in the name of Jesus Christ only what they hold to be the original apostolic formula 95 For this reason they often focus on the baptisms in Acts Those who place great emphasis on the baptisms in Acts often likewise question the authenticity of Matthew 28 19 in its present form citation needed Most scholars of New Testament textual criticism accept the authenticity of the passage since there are no variant manuscripts regarding the formula 41 and the extant form of the passage is attested in the Didache 96 and other patristic works of the 1st and 2nd centuries Ignatius 97 Tertullian 98 Hippolytus 99 Cyprian 100 and Gregory Thaumaturgus 101 Commenting on Matthew 28 19 Gerhard Kittel states This threefold relation of Father Son and Spirit soon found fixed expression in the triadic formulae in 2 Corinthians 13 14 102 and in 1 Corinthians 12 4 6 103 The form is first found in the baptismal formula in Matthew 28 19 Did 7 1 and 3 I t is self evident that Father Son and Spirit are here linked in an indissoluble threefold relationship 104 One God in three persons In Trinitarian doctrine God exists as three persons but is one being having a single divine nature 105 The members of the Trinity are co equal and co eternal one in essence nature power action and will As stated in the Athanasian Creed the Father is uncreated the Son is uncreated and the Holy Spirit is uncreated and all three are eternal without beginning 106 The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are not names for different parts of God but one name for God 107 because three persons exist in God as one entity 108 They cannot be separate from one another Each person is understood as having the identical essence or nature not merely similar natures 109 According to the Eleventh Council of Toledo 675 For when we say He who is the Father is not the Son we refer to the distinction of persons but when we say the Father is that which the Son is the Son that which the Father is and the Holy Spirit that which the Father is and the Son is this clearly refers to the nature or substance 110 The Fourth Lateran Council 1215 adds Therefore in God there is only a Trinity not a quaternity since each of the three persons is that reality that is to say substance essence or divine nature which alone is the principle of all things besides which no other principle can be found This reality neither begets nor is begotten nor proceeds the Father begets the Son is begotten and the holy Spirit proceeds Thus there is a distinction of persons but a unity of nature Although therefore the Father is one person the Son another person and the holy Spirit another person they are not different realities but rather that which is the Father is the Son and the holy Spirit altogether the same thus according to the orthodox and catholic faith they are believed to be consubstantial 111 112 Clarification of the relationships among the three Trinitarian Persons divine persons different from the sense of a human self advanced in the Magisterial statement promulgated by the Council of Florence 1431 1449 though its formulation precedes the council These three persons are one God and not three gods for the three are one substance one essence one nature one Godhead one infinity one eternity and everything in them is one where there is no opposition of relationship relationis oppositio d Robert Magliola explains that most theologians have taken relationis oppositio in the Thomist sense namely the opposition of relationship in English we would say oppositional relationship is one of contrariety rather than contradiction The only functions that are applied uniquely to the Father Son and Holy Spirit respectively in Scripture are the following Paternity to the Father Filiation Sonship to the Son and Passive Spiration or that which is breathed out to the Holy Spirit Magliola goes on to explain Because such is the case among other reasons Karl Rahner rejects the psychological theories of Trinity which define the Father as Knower for example and the Son as the Known i e Truth Scripture in one place or another identifies Knowing with each of the three Persons all told Which is to say according to the relationis oppositio Knowing in our example does not define the Persons qua individual Persons at all but the Unity of God instead Scripture s attribution of Knowing to any one Person at any one time is said to be just appropriated to the Person it does not really belong to that unique Person 113 Magliola continuing the Rahnerian stance goes on to explain that the Divine Persons necessarily relate to each other in terms of pure negative reference that is the three Is Not relations represented in the Scutum Fidei diagram are in each case a pure or absolute Is Not This is the case because the relationis oppositio clause disallows the Persons to share qua Persons the unique role that defines each of them Lest he be misunderstood Magliola in a subsequent publication makes sure to specify that each of the three Persons while unique as a Person is nonetheless because of the Divine consubstantiality and simplicity the one Reality that is God 114 Perichoresis Main article Perichoresis nbsp A depiction of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 at which the Deity of Christ was declared orthodox and Arianism condemnedPerichoresis from Greek going around envelopment is a term used by some scholars to describe the relationship among the members of the Trinity The Latin equivalent for this term is circumincessio This concept refers for its basis to John 10 38 14 11 14 20 115 where Jesus is instructing the disciples concerning the meaning of his departure His going to the Father he says is for their sake so that he might come to them when the other comforter is given to them Then he says his disciples will dwell in him as he dwells in the Father and the Father dwells in him and the Father will dwell in them This is so according to the theory of perichoresis because the persons of the Trinity reciprocally contain one another so that one permanently envelopes and is permanently enveloped by the other whom he yet envelopes Hilary of Poitiers Concerning the Trinity 3 1 116 The most prominent exponent of perichoresis was John of Damascus d 749 who employed the concept as a technical term to describe both the interpenetration of the divine and human natures of Christ and the relationship between the hypostases of the Trinity 117 Perichoresis effectively excludes the idea that God has parts but rather is a simple being It also harmonizes well with the doctrine that the Christian s union with the Son in his humanity brings