The Blessings of Knowing the Trinity

I attend college, if you couldn't pick up from the title of the blog. Specifically, a (very) small, Christian liberal arts college.

One of the features of attending this college is the requirement of completing a minor in Christian Studies.

Among the numerous Christian-based courses necessary to complete this minor, Christian Theology I and II are featured. I had the privilege of taking Christian Theology I this past semester and was challenged in my theological system. Greatly.

The primary doctrine - other than the doctrine of revelation - that particularly showed me difficulty was the doctrine of the Trinity. I had never done any extensive study into the doctrine, and so when we went through it in the class I was excited and ready to expand my theological horizons. The description of the Trinity given in the class - which is historically supported, theologically grounded, and scripturally backed - cleared up much of our misunderstandings, misunderstandings that plague today's Church.

What follows lit my heart on fire, and if you are a Christian, it should for you, too.

The description went as such:

The Father, the Son - Who is the Lord Jesus Christ - and the Holy Spirit, are three eternal Persons who make up the one God.

God, a unitary Being, exists as three Persons, each of Whom are totally united and co-dependent on each other. The Being of God, what the Nicean fathers called the ousia - or essence - of God, is the relationship between these three Persons. This means that similar to a marriage relationship where two people "become one" yet maintain their own distinctness, God is the eternal relationship between the Father, the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, Who maintain their own uniqueness within the relationship.

Furthermore, each Person is dependent upon - and therefore completely equal in value and divinity with - the others for their own eternal integrity. The Father is not the Father without the Son. The Son is not the Son without the Father. The Father and the Son are not the Father and Son without the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Holy Spirit without the Son and the Father.

One is to understand the relationship between the Son and the Father in terms of begotten-ness, as Church history testifies to in the numerous creeds and confessions. The Son and the Father are given their titles so that humanity would understand their relations as a Father who begets - not births or creates - a Son. The Son is begotten of the Father eternally, yet never has a beginning or end, as the Son is as much God as the Father, and in fact there would be no Father without the Son. From this intimate, completely unified, begotten relationship, there also exists the Spirit of the connection between them. The Holy Spirit, as divine and as God as the first Two, exists as the essence of love between the Father and the Son and is a Person in the same way that they are. The Holy Spirit is the love between Father and Son, and as such, emanates from them both, similar to how the Son does the Father: eternally and without beginning or end. This emanation (and the begotten-ness of the Son, otherwise known as eternal generation) ensures the full divinity and "God-ness" of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and is essentially the glue that holds the Being of God (the relations) together.

This Trinity (Tri-unity) is the God that Christians worship. To know Christ is to know the full Being of God, since Christ is the revealer of the divine nature (the Trinity). To know Christ is to know the Trinity.

When the Christian understands these inner workings of the divine nature, which aren't terribly hard to understand - as my professor Dr. McKinion aptly pointed out - the Christian is given a whole new outlook on living. To know that the Being you worship is within Himself a community of harmony and total love-unity stimulates like behavior towards others, who share the same ousia (human-ness) as you. The Trinity not only encourages outward, loving behavior - as Christ commanded of us, in order that we may reflect the very essential nature of God ourselves - but also stimulates awe towards the Divine Being. Who He is is Love, and someone can surely follow a God who is Love.

Do you follow this Trinity? One fact I learned in Theology, apart from this wonderful, awesome doctrine, is that many in the Church today, including myself before taking the class, are confused about the Trinity. They know Jesus is the Son of God, and they know the Holy Spirit is also God, but rarely do they pray to them as such. There is a general lack of understanding among believers today about Who exactly their God is. We've been fooled to believe the nature of God is this über-theological, incredibly complex doctrine that only the professional theologians can truly grasp. But as Dr. McKinion pointed out, if you can grasp the marriage dynamic alluded to earlier, that a man and a woman in a marriage relationship become one while continuing to uphold their distinctiveness as man and woman, then you can surely grasp the doctrine of the Trinity. Just as a wife and a husband are known by their relationship to the other - as a wife can only be a wife by being connected to a husband and vice versa - so are the Three.

Does this make sense? Get rid of the notion that the nature of God is this high-and-mighty concept that can't be grasped by the common man. If it is true that God has given Himself to humanity through Christ, and just as a lover doesn't hold back from revealing who they are to their beloved, so God hasn't held back in showing us Who He is. Take the blessing of the Trinity, understand it in its simple form, guard against heresies, and let the nature of the Divine Love inform how you live and behave towards those around you. Show the eternal life which the Holy Spirit has freely given you, the eternal life which exists between the three glorious, unified, and merciful Persons: the Father, the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

May God, who exists as Three, bless your soul through these words.

-AJR (11/30/20)