In our last
lesson, we summed up the topic of the prerequisites of Dogmatics -
namely Cognizance and Faith – prerequisites that are required for
approaching the mystery of God as well as the mystery of mankind’s
salvation through Christ. Beginning today, we shall specifically
begin to examine the Dogmas of the Faith, starting from the Dogma on
God and the Holy Trinity.
As you may well understand, it is
not only Christians who speak of God. Every religion deals with God.
Even atheism deals with God, inasmuch as it reacts negatively to and
abolishes, a certain specific perception of God. Although it may
seem that atheism at first sight rejects every notion of God, deep
down, it is impossible for someone to uphold a rejective theory
without identifying it with something. We reject something, when we
have somehow related it to something else. Consequently, there is a
deep-seated perception of God in our minds, which we wish to reject.
It is therefore impossible for anyone to escape from the question
pertaining to God, whether a Christian, or a follower of another
religion, or even a denier of every notion of God. As I said, he
must first make it absolutely clear in his own mind exactly what he
is rejecting, before rejecting it.
We here
are naturally going to tackle the notion of God as it developed and
was handed down to the Christian faith and the Church. So, our
question is: what is the Christian notion of God? In order to reply
to this question, we must first clear the historical field. The
Christian faith does not introduce any radically novel concept of
God. God Himself
participates in the faith of the Judeans of that time; it is the God
whom they embraced, and the faith that they embraced, through the
Judean community of the Old Testament; the God of Christ is the God
of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob.
In order, therefore, to locate the historical roots
of the notion of God in Christendom, we must necessarily obtain an
answer to the question of what comprised the Hebrew perception of
God.
A second basic question would be:
what kind of modification does this idea undergo, when passing
through the faith in the person of Christ? Because, while Christ
does not attempt to introduce a new perception of God and speaks of
the same God to Whom the Old Testament refers, nevertheless, when
projecting certain assumptions regarding His person that touch on
the meaning of God in a fundamental way, He inevitably modifies, or
leads to modification of, the perception of God that Hebrews had,
during those times.
A third element pertaining to the
historical modification of the Dogma on God in Christendom, is that
this biblical notion of God - as it appears in the Old Testament,
and later transformed in the New Testament on account of the
pressure exerted by the faith in the person of Christ – is
eventually interpreted by the Fathers of the Church, on the basis of
two elements, which we outlined in the introductory lessons:
firstly, the cultural environment during the times of the
Fathers, which environment supplies the Fathers with the
terminology, the meanings, and everything else that is necessary for
one to define Faith theologically; secondly, the experience of
the Church, from which the Fathers drew the existential
dimensions of the Dogma on God. We must therefore determine what
comprises these cultural elements, these experiences, which shaped
the Dogma on God during the Patristic era.
However, in accordance with the
principles that were set out in our lessons, Dogmatics to us is not
simply a collection of information and knowledge about what certain
people once believed in, or about what they want us to believe
today. Dogmatics is an interpretation, an existential interpretation
of the Dogmas, therefore, the question that always concerns us and
should concern us in every Dogma, is: what is the existential
significance of that Dogma for us today? In other words, if this
Dogma pertaining to God were to supposedly change in some way, what
would the impact be on our existence? Would it have any impact, or
would it simply remain the same, and not signal any existential
change? Therefore the existential interpretation of a Dogma
pertaining to God must concern us, given that it includes the
following general points, especially for us today.
First of all, it is that which we
call a denominational or trans-Christian status, or ecumenical, or
ecumenist. We must examine if and where the Orthodox Christian Dogma
on God differs from other religions’ and Christian denominations’
ideas on God. Where is the definitive difference? Because one could
insist that “we all believe in God”. With the exception of atheism,
for which there will always be the question that I posed from the
beginning (but anyway, atheism rejects every discussion on God),
every other religion makes reference to God. The question is, if our
differing from other religions merely has to do with the addition of
certain things that the others don’t have. Like the Holy Trinity for
example: we all believe in one God, but some don’t believe in the
Holy Trinity, therefore, if we add the Dogma of the Holy Trinity to
the concept of God, we converge with those Christians. Is that the
way it really is? What is the definitive difference in the concept
of God, between non-Christians and Christians? For the others, the
non-Orthodox, the problem is ever serious. Because basically, all
Christians certainly confess the same God, but the differences quite
often are so essential with regard to the matter, that one must
evaluate them and see how much and at which points these differences
affect people – essentially and moreso existentially.