him into union with one who contains in himself in Paul s words all the fullness of deity and not a part e Perichoresis provides an intuitive figure of what this might mean The Son the eternal Word is from all eternity the dwelling place of God he is the Father s house just as the Son dwells in the Father and the Spirit so that when the Spirit is given then it happens as Jesus said I will not leave you as orphans for I will come to you 118 Economic and immanent Trinity The term immanent Trinity focuses on who God is the term economic Trinity focuses on what God does According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church The Fathers of the Church distinguish between theology theologia and economy oikonomia Theology refers to the mystery of God s inmost life within the Blessed Trinity and economy to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life Through the oikonomia the theologia is revealed to us but conversely the theologia illuminates the whole oikonomia God s works reveal who he is in himself the mystery of his inmost being enlightens our understanding of all his works So it is analogously among human persons A person discloses himself in his actions and the better we know a person the better we understand his actions 119 The whole divine economy is the common work of the three divine persons For as the Trinity has only one and the same natures so too does it have only one and the same operation The Father the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three principles of creation but one principle However each divine person performs the common work according to his unique personal property Thus the Church confesses following the New Testament one God and Father from whom all things are and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things are and one Holy Spirit in whom all things are It is above all the divine missions of the Son s Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit that show forth the properties of the divine persons 120 The ancient Nicene theologians argued that everything the Trinity does is done by Father Son and Spirit working in unity with one will The three persons of the Trinity always work inseparably for their work is always the work of the one God The Son s will cannot be different from the Father s because it is the Father s They have but one will as they have but one being Otherwise they would not be one God On this point St Basil said When then He says I have not spoken of myself and again As the Father said unto me so I speak and The word which ye hear is not mine but the Father s which sent me and in another place As the Father gave me commandment even so I do it is not because He lacks deliberate purpose or power of initiation nor yet because He has to wait for the preconcerted key note that he employs language of this kind His object is to make it plain that His own will is connected in indissoluble union with the Father Do not then let us understand by what is called a commandment a peremptory mandate delivered by organs of speech and giving orders to the Son as to a subordinate concerning what He ought to do Let us rather in a sense befitting the Godhead perceive a transmission of will like the reflexion of an object in a mirror passing without note of time from Father to Son 121 According to Thomas Aquinas the Son prayed to the Father became a minor to the angels became incarnate obeyed the Father as to his human nature as to his divine nature the Son remained God Thus then the fact that the Father glorifies raises up and exalts the Son does not show that the Son is less than the Father except in His human nature For in the divine nature by which He is equal to the Father the power of the Father and the Son is the same and their operation is the same 58 Aquinas stated that the mystery of the Son cannot be explicitly believed to be true without faith in the Trinity ST IIa IIae 2 7 resp and 8 resp 122 nbsp A Greek fresco of Athanasius of Alexandria the chief architect of the Nicene Creed formulated at NicaeaAthanasius of Alexandria explained that the Son is eternally one in being with the Father temporally and voluntarily subordinate in his incarnate ministry 123 Such human traits he argued were not to be read back into the eternal Trinity Likewise the Cappadocian Fathers also insisted there was no economic inequality present within the Trinity As Basil wrote We perceive the operation of the Father Son and Holy Spirit to be one and the same in no respect showing differences or variation from this identity of operation we necessarily infer the unity of nature 124 The traditional theory of appropriation consists in attributing certain names qualities or operations to one of the Persons of the Trinity not however to the exclusion of the others but in preference to the others This theory was established by the Latin Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries especially by Hilary of Poitiers Augustine and Leo the Great In the Middle Ages the theory was systematically taught by the Schoolmen such as Bonaventure 125 Trinity and love Augustine coupled the doctrine of the Trinity with anthropology Proceeding from the idea that humans are created by God according to the divine image he attempted to explain the mystery of the Trinity by uncovering traces of the Trinity in the human personality 126 The first key of his exegesis is an interpersonal analogy of mutual love In De trinitate 399 419 he wrote We are now eager to see whether that most excellent love is proper to the Holy Spirit and if it is not so whether the Father or the Son or the Holy Trinity itself is love since we cannot contradict the most certain faith and the most weighty authority of Scripture which says God is love f 127 The Bible reveals it although only in the two neighboring verses 1 John 4 8 16 therefore one must ask if love itself is triune Augustine found that it is and consists of three the lover the beloved and the love g 128 Reaffirming the theopaschite formula unus de trinitate passus est carne meaning One of the Trinity suffered in the flesh 129 Thomas Aquinas wrote that Jesus suffered and died as to his human nature as to his divine nature he could not suffer or die But the commandment to suffer clearly pertains to the Son only in His human nature And the way in which Christ was raised up is like the way He suffered and died that is in the flesh For it says in 1 Peter 4 1 Christ having suffered in the flesh then the fact that the Father glorifies raises up and exalts the Son does not show that the Son is less than the Father except in His human nature