Father son and holy spirit Orthodoxy. All about the Trinity
New Testament consists of books called “The Gospel”, “The Acts of the Holy Apostles”, “The Epistles of the Holy Apostles” and “Apocalypse”. The New Testament is smaller in scope than the Old Testament, but it contains truths that help us understand the meaning of the Old Testament and greatly enrich our understanding of God. From the New Testament we get the most complete picture of what God is.
The Lord Jesus Christ Himself testifies: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), and: “he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me” (John 12:45).
In several places the Savior says that He is God's Son. Repeatedly in the Lord's speech there is a mention of Holy Spirit Which is sent down from Father upon request Son. And finally, He admonishes the apostles with the words: “Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
Unlike the Old Testament, the New Testament speaks of God as one being in three Persons - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God is the unity of three Persons, having the same Divine nature, which in its entirety belongs to each of the three Persons, so that they are not three Gods, but one, one God. And at the same time, there are three Divine Persons, three Persons, three Hypostases in Him. This combination of unity and multiplicity remains an unknowable mystery to the human imagination.
For a person who thinks his thoughts through to the end, the great mystery of the Divine nature is proof that only God could give people such a revelation. And in fact, if Voltaire and his followers were right when they asserted, inverting the biblical truth, that man created God in his own image and likeness, then, probably, such a God would be eminently accessible to human understanding. After all, a person is not able to invent what he himself does not understand: the incomprehensible cannot be invented. When a person invents something, he tries to be convincing to other people. The revelation about the nature of the Divine in the New Testament is perceived by our minds as an incomprehensible mystery. But then, isn’t this the best evidence in favor of the fact that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is of Divine origin?
Of course, God does not at all pursue the goal of asking us unsolvable riddles. He is simply limitless and incomprehensible by His nature. And therefore, by entrusting us with the secret of His existence, He thereby confronts a person with a problem that our mind is not able to fully comprehend. And even when we cross the border separating earthly existence from eternal life, when we finally move into that world where much that is now hidden will be revealed to us, even there and then we will not fully comprehend the secrets of Divine life. Because God and man are incommensurable quantities; because the criteria of human thinking, which are based on the experience of our life, are not applicable to the knowledge of the Divine secret. Behind the revelation of the Trinity lies a mystery infinite god, and man, being unable to penetrate into the depths of this mystery, can only touch it and reverently testify to this mystery.
From the New Testament we learn that God is a Trinity - a kind of mysterious trinity. By the way, English "Trinity", or French "Trinite" or German “Drayinichkeit” and means “Trinity”. Slavic word "Trinity" is a synonym for “Trinity”.
“No one can clearly and completely comprehend with the mind and express in words the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity,” says the Monk Simeon New Theologian. And yet, in order to get closer to understanding the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the fathers and teachers of the Church, that is, the outstanding theologians of antiquity, developed a special terminology. In particular, two concepts were formulated: nature (in Greek “us`iya”) and face (“ip`ostasis”). There is a certain nature general category, inherent in a particular phenomenon or being. For example, when we talk about “human nature,” we mean that such different and dissimilar individuals at the same time have common characteristics that are common to them, which make up their nature. Thus, people have human nature, animals have animal nature, and so on.
The Holy Fathers spoke about the nature of God as a category common to all three Divine Persons. As for the face (otherwise “ip`ostasis”, in Slavic - hypostasis), then this is a person, a totality distinctive features. The following analogy helps to understand the difference between nature and a person: every person has human nature, but at the same time is a person different from other human personalities.
God is not a being with three heads and three faces. God is one nature, which is fully expressed in each Divine hypostasis, in each Divine person.
Christians believe in one God. To better understand this, let us resort to proof by contradiction. Man has a human nature. But there is not and cannot be such a person on earth that would include all the wealth of human types, intellects, temperaments, emotional and volitional qualities, that is, would combine in itself what is inherent in the entire human race, the entire totality of human personalities, together taken. There cannot be such a superhuman personality, which would be capable of absorbing all of humanity without a trace. But in each Divine Person
, in each Person of the Holy Trinity the entire Divine nature is fully and absolutely represented. God has one nature, and each of the Persons of the Holy Trinity possesses the fullness of this nature.
Therefore, we should speak of one, one God, expressing His nature in three Persons.
This difficult to comprehend religious truth cannot be fully perceived by people. We can only use analogies in order to get closer to understanding the mystery of Divine life. Of course, we resort to distant similarities from the experience of our own lives and use clearly insufficient categories of our thinking, aware of the entire conventionality of such ideas. But it is also true that a person knows God not through reason, but through the depth of his religious feeling. There are certain relationships between the three equal Persons of the Holy Trinity. Already from the very name of God the Father it follows that His relationship to the other Persons of the Holy Trinity is a relationship of fatherhood. The Word of God and the teaching of the Church testify that God the Father eternally begets God the Son. “Eternal” means outside of time, always. The truth of the pre-eternal, timeless birth of the Son is incomprehensible to human consciousness. But again, through our imperfect analogies, we will try to touch on this secret. We know that human thought is generated by the mind. Thought and mind are inseparable. Thought is a derivative of the mind, reflecting its power and essence. Discussing the eternal birth of the Son
God's God
The theologian, church writer and father of the Church Basil the Great, who lived in the 4th century, in his Eucharistic prayer calls the Son of God “an equal seal.” That is, such a reflection of God the Father, which equally and in its entirety contains the Divine nature. It is no coincidence that the Apostle John the Theologian begins his Gospel with the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
This is said about the Son of God, whom the Apostle calls the Word(in Greek “Logos”), about the second Person of the Holy Trinity - about the Divine Thought and Divine Wisdom, about the “equivalent seal”, born from God the Father outside of time, carrying in itself the fullness of Divine life and Divine nature.
What then is God the Holy Spirit? This is Divine energy, eternally emanating from God the Father. For there has never been a time when this energy did not emanate, and there will not be a time when it will stop emanating. The procession of the Holy Spirit does not exhaust the nature of the Father and His personality, just as the pre-eternal, timeless birth of the Son does not exhaust His personality and His nature. God is completely present in His energy, which He transmits to the entire creation - the surrounding world. This Divine energy is not a particle of God the Father, but includes all Divine life, all Divine nature. And in this sense, God the Holy Spirit is God in the absolute manifestation of His nature, personal God and the third hypostasis of the Holy Trinity.
So, Each Person of the Holy Trinity has in its entirety the same Divine nature. That is why the Trinity is called consubstantial. The persons of the Holy Trinity, possessing one, that is, the same nature, represent an indissoluble unity, they are inseparable.