This is an area that concerns
modern man. The other area is that of modern man’s basic existential
needs. I have repeatedly said that Dogmatics without any existential
interpretation is a dead letter, which will inevitably lead to a
marginalizing of theology; unfortunately, this marginalizing has
become reality for modern man. And the danger especially in regard
to the dogmas is severe. We theologians and even the Church itself
have left the dogmas to the specialists: “On the matter of God, you
must ask the professor of Dogmatics – I have nothing to do with the
subject”, is what the Bishop or the priest or anyone else will say
to you. Or, our sermons avoid these dogmatic subjects altogether,
because they are for the “specialists”. Well, this is exactly what
marginalizing of dogmas means, and it has occurred, because we do
not strive – as I said – for an existential interpretation that will
or will not prove that dogmas are a matter of life and death for
mankind. We may admit this in a show of piety, but we do not
actually show it. We cannot convince anyone. Theology has the duty
to try to convince, because it is a matter of life and death to
accept this concept of God, and not any other notion about
God. On these general observations, we shall now try to initially
outline the historical framework within which the Dogma on God
appeared - the idea about God within Christendom - and we shall
naturally begin from the Bible, from the Biblical framework,
because that is where the Christian concept of God appeared. Then we
shall proceed to the Patristic framework; we shall see how it is
shaped therein, and then we shall interpret it existentially.
Christ already believed in the
same God in Whom His contemporary Judeans believed. He does not ask
the Judeans to change their concept of God. He makes it evident
every time He communicates with them, that He participates in the
same faith towards the same God – the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of
Jacob, the God of the Fathers of the Old Testament. What, then, were
the basic, characteristic elements of this faith, this concept of
God, which differentiated it from other, non-Biblical concepts of
God?
Very briefly, we can locate these
elements (the characteristic elements that comprise the definitive
difference for the Hebrews and the Old Testament, which, as I said,
Christ Himself accepted) in the following:
First
of all, in the absolute transcendence of God; God exists prior
to the world, and we can never relate Him to anything of what we see
in the world. It is imperative that we transcend the experience of
this world, as opposed to ancient Hellenism and ancient Greek
philosophy. We have here a distinct definitive difference, because,
to the ancient Hellene, the cosmos was always the place where
someone could meet God. Whether their God was a logical, connective
force – the one that holds the world together in harmony, in beauty,
(given that the word “cosmos” as you know, in Greek has the meaning
of harmony, beauty, order) – or a logic that allowed them to explain
the cosmos, the ancient Hellene had gone as far as to search for
God, within the cosmos.
From a Biblical point of view,
this was unacceptable. You cannot reach God by studying the cosmos
and you cannot tie God, God’s existence, to the existence of the
cosmos. Basically, you cannot simultaneously refer to God and the
cosmos. You must suppose God to be Someone Who existed before the cosmos,
before the existence of the cosmos.
Naturally, this is connected to the idea of the creation of the
cosmos from nil; in the sense that the cosmos once did not exist,
whereas God always existed. The ancient Hellenes could in no way
accept this idea.
To the ancient Hellene, the cosmos
is eternal, even when in the process of being created; in Plato, we
have the creation of the cosmos by the Creator-God. This God creates
pre-existing ideas, from pre-existing elements, in a pre-existing
space. Hence, there is something that is ever-existent, from which
the cosmos is made, in the design given to it by God, and God is
somehow entangled in this existence. No matter how hard we look for
transcendence in the gods of ancient Hellenism, we shall not find it
to the absolute degree that we find it in the Old Testament. This,
then, is one element.
The
second one, which explains the absolute transcendence of God and is
naturally associated with the first, is that God is not bound by any
physical or moral needs; in other words, this is the absolute
freedom of God. God’s transcendence rests in His absolute freedom.
And again, so that you may see the difference, I will remind you of
the idea that the ancient Hellenes - ancient Greek philosophy - had
of God. To the tragic poets – mainly Euripides, but also the
pre-Socratic thinkers, as well as Heracletus and all the Greek
philosophers, the question was posed as to whether the gods were
free to do what they wanted. The reply that they gave was a
categorical “no”. The gods were bound to do what was correct;
they could never act unjustly, nor do anything that would contravene
any physical or moral laws. There was a moral and a physical law.
Heracletus said that there exists a logic,
a “logos” that preserves the continuum of the cosmos in harmony, and
if something were to go wrong, the entire cosmos would vanish.
