TRINITY 333 – FINAL REVIEW

DR. REGIS MARTIN – FRI MAY 4

1.Discuss the origin of the Christian doctrine of God. What was its source,
abstract speculation or historical experience? What were the various
developing stages in the doctrine’s emergence? And, finally, what questions
was it necessary for the Church and theology to ask regarding the whole
process?

o The Christian position is new, something never before disclosed – however it is not
mere abstract speculation but based upon historical experience

DEVELOPING STAGES (?) & QUESTIONS:

“The Christian faith took a unique position… it held to the enlightened view of the
philosophers: the gods do not exist. What the Christians call “God” is what the
philosophers call “being”, “ground” or “God”.
-RATZINGER

“Between a belief in the many gods and the one Jewish God there is a stark starring
opposition, BUT – both of these positions are miraculously reconciled in the Gospel.”
-ST MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR

i. “Contradictory, multiplicity unchecked” – polytheism

ii. “Unity but w/o any inner riches” –Judaism
 BOTH are inadequate  and grab hold of something which is greater
(TRI-UNE GOD!)

o The Christian confession of faith begins with “GOD IS ONE”

i. These words are summed up in the faith of Israel with the SHEMA:
 “Here oh, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord and you shall love the
Lord your God…” Deut 6:4
 Jesus repeats the SHEMA in Mk 12:8 to respond to which
commandment is the greatest

2 Points made clear:

i. In both the OT and NT monotheism is not a philosophical question but the
result of a religious experience.
a. A belief in the one God is to permit God to lay total claim upon you.
b. Confession of faith in one God obliges one to live a life of continual
reversal (denying of self by the will)

ii. The oneness of God involves much more than a numerical oneness.
a. The singularity of this God is qualitative, not merely quantitative
 b. He is limitless uniqueness, by the very nature of his being God  there
can only be one of Him
c. If there were two Gods they would limit one another.
d. “If God is not one then there is no God” – TERTULLIAN

o Both OT/NT answer primordial human question: “Where do we locate the unity of all
things, the point of balance amid all things?”
i. Polytheists cannot bring all of the chaotic multiplicity to a point of balance

o Early on in the Churches baptismal catechesis – the doctrine of the one God was
given pride and place

o Christianity distinguishes itself from the other monotheistic religions by

understanding the TRINITY of the ONE GOD: the oneness of God absolutely
depends upon the unity of persons.

o THREE CONSIDERATIONS:
i. Notion that in grounding the oneness of God we do so in a monotheistic way
o (the infinity of God leaves no room for a second God)
ii. The absolute oneness of God requires that God be w/o division
o The unity of this God nec. Excludes any materiality. (he must be pure
undivided spirit whom absolutely transcends the world)
iii. The absolute unity of God demands that this unity of God and unity of the world
God made cannot be confused.
o The problem of the one and many has to be solved in the terms of the
world (man cannot summon God for an answer)

QUESTION: How does God solve his own unity among multiplicity?
o Because God is a unity is it possible to think of God w/o some sort of otherness in the
God-head?
 w/o this differentiation there could not be the principle of unity either
 w/o the principle God would remain isolated and in turning to the world to
remove his isolation would not render him divine
o Unity of God absolutely demands/ requires such a trinity (church fathers)
o In OT there are hints to plurality w/in God…
 Gen 1: Let us make man in our image and likeness
 Isaiah: Holy, Holy, Holy
o The angel of the Lord prefigures the one and many w/in God himself
o The notion of God’s oneness which we perceive to be separate from the world – is not
even conceivable w/o some sort of otherness w/in God himself
o If God were one person and created the world as counterpart then God would not be
God
o God may be in relation to us b/c he is in eternal relation to himself
QUESTION: Is man the proper End for God?, who does God turn?
o If so man would no longer be loved by God, but a companion of God
o God’s love for the world is not a function for need but gift
o The counterpart to God is found in Jesus… he is the “you” eternally spoken by the
father
o We are drawn into the life of the father and son in the love of them which is the spirit.