We can understand the revelation about the inner life of the Holy Trinity by again turning to some analogies from our human life. After all, unity also exists between human individuals. What is capable of ensuring the inseparability of individuals to the maximum extent, what force can bring them extremely close? There is only one power that can do this - the power of love. True love connects two personalities so organically and indissoluble that they become one. In harmonious love lies the desire for complete unity. But in the love and union of two, the personality of each is not destroyed at all. Even the most happy marriage, which connects two people with the closest ties, not only does not destroy their personal characteristics, but, on the contrary, strengthens and enriches each of its constituent halves.
The limit of human love is set by human nature itself. Even more loving people cannot unite completely, for this would be against the laws of nature. True, there are cases of selfless love when one gives his life for another: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
In this case, it is as if a complete surrender of oneself to another occurs, but at the same time one dies, his physical existence ceases.
In other words, in the conditions of earthly reality, even such an omnipotent force as love is capable of uniting, even to the point of death, but is not able to make two into a single whole. However, what is impossible for man is achievable in the Divine being. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol wrote wonderfully about this: “God is all one love, containing in His Trinity both the lover and the beloved, and the very action of love. The lover is God the Father, the beloved is God
The Son, and the very love that binds them, is God the Holy Spirit.”
The New Testament Revelation about the structure of the inner life of God is the basis of all Christian morality. For we learn that the essence of the Divine is love, and it is also the law by which God lives within Himself.
But man was created in the image and likeness of God. And, therefore, in order to become like his Creator, he must also live according to the law of love, extending it to all areas of social and interpersonal relations. This is what John the Theologian means when he says: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8).
Not only will we not be able to become like God and draw closer to Him, but we will not even be able to understand God if we do not love each other. But if we begin to live according to the laws of love, then through the experience of our existence we will touch the Divine life and thus learn that there is God.
When we talk about love, we must clearly understand what we are talking about.
When performing the Sacrament of baptism, a new member of the Church is sanctified in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, Consubstantial and Indivisible, and thereby assumes the obligation to live according to the law of love, common to the Creator and creation.
Purpose of the lesson – consider the emergence and formulation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity.
Tasks:
- Consider the main provisions of the dogma of Holy Trinity.
- Consider the teaching of Scripture on the Trinity.
- Consider the prerequisites for the formulation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity.
Lesson plan
- Together with the listeners, recall the definitions of the apophatic and cataphatic properties of God and give examples of cataphatic properties.
- Introduce students to the content of the lesson.
- Conduct a discussion-survey on test questions in order to consolidate the material.
- Assign homework: read basic literature, watch videos and, if desired, read additional literature.
Basic educational literature:
- Davydenkov O., ier.
Additional literature:
- Alexander (Mileant), bishop. http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Aleksandr_Mileant/edinyj-bog-v-troitse-poklonjaemyj/#0_7
- Hilarion (Alfeev), bishop.
Key concepts:
- dogma;
- Trinity;
- monarchianism;
- dynamism (adoptianism);
- modalism (Sabellianism);
- Arianism.
Test questions:
- What is the essence of the heresy of Arius?
Illustrations:
Video materials:
1. The dogma of the Holy Trinity is the basis of the Christian faith. The main provisions of the dogma
Belief in one God is not a specific feature of Christianity; Muslims and Jews also believe in one God. But the concepts of unity and the highest properties of God do not exhaust the entirety of the Christian teaching about God. The Christian faith initiates us into the deepest mystery of the inner life of God. She represents God, one in essence, as threefold in Persons. It is the belief in God the Trinity that distinguishes Christianity from others monotheistic religions. Since God is One in His being, then all the properties of God - His eternity, omnipotence, omnipresence and others - belong equally to all three Persons of the Holy Trinity. In other words, the Son of God and the Holy Spirit are eternal and omnipotent, like God the Father.
The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is given in Divine Revelation. This dogma is incomprehensible at the level of reason, therefore not a single natural philosophy could rise to the doctrine of the Triune God.
The doctrine of the Trinity of the Godhead boils down to the following basic principles:
1) God is trinity, trinity consists in the fact that in God there are Three Persons (Hypostases): Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
2) Each Person of the Holy Trinity is God, but They are not three Gods, but are one Divine being.
3) The Three Divine Persons are distinguished by personal (hypostatic) properties: the Father is unborn, the Son is born from the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.
2. Evidence of the Trinity in Scripture
The term “Trinity” was first introduced into theology by the 2nd century apologist Saint Theophilus of Antioch, but this does not mean that until that time the Holy Church did not profess the Trinity mystery. The doctrine of God, the Trinity in Persons, has its basis in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
IN Old Testament times Divine Wisdom, adapting to the level of perception of the Jewish people, prone to polytheism, revealed, first of all, the unity of the Divine.
Saint Gregory the Theologian writes: “The Old Testament clearly preached the Father, and not with such clarity the Son; The New One revealed the Son and gave instructions about the Divinity of the Spirit; Now the Spirit abides with us, giving us the clearest knowledge of Him. It was unsafe to clearly preach the Son before the Divinity of the Father was confessed, and before the Son was recognized (to put it somewhat boldly), to burden us with preaching about the Holy Spirit, and expose us to the danger of losing our last strength, as happened with people who were burdened with food not taken. in moderation, or if your vision is still weak, direct it to the sunlight. It was necessary for the Trinity light to illuminate those being enlightened with gradual additions, receipts from glory to glory.”
Communicating the doctrine of the Holy Trinity to the ancient Jews in its entirety would not have been useful, for it would have been nothing more than a return to polytheism for them. The Old Testament is characterized by the strictest monotheism. It is all the more surprising to find in the text of the Old Testament a sufficient number of indications of the plurality or trinity of Persons in God.
An indication of the plurality of Persons is already contained in the first verse of the Bible.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"(Gen.1:1). The predicate “bara” (created) is singular, and the subject “elohim” is plural and literally means “gods.” Saint Philaret of Moscow notes: “In this place of the Hebrew text, the word “elohim”, the Gods themselves, expresses a certain plurality, while the phrase “created” shows the unity of the Creator. The guess that this expression refers to the sacrament of the Holy Trinity deserves respect.”
Similar indications of the plurality of Persons are contained in other places in the Old Testament: “And God said: Let us make man in our image and after our likeness”(Gen.1:26); “And God said: Behold, Adam has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil.”(Gen.3:22); “And the Lord said: ... let us go down and confuse their language there.”(Gen.11:6-7).
Saint Basil the Great comments on these words of Holy Scripture in the following way: “It is truly strange idle talk to assert that someone sits and orders himself around, supervises himself, compels himself powerfully and urgently.”
