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The Trinity and Man

[Originally written as an assignment where I was given a set of texts and asked to synthesize and compare them.]


Introduction

Trinitarian dogmatic theology is a stable and well-defined foundation that modern Orthodox theologians have built upon to describe a practical Trinitarian anthropology. In looking to the Trinity as an icon of human society they have developed some good metaphors, but seem to overlook the more appropriate model for humanity that is Jesus Christ.

Trinity

Vladimir Lossky, John Meyendorff, and Kallistos Ware present the dogma of the Holy Trinity along lines of ineffability, perichoresis, and monarchy. Rather than the apophaticism of Lossky, the doctrinal emphasis of Meyendorff, or the catechetical theme of Ware, Derwas Chitty starts with the lack of understanding of the Holy Trinity for modern Christians. Because of this, his essay takes a rather different path, but he still touches the three themes observed above.

The Ineffable Trinity

Lossky begins his chapter on the Trinity—in a thoroughly apophatic work—by declaring “The goal to which apophatic theology leads…is something which transcends all notion both of nature and of person: it is the Trinity.”1 He ends with the oft-quoted lines, “The dogma of the Trinity is a cross for human ways of thought”2 Between these two statements, he repeatedly reminds us of the limits of the human mind to comprehend the Trinity. “If we speak of processions, of acts, or of inner determinations, these expressions—involving, as they do, the idea of time, becoming, and intention—only show to what extent our language, indeed our thought, is poor and deficient before the primordial mystery of revelation.”3 He goes on, “But we may ask whether the idea of number can be applied to God; whether we do not thus submit the divinity to an exterior determination… [T]here is no question here of a material number… The threefold number is not, as we commonly understand it, a quantity.”4

Meyendorff observes that the Cappadocians made “no claim…for philosophical consistency…the ultimate meaning of the terms [ousia and hypostasis] is clearly different from their meaning in Greek philosophy, and their inadequacy is frankly recognized.”5 He points out that “Greek patristic thought, and particularly that of the Cappadocians, always presupposed the starting point of apophatic theology…The very notion of God’s being both Unity and Trinity was a revelation illuminating this incomprehensibility.”6

In characteristically concise fashion, Ware says, “The Trinity is not a philosophical theory but the living God whom we worship; and so there comes a point in our approach to the Trinity when argumentation and analysis must give place to wordless prayer.”7 He then quotes St. Basil the Great, “It is easier to measure the entire sea with a tiny cup than to grasp God’s ineffable greatness with the human mind”8

The ineffable character of the Trinity is also described as something experiential rather than logical. According to Meyendorff, “The doctrine of the Trinity was always, for the Greek patristic tradition, a matter of religious experience—liturgical, mystical, and, often, poetical.”9 Ware describes the Trinity as “something revealed to us by God, not demonstrated by our own reason.”10 Chitty touches on this when he says, “this new Christian way of thinking…came almost at once—almost unconsciously—with the Christian revelation; though it was such a revolution that it took more than three centuries for language to be adapted to its formulation.”11

Perichoresis

As part of safeguarding Orthodox Trinitarian dogma, these writers refers to the perichoresis of the Trinity.12 “At the very heart of the divine life, from all eternity God knows himself as ‘I and Thou’ in a threefold way, and he rejoices continually in that knowledge.”13 The perichoresis of the Trinity—understood as “co-inherence”14 or “interpenetration”15 or having their being in each other16—is how we understand the mutuality of the Trinity.

Perichoresis is at the center of how we describe the movement of love in the Trinity. It “expresses the perfect love, and therefore, the perfect unity of ‘energy’ of the three hypostases, without, however, any mingling or coalescing.”17 It indicates the “three equal persons, each one dwelling in the other two by virtue of an unceasing movement of mutual love.”18 However, co-inherence and mutual indwelling do not lessen the uniqueness of each hypostasis. “The persons are made one not so as to commingle, but so as to cleave to each other, and they have their being in each other without any coalescence or commingling…Each one of the persons contains the unity by this relation to the others no less than by this relation to Himself.”19

