DRAFT OF A CHAPTER
THE TRINITY
Charles
P. Poole, Jr.
CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Structure in God
3. Athanasian Creed
4. God in Terms of Four Interaction Levels
5.
Person and Nature
6. Internal (ad Intra) Interactions of Transcendent and Immanent God
7. External (ad Extra) Interactions of God
8. Strong and Weak Interactions
9.
10. Dynamism of the Trinity
11.
Traditional Explanations of the Trinity
12.
Recent Speculations on the Trinity
13. Christian Prayer
14. Irreducible Tensor Model
15. Discussion
Appendix: Irreducible Tensor Model
1. INTRODUCTION
Belief
in the Trinity has been one of the central tenets of the Christian Church from the
earliest centuries of its existence.
This is attested to by the fact that the three persons of the Blessed
Trinity are mentioned in all of the creeds.
In this chapter we will give some rationale as to why a scientist might
have a special interest in the Trinity, we will discuss some of the
characteristics of the Trinity, and in an appendix we will propose a mathematical model for it.
Much of the material presented here was obtained from the 1972 book The Triune God by Edmund J. Fortman S. J.
2. STRUCTURE IN GOD
During
the past couple of centuries scientists have been probing deeper and deeper
into nature, and at particular steps in the process they keep finding more and
more of what they call structure. Examining seemingly uniform solid objects at
a magnification of a billion shows that they are not continuous, but rather
composed of discrete atoms. The size of
the atom is determined by electron clouds which surround its tiny nucleus, a
nucleus which is a million times smaller than the electron clouds. Further probing shows that
the nucleus itself is not a uniform entity, but rather that it is composed of
several or many quarks.
Biologists have found that the organs of the body are composed of
tissues, tissues are composed of cells, and cells themselves have a
substructure. Astronomers tell us that
outer space contains many widely separated galaxies, and each galaxy is mostly
empty space populated by billions of stars.
At each level of probing over various distance scales we
scientists find more diverse structure.
These facts lead a scientist who believes in God to pose the question:
Is there structure in God? Only
Christianity upholds the belief that there is but one God, but this one God has
a triune or trinitarian variety of structure. Since everything else has structure, it should not be
surprising that God also has structure.
Theologians down through the centuries have tried to gain some
understanding of this structure through the light of revelation assisted by
reason. Toward the end of this chapter
we will try to gain some small additional insights into the nature of this
structure by postulating a mathematical model which seems to mimic some of its
salient characteristics.
3. ATHANASIAN CREED
Neither
the familiar Apostles’ Creed nor the Nicene Creed favor us with much
specific information about the Trinity,
so we will begin our discussion of it by quoting from the more detailed
so-called Athanasian Creed which provides what is
probably the best formal statement of the doctrine from the early middle
ages. The Latin name for the Athanasian Creed is its two opening words Quicumque vult (salvus esse) meaning
“Whoever wishes (to be saved).” This Creed
was not actually composed by St. Athanasius
(c.295-373), but rather by a student of
The Athanasian Creed states: “The Son is from the Father alone,
not made nor created, but begotten. The
Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made nor created nor begotten,
but proceeding or spirating. So there is one Father, not three fathers,
one Son, not three sons, and one Holy Spirit, not three holy spirits, and in
this Trinity none is before or after another, none is greater or less, but all
three persons are co-eternal with one another and co-equal. So that in all things, as has already been
said above, both Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity
are to be adored. Therefore whoever will
be saved must believe this of the Trinity.”
In
this statement there is an emphasis on the Son begotten from the Father alone,
and the Holy Spirit proceeding from both the Father and the Son. The terminology "begotten" and "proceeding"
differs in the two cases. A second
emphasis is on the equality of the persons, and a third emphasis is on their coeternality. The
overall statement of the creed corresponds to what we will refer to later as
the immanent Trinity. The final sentence
notes that belief in the Trinity is necessary for salvation.
4. GOD IN TERMS OF FOUR
INTERACTION LEVELS
The
word interaction is widely used in science to denote how two or more entities
relate to, influence,
effect, or change each other.