A clearer evidence of the trinity of God is seen in the appearance of God to Abraham at the oak of Mamre in the form of three men, whom Abraham worshiped as One. “And the Lord appeared to him at the oak grove of Mamre, when he was sitting at the entrance to (his) tent, during the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood against him. Seeing, he ran towards them from the entrance to his tent, and bowed to the ground, and said, “Lord! If I have found favor in Your sight, do not pass Your servant by.”(Gen. 18:1-3) .
An indirect indication of the trinity of Persons in God is the Old Testament priestly blessing: “May the Lord bless you and keep you! May the Lord look upon you with His bright face and have mercy on you! May the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace!”(Numbers 6:24-25). The threefold appeal to the Lord can be considered as a hidden indication of the trinity of Divine Persons.
Saints Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great and other fathers saw another general indication of the mystery of the Holy Trinity in the threefold appeal of the Seraphim to God: "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts". At the same time, the prophet heard the voice of God: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?”. Thus, God speaks of Himself both in the singular and in the plural (Is. 6:3,8).
The Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament speak separately about the Spirit of God, as well as about the Word of God and the Wisdom of God, which, when understood in the New Testament, are the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, i.e. God the Son. During the creation of the world “The Spirit of God hovered over the waters”(Gen.1:2). The Spirit of God created man (Job 33:4) and lives in his nostrils (Job 27:3); Spirit of God, or Spirit of the Lord - “It is the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and piety”(Isa. 11:2). He descends on kings, priests and prophets, placing them in service, revealing secrets to them, revealing visions. Spirit of God in Old Testament devoid of personal attributes - it is rather the breath of God, His energy, His creative and life-giving power.
The concept of “the word of God” also plays a significant role in the Old Testament. The Word of the Lord endures forever (Is. 40:8), it "established in heaven forever"(Ps. 119:89). It is the force through which God controls nature and the entire universe: “He sends His word to the earth; His word flows quickly; gives snow like a wave; frost falls like ashes; Throws His hail in pieces; Who can resist His frost? He will send His word, and everything will melt; He will blow with His wind, and the waters will flow out."(Ps. 147:4-7). The word of the Lord is not like the word of man: it "like fire" or "the hammer that breaks the rock"(Jer.23:29). "Word" God's "never returns to God empty"(Isa.55:11); “not a single word of God remained unfulfilled”(Joshua 23:14). The Word of God works without delay: “He spoke and it was done; He commanded - and it appeared"(Ps. 32:9). The Word of God has healing power (Ps. 106:20). In the same time "the almighty word of God is like a formidable warrior"(Wis.18:15) with a sword in his hands, is an instrument of God's judgment and punishment.
The Word of God is connected with the Spirit of God: “The Spirit of the Lord speaks in me, and His word is on my tongue.”(2 Samuel 23:2). During the creation of the world, the Word and the Spirit act together: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.”(Ps. 32:6). This verse of the psalm attracted special attention from Christian interpreters, who saw in it an indication that the three Persons of the Holy Trinity took part in the creation of the world.
The idea of the Wisdom of God plays a significant role in the Old Testament. Sometimes Wisdom is described as one of the qualities of God: "With Him is wisdom and power, His counsel and understanding"(Job.12:13), "He has power and wisdom"(Job.12:16), “Wonderful are His fates, great is His wisdom”(Isa.28:29). However, in three biblical books - the Proverbs of Solomon, the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach - Wisdom appears as the power of God, endowed with the features of a living spiritual being: “I learned everything, both hidden and obvious, for Wisdom, the artist of everything, taught me. She is the spirit of reason, holy, only-begotten, many-parted, subtle, easily mobile, light, pure, clear, harmless, benevolent, quick, uncontrollable, beneficent, humane, firm, unshakable, calm, carefree, all-seeing and penetrating all intelligent, pure, subtlest perfume. For wisdom is more mobile than any movement, and in its purity it passes through and penetrates everything. She is the breath of the power of God and the pure outpouring of the glory of the Almighty: therefore nothing defiled will enter into her. She is a reflection of eternal light and a pure mirror of the action of God and the image of His goodness. She is alone, but she can do everything, and, remaining in herself, she renews everything and, passing from generation to generation into holy souls, prepares friends of God and prophets; for God loves no one except the one who lives in wisdom. She is more beautiful than the sun and more excellent than the host of stars; in comparison with light it is higher; for light gives way to night, but wisdom does not prevail over evil. She quickly spreads from one end to the other and arranges everything for the benefit... She exalts her nobility by the fact that she has cohabitation with God, and the Lord of all loved her: she is the mystery of the mind of God and the selector of His works.”(Wis.7:21-30; 8:1,3,4).
Wisdom is symbolically described as a woman who has a HOME (Prov. 9:1; Sir.14:25) and a servant (Prov. 9:3). She stabbed the victim, dissolved the wine, prepared a meal and invited everyone to it: “Come, eat my bread and drink the wine that I have mixed; leave foolishness behind and live and walk in the way of reason.”(Prov.9:5-6). In the Christian tradition, this narrative is perceived as a prototype of the Eucharist, and biblical Wisdom is identified with the Son of God. According to the Apostle Paul, Christ is God's power and God's wisdom (1 Cor. 1:24). Despite the fact that Wisdom is called “spirit” and “breath,” She was not identified with the Holy Spirit in the Christian tradition. The book of the Wisdom of Solomon itself makes a distinction between the Holy Spirit and the Wisdom of God: “Who would know Your will if You had not bestowed Wisdom and sent down Your Holy Spirit from above?”(Wis.9:17).
The New Testament became a revelation about the One God in three Persons. According to the Synoptic Gospels, when Jesus Christ, having been baptized by John, came out of the water, “Behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and John saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and descending on Him. And behold, a voice from heaven said: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”(Matt. 3:16-17). In the evangelists Mark and Luke, the Father addresses the Son directly: "You are My beloved Son"(Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22).
The voice of the Father also sounds in two other gospel narratives: about the Transfiguration of the Lord and about Christ’s conversation with the people. In the first case, the evangelists say that when Christ was transfigured, a bright cloud overshadowed the disciples and a voice from the cloud said: “This is my beloved Son; Listen to him"(Mark 9:7, Luke 9:35; Matt. 17:5). The second story tells how, during a conversation with the people, Jesus turned to the Father: “Father! glorify your name. And immediately a voice came from heaven: I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. The people... who heard it said: it is thunder; and others said: The angel spoke to him. Jesus said to this: “This voice was not for me, but for the people.”(John 12:28-30).