The formula of faith emerges out of the burning bush scene – for the jews
In John the burning bush reaches its fullest meaning in the person of JC
o Christ is the very nameability of God – God is no longer simply a word but a
PERSON

QUESTION: What’s the point of speaking God’s name?

o You want to speak the name because it then becomes a relationship
o A name reveals the person, it discloses identity, nature answers question: what is this?,
person answers question: who?
o God wants to open up a relationship w/ humanity so he makes himself nameable and
enters into humanity
o The father and some become present in us through the holy spirit
o The Trinitarian confession is not the fruit of speculation but rather a summary of the
entire saving event of the gospels. (Christian existence begins at baptism)

I. QUESTIONS NECESSARY TO ASK:

1. Why did Christianity empty the world of the gods?

2. Why would God want to be involved w/ the affairs of men?
3. What is the worth of one human being?
4. What does it mean for the church to profess faith in a triune God?
5. How do we square the oneness of God with three distinct historical factors?
6. What possessed Christianity to make the previous assertion?
2.Describe the Arian argument and why it was repudiated at Nicaea?

o Arianism was the greatest Crisis that beset the Church in 2000 years
o At the council Arius nearly hijacked everything!
o Arianism wanted to dethrone the divinity of Christ.
o St. Gerome prophesized that Athanasius stopped the world from Arianism

ARIUS – had an idea that made his heresy extremely appealing:

o The absolute sovereignty of ONE, God was the un-originated ground of reality (truth)
o BUT if God were to have something exist outside of himself  it would NOT be a
result of God’s self communication (because that would mean God is not unchanging)
– Including God’s son  JESUS!

o Arius’ Question: “Given that the son is from the father, then the Question is this: Is he
of the order of creator, who is God, or of the order of creature who is not God?”
o What Christ is - does not get answered in NT, only what he does… in asking whether
Christ is the son of God or not, Arius in effect is asking a new question.

FOUR PROPOSITIONS OF ARIAN BELIEF:

a) The son must be a creature whom the father had formed out of nothing (a perfect
creature but not self subsisting)
b) If J.C. is to be, then there was a time when the son was not.
i. “There was when he was not”
c) If this is true then the son can have no communion w/ the Father b/c he is entirely
distant from the essence of God.
i. “The Father remains ineffable to the Son”
d) The son is liable to change, even that change we call sin. In theory he can sin, but in
practice the father has overshadowed him and he did not sin.

Scripture to his defense:

i. Romans 8:29 – “he was the first born among many”
ii. John 3:14 – “The Father is greater than I”… etc.

o Arius concluded that anything that derives from God as the son proceeds from the
father  is Created

Attitudes that shaped Christ’s awareness:

a) If salvation is to work Christ must be fully human, but he must also be fully divine
b) At no time does the church abandon the oneness of God, Christ cannot be some
inferior “God”
c) Jesus is not wearing the “mask” of humanity (monarchism);
Nor is he an “encounter” of God which is really just our mistaken human belief or
our minds creation (modelism)
 o We know that we cannot break out of our minds
to know God (yet God can break in!)

The Argument of Nicaea:

The Argument was over the word LOGOS – What was Christ’s relation to the Father?
1. Is Christ fully divine & therefore consubstantial to the Father  Homousious
2. OR is Christ only a creature?  if he was he would be infinitely inferior to
God

o If Christ is created than his mediation necessarily fails b/c he lacks

divine substance and he cannot bring us to the Father more than any
other creature (He would do us no damn good)
o There is no Salvation in the Arian “son” (yet Arius still believed
stripped of divinity he could save)
o Athanasius – The son is all that the father is except for the name of the
Father.

o Cutting edge of Nicene dogma is this:

“Begotten out of the father, out of the substance of the father, God out of true God.”

i. Murray – son is not out of the Father’s will, but his substance
ii. The son is begotten in the divine order, his being is not touched by created-ness
iii. He is Homousious w. the father
a. In the adj. ‘Homousious’ the problem of God finds its answer – in the
ontological category of substance
iv. Nicaea did NOT describe BUT DEFINE what the son is: from the Father in a
singular, unshared way. (move from what Christ does to who Christ is!  the
conversation brought to a higher plane)

o Nicaea primarily accomplished by the work of St. Athanasius b/c of his persistence of
the word ‘HOMOUSIOUS’
i. Conservative Right: objected Homousious because it was not found in Scripture
 Real issue concerned development in understanding the Christian
revelation of faith – (scripture also does not use transubstantiation)
ii. Arian Left: Sought to maintain the oneness of God
 The church also maintains monarchy
 Yet Christ cannot be diminished or excluded from the monarchy.