We refer, for example, to the sun interacting with the earth through the
force of gravity, and the collision of two pool balls is considered as an
interaction between them. The entity
called God can be considered in terms of four levels of interaction. 1) The first is the monotheistic God without
interaction. This is God with three as
yet indistinguishable persons. 2) Next
we introduce for consideration, or in the language of science we turn on, the
mutual interpersonal interaction. This
provides us with a transcendent or immanent God who also exhibits internal
interactions such as mutual love between three now distinguishable persons , what theologians call operationes ad intra. 3) Third we add the world, which corresponds to
adding the interactions of creating and sustaining the world in existence. This provides us with the so-called economic
God, an immanent God who also has external interactions, what theologians call operationes ad extra. 4)
Finally we add the covenant - incarnation - redemption - indwelling in
souls - interactions and we obtain the familiar Christian God. These four levels of interaction may be
correlated with traditional subdivisions of treatises on dogmatic theology: 1)
God (de Deo Uno), 2) The Trinity (de Deo Trino),
3) God the Creator (de Deo Creante et
Elevante), and 4) God the Redeemer (de Verbo Incarnato et Redemptore). The next few sections will discuss these
factors in much more detail.
5. PERSON
In
order to describe the Trinity properly, and to compose an adequate expression
of our beliefs, it was necessary for the Church fathers to develop an
unambiguous terminology involving non-biblical words, namely: nature or substance, and person or
hypostasis. From a simplified point of view “nature” answers the question “What
is God?," and “person” answers the question “Who is
God.” The nature, substance, or essence
of something is what makes it what it is, its internal unity, together with
what governs its activity. Person adds
the notion rational or intellectual, capable of love; a person has dignity and
individuality. Boethius’
(c.480-524) famous definition is “a person is an individual substance of a
rational nature,”
Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173) offered the definition ”an
incommunicable existence of the divine essence,” and Thomas Aquinas
(c.1225-1274) suggested “a relationally distinct subsistence in the divine
nature.” We say that God has a divine
nature that makes God what God is, and that God consists of three rational,
loving, intellectual persons. The Father
and the Holy Spirit are each persons which possess
only a divine nature; and the Son is a person with both a divine nature and a
human nature.
6. INTERNAL (AD INTRA) INTERACTIONS OF
TRANSCENDENT
God as monotheistic is called transcendent because He
exists independent of the world. God as
triune is as described in the Athanasian Creed. This
triune God is called immanent, and consists of three divine persons with an
internal life of mutual interaction among themselves. In theological terminology these mutual
internal interactions are called operationes ad intra,
and they are indeed basic to the essence of the Trinity. They antedate the world, are occurring now,
and will continue indefinitely. This
viewpoint is more in conformity with St. Bonaventure’s emphasis on a rather
dynamic God who is pure activity, in contrast to St. Thomas Aquinas’ emphasis
on a seemingly more static God who is pure act.
Traditional theology does not discuss the three divine
persons in isolation in the Trinity, but as related to each other through the
begetting and spiration operations. The Catechism
says (#255) “The real distinction of the persons from one another resides
solely in the relationships which relate them to one another.” Some mediaeval Thomists
maintained that only opposed relations like paternity and filiation
distinguish the divine persons, but their interpersonal interactions also
differentiate them. Augustine considers
the Holy Spirit as a bond between the Father and the Son, as their mutual gift.
Some have associated the Holy Spirit with the mutual love between the Father
and the Son. To me these two approaches
seem too limiting and too specialized.
From a broader perspective the three persons are individually identified
by their roles in a dynamic relationship; they have mutual roles to play in
their reciprocal activities of interpersonal love. This mutual coexistence or
living together is called circumincession (circumincessio),
and it arises from the consubstantiality, from the origin, and from the
relationships of the persons. In
actuality we know very little about these operations ad intra that we have been discussing, but theologians love to
speculate about them, motivated by the Anselmian
adage fidens quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding.