For in the divine nature by which He is equal to the Father 130 In the 1900s the recovery of a substantially different formula of theopaschism took place at least unus de Trinitate passus est meaning not only in the flesh 131 Deeply affected by the atomic bombs event 132 as early as 1946 the Lutheran theologian Kazoh Kitamori published Theology of the Pain of God 133 a theology of the Cross pushed up to the immanent Trinity This concept was later taken by both Reformed and Catholic theology in 1971 by Jurgen Moltmann s The Crucified God in the 1972 Preface to the Second Edition of his 1969 German book Theologie der drei Tage English translation The Mystery of Easter by Hans Urs von Balthasar who took a cue from Revelation 13 8 Vulgate agni qui occisus est ab origine mundi NIV the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world to explore the God is love idea as an eternal super kenosis 134 In the words of von Balthasar At this point where the subject undergoing the hour is the Son speaking with the Father the controversial Theopaschist formula has its proper place One of the Trinity has suffered The formula can already be found in Gregory Nazianzen We needed a crucified God 135 But if theopaschism indicates only a Christological kenosis or kenotic Christology instead von Balthasar supports a Trinitarian kenosis 136 The persons of the Trinity constitute themselves as who they are through the very act of pouring themselves out for each other 137 The underlying question is if the three Persons of the Trinity can live a self love amor sui as well as if for them with the conciliar dogmatic formulation in terms that today we would call ontotheological it is possible that the aseity causa sui is valid If the Father is not the Son or the Spirit since the generator begetter is not the generated begotten nor the generation generative process and vice versa and since the lover is neither the beloved nor the love dynamic between them and vice versa Christianity has provided as a response a concept of divine ontology and love different from common sense omnipotence omnibenevolence impassibility etc 138 an oblative sacrificial martyrizing crucifying precisely kenotic concept Trinity and will Benjamin B Warfield saw a principle of subordination in the modes of operation of the Trinity but was also hesitant to ascribe the same to the modes of subsistence in relation of one to another While noting that it is natural to see a subordination in function as reflecting a similar subordination in substance he suggests that this might be the result of an agreement by Persons of the Trinity a Covenant as it is technically called by virtue of which a distinct function in the work of redemption is assumed by each 139 Trinity and Christian apologetics Today several analogies for the Trinity abound The comparison is sometimes made between the triune God and H2O 140 141 Just as H2O can come in three distinct forms liquid solid gas so God appears as Father Son Spirit 140 141 The mathematical analogy 1 1 1 3 but 1x1x1 1 is also used to explain the Trinity 140 Political aspect According to Eusebius Constantine suggested the term homoousios at the Council of Nicaea though most scholars have doubted that Constantine had such knowledge and have thought that most likely Hosius had suggested the term to him 142 Constantine later changed his view about the Arians who opposed the Nicene formula and supported the bishops who rejected the formula 143 as did several of his successors the first emperor to be baptized in the Nicene faith being Theodosius the Great emperor from 379 to 395 144 Nontrinitarian Christian beliefsMain article Nontrinitarianism Nontrinitarianism or antitrinitarianism refers to Christian belief systems that reject the doctrine of the Trinity as found in the Nicene Creed as not having a scriptural origin Nontrinitarian views differ widely on the nature of God Jesus and the Holy Spirit Various nontrinitarian views such as Adoptionism Monarchianism and Arianism existed prior to the formal definition of the Trinity doctrine in AD 325 360 and 431 at the Councils of Nicaea Constantinople and Ephesus respectively 145 Following the adoption of trinitarianism at Constantinople in 381 Arianism was driven from the Empire retaining a foothold amongst the Germanic tribes When the Franks converted to Catholicism in 496 however it gradually faded out 82 Nontrinitarianism was later renewed in the Gnosticism of the Cathars in the 11th through 13th centuries in the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century and in some groups arising during the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century h Arianism was condemned as heretical by the First Council of Nicaea and lastly with Sabellianism by the Second Ecumenical Council Constantinople 381 CE 146 Adoptionism was declared as heretical by the Ecumenical Council of Frankfurt convened by the Emperor Charlemagne in 794 for the Latin West Church 147 Modern nontrinitarian groups or denominations include Christadelphians Christian Science the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints Dawn Bible Students Iglesia ni Cristo Jehovah s Witnesses Living Church of God Members Church of God International Oneness Pentecostals La Luz del Mundo the Seventh Day Church of God Unitarian Christians United Church of God and The Shepherd s Chapel As pointed out by Jonathan Israel 148 the 17th Century Dutch Republic was more religiously tolerant than other European countries of the time but its dominant Calvinist Church drew the line at groups who denied the Trinity this was considered an intolerable aberration and such groups were subject to various forms of persecution in the Netherlands Other religions viewsJudaism This section may contain material not related to the topic of the article Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page July 2023 Learn how and when to remove this template message See also God in Judaism Judaism s view of Jesus and Shituf Judaism maintains a tradition of monotheism that excludes the possibility of a Trinity 149 In Judaism God is understood to be the absolute one indivisible and incomparable being which is the ultimate cause of all existence Some Kabbalist writings have a Trinitarian esque view of God speaking of stages of God s being aspects of the divine personality with God being three hidden lights which constitute one essence and one root Some Jewish philosophers additionally saw God as a thinker thinking and thought taking from Augustinian analogies 150 The Zohar additionally says that God is they and they are it Philo of Alexandria