The Trinity
The doctrine of the Trinity is encapsulated in
Matthew 28:19, where Jesus instructs the apostles: "Go therefore and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
The parallelism of the Father, the Son, and the
Spirit is not unique to Matthew’s Gospel, but appears elsewhere in the
New Testament (e.g., 2 Cor. 13:14, Heb. 9:14), as well as in the writings
of the earliest Christians, who clearly understood them in the sense that
we do today—that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three divine persons
who are one divine being (God).
The Didache
"After the foregoing instructions, baptize in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living [running]
water. . . . If you have neither, pour water three times on the head, in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Didache
7:1 [A.D. 70]).
Ignatius of Antioch
"[T]o the Church at Ephesus in Asia . . . chosen
through true suffering by the will of the Father in Jesus Christ our God"
(Letter to the Ephesians 1 [A.D. 110]).
"For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary
in accord with God’s plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of
the Holy Spirit" (ibid., 18:2).
Justin Martyr
"We will prove that we worship him reasonably;
for we have learned that he is the Son of the true God himself, that he
holds a second place, and the Spirit of prophecy a third. For this they
accuse us of madness, saying that we attribute to a crucified man a place
second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of all things;
but they are ignorant of the mystery which lies therein" (First Apology
13:5–6 [A.D. 151]).
Theophilus of Antioch
"It is the attribute of God, of the most high and
almighty and of the living God, not only to be everywhere, but also to
see and hear all; for he can in no way be contained in a place. . . . The
three days before the luminaries were created are types of the Trinity:
God, his Word, and his Wisdom" (To Autolycus 2:15 [A.D. 181]).
Irenaeus
"For the Church, although dispersed throughout
the whole world even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles
and from their disciples the faith in one God, the Father Almighty . .
. and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became flesh for our salvation;
and in the Holy Spirit" (Against Heresies 1:10:1 [A.D. 189]).
Tertullian
"We do indeed believe that there is only one God,
but we believe that under this dispensation, or, as we say, oikonomia,
there is also a Son of this one only God, his Word, who proceeded from
him and through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was
made. . . . We believe he was sent down by the Father, in accord with his
own promise, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith
of those who believe in the Father and the Son, and in the Holy Spirit.
. . . This rule of faith has been present since the beginning of the gospel,
before even the earlier heretics" (Against Praxeas 2 [A.D. 216]).
"And at the same time the mystery of the oikonomia
is safeguarded, for the unity is distributed in a Trinity. Placed in order,
the three are the Father, Son, and Spirit. They are three, however, not
in condition, but in degree; not in being, but in form; not in power, but
in kind; of one being, however, and one condition and one power, because
he is one God of whom degrees and forms and kinds are taken into account
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (ibid.).
"Keep always in mind the rule of faith which I
profess and by which I bear witness that the Father and the Son and the
Spirit are inseparable from each other, and then you will understand what
is meant by it. Observe now that I say the Father is other [distinct],
the Son is other, and the Spirit is other. This statement is wrongly understood
by every uneducated or perversely disposed individual, as if it meant diversity
and implied by that diversity a separation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit"
(ibid., 9).
"Thus the connection of the Father in the Son,
and of the Son in the Paraclete, produces three coherent persons, who are
yet distinct one from another. These three are, one essence, not one person,
as it is said, ‘I and my Father are one’ [John 10:30], in respect of unity
of being not singularity of number" (ibid., 25).
Origen
"For we do not hold that which the heretics imagine:
that some part of the being of God was converted into the Son, or that
the Son was procreated by the Father from non-existent substances, that
is, from a being outside himself, so that there was a time when he [the
Son] did not exist" (The Fundamental Doctrines 4:4:1 [A.D. 225]).
"No, rejecting every suggestion of corporeality,
we hold that the Word and the Wisdom was begotten out of the invisible
and incorporeal God, without anything corporal being acted upon . . . the
expression which we employ, however that there was never a time when he
did not exist is to be taken with a certain allowance. For these very words
‘when’ and ‘never’ are terms of temporal significance, while whatever is
said of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is to be understood as
transcending all time, all ages" (ibid.).