We have seen how the three relations of paternity, filiation and spiration express
the distinctiveness or diversity of the three divine persons, but it is not
clear to what extent, if at all, these persons are composed of, or are constituted
by, these relations.
7. EXTERNAL (AD EXTRA) INTERACTIONS OF GOD
God has external activities of interaction with the world,
called operations ad extra, which are
associated with the presence of God in the world. The perspective of God interacting with the
world is sometimes referred to as the economic Trinity. Examples of operations ad extra are the creation of the world, sustaining the world in
existence, the Old Testament Covenant with the Israelites, the Incarnation, the
Redemption, the Covenant with individual Christians through baptism, and the
inhabitation or indwelling of God in the souls of the just.
There is ample evidence that in some activities of God in
the world, a particular person of the Trinity plays a role that differs from
those of the other two persons. For
example, Jesus Christ is truly the Second Person of the Trinity, and is also
true man. The interaction between the
Godhead and the world which produced the Incarnation was an interaction which
involved the Second Person in a particular and specific manner. The Holy Spirit
was involved with bringing about the virginal conception of Jesus in Mary (Catechism
#485). Every Mass induces a unique
interaction between the Second Person and the world, especially at the
consecration and at the reception of Communion.
Jesus makes repeated reference in the gospels to his relationship with
the Father, claiming, for example, that the Father and He are one, and that the
Father had sent Him. In Chap. 1 of the
Acts of the Apostles Jesus mentions that he will send the Holy Spirit, and Chap. 2 describes the arrival of the Holy Spirit
at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit inspired
the apostles to proclaim the gospel message.
A number of theologians have commented on the inhabitation
of God in the souls of the just. Augustine considered this indwelling as trinitarian, but with the Holy Spirit playing a special
introductory role. Thomas Aquinas
asserted that both the Son and the Holy Spirit dwell in the soul by grace, and
both of them are invisibly sent. He
considers the Father as also dwelling in us by grace, but not as having been
sent from another. The rationale why a divine person is in a rational human
nature in a novel manner involves sanctifying grace. Th. De Régnon
believes that each divine person sanctifies the just soul in his own unique
manner, establishing a special relation with the soul, H. Nicolas asserts that
God as Trinity is present in each soul by personal relations of knowledge and
love. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange
(1877-1964) explains the special presence of the Trinity in the just as
involving sanctifying grace, infused virtues, and the seven gifts, which the
soul can enjoy through a connatural intimacy with the inner life of God.
There are three ways to view the indwelling presence of God
in a human soul: 1) God is the principle of our supernatural life, the cause of
sanctifying grace, 2) God is the term of our supernatural life, with knowledge
and love the reason for the indwelling, and 3) God is both the principle and
the term, He is both the cause of supernatural life, and the object of special
filial knowledge and love.
8. STRONG
In physics the interaction between two entities is called
strong if the two entities are appreciably influenced by the interaction, or if
the interaction has a major influence on other acts or operations. In the
language of scholastic philosophy, we say that such beings are substantially or
essentially affected by the interaction.
The interaction between beings is called weak if it has only a
negligible or minimal influence on other interactions of the interacting
beings. In particular such a weak
interaction will not appreciably influence the internal (ad intra) interactions of the two entities. In the nomenclature of scholastic philosophy
we say that such beings are affected in a nonessential manner, or per accidens. Relative to the internal dynamical life of
the Trinity all operations ad extra are
weak interactions, although in relation to particular beings in the world they can
be strong. When Jesus healed a leper God
was not changed, but the leper was very much changed. The extent to which one of the Divine
Persons interacts with the world has no effect on his mutual internal life of circumincession, on his divinity, or his omnipotence.
9.
We may distinguish two types of ad extra operations. In the
first type called a mission operation one particular divine person plays a
dominant role, as in Confirmation, and the other two persons play more secondary roles; in the
second type called an appropriation operation all three divine persons play
comparable roles. The Incarnation,
Redemption and Resurrection were mission operations involving the Son, and the
coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was a mission operation of the Holy
Spirit. According to a viewpoint common
to many of the Greek Fathers of the Church the Father is referred to as the
Creator, the Son as the Savior, and the Holy Spirit as the Sanctifier.
