Blessed Trinity and Humanity 6/11/06
by Fr.Gus Carter

The great ancient philosophers, Aristotle and Plato, came to the conclusion that there is only one God. They asked what does God do all the time? Because there is nothing to equal God, they concluded that the only thing worthwhile for God to do was to contemplate Himself Because God is infinite, there could be not change in God. Therefore, God could not suffer. The philosophers had some important ideas, but they left the world with the idea of a God who really could not be interested in mere humans.

Because of there personal experience of God, the Hebrew people were absolutely sure that there is only one God. This God knew his people and was concerned about them. They had come to imagine God creating the world. In the story of creation in the Book of Genesis, creation begins by a "mighty wind swept over the waters." This wind was thought of as the breath of God that gives life. "God breathed into the clay of the earth and man became a living being." The Spirit of God often moved the prophets to defend the weak and oppressed in society.

The poets of Israel imagined God creating the world. From their inspired encounters with creation, they imagined that the Wisdom of God was like a person accompanying God in making the universe. I quote the Book of Proverbs which speaks poetically as Lady Wisdom: "When He established the heavens, I was there, When he marked out the vault over the face of the deep; when he made firm the skies above, When he fixed fast the foundations of the earth; .,. There was I beside Him as his craftsman, and I was his delight day by day, Playing before Him all the while, playing on the surface of the earth; and I found delight in the sons of men." This is a beautiful notion of God as sharing the delights of creation. These words do reflect the dynamics of the Blessed Trinity.

Three Persons in One God is the God of Jesus Christ. He taught us to call God, "Abba," Father. While on earth Jesus acted like God at times. He gave life and forgave sins. At the Last Supper Jesus said in his prayer to the Father, "Everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine." He prayed to the Father for his disciples, "That they may be one just as we (Father and Son) are one." Jesus also told his disciples that the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, "will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears... He will take what is mine and declare it to you." In this manner Jesus spoke of the intimate union and loving oneness among Himself and the Father and the Holy Spirit. There is a threeness in the oneness of God. John, the Beloved Disciple, was able to say not only that God loves us, but that "God is love." We have come to know something of God's inner life in and through the way God reaches outward to us in Jesus and the Spirit. In God's very self there is a loving relationship of three persons. God is Lover, Beloved and the Bond of love.

God is a union of the Giver of Love, the Recipient of love and the very Gift of love: the perfection of love and Givenness and Relationship.

The Vatican II documents remind us that humans are made in the image of God. It is true that we are God-like in our capacity to know and to love. What is equally stressed in modem theology is that the essence of God involves relationships. The document "The Church in the Modem World" declares, "God did not create humans as solitary beings from the beginning:
'male and female he created them. 'Their companionship produces the primary form of interpersonal communion. By their innermost nature humans are social beings, and unless they relate themselves to others they can neither live nor develop their potential."
The Vatican II document stresses, perhaps in a new and yet old way, why we must love our neighbor. We can never reach the fullness of our humanity unless we love. There is reason to say that one who does not love is dead already.

We can see why modem theology insists that the doctrine of the Trinity is not some far out doctrine that interests only learned theologians. There is hope that the Trinity may make the sense of God more appealing, relevant for modem times, aid us in our spirituality, speak to our hearts. By the grace of God our human destiny is to join the circle of love that is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.