recognized a threefold character of God but had many differences from the Christian view of the Trinity 151 John William Colenso argued that the Book of Enoch implies a Trinitarian esque view of God seeing the Lord of the spirits the Elected one and the Divine power each partaking of the name of God 152 Islam This section may contain material not related to the topic of the article Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page July 2023 Learn how and when to remove this template message Main articles Islamic view of the Trinity Haqq Muhammad Ali and Shirk Islam Islam considers Jesus to be a prophet but not divine 149 and God to be absolutely indivisible a concept known as tawhid 153 Several verses of the Quran state that the doctrine of the Trinity is blasphemous Indeed disbelievers have said Truly Allah is Messiah son of Mary But Messiah said Children of Israel Worship Allah my lord and your lord Indeed whoever associates partners with Allah surely Allah has forbidden them from Heaven and fire is their resort And there are no helpers for the wrongdoers Indeed disbelievers have said Truly Allah is a third of three Yet there is no god except One God and if they do not desist from what they say a grievous punishment befalls the disbelievers Will they not turn to Allah and ask His forgiveness For Allah is most forgiving and merciful Is not Messiah son of Mary only a messenger Indeed messengers had passed away prior to him And his mother was an upright woman They both ate food Observe how we explain the signs for them then observe how they turn away from truth Quran 5 72 75 Interpretation of these verses by modern scholars has been varied Verse 5 73 has been interpreted as a potential criticism of Syriac literature that references Jesus as the third of three and thus an attack on the view that Christ was divine 154 Another interpretation is that this passage should be studied from a rhetorical perspective so as not to be an error but an intentional misrepresentation of the doctrine of the Trinity in order to demonstrate its absurdity from an Islamic perspective 155 David Thomas states that verse 5 116 need not be seen as describing actually professed beliefs but rather giving examples of shirk claiming divinity for beings other than God and a warning against excessive devotion to Jesus and extravagant veneration of Mary a reminder linked to the central theme of the Qur an that there is only one God and He alone is to be worshipped 153 When read in this light it can be understood as an admonition Against the divinization of Jesus that is given elsewhere in the Qur an and a warning against the virtual divinization of Mary in the declaration of the fifth century church councils that she is God bearer Similarly Gabriel Reynolds Sidney Griffith and Mun im Sirry argue that this quranic verse is to be understood as an intentional caricature and rhetorical statement to warn from the dangers of deifiying Jesus or Mary 156 157 It has been suggested that the Islamic representation of the doctrine of the Trinity may derive from its description in some texts of Manichaeism where we encounter a trinity consisting of a Father a Mother of Life the Living Spirit and the Original Man 158 Artistic depictionsMain article Trinity in art The Trinity is most commonly seen in Christian art with the Spirit represented by a dove as specified in the Gospel accounts of the Baptism of Christ he is nearly always shown with wings outspread However depictions using three human figures appear occasionally in most periods of art 159 The Father and the Son are usually differentiated by age and later by dress but this too is not always the case The usual depiction of the Father as an older man with a white beard may derive from the biblical Ancient of Days which is often cited in defense of this sometimes controversial representation However in Eastern Orthodoxy the Ancient of Days is usually understood to be God the Son not God the Father see below early Byzantine images show Christ as the Ancient of Days 160 but this iconography became rare When the Father is depicted in art he is sometimes shown with a halo shaped like an equilateral triangle instead of a circle The Son is often shown at the Father s right hand Acts 7 56 He may be represented by a symbol typically the Lamb agnus dei or a cross or on a crucifix so that the Father is the only human figure shown at full size In early medieval art the Father may be represented by a hand appearing from a cloud in a blessing gesture for example in scenes of the Baptism of Christ Later in the West the Throne of Mercy or Throne of Grace became a common depiction In this style the Father sometimes seated on a throne is shown supporting either a crucifix 161 or later a slumped crucified Son similar to the Pieta this type is distinguished in German as the Not Gottes 162 in his outstretched arms while the Dove hovers above or in between them This subject continued to be popular until the 18th century at least By the end of the 15th century larger representations other than the Throne of Mercy became effectively standardised showing an older figure in plain robes for the Father Christ with his torso partly bare to display the wounds of his Passion and the dove above or around them In earlier representations both Father especially and Son often wear elaborate robes and crowns Sometimes the Father alone wears a crown or even a papal tiara In the later part of the Christian Era in Renaissance European iconography the Eye of Providence began to be used as an explicit image of the Christian Trinity and associated with the concept of Divine Providence Seventeenth century depictions of the Eye of Providence sometimes show it surrounded by clouds or sunbursts 163 Image gallery nbsp Depiction of Trinity from Saint Denis Basilica in Paris 12th century nbsp The Father The Holy Spirit and Christ crucified depicted in a Welsh manuscript c 1390 1400 nbsp The Holy Trinity in an angelic glory over a landscape by Lucas Cranach the Elder d 1553 nbsp God the Father top and the Holy Spirit represented by a dove depicted above Jesus Painting by Francesco Albani d 1660 nbsp God the Father top the Holy Spirit a dove and the child Jesus painting by Bartolome Esteban Murillo d 1682 nbsp Pope Clement I prays to the Trinity in a typical post Renaissance depiction by Gianbattista Tiepolo d 1770 nbsp Atypical depiction The Son is identified by a lamb the Father an Eye of Providence and the Spirit a dove the painting is by Fridolin Leiber d 1912 nbsp 13th century depiction of the Trinity from a Roman de la Rose manuscript nbsp Renaissance