Even the acts of God, though often seen as the prerogative of one of the persons, are Trinitarian. “God the Father creates through his ‘Word’ of Logos (the second person) and through his ‘Breath’ or Spirit (the third person).”20 In the Son’s Incarnation “The Spirit is sent down from the Father, to effect the Son’s presence within the womb of the Virgin.”21

Monarchy of the Father

While maintaining the distinctness of the three persons of the Trinity, there is also an understanding that the Father is the source of the Godhead. Often this is expressed as the monarchy of the Father. “The Greek Fathers always maintained that the principle of unity in the Trinity is the person of the Father.”22 Lossky quotes St. Athanasius, “there is a single principle of the Godhead, whence there is strictly monarchy.”23 According to Ware (he is quoting and paraphrasing Ss. John of Damascus and Gregory the Theologian), “God the Father is the ‘fountain’ of the Godhead, the source…for the other two persons…There is one God because there is one Father.”24 As Chitty says, “The Father is the Only Source, because He is the focus of the Being of God.”25

The emphasis on the monarchy of the Father is a reflection of the experiential and biblical revelation of God. “In insisting upon the monarchy of the Father—unique source of Godhead and principle of the unity of the three—the eastern theologians were defending a conception of the Trinity which they considered to be more concrete, more personal, than that against which they contended.”26

According to Chitty, the monarchy of the Father is reflected in various expressions from a formal catechism that correspond to God in His being, His Incarnation and His life-giving presence: “He that cometh to God must believe that he is”; “the Way whereby Abraham sought the God who is”; and “Faith …as that of Abraham—belief that he is.”27

Finally, the monarchy of the father is what is ultimately at stake in the filioque. “The Father is the sole source and ground of unity in the Godhead. To make the Son a source as well as the Father…is to risk confusing the distinctive characteristics of the persons.”28 It is only the distinctive characteristics of unbegotten, begotten, and procession that separate the persons of the Trinity.

Because of the Father having the qualities, the Son and the Spirit have all their qualities, those of being unbegotten, and of birth and of procession being excepted. For in these hypo-static or personal properties alone do the three holy hypostases differ from each other, being indivisibly divided not by essence but by the distinguishing mark of their proper and peculiar hypostases.”29

The monarchy of the Father is emphasized by the personalist theology of Metropolitan John Zizoulous. Recent writers have offered a nuanced reading of the Cappadocian Fathers that pushes back against the personalism that is nearly ubiquitous in 20th century Trinitarian thinking. According to Fr. Chrysostomos Koutloumousianos, the emphasis on the Person of the Father as the monarchical principle is a misreading of the Patristic sources.30

Monarchy is not the monarchy of the ‘person of the Father’ above and beyond the common nature. There is not a hierarchy of ‘a first, a second and a third’, but there is monarchy related to ‘the one form which is seen in God the Father and in God the Only-begotten, imaged through the undeviating character of the Godhead’. When Gregory is prepared to name the Father ‘union’ of the other Persons, it is because he recognises in the Trinity a simple nature and identity of being, which means no space or grade within the will or power. It is precisely this that differentiates created from uncreated being: in the created state, one may rebel not only against others but also against one’s self. Nowhere is in the divine mystery a reference to the cause without a simultaneous reference to the identity of nature.31

Humankind

Humankind is made is in the image of God which is found in the Holy Trinity. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Gen 1:26) “Christian thinkers from the second century onwards have been quick to see [in this] a reference to the Trinity.” Indeed, “to be made in the image of God is to be made in the image of the Holy Trinity; like the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, human being are persons.”32 “The image of God within us is thus a distinctively Trinitarian image.”33

What is the image of God in humans? “Many contemporary Orthodox theologians, and Western theologians as well, believe that the imago Dei is located in humankind as a whole.”34 If the locus of the image is human nature, and the image is Trinitarian, then it follows that the Trinitarian life is a suitable model for human life. In fact, Harrison claims that the image of God “is a ‘relational’ image, reflected in the relationship between man and woman, in the primordial social bond that is the foundation of all other forms of social life.”35