Of the three narratives in which the voice of God the Father is heard, the narrative of the Baptism of the Lord received the greatest importance for the development of the Christian teaching about the One God in three Persons. In the Christian tradition, the event described in it is perceived as the simultaneous appearance of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit: the Son is revealed to the people in His human form, the voice of the Father testifies to the Son, and the Spirit descends on the Son in the form of a dove. IN Orthodox Church The celebration of the Epiphany is called Epiphany. The troparion of this holiday says: “In the Jordan I was baptized to You, O Lord, the Trinitarian adoration appeared. For the voice of the Parents testified to Thee, naming Thy beloved Son, and the Spirit in the form of a dove announced the affirmation to your words" (“When You, Lord, were baptized in the Jordan, the worship of the Trinity was revealed, for the voice of the Parent testified of You, calling You the beloved Son, and the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the truth of this word").
In addition to the story of the Baptism of the Lord, another important text that influenced Christian teaching about the triune God, were the words of Christ addressed to the disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”(Matthew 28:19). Saint Ambrose of Milan comments on this verse as follows: “the Lord said: in the name, and not in names, because there is one God; not many names: because there are not two Gods, not three Gods.” These words became the baptismal formula ancient Church. The Trinitarian faith of the Church was based on this formula even before the doctrine of the Trinity received its final terminological formulation.
Trinitarian formulas mentioning God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are found in the Epistles of the Apostles Peter and Paul: “According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied to you.”(1 Peter 1:2); “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”(2 Cor. 13:13). However, much more often the Apostle Paul greets the recipients of his Epistles with the name of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is explained not so much by the insufficient development of Trinitarian terminology in his time (the doctrine of the equality of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity and the consubstantiality of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit was finally formulated only in the 4th century), but by the Christological orientation of his Epistles. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ, “Who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and was revealed to be the Son of God with power, according to the Holy Spirit, by the resurrection from the dead.”(Rom. 1:3-4), was the main content of all the Epistles of the Apostle Paul.
The Church has always believed that God is one in essence, but threefold in Persons. However, it is one thing to confess that God is “at the same time” both Trinity and One, and quite another to be able to express one’s faith in clear formulations. Therefore, the dogmatic teaching about the Holy Trinity was created gradually and, as a rule, in the context of the struggle against various heretical errors.
The doctrine of the Holy Trinity has always been closely connected with the doctrine of Christ, the Incarnation of the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, therefore Trinitarian disputes have always had a Christological basis. The very doctrine of the Trinity became possible only thanks to the Incarnation, the Revelation of God in Christ, and it was in Christ that “Trinitarian worship appeared.” The doctrine of the Holy Trinity was initially a stumbling block for both “strict” Jewish monotheism and Hellenic polytheism. Therefore, all attempts to rationally comprehend the mystery of the Trinity being led to errors of either a Jewish or Hellenic nature. The first sought to dissolve the Persons of the Trinity in a single Divine nature, and the second reduced the Trinity to a union of three beings unequal in dignity.
In the 2nd century, Christian apologists, wanting to make Christian doctrine more understandable for the educated part of Greco-Roman society, created the doctrine of Christ as the incarnate Divine Logos. Thus, the Son of God becomes close and even identified with the logos ancient philosophy(Stoics, Philo, etc.). According to apologists, the Logos is the true and perfect God, but at the same time, they argue, God is one and only. Naturally, rationally thinking people could not help but have doubts: does not the doctrine of the Son of God as the Logos contain hidden ditheism? Origen wrote: “Many lovers of God and those who sincerely surrender to Him are embarrassed that the teaching about Jesus Christ, as the Word of God, seems to force them to believe in two gods.”
The reaction to the teaching of the apologists was monarchianism - a heretical teaching that aimed to eliminate any suspicion of bitheism from the doctrine of God. Monarchianism existed in two forms:
a) dynamism (from the Greek “strength”), or adoptionism. (from Latin “to adopt”),
b) modalism (from Latin “type”, “way”).
The dynamists taught about God in the spirit of Aristotle's philosophy as a single absolute being, pure spontaneous thought, dispassionate and unchanging. In such philosophical system for Logos, in its Christian understanding, there is no place. For the dynamists, Christ is a simple man, differing from others only in the degree of virtue.
God, according to Adoptian dynamists, is a person with perfect self-awareness, while the Logos and the Holy Spirit do not have a personal existence, but are only powers and properties of the one God. The Logos as an impersonal, non-hypostatic Divine power descended on the man Jesus, just as it did on the Old Testament prophets.
If the dynamists did not recognize Christ as God, then the modalists, on the contrary, aimed to substantiate the Divine dignity of the Savior. They reasoned as follows: Christ is undoubtedly God, and in order to avoid ditheism, He should in some way be identified with the Father.
According to the teachings of the most prominent representative of this Roman presbyter, Sabellius (therefore, modalism is also called Sabellianism), God is an impersonal single being who consistently manifests Himself in three modes or persons. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three Divine modes. The Father created the world and gave the Sinai legislation, the Son became incarnate and lived with people on earth, and the Holy Spirit has inspired and governed the Church since Pentecost. However, under all these external masks, successively replacing one another, the same God is hidden. The mode of the Holy Spirit, according to Sabellius, is also not eternal, and He will have an end. In this case, the Deity will return to its original impersonal state, and the world it created will cease to exist.
The founder of this heresy is the Alexandrian presbyter Arius (1st half of the 4th century). The scheme of reasoning of Arius, who was not satisfied with the contemporary state of Trinitarian theology, is as follows. If the Son is not created from nothing, therefore, He comes from the essence of the Father, and if He is also co-eternal with the Father, then it is generally impossible to establish any difference between the Father and the Son, and we thus fall into Sabellianism. In addition, origin from the essence of the Father must necessarily presuppose the division of the Divine essence, which in itself is absurd, for it presupposes some variability in God. Arius considered the only way out of the above contradictions to be the unconditional recognition of the creation of the Son by the Father from nothing.
The doctrine of Arius can be reduced to the following basic principles:
a) The Son was created by the Father from nothing and, therefore, b) the Son is a creature and has the beginning of His existence. Thus, c) the natures of the Father and the Son are fundamentally different, and d) the Son occupies a subordinate position in relation to the Father, being the Father’s instrument for the creation of the world, and e) the Holy Spirit is the highest creation of the Son and thereby is in relation to the Father as would be a “grandson”.
Heresy Arius was condemned on I Ecumenical Council.
Test questions:
- Formulate the main provisions of the teaching of the Orthodox Church about the Trinity of the Divine.
- Give examples of hidden reference to the Trinity of Divine Persons from the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament.
- In what events of the Gospel history does God reveal Himself as the Trinity?
- Why was it necessary to express faith in the Triune God in clear terms? What heresies preceded this?