painting by Jeronimo Cosida depicting Jesus as a triple deity Inner text The Father is God the Son is God the Holy Spirit is God nbsp Representation of the Trinity in the form of the mercy seat epitaph from 1549 Trinity in architectureThe concept of the Trinity was made visible in the Heiligen Geist Kapelle in Bruck an der Mur Austria with a ground plan of an equilateral triangle with beveled corners 164 Trinity in literatureThe Trinity has traditionally been a subject matter of strictly theological works focused on proving the doctrine of the Trinity and defending it against its critics In recent years however the Trinity has made an entrance into the world of Christian literature through books such as The Shack published in 2007 and The Trinity Story published in 2021 See also nbsp Christianity portalAhuric triad Ayyavazhi Trinity Formal distinction Hypostasis philosophy and religion Saint Patrick Social trinitarianism Three Pure Ones Trikaya the three Buddha bodies Trimurti Hinduism Tridevi Hinduism Trinitarian Order Trinitarian universalism Trinity Sunday a day to celebrate the doctrine Triple deity an associated term in comparative religion Triquetra a symbol sometimes used to represent the TrinityReferencesNotes Augustine had poor knowledge of the Greek language and no knowledge of Hebrew So he trusted the Septuagint which differentiates between kyrioi lords vocative plural and kyrie lord vocative singular even if the Hebrew verbal form נא אדני na adoni is exactly the same in both cases See for instance the note in 1 John 5 7 8 Very little of Arius own writings have survived We depend largely on quotations made by opponents which reflect what they thought he was saying Furthermore there was no single Arian party or agenda but rather various critics of the Nicene formula working from distinct perspectives Williams 2001 pp 95 247 Denzinger Heinrich 1962 Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum Herder p 1330 English trans Dupuis amp Neuner 2001 p 111 See also Divinization Christian in Latin Veluti nunc cupimus videre utrum illa excellentissima caritas proprie Spiritus Sanctus sit Quod si non est aut Pater est caritas aut Filius aut ipsa Trinitas quoniam resistere non possumus certissimae fidei et validissimae auctoritati Scripturae dicentis Deus caritas est in Latin Tria ergo sunt amans et quod amatur et amor See also Binitarianism Citations Definition of trinity in English Oxford Dictionaries English Archived from the original on 26 December 2012 Daley 2009 pp 323 350 Ramelli 2012 Definition of the Fourth Lateran Council quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church 253 Latin substantia essentia seu natura divina DS 804 Fourth Lateran Council 1215 List of Constitutions 2 On the error of abbot Joachim Archived from the original on 7 July 2019 Retrieved 7 July 2019 Greek and Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit EWTN EWTN Global Catholic Television Network Retrieved 24 December 2022 Fathers Council 11 November 1215 Fourth Lateran Council 1215 Council Fathers Retrieved 24 December 2022 Frank Sheed Theology and Sanity Ignatiusinsight com Archived from the original on 30 July 2018 Retrieved 3 November 2013 Sheed Frank J 11 January 1978 Theology amp Sanity Bloomsbury Publishing published 1978 ISBN 9780826438829 Retrieved 21 December 2021 Nature answers the question what we are person answers the question who we are Nature is the source of our operations person does them Catechism of the Catholic Church 253 267 The dogma of the Holy Trinity Hurtado 2010 pp 99 110 a b c Januariy 2013 p 99 Archimandrite Janurariy Ivliev 9 March 2013 2003 The Elements of Triadology in the New Testament In Stewart Melville Y ed The Trinity East West Dialogue Volume 24 of Studies in Philosophy and Religion Dordrecht Springer Science amp Business Media published 2013 p 100 ISBN 9789401703932 Retrieved 21 December 2021 Trinitarian formulas are found in New Testament books such as 1 Peter 1 2 and 2 Cor 13 13 But the formula used by John the mystery seer is unique Perhaps it shows John s original adaptation of Paul s dual formula a b Hurtado 2005 pp 644 648 Filioque Christianity Britannica www britannica com Retrieved 1 May 2023 English Lance Why We Must Reject Social Trinitarianism It is neither Nicene nor Biblical Credo Magazine credomag com Retrieved 1 May 2023 Trinitarian Agency and the Eternal Subordination of the Son An Augustinian Perspective The Gospel Coalition Retrieved 1 May 2023 Subordinationism Christianity Britannica www britannica com Retrieved 1 May 2023 For to Us a Child Is Born The Meaning of Isaiah 9 6 Zondervan Academic Retrieved 15 July 2022 Doctrine of the Last Things Part 1 The Second Coming of Christ Reasonable Faith Retrieved 15 July 2022 Bible Gateway passage Psalm 145 13 New International Version Bible Gateway Retrieved 31 July 2022 Cross amp Livingstone 2005 p 1652 a b Joyce 1912 Gregory Nazianzen Orations 31 26 Genesis 18 1 2 Genesis 19 a b c Watson Francis Abraham s Visitors Prolegomena to a Christian Theological Exegesis of Genesis 18 19 Hurtado 2005 pp 573 578 Baker s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology Angel of the Lord Studylight org Retrieved 2 January 2012 a b Fee 2002 p 52 a b Metzger amp Coogan 1993 pp 782 783 Metzger amp Ehrman 1968 p 101 Hurtado 2010 pp 1 Hurtado 2005 pp 134 152 Is Jesus God Romans 9 5 billmounce com Retrieved 15 July 2022 Litwa 2019 p 53 CS Lewis 2001 Mere Christianity HarperCollins pp 51 52 Kupp 1996 p 226 Hays 2014 pp 44 45 Hurtado 2005 pp 337 338 a b Ferguson 2009 pp 134 135 Sim amp Repschinski 2008 pp 124 125 a b Hurtado 2005 p 345 Bauckham 2017 pp 516 519 Hurtado 2005 pp 194 206 Allison 2016 pp 807 826 The Presentation of Jesus in John s Gospel h2g2 The Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy Earth Edition 10 January 2008 Retrieved 2 January 2012 Brown 1970 pp 1026 1032 Philip B Harner Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns Mark 15 39 and John 1 1 Journal of Biblical Literature 92 1 March 1973 Hartley Donald Revisiting the Colwell Construction in Light of Mass Count Nouns bible org Retrieved 1 November 2022 Philip B Harner March 1973 Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns Mark 15 39 and John 1 1 Journal of Biblical Literature The Society of Biblical Literature 92 1 75 87 doi 10 2307 3262756 JSTOR 3262756 Rhodes Ron Reasoning from the Scriptures with the Jehovah s Witnesses Harvest House Publishers 2009 p 104 105 Hoskyns 1967 p 142 Clarke 1900 pp 161ff Polkinghorne 2008 pp 395 396 Simonetti amp Oden 2002 St Augustine of Hippo De Trinitate Book I Chapter 3 a b Aquinas