 3 Data of faith synthesized by council fathers:

i. God the father is sovereign lord of all the universe
ii. The son is equally God, equally divine
iii. The son is from the father and other than the father
3.What positively can be said in elucidation of the Church’s understanding
of the Triune God? In other words, discuss the three theses pursuant to the
church’s finished understanding of God.

3 Theses of the church: “one king, one essence, in three persons”

i. This paradox is subordinate to, dependent upon the question of original meaning of
UNITY AND PLURALITY.
a. To ancients- only oneness can be divine, absolute and plurality would be secondary –
for it represents the disintegration of unity
b. Christianity affirms that the divine is both one and many
 One is divine but plurality too is divine
c. For Maximus the confessor 2 Things get reconciled –
i. Heathen polytheism
ii. Jewish monotheism
o Both are equally imperfect and need enrichment, that completion is provided
by the Tri-une God of the Gospel
d. Christianity is not disjuncted but fuses both plurality and unity.
e. Plurality is not the break up of one into many – only through the doctrine of the
trinity can we reserve a place for the many
f. **If God is Triune than the highest possible expression of unity is not monotony BUT
the unity we achieve through LOVE b/c love is precisely one and many!

ii. Same paradox but a different way, meaning of the word: PERSON
a. Paradox to be understood as an intrinsic implication of the very word person
b. Greek: PROSOPON – “looking forward”
• To be a person is to be looking towards or moving towards another
c. Latin: PERSONA – “sounding through”
• Expresses relatedness, yet this time in the form of communication
d. The words Prosopon/ persona point to the realities they signify
e. If God is person – he cannot be an absolute singular person. – to be a person means to
be in relation to another
f. If God is person then he is not reducible to mere unity – it looks to, speaks through an
otherness relationship

iii. The absolute character of RELATIVITY

a. To get a datum on this handle of faith, we need to subordinate that datum to the
absolute and relative – only now we stress the absoluteness of the relative
b. 2 ARGUMENTS:
1. When we see God absolutely – he is only one
• Can’t be a plurality of divine principles
• This oneness which is God can only be founds on the
plane of substance, nature, essence
2. The element of being three
 • The three-ness of God is something which cannot be
found on the plane of substance – but the plane of relation
(relativity)
c. In Gethsemane – Jesus goes to be alone with his father – an OTHER
d. W/in God both the presence of I & THOU
i. An element of co-existent diversity & affinity
ii. All genuine relationships are characterized by diversity and affinity
e. In terms of SUBSTANCE – God is only one; while he is a trinity of PERSONS

f. The church makes a distinction between nature and person

i. Nature – what is this stuff; Person – who is this
g. Divine nature – may not be reduced in any way, yet it maybe related to itself in a
number of different ways.
h. Three distinct relations grounded to one substance
i. “GOD IS LOVE” – very distinction of persons w/in God-head (p.13 of Handout)
i. Love is a movement of giving and receiving, a relationship btw persons
ii. A third person is implicit in this very act of mutual giving and receiving –
The GIFT is THE HOLY SPIRIT
iii. The divine nature is itself GIFT
iv. The Spirit is the Love of the Father and the Son – all are perfectly united
in this “dance”
j. w/in the trinity we have a genuine experience w/ a God who conducts a dialogue
with himself  Not only LOGOS but DIALOGOS
k. being father is purely a concept of relation
i. relationship w/in the trinity is not something extra or added (as is w/ us)
l. “in God there are no accidents only substance and relation” –ST AUGUSTINE

4.Identify the three axioms of belief on which the entire Christian

understanding of God finally turns, according to Jean Danielou.