That the cosmos does
not vanish is precisely because this logical order exists, and the
gods must respect this logical order. And within this logical order,
the ancient Greeks also placed justice. Basically, Zeus – as you
know – married Themis (themis=justice), to evidence precisely that
Zeus could not act arbitrarily; that he was checked by Justice.
Justice was an important element to the ancient Hellene. The tragic
poets most assuredly brought this fact to the surface. Thus, to the
ancient Hellene, God cannot act arbitrarily.
In the Old Testament, this concept
did not apply to the Hebrews’ perception of God. It did not cross a
Hebrew’s mind that God could be shackled to goodness, to correctness
and to justice as principles that dominated over God Himself, and
that they must be respected by God Himself. That is why the Old
Testament God acts extremely arbitrarily. The Old Testament is
filled with murders, filled with numerous things that do not appear
just and proper at first glance, but nevertheless are executed on
God’s command; this is because God is not bound to moral principles.
Pay special attention to this point, as it is extremely sensitive
and difficult to remove from our thoughts, because we are kneaded
into the Greek perception of God and we have tied down God, we have
subjugated God’s freedom to certain behavioral regulations and
regulations of justice, which we have drawn from ethics. But ethics
can never abolish God’s freedom, whether according to the Hebrew
perception, or to the Christian perception, as we shall see. In any
case, while we are on the subject of the definitive difference
according to the biblical concept of God, we must stress this: God
has absolute freedom, not only towards the cosmos, but also towards
principles and ideas.
And I will again remind you that
Plato in Timaeus speaks of a god who creates, but only in
conformance with ideas that already exist. Ideas are not created by
God; ideas designate God’s actions. God has to comply with
the idea of goodness for instance, or virtue, and thus, if he were
to create a world which was not “good” ( a term otherwise understood
as “beauteous” ), and instead made it ugly, he would be violating
ideas; also the idea of beauty to which he is subordinate. That is
why he gave the world a spherical shape – as Plato explains in
Timaeus – because, he explains, a sphere is the ideal form of
perfection, of beauty etc. And God can indeed do nothing that would
violate any ideas. Whether these ideas are moral perceptions of
goodness or aesthetic perceptions of beauty, the ancient Hellene
always made God subordinate to these ideas. This does not apply, in
the biblical perception of God.
The
third basic element is what we would call the personal
character of God. God is personal. Of course one could say that God
was personal in ancient Greek thought, but it all depends on what
the word “personal” means. That is why we must define what we mean
in the Old Testament, when we say that God is personal. What we mean
is that God is acknowledged through personal
relationships. He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob. He
is never a faceless, supreme power, as many people would say today
“yes, I believe in God, as a supreme power, and impersonal”. One
principle that explained the cosmos the way it was in ancient
Hellenism is the Mind, the supremely intellectual mind – (once
again, the ancient Greeks had started to relate God to the Mind, and
unfortunately many Christians – even during the Patristic period –
were tempted to describe God by using the notion of the Mind quite
often). Both in the Old Testament as well as in Hebrew perception,
the idea of God could not be understood in relation to a Mind; nor
in a physical power, or in a logical origin of beings. God can be
related, through personal relationships : He is the God of Abraham,
of Isaac, of Jacob. His does not say anything about the nature of
God, but it does say that this God is always associated to someone,
and is not a unit, a single person that can be isolated. He always
resides within a personal relationship. This is elementary
for the Christian notion of God, and although it is found in the
biblical faith in God, the Hebrews who didn’t accept Christianity
did not develop it into its full potential. Further down, we shall
see the importance of this fact. For the time being, we shall keep
in mind that in the Hebrew idea of God, He is always a God of
associations, and not an isolated person.
Another element of this personal
character of God is that the Old Testament God – the God of the
Bible – is not only in a constant personal association; He also
calls on man to indulge in a liberal personal association, in a mode
of existence such as His. He is therefore a God of personal
associations.
