God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985 The...

God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit

General audience of October 9, 1985

The Church professes her faith in the one God, who is at the same time the Most Holy and ineffable

Trinity of Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Church lives by this truth contained in the most ancient symbols of faith.

Paul VI recalled it in our times on the occasion of the 1900th anniversary of the martyrdom of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul (1968), in the symbol he

presented which is universally known as the Credo of the People of God.



Only "he who has wished to make himself known to us, and who 'dwelling in light inaccessible'

(1 Tim 6:16) is in himself above every name,

above every thing and above every created intellect...

can give us right and full knowledge of this reality by revealing himself as Father, Son and Holy

Spirit, in whose eternal life we are by grace called to share, here below in the obscurity of faith and

after death in eternal light..." (L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, July 11, 1968, p. 4).



God is incomprehensible to us.

He wished to reveal himself, not only as the one creator and Almighty Father, but also as

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This revelation reveals in its essential source the truth about God, who is love:

God is love in the interior life itself of the one divinity.



This love is revealed as an ineffable communion of persons.

This mystery

—the most profound, the mystery of the intimate life of God himself—

has been revealed to us by Jesus Christ:

"He who is in the bosom of the Father,

he has made him known"

(Jn 1:18).



The last words with which Christ concluded his earthly mission after the resurrection were

addressed to the apostles, according to St. Matthew's Gospel:

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the

Holy Spirit" (Mt 28:19).

These words began the Church's mission and indicated her fundamental and constitutive task.

The Church's first task is to teach and baptize—to baptize means "to immerse"—

so that all may come to share God's trinitarian life.



Trinity in New Testament Jesus Christ expressed in these final words all that he

had previously taught about God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

He had announced from the beginning the truth about the one God, in conformity with the tradition of Israel.

Jesus answered the question: "Which commandment is the first of all?" by stating: "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one

Lord,'" (Mk 12:29).



Trinity in New TestamentAt the same time Jesus had constantly addressed

God as "his Father," to the point of asserting: "I and the Father are one"

(Jn 10:30).

He had revealed in the same way the "Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father"

and whom—as he assured us—"I will send to you from the Father"

(Jn 15:26).



The words of baptism

"in the name of the Father and of the Son

and of the Holy Spirit,"

entrusted by Jesus to the apostles at the end of his earthly mission, have a special significance.

They have consolidated the truth about the Most Holy Trinity, by placing it at the basis of the Church's

sacramental life.

The life of faith of all Christians begins in baptism,

with immersion in the mystery of the living God.



The letters of the apostles prove this, especially those of Paul.

Among the trinitarian formulas which they contain, the best known and the one constantly used in the liturgy

is that in the Second Letter to the Corinthians: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God (the Father) and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all"

(2 Cor 13:14). We find others in the First Letter to the Corinthians, in the Letter

to the Ephesians and also in the First Letter of St. Peter, at the beginning of the first chapter

(1 Pet 1:1-2).



Indirectly the whole development of the Church's life of prayer has taken on a trinitarian awareness and

orientation—in the Spirit, through Christ, to the Father.

Thus faith in the Triune God has entered from the beginning into the tradition of the life of the Church

and of Christians. Consequently the whole liturgy has been

—and is—essentially trinitarian,

inasmuch as it expresses the divine economy.



One must emphasize that faith in the redemption,

that is, faith in Christ's work of salvation,

has contributed to understanding this supreme mystery of the Blessed Trinity.

• It manifests the mission of the Son and of the Holy Spirit who in the bosom of the eternal Trinity proceed "from the Father."

• It reveals the "trinitarian economy" present in the redemption and in sanctification.



The Holy Trinity is announced first of all through soteriology, that is,

through the knowledge of the

"economy of salvation,"

which Christ announced and put into effect in his messianic mission.



The path to the knowledge of the "immanent" Trinity,

of the mystery of God's inner life,

begins from this knowledge.

In this sense the New Testament contains the fullness of trinitarian revelation.

God reveals both who God is for us,

and who God is in himself,

namely, in his inner life,

by the revelation of himself in Jesus Christ.



The truth that "God is love"

(1 Jn 4:16),

expressed in the First Letter of John,

is a keystone here.

This truth reveals who God is for us.

It also reveals who God is in himself,

(as far as is possible for the human mind to understand it and for human language to express it).

He is a Unity, that is, a Communion of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.



The Old Testament has not revealed this truth explicitly.

It prepared the way for it by showing God's Fatherhood in the covenant with his people, and by manifesting his activity in the world with Wisdom, the Word and the

Spirit

(cf. e. g., Wis 7:22-30; Prov 8:22-30; Ps 33:4-6; Ps 147:15; Is 55:11; Wis 12:1; Is 11:2; Sir 48:12).

The Old Testament has principally consolidated the truth about the one God, the hinge of the monotheistic

religion, first of all in Israel and then outside of it.



One must then conclude that the New Testament has brought the fullness of revelation about the Blessed

Trinity.

The trinitarian truth has been from the beginning at the root of the living faith of the Christian community by

means of baptism and the liturgy.

The rules of faith,

which we meet frequently both in the letters of the apostles and in the testimony of the kerygma,

kept pace with the Church's catechesis and prayer.



The formation of the trinitarian dogma in the context of the defense against the heresies of

the early centuries is a separate subject.

The truth about the Triune God is the most profound mystery of the faith and also the most

difficult to understand.

The possibility of erroneous interpretations existed, especially when Christianity came into

contact with Greek culture and philosophy.



It was a case of correctly "inscribing" the mystery of the Triune God

"into the terminology of being." That is, it was to express in a precise form in the philosophical language of the age

the concepts which unequivocally defined

both the unity and trinity of the God of our revelation.



This happened first of all in the two great ecumenical councils of Nicaea (325) and

Constantinople (381).

The magisterium of these councils bore fruit in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

The Church has expressed in it from those times her faith in the Triune God

—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.



Recalling the work of the councils one must mention some particularly outstanding theologians, especially

among the Fathers of the Church. • For the pre-Nicene period we may mention Tertullian, Cyprian,

Origen, Irenaeus;

• for the Nicene period, Athanasius and Ephraim the Syrian;

• for the period preceding the Council of Constantinople we recall Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary, down to Ambrose, Augustine and Leo the Great.

• From the fifth century we have the so-called Athanasian Creed which begins with the word Quicumque. It is like a kind of comment on the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.



Paul VI's Credo of the People of God confirms the faith of the primitive Church when it proclaims:

"The mutual bonds which eternally constitute the three Persons who are each one and the same Divine Being,

are the blessed inmost life of God thrice holy, infinitely beyond all that we can conceive in human

measure“

—truly, the ineffable and Most Holy Trinity—

the One God.(cf. DS 804) (L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, July 11, 1968, p. 4)

God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985 The...

Documents

Transcript of God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985 The...