Last Sunday was Trinity Sunday. One year ago, on Trinity Sunday, the sermon had given me thought to write an essay on the Trinity, one of my Five Essays posted earlier, proposing a simple way of understanding the Trinity in terms of a logical necessity for there being three Persons in only one God. God is Love and must have an object of His love which necessitates the existence of His Son, also God, but a distinct Person. The ferocity of the love between the Father and the Son must be God as pure Love and hence predicates the existence of a third distinct Person, the Holy Spirit. But there is only one God. An oversimplified way of seeing the legitamacy of this idea is to view God in terms of three parts or functions which make up the whole; each part or Person having the same nature, God.
As a result of the most recent Trinity Sunday I came away with the realization that the Trinity is the core of Christian belief and faith. Why? The beginning of the revelation of the Trinity begins with the Virgin birth of Christ, continues with the teachings and miracles of Christ culminating in the absolutely unparalleled gift of God's redeeming love for all human beings, of all times, found in the suffering, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, God.
It is through all these events that God has revealed Himself in the Trinity of Persons heretofore unknown but to a few to whom God wished to reveal Himself. Jesus asks the Pharisees in the Temple in Jerusalem, whose descendant is the Messiah to be? David's descendant, they responded. Jesus then asks them why the Holy Spirit, through a special revelation, inspires David in psalm 110 to call this descendant 'Lord', that is, God. In spite of all the miracles He has performed and all He has taught, these Pharisees are unable to understand that Jesus is revealing to them that He is the Messiah, so they have no response.
Through the revelation of the Trinity then, God makes us understand that only His Son, Jesus Christ, could redeem human beings from the separation from God due to the fall of Adam, the father of the human race. As St. John says, God so loved human beings that He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to make reparation, in a way that is one of the great mysteries of Christianity, through the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, on a cross, in the personhood of God the Son of God.
As a result of the most recent Trinity Sunday I came away with the realization that the Trinity is the core of Christian belief and faith. Why? The beginning of the revelation of the Trinity begins with the Virgin birth of Christ, continues with the teachings and miracles of Christ culminating in the absolutely unparalleled gift of God's redeeming love for all human beings, of all times, found in the suffering, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, God.
It is through all these events that God has revealed Himself in the Trinity of Persons heretofore unknown but to a few to whom God wished to reveal Himself. Jesus asks the Pharisees in the Temple in Jerusalem, whose descendant is the Messiah to be? David's descendant, they responded. Jesus then asks them why the Holy Spirit, through a special revelation, inspires David in psalm 110 to call this descendant 'Lord', that is, God. In spite of all the miracles He has performed and all He has taught, these Pharisees are unable to understand that Jesus is revealing to them that He is the Messiah, so they have no response.
Through the revelation of the Trinity then, God makes us understand that only His Son, Jesus Christ, could redeem human beings from the separation from God due to the fall of Adam, the father of the human race. As St. John says, God so loved human beings that He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to make reparation, in a way that is one of the great mysteries of Christianity, through the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, on a cross, in the personhood of God the Son of God.
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