A
fourth element after transcendence, freedom and a personal character
of God, is that which we could call the historical character
of God’s revelation. This analyzed, means first of all that God
reveals Himself and is recognized by His involvement during the
course of history; this does not – I repeat – mean the observation
of the nature or the aesthetics of the cosmos. Hence, the place in
which God can be referred to and where one could say that He can be
found, is in History and not in nature. We will of course
notice that, although the Hellenes had embraced Christianity during
the Patristic years, it was nevertheless difficult to expel the
importance of observing the cosmos, hence the Fathers – and
predominantly at the height of that era with Saint Maximus the
Confessor – would frequently introduce this element of observing the
cosmos, but it was mainly in reference to God; it was their
approach to God. In referring to the biblical roots of the Christian
idea of God, we must seriously stress the following: that the
observation of the cosmos does not lead us towards God, except only
in one way, as is expressed in the Psalm “… the heavens narrate the
glory of God, and the works of His hands are made evident by the
firmament….”. In other words, God is not to be somehow found
within the cosmos; instead, the cosmos itself testifies
that Someone Else - this God – exists, but beyond the cosmos,
and consequently this transcendence of God with respect to the world
once again, plays a definitive role and thus the observation of the
cosmos in relation to God – if we observe this Psalm’s expressions –
is more like a historical kind of observation, and not
cosmology per se. “…The works of His hands are made evident by the
firmament….” : to the Hebrews, the world is a creation, a project;
someone made it. It is not a nature, which has certain principles,
certain laws – the laws of harmony, the laws of goodness, of
justice, and all those things that the ancient Hellenes had.
Consequently, the world itself is treated as “history”, and not as
“nature” or as “ the world”.
Another
element of the biblical meaning of God, under that which we named
the historical character of the revelation of God, is that the
biblical God reveals Himself mainly through His commandments
and man’s observance of these commandments. For the Hebrew, the
truth in general but more specifically the faith in God, is not a
theory and neither does it originate theoretically – as we said –
from the examination of the cosmos. It originates from the
examination of history; from God’s interaction with the people of
Israel during the course of History, and from the experience of a
Being that sets down a Law that is to be obeyed. The response to
this Law, the obedience to this Law, comprises the encountering with
God.
These
all belong to the biblical perception of God; the Old Testament
perception of God. Now, as I said, Jesus introduced certain new
elements that did not negate the Hebrew perception of God, nor were
they introduced for this purpose. Christ never suggested that the
Hebrews of His time did not believe in the true God. Christ Himself
believes in the same God that they believe in. The difference lies
in a) the stance that one should take towards the Hebrews in
this case and b) the stance that one should take towards idolaters. In the case of idolaters, the gods are false. They do
not exist; they are not real. Here, we have the true God of the same
Fathers that they believe in, the same ones that the Judeans of His
time accepted. Despite all this, there are certain claims that
Christ makes with regard to His person, which automatically lead to
a revision of the idea that the Hebrews had of God. This also
explains the conflict with the Hebrews of His time. However, from a
Christian point of view, Christ’s claims with regard to His person
are wholly accepted. Our issue is not to discuss whether they should
or should not be accepted; they were accepted by certain people, by
His disciples, by the communities that also wrote the New Testament
and then by the Church, which formulated the Christians’ Dogma on
God. Consequently, our problem is not whether these claims were
rightly or wrongly accepted; our problem, our issue, is that they
were accepted, and that from the moment they were accepted, the
question “What does God look like?” arose. Is it still the same
concept of God, or do we have a radical change? I repeat that even
Christ Himself had no intention of introducing radical changes. It
is in fact the fulfillment of the Old Testament notion of
God, in the format that Christ presented, as regards His own
person. But we have to examine these claims closer.
A first
claim is that Christ projects a particular - and moreso an
exclusive, Filial relationship with God. He addresses God as
His Father, and not just father, in the way that anyone would
say it; it carries a unique meaning. Bible scholars today have
especially stressed the meaning of the word ‘abba’, ‘abba the
Father’. It is an Aramaic word that Christ used in His conversations
with God, with the Father. This word, according to the
interpreters, bears a special meaning of a close personal nature, a
particular personal relationship. Therefore, with this claim,
Christ brings Himself into a relationship with God that is different
to the relationship that people have with God, or that the other
Hebrews had. This is the first element that He introduces, which, as
we shall see, leads to the modification of the biblical idea of God.