Scholastics, on the other hand, emphasize that in divine operations ad extra such as creation and
sanctification the three persons act jointly, the Father through the Son in the
Holy Spirit (Pater per Filium in Spiritu Sancto omnia operat), so these are
appropriation operations. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#689) refers to
the joint mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit sent by the Father to the
world.
In the sixth century Fulgentius
of Ruspe mentioned two missions of the Holy Spirit
sent by the Father and the Son: when He came on the apostles as fire, and when
He came over Christ in the form of a dove.
M. Scheeben suggests that the divine missions
are temporal prolongations of eternal processions. B. Lonergan
observes that the Son is sent to restore and reconcile all so God may be all
things to all, and the Holy Spirit is sent to preside
over the whole Christian life of each of us in sanctifying grace. He further asserts that the object of a
mission involves the cooperation of others, establishing personal relations
like friendship.
10. DYNAMISM OF THE TRINITY
The air in a calm room is in reality composed of nitrogen,
oxygen, and other molecules darting about at high speed in all directions. The occupants of the room are not aware of
this rapid motion which is random in magnitude and direction. Only coordinated motion of air such as wind
is detectable without the use of sophisticated instruments. From a more general viewpoint we say that the
material world has a microscopic or small scale dynamism which often produces a
static behaviour on the macroscopic or large scale
level of observation. In theological
terminology we say that the material world has an internal or ad intra dynamism which produces an
observable external or ad extra appearance. By analogy with this reasoning we can say
that ad intra God as a Trinity of
three persons is ever interacting, while ad
extra God seems to us as ever the same, with the world ever changing. The dynamism of the world does not react back
on or have any appreciable influence on the ad
intra life of the Trinity.
11. TRADITIONAL EXPLANATIONS
OF THE TRINITY
Down through the centuries various theologians have thought
about and written about the Trinity, and their understanding of it. This was especially the case during the
fourth and fifth centuries when the first four Ecumenical Councils Nicaea 325, 1 Constantinople 381, Ephesus 431, and Chalcedon 451 were convening to resolve the issues of Jesus
Christ being true God and true man, and of God having one nature and three
persons. After the latter issue was decided there was still a great deal of
interest in trying to comprehend the meaning of the trinitarian
doctrine. The main controversial issue
was the filioque (and
from the Son) question, whether or not the Holy Spirit was descended from
the Father and the Son. This issue was
finally decided in the year 1215 when the 12th Ecumenical Council (Lateran
IV) decreed in conformity with the Athanasian Creed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the
Father and the Son.
The Eastern Church led by the Cappadocians
Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and
Basil tended to stress the plurality of
God, and the Western Church with Athanasius as their
spokesman put more emphasis on the unity of God. The final definitive understanding that was
arrived at was in part a result of the tension between these two opposing, but
still orthodox, viewpoints. The Church
Fathers argued about a single letter, a Greek iota, in deciding that the Father
and the Son are homoousios, that is they
have the same (homo) rather than
similar (homoi)
natures (ousioi). Victorius suggested
as an analogy of the Trinity the fact that the soul of man exists, lives and
understands (esse, vivere, intelligere); Augustine suggested several analogies,
such as: a) lover, beloved, their love; b) being, knowing, willing; c) memory,
understanding, will; and d) mind remembering God, mind understanding God, mind
loving God. Augustine proposed a
so-called psychological theory of the
processions in the Trinity that Thomas Aquinas perfected by affirming that the Son is born of the
Father as the word of the divine intellect, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from
the Father and the Son as a procession of love.
