A better understanding of the Trinity
This might sound crazy, but I think I just understood the Trinity to some degree for the first time. It felt like a eureka moment, and I haven’t had one of those in a long time. I saw a quote in an article about mystics, and it said the quote was from God the Father to this mystic. That was the first time I ever saw that. All the other quotes were from Jesus. That got me thinking. What is God the Father like? It seems like we never talk about Him, only about Jesus. Then a thought really struck me:
When Philip asked Jesus to show him the Father, He said, “Have I been with you such a long time, and do you not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How do you say, ‘Show us the Father?’
He didn’t just say He’s in the Father and the Father is in Him, as He said in other verses. He’s saying He is the Father. It was as if Jesus was telling Philip: “Look at me. I’m the Father, right here in front of you. I’ve taken the form of a human to elevate humanity to myself, and thus you see a man in front of you instead of a pure spirit. But don’t let your eyes deceive you. Behind this temporary form I have right now is my essence. That’s also why you can be in my presence and not die. I’m using the humanity I’ve taken to shield you from my full glory, which is infinite, and thus would destroy any finite and imperfect being, which you all are. But in Heaven, you’ll see me as I really am. However, you don’t have to wait til you’re in Heaven to understand and believe that even though I am Jesus, I am also the Father”.
Then I realized that if Jesus is the Word of God, that’s just another way of saying Jesus is the revelation of God the Father. In other words, if you could take God the Father’s essence and distill it into a separate being, it would be Jesus. That’s what Jesus is, the essence of the Father. They’re separate beings, but not in the way we understand that concept. God the Father is the essence of the Trinity, and Jesus is the revealed form of that essence. So when we look at Jesus, we’re looking at God the Father without realizing it. He’s the Father in physical form, or the embodiment of the Father. Since the essence of God is love and love is always shared, that means that God’s essence is eternally shared between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This reminded me of an article about St Augustine’s book on the Trinity, which was one of the most profound things I’ve ever read about God:
“As Augustine meanders towards his topic, he proceeds to identify triads in mankind that are potential images of the Trinity. Early on, for example, he discerns an inner Trinitarian structure to love: there is the lover, the beloved, and the love they share. He then proceeds to identify another triad that is a potential reflection of the Trinity: mind, knowledge, and love. This yields one of the many great insights of the work — Augustine’s explanation for why the Word is ‘begotten’ but not the Holy Spirit. The explanation comes by way of ‘analogy’ with how the individual mind of a man works:
But the reason it is not right to say that love is begotten by it like the knowledge of itself by which it knows itself, is that knowledge is a kind of finding out what is said to be brought forth or brought to light, which is often preceded by an inquisitiveness that is going to rest in that end. Inquisitiveness is an appetite for finding out, which amounts to the same thing as ‘bringing to light.’ But things that area brought to light are so to speak brought forth, which makes them similar to offspring. And where does all this happen but in knowledge? It is there that they are as it were squeezed out and formed. Even if the things we have found out by inquiry already existed, still knowledge of them did not yet exist, and it is this that we reckon as offspring coming to birth (284–285).
In other words, the process of acquiring knowledge is a kind of bringing forth of something — or a ‘begetting.’ That initial appetite for finding out and the resulting will which joins knowledge to the mind that knows it is what Augustine calls love. These three — the mind, its knowledge, and the love they share — are an image of the Trinity”.
If the idea of the creation of mankind and the universe always existed in God’s mind, and Jesus is constantly being begotten by God the Father, then this explains why Jesus is the primary reason for our creation. If Jesus was always begotten, then everything that was created was done so in and through Him. Our creation was just a continuation of that begetting of the Son from the Father. It was an overflow of the love between them into time and space. It couldn’t be contained between them, so it had to expand into a created world to reflect the love and glory of the Trinity, which is what each one of us is, and what each family is.
I think when most people think about Jesus and God the Father, they think of them as two beings with two different personalities and sets of characteristics, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I think the paradox of the Trinity is that Jesus and God the Father are two separate beings, but they’re also one with each other in essence. They’re two beings with one set of shared characteristics, because as Jesus said, whatever belongs to the Father belongs to Him, and whatever belongs to Him also belongs to the Father. When Jesus speaks, He’s not just speaking for Himself. He’s God the Father’s voice. So when we look at Jesus, we should always remember that He is the Revealed Father. Our minds are limited by time and space, so we have to think of Jesus and His Father as two separate and distinct beings, but I believe in Heaven, we’ll see them as they really are, which is two beings who are perfectly united, and thus inseparable.