The
second one is His claim that He is the incarnation of God’s final
act in history. I mentioned before, that, to the Hebrew, God
revealed Himself in His historical acts and not in any physical
acts. Take note that the acts of God - as distinguished from the
nature of God – are later unfolded, in the theology of the Fathers,
where the Hellenic interest in cosmology is already taken into
consideration, an interest that the Hebrew doesn’t have. We are
compelled to make these subtle distinctions as scientists. Because
it is simpler and easier to say that we learn Dogmatics by putting
all the information into a bag and pulling out whatever we require
from therein. To the Hebrew, the acts of God were historical acts
and not physical acts. A Hebrew would have immediately suspected
idolatry, if one spoke to him of physical acts. At any rate, I have
mentioned this in order to arrive at the crucial point – that for
the Hebrews of His time, Christ projects the claim that He is the
“son of man”, where, as you know from the Apocalyptics of that era
which both the audience and Christ Himself shared, the “son of man”
is the one who will bring on the end of history, the final crisis of
history, which – for the Hebrew – could only be God; only God can
make the final, irrevocable judgment in the due course of time. And
this judgment of God is given to the “son of man” (this is expounded
in the book of Daniel, then in Enoch, and all of this is found in
the Gospel: “when the son of man comes, and is seated on His throne
of glory”). The son of man is the one who will pass judgment. In
view of the fact that to the Hebrew, this final judgment can only be
passed by God, this “son of man” is the incarnation of the divine
presence of God in history. Man cannot pass judgment on history; in
the end, only God can. But the Hebrew does not expect to see God;
it is impossible to see Him, on account of God’s transcendental
element. God appears in the form known as ‘son of man’, bearing the
act of final judgment on history, when Christ identifies Himself as
the ‘son of man’. (Many interpreters today have doubts as to whether
Christ actually identified Himself as the ‘son of man’, or if the
Church did this, later on.) I believe that Christ clearly identified
Himself as the Son of Man, but that is not the issue here. The
important thing is that He had already identified Himself earlier
on, basically with the Resurrection; with faith in the Resurrection.
From that moment, a special kind of relationship is created, between
the person of Christ and God; one that urges us to re-examine the
meaning of God in the light of these events. In other words, in a
person such as Christ, who maintains that He will be the One to
judge history.
It was on this information that
the first Church inevitably proceeded to modify the Hebrew
perception of God. And we must keep these subtle distinctions in
mind, in order to understand how the Dogma on God arrived at the
point it did, with the Fathers. Take note of these subtle
distinctions, these delicate steps. The preaching of Christ’s
Resurrection automatically signifies that in the conscience of the
first faithful, Jesus Christ is identified to the eschatological son
of man, that is, with God Himself acting irrevocably upon history.
At this juncture, we have the additional fact that this
eschatological son of man, who is now the resurrected Christ, is
expected to return soon in order to effect this final judgment of
history.
So
far, the problem is not so acute, with regard to the meaning of God.
It becomes acute, when Christ’s Second Coming lingers; the New
Testament is a faithful mirror of this situation. One has to be
blind, not to see the first Christians’ troubled minds with regard
to their expectation of the Second Coming. This immediately poses
the question: where is Christ in the meantime, until His
return for the final judgment? What is His place now, and what is
His relation to God? The answer is found in the Christology of
Christ’s Ascension, where He is thenceforth found to reside at God’s
right. The words of the 110th Psalm “…the Lord sayeth to
my Lord, be seated on my right…” is where Christology first
developed and placed Christ to the right of the Father, up until the
day of the Final Judgment. However, this was the cause of the
following existential situation.
This Christ, Who is presently
seated at the right of the Father – according to the 110th
Psalm – enjoys certain privileges that for the Hebrew belong
exclusively to God,. Observe two such privileges. Firstly, worship:
“…everything on earth and in heaven shall kneel…”. No Hebrew can
kneel before a creation, a creature; it is out of the question. Now
here comes another Person, which seats itself next to the person of the only Father, the Father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the
unique God, and expects - or receives – both adoration and worship.
A second
existential element is that this person expects and receives such
devotion, that it demands the sacrificing of one’s very life under
torture. Only God can make such demands. Hence, the question of
what is this Christ, immediately raises the question of what happens
with the idea of God. How is God Himself any more, the One we
believed in, when there is also this other person who has these
demands that are so absolute and befitting only to God?
This lingering of Christ’s Second
Coming now adds a third basic element. It not only poses the
question “where is Christ now?”, but also the question “what is our
relationship in the meantime with God, until Christ returns?” In
other words, how does man see his relationship with God, now that
Christ is seated at God’s right, in heaven?