In the twelfth century Joachim de Fiore (c.1132-1202) divided the
history of the world into three epochs: the time under the Old Testament law is
ascribed to the Father, the subsequent time under the gospel is ascribed to the
Son, and future time under spiritual intelligence is ascribed to the Holy
Spirit. Later that century Albertus Magnus (c.1200-1280) talked about a divine
communicability acting ad intra that
is involved in the generation of the Son and the spiration
of the Holy Spirit. Joachim de Fiore
discussed the Trinity as a quaternity of three
persons with their common essence as a fourth.
Thomas Aquinas mentioned four real relations identified with the divine
essence: divinity, paternity, filiation or spiration, and procession; three of them paternity, filiation and procession are distinct by mutual opposition
and hence constitute the three persons.
Duns Scotus (1265-1308) maintained that there
are seven real relations in God, namely: paternity, filiation,
active and passive spiration, identity, equality and
likeness. Alexander of Hales
(c.1185-1245), teacher of Bonaventure (1221-1274), discussed a twofold diffusion of
divine goodness, namely a personal type whereby one person diffuses in the
procession of another, and an external type in the communication of divine
persons to creatures.
12. RECENT SPECULATIONS ON THE TRINITY
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) viewed creation as a reflection or
image of the Trinity. Karl Rahner (1904-1984) claims
that the two divine processions have something to do with the two basic acts
which belong to the spirit, namely knowledge and love. Bernard Lonergan
(1904-1984) asserts that the three divine persons are not only referred to each
other by interpersonal relations, but in addition they are constituted as
persons by these relations. M. Schmaus maintains that the tri-personality of God is a sign
of life at its fullness, with a continual exchange of life between the three
divine persons, each finding his existence and joy in
the personalities of the other two. B.
Cooke stresses the community of persons, with the divine being God continuously
constituted by the dynamic personal communion between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Matthias Scheeben (1835-1888) suggests that each of the divine
persons is in His own manner both a center and a focus to which the other two
are related, and
in which they are united to each other.
For example, the Holy Spirit unites the Father and the Son in and with
himself as the product of their mutual love.
G. Salet stresses that each divine person
possesses an infinite richness which he communicates to the others in an
unselfish manner, loving the others in a total giving of self since it is in
the other two that he finds himself.
13. CHRISTIAN PRAYER
Devotion to the Trinity has always been an important emphasis in the Church’s devotional life. We start our prayers by blessing ourselves “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Traditional prayers like the Te Deum, and traditional hymns like the Pange Lingua, refer to the Trinity. Many of the hymns in the Liturgy of the Hours or Divine Office end with verses that sing praise to the Trinity, such as:.
Sit,
Christe, rex piissime
tibi Patrique
gloria
cum Spiritu Paraclito
in sempiterna saecula. Amen.
The Mass has many references
to the divine persons. Thus devotion to
the Trinity has always been central in our lives of prayer and worship, and the
more acquainted we are with the nature of the Trinity the more devoutly we can
pray and worship.
14. IRREDUCIBLE TENSOR MODEL
There is a mathematical formalism involving irreducible
tensors and group theory which has been used to explain many aspects of physics
during the past century. This formalism
is a mathematical method for treating a set of entities which exhibits both a
fundamental unity and a well characterized diversity. The set has a unifying principle, and the
individuals that comprise the set have a differentiating principle or
property. There is an operator called a
raising (or lowering) operator which can derive the individual entities from each
other. For example, the nucleus of an
atom is composed of several or many nucleons, and the nucleons come in two
types, a positively charged proton and a neutral (i.
e. uncharged) neutron, each of which has a particular mass. These two nucleons
are related to, and can be generated from, each other by raising and lowering
operations. This mathematical formalism
is briefly described in the Appendix, and then applied as a model to explain
the manner in which God can be simultaneously one in nature and threefold in
persons. The rationale that motivates proposing this model is what motivated
St. Anselm (1033-1109) in the 11th century, namely: fides quaerens intellectum, the name of this website. Many of the principal features of our
understanding of the Trinity fit well into this mathematical formalism, and the
results complement traditional theological explanations of the Trinity. Since these results are couched in
mathematical expressions, it would break up the continuity of this presentation
to elaborate on them here, so the appendix should be consulted for details.