- What ideas underlie the Dynamist heresy?
- What ideas underlie the modalists?
- What do modalism and dynamism have in common?
- What is the essence of the heresy of Arius?
Sources and literature on the topic
Basic educational literature:
- Davydenkov O., ier. Catechism. Lecture course. - M.: PSTBI, 2000.
- Alypiy (Kastalsky-Borozdin), archim., Isaiah (Belov), archim. Dogmatic theology. Lecture course. – M.: Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra. 2012. 288 p.
Additional literature:
- Alexander (Mileant), bishop. One God worshiped in the Trinity. [Electronic resource]. – URL: http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Aleksandr_Mileant/edinyj-bog-v-troitse-poklonjaemyj/#0_7 (access date: November 23, 2015).
- Hilarion (Alfeev), bishop. Orthodoxy. Volume 1 - M.: Sretensky Monastery Publishing House, 2008. - 864 p.
Video materials:
1. God's law. Faith in God. About God - Trinity
2. TV "Soyuz". "Peace and Clear" program. Dogma of the Holy Trinity
3. Leonov V., prot. Lecture 9. God's Revelation about Himself
4. Fast G., prot. About the Holy Trinity.
The Holy Trinity- the doctrine revealed by Christianity about the Triune God, one in essence and trinity in the Persons (Hypostases) of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
However, the concept of the Trinity is reflected in many biblical texts. More than 60 times Scripture simultaneously mentions the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For example:
- “And Jesus, having been baptized, immediately came out of the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and John saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and descending upon Him. And behold, a voice from heaven said: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." (Matthew 3: 16 -17),
- “Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19),
- “For three bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one” (1 John 5:7),
- “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:13),
- “When the grace and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not by works of righteousness which we had done, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” ( Tit. 3, 4 -6).
The Hebrew word Elohim, found in Genesis 1, is the plural form of El or Eloah. Many see here an indication of the plurality of Persons in God.
Distortions of the doctrine of the Trinity
Followers of Christian sects who do not accept the doctrine of the Holy Trinity are called anti-Trinitarians.
Iconography
The iconographic tradition of depicting the Trinity, first of all, reflects several biblical episodes, of which the Eternal Council and the Hospitality of Abraham are widespread; the appearance of the Trinity to Alexander of Svirsky and the Holy Life-Giving Trinity with Acts are less commonly mentioned
The dogma of the Holy Trinity is the foundation of the Christian religion!
God is one in essence, but trinity in persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Trinity is consubstantial and indivisible.
The word “Trinity” itself, of non-biblical origin, was introduced into the Christian lexicon in the second half of the 2nd century by St. Theophilus of Antioch. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is given in Christian Revelation.
The dogma of the Holy Trinity is incomprehensible, it is a mysterious dogma, incomprehensible at the level of reason. For the human mind, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is contradictory, because it is a mystery that cannot be expressed rationally.
It is no coincidence that Fr. Pavel Florensky called the dogma of the Holy Trinity “a cross for human thought.” In order to accept the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity, the sinful human mind must reject its claims to the ability to know everything and rationally explain, that is, in order to understand the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, it is necessary to reject its understanding.
The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is comprehended, and only partially, in the experience of spiritual life. This comprehension is always associated with ascetic feat. V.N. Lossky says: “The apophatic ascent is an ascent to Golgotha, therefore no speculative philosophy could ever rise to the mystery of the Holy Trinity.”
Belief in the Trinity distinguishes Christianity from all other monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam. The doctrine of the Trinity is the basis of all Christian faith and moral teaching, for example, the doctrine of God the Savior, God the Sanctifier, etc. V.N. Lossky said that the doctrine of the Trinity is “not only the basis, but also the highest goal of theology, for ... to know the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity in its fullness means to enter into Divine life, into the very life of the Most Holy Trinity.”
The doctrine of the Triune God comes down to three points:
1) God is trinity and trinity consists in the fact that in God there are Three Persons (hypostases): Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
2) Each Person of the Holy Trinity is God, but They are not three Gods, but are one Divine being.
3) All three Persons differ in personal or hypostatic properties.
Analogies of the Holy Trinity in the world
The Holy Fathers, in order to somehow bring the doctrine of the Holy Trinity closer to the perception of man, used various kinds of analogies borrowed from the created world.
For example, the sun and the light and heat emanating from it. A source of water, a spring coming from it, and, in fact, a stream or river. Some see an analogy in the structure of the human mind (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov. Ascetic experiences): “Our mind, word and spirit, by the simultaneity of their beginning and by their mutual relationships, serve as the image of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
However, all these analogies are very imperfect. If we take the first analogy - the sun, outgoing rays and heat - then this analogy presupposes some temporary process. If we take the second analogy - a source of water, a spring and a stream, then they differ only in our imagination, but in reality they are a single water element. As for the analogy associated with the abilities of the human mind, it can only be an analogy of the image of the Revelation of the Most Holy Trinity in the world, but not of intra-Trinity existence. Moreover, all these analogies place unity above trinity.
Saint Basil the Great considered the rainbow to be the most perfect analogy borrowed from the created world, because “the same light is both continuous in itself and multi-colored.” “And in the multicoloredness a single face is revealed - there is no middle and no transition between colors. It is not visible where the rays demarcate. We clearly see the difference, but we cannot measure the distances. And together, the multicolored rays form a single white one. The one essence reveals itself in a multi-colored radiance.”
The disadvantage of this analogy is that the colors of the spectrum are not independent individuals. In general, patristic theology is characterized by a very wary attitude towards analogies.
An example of such an attitude is the 31st Word of St. Gregory the Theologian: “Finally, I concluded that it is best to abandon all images and shadows, as deceptive and far from reaching the truth, and adhere to a more pious way of thinking, focusing on a few sayings.” .
In other words, there are no images to represent this dogma in our minds; all images borrowed from the created world are very imperfect.
A Brief History of the Dogma of the Holy Trinity
Christians have always believed that God is one in essence, but trinity in persons, but the dogmatic teaching about the Holy Trinity itself was created gradually, usually in connection with the emergence of various kinds of heretical errors. The doctrine of the Trinity in Christianity has always been connected with the doctrine of Christ, with the doctrine of the Incarnation. Trinitarian heresies and trinitarian disputes had a Christological basis.
In fact, the doctrine of the Trinity became possible thanks to the Incarnation. As the troparion of Epiphany says, in Christ “Trinitarian worship appears.” The teaching about Christ is “a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks” (1 Cor. 1:23). Also, the doctrine of the Trinity is a stumbling block for both “strict” Jewish monotheism and Hellenic polytheism. Therefore, all attempts to rationally comprehend the mystery of the Holy Trinity led to errors of either a Jewish or Hellenic nature. The first dissolved the Persons of the Trinity in a single nature, for example, the Sabellians, while others reduced the Trinity to three unequal beings (Arians).