Thomas Summa Contra Gentiles Book Four Chapter 8 Archived from the original on 28 July 2018 Retrieved 11 January 2019 Goodman amp Blumberg 2002 p 36 a b Hurtado 2018 p 62 Hurtado 2018 p 64 a b c Basil of Caesarea 1980 Ch 16 Basil of Caesarea 1980 Ch 19 Basil of Caesarea 1980 Ch 21 Arendzen 1911 Milburn 1991 p 68 Ehrman Bart D The Apostolic Fathers Vol 1 Loeb Classical Library 2003 119 Ehrman further notes fn 97 Clement is alluding to Ephesians 4 4 6 Also see 1 Clement 58 2 Ehrman Bart The Apostolic Fathers Vol 1 Harvard University Press 2003 pp 411 429 Ignatius s Letter to the Magnesians Ch XIII Hurtado 2005 pp 595 599 First Apology LXI Ccel org 13 July 2005 Retrieved 3 November 2013 Hurtado 2005 pp 646 Theophilus Apologia ad Autolycum Book II Chapter 15 Theophilus To Autolycus 1 7 Cf Irenaeus Against Heresies 4 20 1 pg 3Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching pg 5 Tertullian Against Praxeas Against Praxeas chapter 2 Ccel org 1 June 2005 Retrieved 19 March 2018 a b Mulhern 1967 p 205 Ramelli 2011a Barnard 1970 pp 172 188 Chapman 1913 Chadwick 1993 p 87 a b Cross amp Livingstone 2005 p 100 Creeds of Christendom with a History and Critical notes Christian Classics Ethereal Library Anderson Michael The Nicaeno Constantinopolitan Creed creeds net a b c Trinity Britannica Encyclopaedia of World Religions Chicago Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006 See Creeds of Christendom Hornblower Spawforth amp Eidinow 2012 p 193 Shelley Bruce L 2013 Church History in Plain Language p 113 Shelley Bruce L 2013 Church History in Plain Language p 113 For a different view see e g Excursus on the Words pistin ἑteran Greek and Latin Traditions on Holy Spirit Retrieved 18 January 2019 Gregory of Nazianzus Orations 40 41 Mt 28 19 Matthew 28 19 Vondey 2012 p 78 7 1 3 online Epistle to the Philippians 2 13 online On Baptism 8 6 online Against Praxeas 26 2 online Against Noetus 1 14 online Seventh Council of Carthage online A Sectional Confession of Faith 13 2 online 2 Cor 13 14 1 Cor 12 4 6 Kittel 3 108 full citation needed Grudem 1994 p 226 Athanasian Creed Ccel org Retrieved 2 January 2012 Barth 1975 pp 348 349 Pegis 1997 pp 307 309 De Smet 2010 The Eleventh Council of Toledo 675 Retrieved 11 January 2019 Fourth Lateran Council 1215 List of Constitutions 2 On the error of abbot Joachim Archived from the original on 7 July 2019 Retrieved 7 July 2019 Fathers Council 11 November 1215 Fourth Lateran Council 1215 Council Fathers Retrieved 24 December 2022 Magliola 2001 pp 404 405 Magliola 2014 pp 159 161 John 10 38 14 11 14 20 NPNF2 09 Hilary of Poitiers John of Damascus Christian Classics Ethereal Library Ccel org 13 July 2005 Retrieved 2 January 2012 Cross F L ed 1974 Cicumincession The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church 2nd ed Oxford University Press John 14 18 CCC 236 CCC 258 Basil the Great De Spiritu Sancto NPNF Vol 8 Ccel org 13 July 2005 Retrieved 2 January 2012 John Took 15 May 2016 Conversations with Kenelm Essays on the Theology of the Commedia Ubiquity Press p 66 ISBN 9781909188082 OCLC 1054304886 Quote in Latin mysterium Christi explicite credi non potest sine fide Trinitatis Athanasius 3 29 p 409 Basil Letters NPNF Vol 8 189 7 p 32 Sauvage 1907 Stefon Matt 10 December 2015 Christianity The Holy Trinity Attempts to define the Trinity Encyclopaedia Britannica Augustine of Hippo 2002 p 25 Augustine of Hippo 2002 p 26 Pool 2011 p 398 Aquinas 1975 p 91 in Latin DS 401 Pope John II letter Olim quidem addressed to the senators of Constantinople March 534 Yewangoe 1987 p 273 Kitamori 2005 p v von Balthasar 2000 p vii von Balthasar 1992 p 55 Mobley 2021 p 202 Dimech 2019 p 103 Carson 2000 p 9 Warfield 1915 pp 3020 3021 a b c Jonas W Glenn 1 January 2010 Christianity Mercer University Press p 241 ISBN 9780881462043 Popular analogies for the Trinity abound The comparison is sometimes made between the triune God and H2O Just as H2O can come in three distinct forms liquid solid gas so God appears as Father Son Spirit Or just as the sun cannot be separated from its rays of light and its felt heat so the Son is the ray of the Father and the spirit is the heat of God Or to use a mathematical analogy 1 1 1 3 but 1x1x1 1 a b Seamands Stephen 20 August 2009 Ministry in the Image of God The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service InterVarsity Press p 97 ISBN 9780830876358 Christians have always used various analogies to help make sense of the Trinity Water for example can exist in three different states as liquid steam or ice It is once substance H2O yet appears in three distinct forms Harvey amp Hunter 2008 What Was Debated at the Council of Nicea Archived from the original on 10 July 2014 Retrieved 11 July 2014 Schaff Philip History of the Christian Church Vol III Nicene and Post Nicene Christianity fifth revised ed 27 von Harnack Adolf 1 March 1894 History of Dogma Retrieved 15 June 2007 In the 2nd century Jesus was either regarded as the man whom God hath chosen in whom the Deity or the Spirit of God dwelt and who after being tested was adopted by God and invested with dominion Adoptionist Christology or Jesus was regarded as a heavenly spiritual being the highest after God who took flesh and again returned to heaven after the completion of his work on earth pneumatic Christology Olson 1999 p 173 Meens 2016 p 64 Jonathan Israel The Dutch Republic Its Rise Greatness and Fall 1477 1806 a b Glasse amp Smith 2003 pp 239 241 Trinity gt Judaic and Islamic Objections Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato stanford edu Retrieved 23 August 2022 The Jewish Quarterly Review Macmillan 1895 Colenso John William 2022 The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically examined Part 3 Part 4 2 ed BoD Books on Demand ISBN 978 3 375 00420 0 a b Thomas 2006 Trinity Griffith 2012 p 8 note 7 Zebiri 2006 p 274 Sirry 2014 p 47 Neuwirth amp Sells 2016 pp 300 304 Van Reeth Jan M F 31 December 2012 Who is the other Paraclete The Coming of the Comforter When Where and to Whom Gorgias Press 440 441 doi 10 31826 9781463234812 014 ISBN 9781463234812 Schiller 1971 figs 1 5 16 Cartlidge amp Elliott 2001 p 240 Schiller 1971 pp 122 124 and figs 409 414 Schiller 1971 pp 219 224 and figs 768 804 Potts 1982 pp 68 78 Sanierung Heiligen Geist Kapelle Bruck an der Mur in German Bruck an der Mur Retrieved 27 May 2020 Sources Allison Dale C Jr 2016 Acts 9 1 9 22 6 11 26 12 18 Paul and Ezekiel Journal of Biblical Literature 135 4 807 826 doi 10 15699 jbl 1354 2016 3138 Aquinas Thomas 1975 Summa Contra Gentiles Book 4 Salvation Chapter 4 University of Notre Dame Press ISBN 978 0268074821 