What Is Faith?… The Most Holy Trinity

By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM

Part 11

Have you ever asked yourselves why the mystery of the Trinity was not clearly defined in the Old Testament, but was only revealed in the New? We find hints of it in the Book of Genesis, for instance, when God said, “Let us create man in our image and likeness” (Gen. 1:26) — our image, our in the plural. But the reason it was not clearly revealed, according to some sound theologians, is because of the Hebrews’ tendency to give into polytheism, to imitate the pagan races around them.
The Mystery of the Trinity is a chief article of the Christian faith, and is also an incentive to piety. Jesus spoke plainly about the equality between Himself and the Father, when He affirmed, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Some non-Catholics attempt to avoid this clear teaching by saying that Jesus meant that He and the Father were one in purpose: but the Jewish Sanhedrin also believed that they were one with God in purpose. And yet they accused Jesus of blaspheming when He said that He and the Father were one, because He was a man and made Himself equal to God (John 5:18), as they accused Him.
Jesus spent forty days with the apostles, teaching them everything they were to convey to mankind in His name. Although the Gospels record nothing at all about that forty-day crash course in Catholic apologetics, we can know a lot about the contents of the course by the teachings of the apostles, teachings which are not necessarily recorded in the Gospels.
For instance, the apostles knew that the Holy Spirit that Jesus sent was also a Divine Person: in Acts, St. Peter says, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?. . . You have not lied to men but to God” (John 10:30; Acts 5:3-4; cf. also Mark 1:11; Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14).
It was evident that St. Peter believed in the divinity of the Holy Spirit.
Some non-Catholics attempt to deny the Trinity by saying that the Holy Spirit is simply God’s energy to act, a force, something like electricity, which causes reactions in people and things. But it does not make sense, because Ananias could not have lied to electricity — nobody does anyway, unless you are nuts — because you can only lie to a person, not to a thing. A force cannot be deceived.
Another way to describe the Holy Trinity is to consider the Trinity as the internal activity of God, the activity of God within Himself, in which each Divine Person has His own particular share. God the Father generates an idea, an image, of Himself, so perfect that it is another Self, God the Son; and the mutual love between the Father and His image is the Holy Spirit. We have no idea of how this happens, but since God is infinitely happy with His nature, and in Heaven we are going to contemplate God as He is, we will also be immensely happy throughout eternity.
On the other hand, all works outside God, such as all His dealings with creatures, their creation, preservation, sanctification, are common to the whole Trinity. For instance, the divine decree to send a Redeemer into the world; the formation of the human nature of Christ in the womb of Mary; the joining of that human nature to God the Son in personal union; the decision to accept the sacrifice of the cross as satisfaction for the sins of men: All of these actions are the work of God, the works common to the Three Divine Persons.
But the acts of Christ as man, the acts done through His human nature, are His alone. Jesus ate, slept, and felt pain, not God the Father or God the Holy Spirit. Folks, these are marvelous realities, which we will only begin to understand in Heaven. I say begin to understand, and not fully understand, because since God is infinite and our puny minds are very much finite, we will never be able to fully comprehend God’s infinite nature and operations. That is why Heaven is eternal, it will take an eternity to know God and love Him, to our endless happiness. But, by appropriation, we speak of the Father, since He is the Head of the whole Trinity, as the Author of creation, and of the Holy Spirit, since He is Divine Love, as the Author of our sanctification.
Over the centuries, wrong teachings have emerged against the Trinity. Around the year 200 the monarchians held that in God there is only one Person. A reform of the monarchian idea was attempted by the modalists, who affirmed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were mere modes or manifestations of the same Divine Person.
A priest from Alexandria, Egypt, entered history as the first great heresiarch, Arius by name (c. 250-c. 336), who maintained that the Son was a mere creature, not consubstantial with the Father. After him came one of his followers, Macedonius, who was a bishop of Constantinople, and died in the year 362. He enlarged his master’s impious doctrine, holding that the Holy Spirit too was a creature and inferior to the Son. Arius was condemned at the First General Council of the Church, held at Nicea (now Iznik, northwest Turkey) in Bithynia, Asia Minor, in 325. Macedonius was condemned at the Second General Council of the Church, held at Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 381.
The Creed which we recite in the Mass was drawn up at these two councils. St. Athanasius was the great defender of the faith in those days.
More recently, some sects (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses) hold, against the plainest teaching of Scripture and Tradition, that the doctrine of the Trinity did not attain the form in which it is now professed in the Catholic Church until the fourth century.
Ignoring history as they do, they assert that the early Christians regarded Christ, not as God, but as a divine ambassador. They also assert that the Holy Spirit was nothing more than the power or activity of God. We have seen above that according to St. Peter one cannot lie to a force, but only to a person.

Growing In Clarity

The heresy of modernism, which still infects areas of the Church to this day, was founded on an altogether false notion of the development of the doctrine, that is, that truth changes with time in a process of natural evolution. We saw examples of this in the recent synods. It also denies that the Church is infallible, and ends in the absurd conclusion that, in the first century, a Christian would have given his life rather than defend the divinity of Christ, and, in the fourth century he would have given his life rather than deny it. Truth would change, as if God could change in an evolutionary process.
No, doctrine does not change in its essence: It can become clearer, more explicit, as in the case of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. But development is nothing more than an unfolding, a fuller and more precise explanation, delivered as the need arises, of the doctrines committed by Christ to His apostles. It never implies that there can be any contradiction among the teachings of the Church in different ages. Development is to be distinguished from mutation or aberration or transformation.
Just as a child from the moment of conception grows and matures until he is born and then goes on maturing into an adult, keeping the same fingerprints and DNA, likewise, Catholic teaching grows naturally in clarity in the course of the centuries, always faithful to the original teaching given by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Next article: God the Creator: the angels!

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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www.RaymonddeSouza.com.)