The condemnation of Arianism occurred in 325 at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. The main act of this Council was the compilation of the Nicene Creed, into which non-biblical terms were introduced, among which the term “omousios” - “consubstantial” - played a special role in the Trinitarian disputes of the 4th century.
To reveal the true meaning of the term “omousios” it took enormous efforts of the great Cappadocians: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa.
The great Cappadocians, primarily Basil the Great, strictly distinguished between the concepts of “essence” and “hypostasis”. Basil the Great defined the difference between “essence” and “hypostasis” as between the general and the particular.
According to the teachings of the Cappadocians, the essence of the Divine and its distinctive properties, i.e., the non-beginning of existence and Divine dignity, belong equally to all three hypostases. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are its manifestations in Persons, each of which possesses the fullness of the divine essence and is in inextricable unity with it. The Hypostases differ from each other only in their personal (hypostatic) properties.
In addition, the Cappadocians actually identified (primarily the two Gregory: Nazianzen and Nyssa) the concept of “hypostasis” and “person”. “Face” in the theology and philosophy of that time was a term that did not belong to the ontological, but to the descriptive plane, that is, a face could be called the mask of an actor or the legal role that a person performed.
Having identified “person” and “hypostasis” in trinitarian theology, the Cappadocians thereby transferred this term from the descriptive plane to the ontological plane. The consequence of this identification was, in essence, the emergence of a new concept that was not known ancient world: This term is “personality”. The Cappadocians managed to reconcile the abstractness of Greek philosophical thought with the biblical idea of a personal Deity.
The main thing in this teaching is that personality is not part of nature and cannot be thought of in the categories of nature. The Cappadocians and their direct disciple St. Amphilochius of Iconium called the Divine hypostases “ways of being” of the Divine nature. According to their teaching, personality is a hypostasis of being, which freely hypostasizes its nature.
Thus, the personal being in its specific manifestations is not predetermined by the essence that is given to it from the outside, therefore God is not an essence that would precede Persons. When we call God an absolute Person, we thereby want to express the idea that God is not determined by any external or internal necessity, that He is absolutely free in relation to His own being, always is what He wants to be and always acts as He wants to be. as he wants, that is, he freely hypostasizes His triune nature.
Indications of the trinity (plurality) of Persons in God in the Old and New Testaments:
In the Old Testament there is a sufficient number of indications of the trinity of Persons, as well as hidden indications of the plurality of persons in God without indicating a specific number.
This plurality is already spoken of in the first verse of the Bible (Gen. 1:1): “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The verb “bara” (created) is singular and the noun “elohim” is plural, which literally means “gods.”
Life 1:26: “And God said: Let us make man in our image and after our likeness.” The word “let us create” is plural. Same thing Gen. 3:22: “And God said, Behold, Adam has become as one of Us, knowing good and evil.” “Of Us” is also plural.
Life 11, 6 – 7, where we are talking about the Babylonian pandemonium: “And the Lord said: ... let us go down and confuse their language there,” the word “let us go down” is in the plural. St. Basil the Great in Shestodayev (Conversation 9), comments on these words as follows: “It is truly strange idle talk to assert that someone sits and orders himself, supervises himself, compels himself powerfully and urgently. The second is an indication of actually three Persons, but without naming the persons and without distinguishing them.”
XVIII chapter of the book of Genesis, the appearance of three Angels to Abraham. At the beginning of the chapter it is said that God appeared to Abraham; in the Hebrew text it is “Jehovah”. Abraham, coming out to meet the three strangers, bows to Them and addresses Them with the word “Adonai,” literally “Lord,” in the singular.
In patristic exegesis there are two interpretations of this passage. First: the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, appeared, accompanied by two angels. We find this interpretation in martyr. Justin the Philosopher, St. Hilary of Pictavia, St. John Chrysostom, Blessed Theodoret of Cyrrhus.
However, the majority of the fathers are Saints Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil the Great, Ambrose of Milan, St. Augustine, - they believe that this is the appearance of the Most Holy Trinity, the first revelation to man about the Trinity of the Divine.
It was the second opinion that was accepted by the Orthodox Tradition and found its embodiment, firstly, in hymnography, which speaks of this event precisely as the appearance of the Triune God, and in iconography (the well-known icon of the “Old Testament Trinity”).
Blessed Augustine (“On the City of God,” book 26) writes: “Abraham meets three, worships one. Having seen the three, he understood the mystery of the Trinity, and having worshiped as if one, he confessed the One God in Three Persons.”
An indication of the trinity of God in the New Testament is, first of all, the Baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Jordan by John, which received the name Epiphany in Church Tradition. This event was the first clear Revelation to humanity about the Trinity of the Divine.
Further, the commandment about baptism, which the Lord gives to His disciples after the Resurrection (Matthew 28:19): “Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Here the word “name” is singular, although it refers not only to the Father, but also to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together. St. Ambrose of Milan comments on this verse as follows: “The Lord said “in the name,” and not “in names,” because there is one God, not many names, because there are not two Gods and not three Gods.”
2 Cor. 13:13: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” With this expression, the Apostle Paul emphasizes the personality of the Son and the Spirit, who bestow gifts on an equal basis with the Father.
1, In. 5, 7: “Three bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.” This passage from the letter of the apostle and evangelist John is controversial, since this verse is not found in ancient Greek manuscripts.
Prologue of the Gospel of John (John 1:1): “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” By God here we mean the Father, and the Word is called the Son, that is, the Son was eternally with the Father and was eternally God.
The Transfiguration of the Lord is also the Revelation of the Most Holy Trinity. This is how V.N. Lossky comments on this event in gospel history: “That is why the Epiphany and Transfiguration are celebrated so solemnly. We celebrate the Revelation of the Most Holy Trinity, for the voice of the Father was heard and the Holy Spirit was present. In the first case, in the guise of a dove, in the second, as a shining cloud that overshadowed the apostles.”
Distinction of Divine Persons by Hypostatic Properties
According to church teaching, Hypostases are Persons, and not impersonal forces. Moreover, the Hypostases have a single nature. Naturally the question arises, how to distinguish them?
All divine properties relate to a common nature; they are characteristic of all three Hypostases and therefore cannot express the differences of the Divine Persons by themselves. It is impossible to give an absolute definition of each Hypostasis using one of the Divine names.
