The Trinity and the Nature of Love

The Trinity and the Nature of Love | Fr. Christopher Rengers | From the November 2007 issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review

It is only through revelation that we have come to know that God is one and three. To understand the doctrine completely is beyond human ability. But to explore the Holy Trinity by appealing to reason and human experience is very worthwhile.

In fact, the Trinity, as the struggles of the first centuries of Christianity show, must be discussed in order to define who Jesus is and why Mary may be called Mother  of God. Our most common Christian gesture and the words that go with it in the Sign of the Cross turn our thoughts to the Trinity. This simple practice presents us with contrasting mysteries, bringing together suffering, mortal human nature and unchangeable, eternal divine nature. The tracing of the cross points to painful death while the words point to the source of all life, the Holy Trinity.

Prayerful contemplation, discussion and exploration have a continuing purpose. The fullness of all life, creativity and power that is in the Trinity provides ever-expanding horizons for contemplation, thought and incorporation in helpful, practical ways into human life. Two "explorers" almost a millennium apart offer viewpoints of unique interest. They are the little-known Richard of St. Victor and our present Holy Father, Benedict XVI. The latter's work An Introduction to Christianity [1] appeared originally in German in 1968, and is not magisterial teaching. It is rather the product of a profound philosopher and theologian. It delves into the ultimate nature of reality in the Trinity and the ultimate meaning of person.

The chapter "Belief in the Triune God" makes a helpful comparison between the nature of matter as now conceived in physics and the nature of substance and relation in the Trinity. The phrase quoted to explain the structure of matter as "parcels of waves" brings the comparison into focus.

The phrase is open to criticism in regard to physics, "but it remains an exciting simile for the actualitas divina, for the fact that God is absolutely 'in act' (and not 'in potency'), and for the idea that the densest being—God—can subsist only in a multitude of relations, which are not substances but simply 'waves,' and therein form a perfect unity and also the fullness of being" (p. 175).

The position of the observer has much to do with what he will discover. The question the observer asks will have an effect on the answer. The physicist doesn't approach everything as though it had to be matter. Nor does he approach everything as though it had to be motion. He looks at the total reality from two viewpoints. One is that things are made of matter, the second that everything is arranged according to motion or "waves." It is necessary to think in complementarities, whether in physics or in the theology and philosophy of the Trinity.

So in approaching the Trinity we consider it according to substance and according to relationship. The two together taken complementarily will give the complete reality that is the Holy Trinity. The relatededness cannot be considered as an accident of the substance. Putting the two together expresses the reality that is defined as one God and three divine Persons. "Not only unity is divine; plurality, too, is something primordial and has its inner ground in God himself. ...It corresponds to the creative fullness of God, who himself stands above plurality and unity, encompassing both" (pp. 178-179).

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