15. DISCUSSION
We have maintained that there is a valid distinction that
can be made between the immanent Trinity which refers to God as He is in
Himself, triune in mutually interacting persons
without reference to the world, and the economic Trinity which refers to God as
manifested to or interacting with the world.
It is not clear that theology will ever be able to elucidate operations
whereby individual persons of the trinity interact with the world, although
theologians have distinguished between individualized mission operations of
particular persons, and collective appropriation interactions of all three
persons acting in unison. Our emphasis
on dynamic ad intra interactions is a
shift from the traditional Thomistic view of the
Trinity to one more
in the spirit of Bonaventure and Scotus. The present
stress on mission and appropriation operations is more in accord with the
spirit of Rahner than it is with traditional Thomists. Our
highlighting of the economic Trinity is in contrast to a traditional emphasis
on the immanent Trinity and the procession operations.
It is hoped that the exposition in this chapter will assist
believing Christians in their lives of prayer and worship, and that it will
provide some insight to Nonchristians concerning the
place of the Trinity in our lives.
Perhaps the exposition on these pages will help to clarify why a
Christian scientific mentality can be attracted to probing into the mysteries
surrounding the triune nature of God.
It is fitting to end with a quotation from the Sulpician
priest Adolf Alfred Tanquery
(1894-1932) whose theological writings educated most of our seminarians for
several decades during the 20th century: “Pater
per Filium in Spiritu Sancto omnia operat.”
APPENDIX
IRREDUCIBLE TENSOR MODEL OF
THE TRINITY
The irreducible tensor formalism is a mathematical method
used in quantum mechanics for treating a group of entities which exhibits a
basic unity as well as a characteristic diversity. We use the notion of what we
call a wave function to designate all the information that we can know about
the entity. The wave function has the
symbol R, the Greek letter lower case psi. A superscript g is used to designate the wave
function Rg of the group, and a subscript i
is added to denote the individual member of the group, corresponding to the
notation Rgi. In our case the group is the Trinity RT, and the individuals RTP are the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit whom we can designate by the wave functions RTF = RT+1 , RTS = RT0 , and RTHS = RT-1 . In writing these expressions we follow
standard quantum mechanical nomenclature by designating the first individual or
person F of the group by the number P = +1, the second individual S by P = 0,
and the third HS by P = -1. Thus we have
P = +1 Father RTF = RT+1
P =
0 Son RTS = RT0
P = -1
Holy Spirit RTHS = RT-1
The letter P might be called
the person quantum number which can take on three possible values, namely +1, 0
and -1.
In quantum mechanics the wave functions in a group can be
converted into one another by what are called raising and lowering operators,
denoted by R and L respectively. For a
wave function RM with the subscript M which is either
an integer or a half integer, these operations produce the following
results
R RM = RM+1
L RM = RM-1
In the case of the Trinity
we have
L RT+1 = RT0
which corresponds to
L RTF = RTS
The quantity L might be
called the begetting operator since by this equation the Father generates or
begets the Son. More technically we say
that the begetting operator operates on the wave function of the Father and
produces the wave function of the Son. In
less technical language the Son is begotten by the Father.
The spiration operator can be
designated by (L)2, and it operates on the
Father and the Son as to produce the Holy Spirit as follows:
(L)2
[RT+1 + RT0 ] = L
[ L ( RT+1 + RT0 ) ]
= L [ RT0 + RT-1 ]
= RT-1 + 0
= RT-1
Symbolically this can be
shortened to the expression
(L)2
[RTF + RTS ] = RTHS
meaning that the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Father and the Son.
The Orthodox Churches prefer the expression
(L)2
RTF = RTHS
whereby the Holy Spirit proceeds
from the Father alone. In this case
there is still the intermediate step in the mathematical development of the
equation
(L)2 RTF =
L RTS = RTHS
which involves the Son and points
to the filioque.
This irreducible tensor approach does not really prove
anything, but it does show that there exists a mathematical formalism capable
of describing the basic defining ad intra
operations of the Trinity.