One of the features of personal existence is that personality is unique and inimitable, and therefore, it cannot be defined, it cannot be subsumed under a certain concept, since the concept always generalizes; impossible to bring to a common denominator. Therefore, a person can only be perceived through his relationship to other individuals.
This is exactly what we see in Holy Scripture, where the concept of Divine Persons is based on the relationships that exist between them.
Starting approximately from the end of the 4th century, we can talk about generally accepted terminology, according to which hypostatic properties are expressed in the following terms: in the Father - ungeneracy, in the Son - birth (from the Father), and procession (from the Father) in the Holy Spirit. Personal properties are incommunicable properties, eternally remaining unchanged, exclusively belonging to one or another of the Divine Persons. Thanks to these properties, Persons differ from each other, and we recognize them as special Hypostases.
At the same time, distinguishing three Hypostases in God, we confess the Trinity to be consubstantial and indivisible. Consubstantial means that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three independent Divine Persons, possessing all divine perfections, but these are not three special separate beings, not three Gods, but One God. They have a single and indivisible Divine nature. Each of the Persons of the Trinity possesses the divine nature perfectly and completely.
Priest Oleg Davydenkov
The Holy Trinity is a theological term reflecting the Christian teaching about the Trinitarian nature of God. This is one of the most important concepts of Orthodoxy.
The Holy Trinity
From lectures on dogmatic theology at the Orthodox St. Tikhon's Theological Institute
The Dogma of the Holy Trinity is the foundation of the Christian religion
God is one in essence, but trinity in persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Trinity is consubstantial and indivisible.
The word “Trinity” itself, of non-biblical origin, was introduced into the Christian lexicon in the second half of the 2nd century by St. Theophilus of Antioch. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is given in Christian Revelation.
The dogma of the Holy Trinity is incomprehensible, it is a mysterious dogma, incomprehensible at the level of reason. For the human mind, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is contradictory, because it is a mystery that cannot be expressed rationally.
It is no coincidence that Fr. Pavel Florensky called the dogma of the Holy Trinity “a cross for human thought.” In order to accept the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity, the sinful human mind must reject its claims to the ability to know everything and rationally explain, that is, in order to understand the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, it is necessary to reject its understanding.
The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is comprehended, and only partially, in the experience of spiritual life. This comprehension is always associated with ascetic feat. V.N. Lossky says: “The apophatic ascent is an ascent to Golgotha, therefore no speculative philosophy could ever rise to the mystery of the Holy Trinity.”
Belief in the Trinity distinguishes Christianity from all other monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam. The doctrine of the Trinity is the basis of all Christian faith and moral teaching, for example, the doctrine of God the Savior, God the Sanctifier, etc. V.N. Lossky said that the doctrine of the Trinity is “not only the basis, but also the highest goal of theology, for ... to know the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity in its fullness means to enter into Divine life, into the very life of the Most Holy Trinity.”
The doctrine of the Triune God comes down to three points:
1) God is trinity and trinity consists in the fact that in God there are Three Persons (hypostases): Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
2) Each Person of the Holy Trinity is God, but They are not three Gods, but are one Divine being.
3) All three Persons differ in personal or hypostatic properties.
Analogies of the Holy Trinity in the world
The Holy Fathers, in order to somehow bring the doctrine of the Holy Trinity closer to the perception of man, used various kinds of analogies borrowed from the created world.
For example, the sun and the light and heat emanating from it. A source of water, a spring coming from it, and, in fact, a stream or river. Some see an analogy in the structure of the human mind (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov. Ascetic experiences): “Our mind, word and spirit, by the simultaneity of their beginning and by their mutual relationships, serve as the image of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
However, all these analogies are very imperfect. If we take the first analogy - the sun, outgoing rays and heat - then this analogy presupposes some temporary process. If we take the second analogy - a source of water, a spring and a stream, then they differ only in our imagination, but in reality they are a single water element. As for the analogy associated with the abilities of the human mind, it can only be an analogy of the image of the Revelation of the Most Holy Trinity in the world, but not of intra-Trinity existence. Moreover, all these analogies place unity above trinity.
Saint Basil the Great considered the rainbow to be the most perfect analogy borrowed from the created world, because “the same light is both continuous in itself and multi-colored.” “And in the multicoloredness a single face is revealed - there is no middle and no transition between colors. It is not visible where the rays demarcate. We clearly see the difference, but we cannot measure the distances. And together, the multicolored rays form a single white one. The one essence reveals itself in a multi-colored radiance.”
The disadvantage of this analogy is that the colors of the spectrum are not independent individuals. In general, patristic theology is characterized by a very wary attitude towards analogies.
An example of such an attitude is the 31st Word of St. Gregory the Theologian: “Finally, I concluded that it is best to abandon all images and shadows, as deceptive and far from reaching the truth, and adhere to a more pious way of thinking, focusing on a few sayings.” .
In other words, there are no images to represent this dogma in our minds; all images borrowed from the created world are very imperfect.
A Brief History of the Dogma of the Holy Trinity
Christians have always believed that God is one in essence, but trinity in persons, but the dogmatic teaching about the Holy Trinity itself was created gradually, usually in connection with the emergence of various kinds of heretical errors. The doctrine of the Trinity in Christianity has always been connected with the doctrine of Christ, with the doctrine of the Incarnation. Trinitarian heresies and trinitarian disputes had a Christological basis.
In fact, the doctrine of the Trinity became possible thanks to the Incarnation. As the troparion of Epiphany says, in Christ “Trinitarian worship appears.” The teaching about Christ is “a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks” (1 Cor. 1:23). Also, the doctrine of the Trinity is a stumbling block for both “strict” Jewish monotheism and Hellenic polytheism. Therefore, all attempts to rationally comprehend the mystery of the Holy Trinity led to errors of either a Jewish or Hellenic nature. The first dissolved the Persons of the Trinity in a single nature, for example, the Sabellians, while others reduced the Trinity to three unequal beings (Arians).
The condemnation of Arianism occurred in 325 at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. The main act of this Council was the compilation of the Nicene Creed, into which non-biblical terms were introduced, among which the term “omousios” - “consubstantial” - played a special role in the Trinitarian disputes of the 4th century.
To reveal the true meaning of the term “omousios” it took enormous efforts of the great Cappadocians: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa.
The great Cappadocians, primarily Basil the Great, strictly distinguished between the concepts of “essence” and “hypostasis”. Basil the Great defined the difference between “essence” and “hypostasis” as between the general and the particular.
According to the teachings of the Cappadocians, the essence of the Divine and its distinctive properties, i.e., the non-beginning of existence and Divine dignity, belong equally to all three hypostases. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are its manifestations in Persons, each of which possesses the fullness of the divine essence and is in inextricable unity with it. The Hypostases differ from each other only in their personal (hypostatic) properties.