Question: what does it really mean, that God is both one and three?
Answer: Love is contemporaneous w/ being, that is to say the very structure of the absolute is
love. (P.14 - Handout.)

o Now we know that we are members of two gifts:

a. Given in being –creation (nature)
b. Forgiven in Grace

o We are created by love and for love, and re-created by love and for love. In
the evening of our lives we will be judged upon love.
o w/in the Trinitarian life there is infinite, unending love

3 TRUTHS:
a. God is eternally love
b. God loves us
c. We must love one another

o The love with which we are to love one another is a participation itself 
immersed in God who is love
o Human love is limited and is permitted to become sinful and change into
its opposite. what joins me to a beloved – ie. Spouse – does not exhaust
who I am
i. That relation which joins me to another human is not to be
confused w/ my nature (our existence as students is not exhaustive
of who we are)
ii. In other words  love is something we experience/ express BUT
love is defined as who we are (we are not the LOVE we have for
our friends)
o The miracle of DIVINITY – “GOD IS LOVE”
i. This is the highpoint of NT faith
ii. Love is what God is, he is nothing other than love, it is his very
essence
iii. Therefore it is love free of limitations, unlike the love which we
find in ourselves b/c love in ourselves is never the fullness of
ourselves: our nature does not co-inside w. our being love
o GOD IS LOVE – What do those words mean?
i. Everything we say about the three persons, everything we confess
about divine nature – amounts to the logic of GIFT!

o RELATIO – relationship
i. The dogma of God says the three divine persons are distinguished
by NOTHING, EXCEPT by there relations which unite them
ii. To be a father is not the same as being the son or spirit, it is rather
to beget the son or ‘generate’ the son
iii. What each person possess is only possessed in virtue of his giving
away, communicating it
iv. Each person IS the relation he has with the other person
v. This relation is none other than LOVE
o CS LEWIS “you may ask: if we can’t imagine this 3 person God than
what is the use in talking about him? …. There isn’t any use in talking; we
ought to be drawn into his life.
5.Concerning the Thomist problem of God, as understood by Fr. Murray, the
substance of Aquinas’ argument reveals two general aspects of thought.
Explain what they are.

o “St. Thomas aspires to heights unthinkable to human intelligence” – Pope Leo XIII
o Both the light of reason and faith come from same God: Grace perfects nature;
Faith perfects reason  Illuminated by faith, reason is set free from limitations
deriving from the disobedience of sin

o JPII “Fides et Ratio” –

a) St. Thomas writes: what ever the source, TRUTH has it’s highpoint of origin
in the H.S.
b) He was imparted in his love of truth, he sought truth wherever it might be
found
c) In the thinking of Thomas, the demands of reason & power of faith find the
most elevated synthesis of human thought

o Murray on Thomas: (p. 69  76 The Problem of God)

 “The first question to be asked about God is whether God is; …
having answered the first question we can move to the second: what
God is… however in the case of God we cannot know what he is but
only what he is not”
 In the case of God we cannot know what he is, but only what he is not
 Once it has been established, the truth that God does exist, we cannot
go on to answer the question of essence in its positive form (ie. What
God is)

d) THREE STAGES:
a. You must empty every conceptual image of God that bears even
remotely on the created universe (left w. GOD IS)
b. Acknowledgement that this is all you know of God – simply that
HE IS (the only admissible datum of human intelligence)
c. You must even empty the ISING b/c that bears upon the world we
know (because the only ising we have is creaturely ising) 
LEFT W. GOD!
“This is a kind of poverty nothing left to be said” – Thomas

o Two interpretations – come together in the fact that “he who is” and cannot be
designated b/c it is beyond our reach
a. “I am who am” – I am who is
b. “I am that which it pleases me to be” – more to God than the name GOD
o On the feast of St. Nicholas – Thomas struck silent – “all that I have written is nothing
but straw – compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me”
o One thing remains completely unknown about God – NAMELY WHAT GOD IS!
o All human knowledge of God ends in ignorance
6.Discuss the sense in which atheism and agnosticism in the modern context
are less an issue of the intelligence than a problem of the will. In other
words, in what sense are we describing, as Fr. Murray suggests, “a free act
of choice that antedates all theories”?