The
answer to this timely, existential question comes from the other
Paraclete, as analyzed in the Gospel of St. John “..I
shall not leave you orphaned..” . I am departing, I am not here,
Christ had said; I am presently at God’s right, however, the Father
“shall send forth another Paraclete (cletos=summoned, para=by), the
Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father..”. Therefore, an
experience of a new relationship with God begins, after Christ’s
Ascension, with the arrival of a third person on the scene. A
person which, like Christ, verifies the presence of God Himself; It
does things that only God can do. The miracles, the charismas, all
these things are realized, thanks to the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the
first faithful are compelled – within the meaning of God – to
somehow find a place for this existential, this empirical reality.
Because now, God acts as a communion of the Holy Spirit.
Subsequently, Christ appears as that communion, which includes the
Church community and all the charismas that the community contains,
given that all these things cannot be attributed to a creation.
To
Hebrew thinking, the question is therefore raised, as to whether,
after all the above, we can now refer to God, to this Being, to the
One that the Hebrews called God, without simultaneously and
automatically referring to the other two Persons: of Christ, who
named Himself “the Son of God” in a particular way, and of the Holy
Spirit, who replaces or verifies Christ’s presence in this special
way – the communion in the Spirit – during the course of history.
Thus, the church is led with the
aid of these existential experiences to the Triadic definition of
faith; in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, simultaneously.
This Triadic form eventually becomes the inevitable form of
reference to God for the Christians, for the reasons I just gave
you. These processes that take place in the course of history are
basically empirical; they are not intellectual. You must deal with
certain persons, such as Christ, who give rise to existential
situations, therefore, you either reject Christ’s claims – you have
that right – and thenceforth remain as a Hebrew with one God (who,
as we shall see later on poses certain problems, and who is not the
Triadic God), or, you embrace this Triadic formula out of necessity
now, since you have accepted Christ’s claims.
Well, this Triadic formula that
springs up in history under the circumstances that I described,
appears obviously in the New Testament, and it has three forms. Two
of them are clearly existential. One form is the Baptismal
form. The faith in God that is required for baptism involves a faith
or a reference to God not as a single person, but as a Holy Trinity.
At the end of St. Matthew’s Gospel, we have a definite reference to
Christ’s instruction to “baptize in the name of the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit” . You may know from history or from the New
Testament, that this reference to the Holy Trinity at the end of
Matthew’s Gospel is not accepted as genuine, but is considered to be
a later addition, based on certain arguments that, according to the
Acts of the Apostles and the witness accounts therein, the Baptism
was performed in the name of Christ and not the Holy Trinity. The
first positive account that we have of baptism in the name of the
Holy Trinity is in Justin. But the importance does not lie in
whether baptism was performed in the name of the Holy Trinity; the
importance lies in the fact that this form is present in all the
Books of the New Testament and especially in Paul’s Epistles, and
that it reached from being a baptismal experience to being included
within the baptismal reference to God.
The other form by which it
appears, is the Eucharist form. This is also very basic, and
we encounter it clearly, at the end of Paul’s epistles, especially
at the end of the 2nd Epistle to Corinthians 13, in the
familiar form “…may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love
of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you
all…”. As proven by research, this form with which Paul’s epistles
ended, comprised the opening of the Eucharist Liturgy in the first
Churches, in the ancient Church, and so we must consider it a
Eucharist formula. In other words, the Divine Eucharist was
associated with the Triadic formula from the start.
The third form is the theological
form in the broader sense, which we observe in St. John’s Gospel and
in Apostle Paul. We won’t quote any verses. The simultaneous
reference to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is prevalent in
both Paul and St. John’s Gospel.
Consequently, a theology surrounding these three
persons now
commences. The theology of the three persons does not, however,
become a problem, up until the Patristic period in particular. And
although the Patristic era commences with the Apostolic Fathers from
the point of view of Ecclesiastic Philology, from the point of view
however of theological Dogmatics it essentially begins with the
Apologists of the 2nd century, because it was during that
period that Hellenic queries were raised; Hellenic-type queries
regarding faith in God.