In addition, the Cappadocians actually identified (primarily the two Gregory: Nazianzen and Nyssa) the concept of “hypostasis” and “person”. “Face” in the theology and philosophy of that time was a term that did not belong to the ontological, but to the descriptive plane, that is, a face could be called the mask of an actor or the legal role that a person performed.
Having identified “person” and “hypostasis” in trinitarian theology, the Cappadocians thereby transferred this term from the descriptive plane to the ontological plane. The consequence of this identification was, in essence, the emergence of a new concept that the ancient world did not know: this term is “personality”. The Cappadocians managed to reconcile the abstractness of Greek philosophical thought with the biblical idea of a personal Deity.
The main thing in this teaching is that personality is not part of nature and cannot be thought of in the categories of nature. The Cappadocians and their direct disciple St. Amphilochius of Iconium called the Divine hypostases “ways of being” of the Divine nature. According to their teaching, personality is a hypostasis of being, which freely hypostasizes its nature. Thus, the personal being in its specific manifestations is not predetermined by the essence that is given to it from the outside, therefore God is not an essence that would precede Persons. When we call God an absolute Person, we thereby want to express the idea that God is not determined by any external or internal necessity, that He is absolutely free in relation to His own being, always is what He wants to be and always acts as He wants to be. as he wants, that is, he freely hypostasizes His triune nature.
Indications of the trinity (plurality) of Persons in God in the Old and New Testaments
In the Old Testament there is a sufficient number of indications of the trinity of Persons, as well as hidden indications of the plurality of persons in God without indicating a specific number.
This plurality is already spoken of in the first verse of the Bible (Gen. 1:1): “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The verb “bara” (created) is singular and the noun “elohim” is plural, which literally means “gods.”
Life 1:26: “And God said: Let us make man in our image and after our likeness.” The word “let us create” is plural. Same thing Gen. 3:22: “And God said, Behold, Adam has become as one of Us, knowing good and evil.” “Of Us” is also plural.
Life 11, 6 – 7, where we are talking about the Babylonian pandemonium: “And the Lord said: ... let us go down and confuse their language there,” the word “let us go down” is in the plural. St. Basil the Great in Shestodayev (Conversation 9), comments on these words as follows: “It is truly strange idle talk to assert that someone sits and orders himself, supervises himself, compels himself powerfully and urgently. The second is an indication of actually three Persons, but without naming the persons and without distinguishing them.”
XVIII chapter of the book of Genesis, the appearance of three Angels to Abraham. At the beginning of the chapter it is said that God appeared to Abraham; in the Hebrew text it is “Jehovah”. Abraham, coming out to meet the three strangers, bows to Them and addresses Them with the word “Adonai,” literally “Lord,” in the singular.
In patristic exegesis there are two interpretations of this passage. First: the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, appeared, accompanied by two angels. We find this interpretation in martyr. Justin the Philosopher, St. Hilary of Pictavia, St. John Chrysostom, Blessed Theodoret of Cyrrhus.
However, most of the fathers - Saints Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil the Great, Ambrose of Milan, Blessed Augustine - believe that this is the appearance of the Most Holy Trinity, the first revelation to man about the Trinity of the Divine.
It was the second opinion that was accepted by the Orthodox Tradition and found its embodiment, firstly, in hymnography, which speaks of this event precisely as the appearance of the Triune God, and in iconography (the well-known icon of the “Old Testament Trinity”).
Blessed Augustine (“On the City of God,” book 26) writes: “Abraham meets three, worships one. Having seen the three, he understood the mystery of the Trinity, and having worshiped as if one, he confessed the One God in Three Persons.”
An indication of the trinity of God in the New Testament is, first of all, the Baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Jordan by John, which received the name Epiphany in Church Tradition. This event was the first clear Revelation to humanity about the Trinity of the Divine.
Further, the commandment about baptism, which the Lord gives to His disciples after the Resurrection (Matthew 28:19): “Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Here the word “name” is singular, although it refers not only to the Father, but also to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together. St. Ambrose of Milan comments on this verse as follows: “The Lord said “in the name,” and not “in names,” because there is one God, not many names, because there are not two Gods and not three Gods.”
2 Cor. 13:13: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” With this expression, the Apostle Paul emphasizes the personality of the Son and the Spirit, who bestow gifts on an equal basis with the Father.
1, In. 5, 7: “Three bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.” This passage from the letter of the apostle and evangelist John is controversial, since this verse is not found in ancient Greek manuscripts.
Prologue of the Gospel of John (John 1:1): “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” By God here we mean the Father, and the Word is called the Son, that is, the Son was eternally with the Father and was eternally God.
The Transfiguration of the Lord is also the Revelation of the Most Holy Trinity. This is how V.N. Lossky comments on this event in gospel history: “That is why the Epiphany and Transfiguration are celebrated so solemnly. We celebrate the Revelation of the Most Holy Trinity, for the voice of the Father was heard and the Holy Spirit was present. In the first case, in the guise of a dove, in the second, as a shining cloud that overshadowed the apostles.”
Distinction of Divine Persons by Hypostatic Properties
According to church teaching, Hypostases are Persons, and not impersonal forces. Moreover, the Hypostases have a single nature. Naturally the question arises, how to distinguish them?
All divine properties relate to a common nature; they are characteristic of all three Hypostases and therefore cannot express the differences of the Divine Persons by themselves. It is impossible to give an absolute definition of each Hypostasis using one of the Divine names.
One of the features of personal existence is that personality is unique and inimitable, and therefore, it cannot be defined, it cannot be subsumed under a certain concept, since the concept always generalizes; impossible to bring to a common denominator. Therefore, a person can only be perceived through his relationship to other individuals.
This is exactly what we see in Holy Scripture, where the concept of Divine Persons is based on the relationships that exist between them.
Starting approximately from the end of the 4th century, we can talk about generally accepted terminology, according to which hypostatic properties are expressed in the following terms: in the Father - ungeneracy, in the Son - birth (from the Father), and procession (from the Father) in the Holy Spirit. Personal properties are incommunicable properties, eternally remaining unchanged, exclusively belonging to one or another of the Divine Persons. Thanks to these properties, Persons differ from each other, and we recognize them as special Hypostases.
At the same time, distinguishing three Hypostases in God, we confess the Trinity to be consubstantial and indivisible. Consubstantial means that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three independent Divine Persons, possessing all divine perfections, but these are not three special separate beings, not three Gods, but One God. They have a single and indivisible Divine nature. Each of the Persons of the Trinity possesses the divine nature perfectly and completely.