o Atheism brings about the seeming death of God; a phenomenon of UNBELIEF –

aggressive, hostile, belligerent disbelief.
o The problem of the ATHEIST:
a) If God finally is not a proposition but a presence, the opposite is equally so
b) To say that God is not  is not to be understood as a proposition but a state of
existence

o P.77: The problem of God can only be understood by human WILL, not by a function
of intelligence. – Atheism is NOT a problem of the intellect, but the will
o JPII – Atheism is the heart of the tragic experience of modern man, the eclipse of God
and man
o The loss of a sense of God brings about a loss in the sense of man

o P. 78: Bible presents 3 major types of Godless man:

a) W/in the people of God – this man is called by the psalmist: “The fool, the
idiot, the moron” – the fools denial does not concern God’s existence in a
metaphysical sense but in an acting sense  God is not here with me
b) Outside of the people of God – “the peoples who do not know God the Father,
and will not listen to the good news of Jesus Christ” the agnostic, and the
idolater – more or less an atheist.
c) The Philosopher – the sage - not making cosmic powers the “idol,” but his
own learning

o Atheism is never a conclusion of any theory, but a free act of choice that antedates
any theory – their atheism is reduced only by their will to be atheist

o P. 96: MODERN AGNOSTIC: “Since I cannot know what God is, I have decided to
disbelieve that he is”  stupidity, not only an implicit denial of God – BUT also an
explicit denial of intelligence!
o Agnostism is atheism by default – “an atheism for the lazy”
o Agnostic – gives up even the search for God (an atheism of despair)

2 Forms of modern atheism:

a) Aristocratic atheism of the modern academy – to explain the world w/o God
b) Bourgeois atheism of the market place – we have no need of God – therefore God
doesn’t exist! – Sole realities of life are economic.
7.Identify the two forms of the God-less man of the post-modern age. Of the
two, which is more amenable to conversion and why?

2 Forms in Post Modern Age:

a) (easiest) – Godless man of revolution, here the godless man is not an individual but a
collective class.
i. The will of the Marxist man is to transform the world
ii. For marx, everything is reduced to class (class structure, struggle, etc.)
iii. For Marx the world is purely industrial
iv. Man makes a unity, since it is his own work, thus it represents him (What I do
is who I am)
b) The godless man of the theater – who dwells in world of public imagination
i. A world of dramatic fantasy and emotion (i.e. Television, media, music)
ii. This godless man is not a philosopher
iii. His profession is Phenomenology: not interested in “whatness”
iv. “Man is only a presence, a sort of process, a continual ‘standing forth’ an
actual ‘being-there-in-the-moment’ in action and freedom”
v. His postulate is that man has no nature at all
vi. He isn’t interested in explaining anything, for he does not want to change the
world
vii. His project is SIMPLY TO EXIST himself in a godless world – he wills the
absence of God
viii. It really is more difficult to characterize this form of post-modern atheism

o The model for the godless man of the Theater is probably: Jean-Paul Sartre
a) He begins w. the myth of the death of God
b) His question: Can we “live” the death of God? (to stand forth the world to
which God has died – to EX – SIST)

o The original ground from which the man of the theater proceeds is not the world of
ideas but in the world of FACT – he sees a garden surrounded by death, and beyond
death is nothing
o Freedom IS NOT the possibility of changing the world
o P. 116: For a man to be free is for him to assume single and full obligation for his own
existence. It is for him to bear alone the entire responsibility for being. In the face of
the worlds absurdity, man’s original choice is to be-for-himself… this is the only value
in an otherwise absurd world. And it is itself absurdity… For man to be thus free is for
him to BE God. And this is absurdity squared. It is not only that man cannot be God. It
is also that for a man to ex-sist God is for him not to ex-sist; for God does not ex-sist.
o P. 117: His question is biblical: “Is God here w/ us?” and his answer is: NO; the will of
the man of the theater thus becomes a will to the repression of God from
consciousness

o P. 119 CONCLUSION: one conclusion (2 parts)

 a. The modern problem of God had a measure of diminishing continuity
w/ medieval as structured by Aquinas. The central question was the
same: what God is. In the post-modern age however, the intelligibility
of God was meaningless… why argue at all. The thing to do was either
change the world in the name of man’s freedom to do so; or simply ex-
sist the world in the name of mans freedom to do nothing else.
b. In the post modern age problem has come back in biblical mode, its
plane of position is the historical existential order where the terms of
argument are presence or transparence.

OPINION:
OF THE TWO WHICH IS MORE AMENABLE TO CONVERSION AND WHY?