At the same time, we must recognize the limits of this analogy. Harrison describes the image of God in humans as “multidimensional and cannot be limited to one defined characteristic.”36 Theologians have named various qualities as the locus of the image of God: reason, speech, heart, free will and self-determination, immortality, virtues, ability to create.37 Ultimately, the image of God in humankind is polysemous and must be characterized in broader terms.38 “True humanity is realized only when [one] lives ‘in God’ and possesses divine qualities.”39

In addition to the “image of God,” humans are also created in His “likeness.” This is often understood as the human potential for theosis: when we make proper use of the image of God, we attain to the likeness of God. Meyendorff describes the likeness an “openness” toward God.40 “Man, since he is not an autonomous being, but an image of God ‘open upward,’ possess the natural property of transcending himself and reaching the divine.”41 The fall of Adam introduced polarities that stand in the way of our fulfilling the likeness of God. “Only the man Jesus, because He is also God, was able to overcome them. He is the new Adam, and in Him, creation again finds communion with the creator and harmony within itself.”42

There is an analogy between the social model of the Trinity and human society, thus, according to Harrison and Ware, the former must be a fit model for the latter. There is a compelling account of how this analogy should operate. “The three divine persons are forever united with each other in mutual love, they dwell in each other…They are related to each other in a specific order, a taxis, since the Father is the source of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Yet they are completely equal to each other, and each is completely free and possesses royal dignity.”43

Both Metropolitan Kallistos and Nonna Harrison acknowledge the ineffability of the Trinity, and then carefully explore further possible analogies. According to Ware, “the best approach to the Trinity is through doxology and silence.”44 As Harrison acknowledges a few pages earlier, “Christ’s humanity reveals the perfect human image of God, according to which all Christians are called to model themselves.”45 Nonetheless they are looking to the social model of the Trinity to serve as a guide for human society.

There are ways “to feel that the doctrine of the Trinity has something directly to do with me, that it has practical consequences for my personhood”46 without overstepping the bounds of ineffability or overlooking the humanity of Jesus Christ. To start with, there can be an analogy between the Trinity and the human family, so long as the limits of analogy are respected. “Shared love is properly said to exist when a third person is loved by two persons harmoniously and in community, and the affection of the two persons is fused into one affection by the flame of love for a third.”47 Hence the life of the Holy Trinity is analogous to “the fully realized family—husband, wife, and child.”48 However, Metropolitan Hilarion does not claim that the family is an icon of the trinity, but that it “is a reflection of the divine love in three Hypostases.” This is a subtle distinction, but one that observes the boundaries of the mystery of the Trinity. When making an analogy between humanity and the Trinity we must remember that “human persons, or hypostases, are isolated and, in the words of St. John Damascene, ‘do not exist the one within the other’; while, ‘in the Holy Trinity it is quite the reverse…the hypostases dwell in one another.’ ”49

Metropolitan Kallistos says that “to be human, after the image and likeness of God of the Holy Trinity, means to love others with a love that is costly and sacrificial.”50 The best model of this kenotic love of the Trinity is the kenotic love of Jesus Christ. Because we share our nature with him and have him as a material example of divinized humanity, we can identify with his example. While remaining one of the Holy Trinity, he also became incarnate and shared in our human nature and life. If we turn to an example of what it means to be human, Jesus Christ is the example.

While looking at analogies between the Trinity and human society, we should always remember that “communion in the risen body of Christ; participation in the divine life; sanctification through the energy of God, which penetrates true humanity and restores it to its ‘natural’ state…these are at the center of Byzantine understanding of the Christian Gospel.”51 “When God created human nature, he created it not only for us but for himself, since he knew that one day he would himself become a human being.”52 While “human nature itself has ‘fallen ill with sin’,”53 it is important to distinguish that human nature has not been altered in essence. Something external has been done to it. Our nature has an illness that needs to be cured, a wound that needs to be healed, a veiling that needs to be uncovered. “The human being’s perfection is not a sort of amputation of his nature (involving body, senses, imagination and the other dynamic drives of human existence)…The imitation of divine nature, far from truncating human nature, is a restoration of true human nature.”54