Arendzen John Peter 1911 Pneumatomachi In Herbermann Charles ed Catholic Encyclopedia Vol 12 New York Robert Appleton Company Augustine of Hippo 2002 Augustine On the Trinity Books 8 15 Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0521796651 Barnard L W 1970 The Antecedents of Arius Vigiliae Christianae 24 3 172 188 doi 10 2307 1583070 ISSN 0042 6032 JSTOR 1583070 Barth Karl 1975 The Doctrine of the Word of God prolegomena to Church Dogmatics Being Volume I 1 T amp T Clark ISBN 978 0567090133 Basil of Caesarea 1980 On the Holy Spirit St Vladimir s Seminary Press ISBN 978 0913836743 Bauckham Richard 2017 Is High Human Christology Sufficient A Critical Response to J R Daniel Kirk s A Man Attested by God Bulletin for Biblical Research Penn State University Press 27 4 503 525 doi 10 5325 bullbiblrese 27 4 0503 JSTOR 10 5325 bullbiblrese 27 4 0503 S2CID 246577988 Brown Raymond Edward 1970 The Gospel According to John Vol 2 XIII to XXI Doubleday ISBN 978 0385037617 Carson Donald Arthur 2000 The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God Inter Varsity ISBN 978 0851119755 Cartlidge David R Elliott James Keith 2001 Art and the Christian Apocrypha Routledge ISBN 978 0415233927 Chadwick Henry 1993 The Penguin History of the Church The Early Church Penguin ISBN 978 0140231991 Chapman Henry Palmer 1913 Paul of Samosata In Herbermann Charles ed Catholic Encyclopedia New York Robert Appleton Company Clarke William Newton 1900 An Outline of Christian Theology 8th ed New York Scribner Cross Frank Leslie Livingstone Elizabeth A 2005 Trinity doctrine of the The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0192802903 Daley Brian E 2009 The Persons in God and the Person of Christ in Patristic Theology An Argument for Parallel Development God in Early Christian Thought Leiden amp Boston Brill pp 323 350 ISBN 978 9004174122 De Smet Richard 2010 Ivo Coelho ed Brahman and Person Essays Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 8120834590 Dimech Pauline 2019 9 Von Balthasars Theoaesthetics Applied to Religious Education In Michael T Buchanan Adrian Mario Gellel eds Global Perspectives on Catholic Religious Education in Schools Volume II Learning and Leading in a Pluralist World Springer p 103 doi 10 1007 978 981 13 6127 2 ISBN 978 9811361272 Dupuis Jacques Neuner Josef 2001 The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church 7th ed Alba House ISBN 978 0818908934 Hurtado Larry 2018 Observations on the Monotheism Affirmed in the New Testament In Beeley Christopher Weedman Mark eds The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology Catholic University of America Press ISBN 978 0813229959 Fee Gordon 2002 Paul and the Trinity The experience of Christ and the Spirit for Paul s Understanding of God In Davis Stephen ed The Trinity An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0199246120 Ferguson Everett 2009 Baptism in the Early Church History Theology and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries Eerdmans ISBN 978 0802827487 Glasse Cyril Smith Huston 2003 The New Encyclopedia of Islam Rowman Altamira ISBN 978 0759101906 Goodman Roberta Louis Blumberg Sherry H 2002 Teaching about God and Spirituality A Resource for Jewish Settings Behrman House ISBN 978 0867050530 Griffith Sidney H 2012 The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam Princeton University Press ISBN 978 1400834020 Grudem Wayne 1994 Systematic Theology An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine Leicester Inter Varsity Press ISBN 978 0310286707 Harvey Susan Ashbrook Hunter David G 2008 The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0199271566 Hays Richard B 2014 Reading Backwards Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness Baylor University Press ISBN 978 1481302326 Hoskyns Sir Edwyn Clement 1967 F N Davey ed The Fourth Gospel 2nd ed London Faber amp Faber Hurtado Larry 2005 Lord Jesus Christ Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity Eerdmans ISBN 978 0802831675 Hurtado Larry 2010 God in New Testament Theology Abingdon Press ISBN 978 1426719547 Januariy Archimandrite 2013 The Elements of Triadology in the New Testament In Stewart M ed The Trinity East West Dialogue Springer ISBN 978 9401703932 Joyce George Hayward 1912 Blessed Trinity In Herbermann Charles ed Catholic Encyclopedia Vol 15 New York Robert Appleton Company Hornblower Simon Spawforth Antony Eidinow Esther 2012 On Athanasius The Oxford Classical Dictionary Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0199545568 Kitamori Kazoh 2005 Theology of the Pain of God Translated by Graham Harrison from the Japanese Kami no itami no shingaku revised edition 1958 first edition 1946 Eugene Oregon Wipf and Stock ISBN 978 1597522564 Kupp David D 1996 Matthew s Emmanuel Divine Presence and God s People in the First Gospel Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0521570077 Litwa M David 2019 How the Gospels Became History Jesus and Mediterranean Myths Yale University Press ISBN 978 0300249484 Magliola Robert 2001 Two Models of Trinity French Post structuralist versus the Historical critical argued in the Form of a Dialogue In Oliva Blanchette Tomonobu Imamichi George F McLean eds Philosophical Challenges and Opportunities of Globalization Vol 2 Washington DC CRVP Catholic U of America ISBN 978 1565181298 Magliola Robert 2014 Facing Up to Real Doctrinal Difference How Some Thought Motifs from Derrida Can Nourish The Catholic Buddhist Encounter Angelico Press ISBN 978 1621380795 Meens Rob 2016 Religious Franks Religion and Power in the Frankish Kingdoms Studies in Honour of Mayke de Jong Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0719097638 Metzger B M Ehrman B D 1968 The Text of New Testament 2nd ed Oxford University Press ISBN 978 5885009010 Metzger Bruce M Coogan Michael David 1993 The Oxford Companion to the Bible Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0199743919 Milburn Robert 1991 Early Christian Art and Architecture University of California Press ISBN 0520074122 Mobley Joshua 2021 A Brief Systematic Theology of the Symbol Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN 978 0567702524 Mulhern Philip 1967 Trinity Holy Devotion To In Bernard L Marthaler ed New Catholic Encyclopedia McGraw Hill OCLC 588876554 Neuwirth Angelika Sells Michael A 2016 Qur anic Studies Today Routledge ISBN 978 1317295662 Olson Roger 1999 The Story of Christian Theology Twenty Centuries of Tradition amp Reform InterVarsity Press p 173 ISBN 978 0830815050 sabellian heresy council constantinople Pegis Anton 1997 Basic writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas Hackett Pub ISBN 978 0872203808 Polkinghorne John September 2008 Book Review The Language of God A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief Theology 111 863 395 396 doi 10 1177 0040571x0811100523 ISSN 0040 571X S2CID 170563171 Pool Jeff B 2011 2009 God s Wounds Evil and Divine Suffering Vol 2 Havertown Philadelphia Casemate Publishers ISBN 978 0227173602 Potts Albert M 1982 The World s Eye University Press of Kentucky pp 68 78 ISBN 978 0813131306 Ramelli Ilaria 2011a Origen s anti subordinationism and its heritage in the Nicene and Cappadocian line Vigiliae Christianae 65 1 21 49 doi 10 1163 157007210X508103 Ramelli Ilaria 2012 Origen Greek Philosophy and the Birth of the Trinitarian Meaning of Hypostasis The Harvard Theological Review 105 3 302 350 doi 10 1017 S0017816012000120 JSTOR 23327679 S2CID 170203381 Reynolds Gabriel Said 2014 On the Presentation of Christianity in the Qurʾan and the Many Aspects of Qur anic Rhetoric Al Bayan Journal of Qurʾan and Ḥadith Studies 12 1 42 54 doi 10 1163 22321969 12340003 ISSN 2232 1950 Sauvage George 1907 Appropriation In Herbermann Charles ed Catholic Encyclopedia Vol 1 New York Robert Appleton Company Schiller Gertrud 1971 Iconography of Christian Art Vol 1 Christ s Incarnation Childhood Baptism Temptation Transfiguration Works and miracles Lund Humphries ISBN 978 0853312703 Sim David C Repschinski Boris 2008 Matthew and his Christian Contemporaries Bloomsbury ISBN 978 0567462312 Simonetti Manlio Oden Thomas C 2002 Matthew 14 28 InterVarsity Press ISBN 978 0830814695 Sirry Mun im 2014 Scriptural Polemics The Qur an and Other Religions Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0199359370 Thomas David 2006 Trinity Encyclopedia of the Qur an Vol V von Balthasar Hans 1992 Theo drama Theological Dramatic Theory Vol 3 Dramatis Personae Persons in Christ Ignatius Press ISBN 978 0814622810 von Balthasar Hans Urs 2000 1990 Preface to the Second Edition Mysterium Paschale The Mystery of Easter Translated with an Introduction by Aidan Nichols O P 2nd ed San Francisco Ignatius Press ISBN 978 1681493480 Vondey Wolfgang 2012 Pentecostalism A Guide for the Perplexed T amp T Clark ISBN 978 0567627315 Warfield Benjamin B 1915 20 Trinity The Question of Subordination In James Orr ed The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia Vol 5 Howard Severance Company Williams Rowan 2001 Arius Heresy and Tradition 2nd ed SPCK ISBN 978 0334028505 Yewangoe Andreas 1987 Theologia Crucis in Asia Asian Christian Views on Suffering in the Face of Overwhelming Poverty and Multifaceted Religiosity in Asia Rodopi ISBN 978 9062036103 Zebiri Kate 2006 Argumentation In Rippin Andrew ed The Blackwell Companion to the Qur an Wiley Blackwell ISBN 978 1405178440 Further readingAlfeyev Hilarion 2013 The Trinitarian Teaching of Saint Gregory Nazianzen In Stewart M ed The Trinity East West Dialogue Springer ISBN 978 9401703932 Bates Matthew W 2015 The Birth of the Trinity Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0191045875 Bellarmine Robert 1902 Trinity Sunday The Holy Trinity Sermons from the Latins Benziger Brothers Beeley Christopher Weedman Mark eds 2018 The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology Catholic University of America Press ISBN 978 0813229966 Emery Gilles O P Levering Matthew eds 2012 The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity OUP Oxford ISBN 978 0199557813 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint multiple names editors list link Grillmeier Aloys 1975 1965 Christ in Christian Tradition From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon 451 Vol 1 2nd revised ed Atlanta John Knox Press ISBN 978 0664223014 Fiddes Paul Participating in God a pastoral doctrine of the Trinity London Darton Longman amp Todd 2000 Johnson Thomas K What Difference Does the Trinity Make Bonn Culture and Science Publ 2009 Hillar Marian From Logos to Trinity The Evolution of Religious Beliefs from Pythagoras to Tertullian Cambridge University Press 2012 Holmes Stephen R 2012 The Quest for the Trinity The Doctrine of God in Scripture History and Modernity InterVarsity Press ISBN 978 0830839865 La Due William J The Trinity guide to the Trinity Continuum International Publishing Group 2003 ISBN 978 1563383953 Morrison M 2013 Trinitarian Conversations Interviews With Ten Theologians CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform Letham Robert 2004 The Holy Trinity In Scripture History Theology and Worship P amp R ISBN 978 0875520001 O Collins Gerald 1999 The Tripersonal God Understanding and Interpreting the Trinity Paulist Press ISBN 978 0809138876 Olson Roger E Hall Christopher A 2002 The Trinity Wm B Eerdmans ISBN 978 0802848277 Phan Peter C ed 2011 The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0521877398 Ramelli Ilaria 2011 Gregory of Nyssa s Trinitarian Theology in Illud Tunc et ipse filius His Polemic against Arian Subordinationism and the ἀpokatastasis Gregory of Nyssa The Minor Treatises on Trinitarian Theology and Apollinarism Leiden Boston Brill pp 445 478 ISBN 978 9004194144 So Damon W K Jesus Revelation of His Father A Narrative Conceptual Study of the Trinity with Special Reference to Karl Barth Milton Keynes Paternoster 2006 ISBN 184227323X Spirago Francis 1904 Lesson 3 On the Unity and Trinity of God Anecdotes and Examples Illustrating The Catholic Catechism Translated by James Baxter Benzinger Brothers Reeves Michael 2022 Delighting in the Trinity An Introduction to the Christian Faith InterVarsity Press ISBN 978 0830847075 Tuggy Dale Summer 2014 Trinity History of Trinitarian Doctrines Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Weedman Mark 2007 The Trinitarian Theology of Hilary of Poitiers Leiden Boston Brill ISBN 978 9004162242 Webb Eugene In Search of The Triune God The Christian Paths of East and West Columbia MO University of Missouri Press 2014 External links nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Holy Trinity nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Trinity Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Trinity Trinity entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy A Formulation and Defense of the Doctrine of the Trinity A brief historical survey of patristic Trinitarian thought Trinity article at Theopedia Eastern Orthodox Trinitarian Theology Doctrine of the Trinity Reading Room Extensive collection of online sources on the Trinity Tyndale Seminary Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Trinity amp oldid 1203639442, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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