And the Hellenic-type question
that was predominant from the 2nd century onwards, was:
If we are baptized now in the same way that all Christians were
baptized then, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit, what happens to our faith in the One God, which is accepted
by the Bible? This is a serious question, which I call a Greek
question, given that a Hebrew would never have thought of making it,
whereas a Greek would want to know if the nature of these persons (because that is the Hellenic question: regarding the nature of
beings) relates to the nature of God, or if it is something
different. And that is when tremendous dilemmas appear, from which
the Church with its theology for centuries now is struggling to
escape. Up until the 4th century with the Cappadocians it
was difficult to give an answer to this question, which I will
repeat: If we believe in One god, how is it possible to refer to the
three persons as if they too were ontologically related to that One
God? The dilemma is that, if we say that the three persons are
ontologically associated with the One God, the question that
immediately arises is: “Don’t we then have three Gods?” If we say
that the three or the two persons are not ontologically associated
with the One God, then the existentially pressing question that
arises is: “ then how is it that we adore and worship these
persons , and how can we attribute acts that according to biblical
perceptions belong only to God – for instance, the eschatological
judgment of history and the miracles that are performed by the Holy
Spirit?”
The
dilemma evidently is not easily overcome. The problem is, how can
one accept the Holy Trinity without doubting Monotheism.
Unless one admits it is a “mystery”. And this, is an outlet. You
will permit me not to use this outlet, because we could then say
that everything is a mystery, and that settles everything. That is
not theology. Of course these are mysteries, but they are mysteries
that invite us to ponder. They do not obstruct our thoughts. At any
rate, the Fathers would have given up theology if they had said
“this is a mystery”. On the contrary, they went to great lengths –
especially the Cappadocian Fathers – to find a way to say that there
is no conflict between monotheism and the Triadic God. There
is
no conflict. And that is the main problem that we are also
looking into, based on the Fathers: Why is there no
conflict?
This problem preoccupied the
Patristic era. In order to give a reply to this question, many
generations of theologians had to pass. In the 2nd and 3rd
century – although this is familiar from the history of Dogmatics –
various answers were given. Let us arrange them in one or two
categories, so that we may assist our thoughts. One category of
answers related the Logos and the Spirit to the acts of God in
association with Creation and with Providence in general; i.e., God
is One, but, in order to create the cosmos, He acts as a Logos and a
Spirit. The great difficulty with this kind of answer was that the
Triadic existence of God presupposes the existence of the cosmos. We
would therefore lose God’s transcendence with regard to the three
persons .
In
numerous personages of the 2nd century, I would say even
in Justinian, things are still not very clear; and generally in the
Apologetics of the 2nd century it is still unclear as to
whether the Logos and the Spirit belong to the sphere of God or of
Creation. At any rate, they act and they appear always in
association with Creation, something that is very dangerous even to
the transcendence of the persons . As you know from history, this is
what led to Arianism, and subsequently obliged the Church to clear
matters at least with regard to the Son, the Logos, and to say that
the Logos does not belong in the sphere of Creation, but in the
sphere of God. In this way, the Church gave a negative reply to this
form of answers that had been attempted. It is not because God is a
Creator that He is Triadic; He is Himself Triadic, independently
of His Creation. This was cleared up – at least with regard to
the Son – in the 1st Ecumenical Synod.
The other category of answers was
the one that was called Modalist, Mannerist. There,
the Son and the Holy Spirit and even the Father, were perceived as
the manners with which God acted throughout history, and not
as Beings or as self-existent persons . This kind of theory was
promoted mostly by Savellius, who, as you know, caused an immense
problem to the Church, resulting in the rejection of this theory and
this explanation. Because the Church insisted that these Three
persons are entities, they are Beings, which are in a personal
association between themselves, each one of them being something
different to the other. The Father speaks to the Son, and the Son
prays to the Father; in short, we have two Entities.
The Church therefore rejected
these mannerist theories, it rejected the “Providence” theory, and
so the question remained: if they are three Entities, how come they
aren’t three gods? If it had accepted the mannerist monarchic
theory, the Savellius theory, it would have had no problem. But it
preferred to have the problem, rather than to deny that the three
persons of the Holy Trinity are three Entities; exactly because the
Church did not want to distance itself from this principle and give
an answer, rather than to say “it’s a mystery therefore we do not
talk about it.”
That is why the theology of the
Cappadocian Fathers came into being, and has become the basis for
the Christian dogma and theology. We must delve into this theology
very carefully, with a sincere passion to learn. The problem
surrounding the Holy Trinity is a difficult one. But this dark-age
tendency that is observed in many today, in the name of a simplified
faith and piety that keeps them at a distance from any intellectual
labours, I consider to be something dangerous. Theology is not
piety’s enemy, and if these problems preoccupy us vigorously, we
shall see that God becomes existentially more familiar to us, than
if we didn’t bother at all with these problems.