The transcendence—our openness upward—is not one of transcending nature; rather it is a transcendent fulfillment of nature. Humankind is entangled in the vines and weeds of our fallenness and our vocation is to rise above that to fulfill our telos as true humans. “Man’s salvation is not a salvation from nature, but the salvation of nature.”55

Conclusion

I have briefly covered some dogmatic teaching on the Trinity as explained by 20th Century thinkers. They emphasize the ineffability of the Trinity, the perichoresis of the persons of the Trinity, and the monarchy of Father. While it may be popular to build on the relational personalism of the 20th century to see the Trinity as a model for human society, we must remember to primarily look to the One who shares our nature: the Logos who became man and shares fully in our humanity.


  1. Vladimir Lossky, Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Creswood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976), 44.↩

  2. Ibid., 66.↩

  3. Ibid., 45.↩

  4. Ibid., 47-48.↩

  5. John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979), 182.↩

  6. Ibid., 184-5.↩

  7. Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (Creswood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 31.↩

  8. Ibid., 34.↩

  9. Meyendorff, 181.↩

  10. Ware, The Orthodox Way, 31↩

  11. J. Derwas Chitty, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity told to the Children,” Sobonost 5, no. 5 (1961): 242.↩

  12. The word perichoresis was first applied to the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ. Later it was applied to the relationship of the believer to Christ. And thirdly, came to describe the relationship of the persons of the Trinity. See Nonna Harrison, “Perichoresis in the Greek Fathers,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 35 (1991):53–65↩

  13. Ware, The Orthodox Way, 28↩

  14. Meyendorff, 186.↩

  15. Harrison, “Perichoresis in the Greek Fathers,” 54.↩

  16. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. I.8 in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers II, vol. 9.↩

  17. Meyendorff, 186.↩

  18. Ware, The Orthodox Way, 27.↩

  19. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition, I. 8.↩

  20. Ware, The Orthodox Way, 35.↩

  21. Ibid.↩

  22. Lossky, 58.↩

  23. St. Athanasius, Against Arius. Quoted in Lossky.↩

  24. Ware, The Orthodox Way, 32.↩

  25. Chitty, 244.↩

  26. Lossky, 62.↩

  27. Chitty, 246-47.↩

  28. Ware, The Orthodox Way, 32.↩

  29. John of Damascus.↩

  30. Chrysostomos Koutloumousianos, The One and the Three: Nature, Person, and Triadic Monarchy in the Greek and Irish Patristic Tradition (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2015), Kindle.↩

  31. Ibid., loc 744.↩

  32. Nonna Harrison, “Holy Trinity: A Model for Human Community,” St. Nina Quarterly 3, no. 3 (Summer 1999).↩

  33. Kallistos Ware, “The Human Person as an Icon of the Holy Trinity,” Sobornost 8, no. 2 (1986):6-23.↩

  34. Nonna Harrison, “The Human Community as an image of the Holy Trinity,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 46 (2002): 350.↩

  35. Harrison, “Holy Trinity”↩

  36. Harrison, “Human Community,” 348.↩

  37. Hilarion Alfeyev, The Mystery of Faith (London: Darton, Longman, / Todd, 2002), 60.↩

  38. Like so much of the language and symbols of the Orthodox Faith, which may carry—without preference or burdening—multiple meanings that can seem mutually exclusive.↩

  39. Meyendorff, 139.↩

  40. Ibid.↩

  41. Ibid., 140.↩

  42. Ibid, 142.↩

  43. Harrison, “Holy Trinity.”↩

  44. Ware, “Human Person.”↩

  45. Harrison, “Human Community,” 348-49.↩

  46. Ware, “The Human Person.”↩

  47. Richard of St. Victor, quoted in Ware, “The Human Person.”↩

  48. Alfeyev, 59.↩

  49. Lossky, 53.↩

  50. Ware, “Human Person.”↩

  51. Meyendorff, 146.↩

  52. Alfeyev, 64.↩

  53. Ibid., 71.↩

  54. Koutloumousianos, loc. 1667↩

  55. Ibid., loc 1691.↩

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