"For it is the Trinity alone which exceeds every
sense in which not only temporal but even eternal may be understood. It
is all other things, indeed, which are outside the Trinity, which are to
be measured by time and ages" (ibid.).
Hippolytus
"The Word alone of this God is from God himself,
wherefore also the Word is God, being the being of God. Now the world was
made from nothing, wherefore it is not God" (Refutation of All Heresies
10:29 [A.D. 228]).
Novatian
"For Scripture as much announces Christ as also
God, as it announces God himself as man. It has as much described Jesus
Christ to be man, as moreover it has also described Christ the Lord to
be God. Because it does not set forth him to be the Son of God only, but
also the son of man; nor does it only say, the son of man, but it has also
been accustomed to speak of him as the Son of God. So that being of both,
he is both, lest if he should be one only, he could not be the other. For
as nature itself has prescribed that he must be believed to be a man who
is of man, so the same nature prescribes also that he must be believed
to be God who is of God. . . . Let them, therefore, who read that Jesus
Christ the son of man is man, read also that this same Jesus is called
also God and the Son of God" (Treatise on the Trinity 11 [A.D. 235]).
Pope Dionysius
"Next, then, I may properly turn to those who divide
and cut apart and destroy the most sacred proclamation of the Church of
God, making of it [the Trinity], as it were, three powers, distinct substances,
and three godheads. . . . [Some heretics] proclaim that there are in some
way three gods, when they divide the sacred unity into three substances
foreign to each other and completely separate" (Letter to Dionysius
of Alexandria 1 [A.D. 262]).
"Therefore, the divine Trinity must be gathered
up and brought together in one, a summit, as it were, I mean the omnipotent
God of the universe. . . . It is blasphemy, then, and not a common one
but the worst, to say that the Son is in any way a handiwork [creature].
. . . But if the Son came into being [was created], there was a time when
these attributes did not exist; and, consequently, there was a time when
God was without them, which is utterly absurd" (ibid., 1–2).
"Neither, then, may we divide into three godheads
the wonderful and divine unity. . . . Rather, we must believe in God, the
Father Almighty; and in Christ Jesus, his Son; and in the Holy Spirit;
and that the Word is united to the God of the universe. ‘For,’ he says,
‘The Father and I are one,’ and ‘I am in the Father, and the Father in
me’" (ibid., 3).
Gregory the Wonderworker
"There is one God. . . . There is a perfect Trinity,
in glory and eternity and sovereignty, neither divided nor estranged. Wherefore
there is nothing either created or in servitude in the Trinity; nor anything
superinduced, as if at some former period it was non-existent, and at some
later period it was introduced. And thus neither was the Son ever wanting
to the Father, nor the Spirit to the Son; but without variation and without
change, the same Trinity abides ever" (Declaration of Faith [A.D.
265]).
Sechnall of Ireland
"Hymns, with Revelation and the Psalms of God [Patrick]
sings, and does expound the same for the edifying of God’s people. This
law he holds in the Trinity of the sacred Name and teaches one being in
three persons" (Hymn in Praise of St. Patrick 22 [A.D. 444]).
Patrick of Ireland
"I bind to myself today the strong power of an
invocation of the Trinity—the faith of the Trinity in unity, the Creator
of the universe" (The Breastplate of St. Patrick 1 [A.D. 447]).
"[T]here is no other God, nor has there been heretofore,
nor will there be hereafter, except God the Father unbegotten, without
beginning, from whom is all beginning, upholding all things, as we say,
and his Son Jesus Christ, whom we likewise to confess to have always been
with the Father—before the world’s beginning. . . . Jesus Christ is the
Lord and God in whom we believe . . . and who has poured out on us abundantly
the Holy Spirit . . . whom we confess and adore as one God in the Trinity
of the sacred Name" (Confession of St. Patrick 4 [A.D. 452]).
Augustine
"All the Catholic interpreters of the divine books of the Old and New Testaments whom I have been able to read, who wrote before me about the Trinity, which is God, intended to teach in accord with the Scriptures that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one and the same substance constituting a divine unity with an inseparable equality; and therefore there are not three gods but one God, although the Father begot the Son, and therefore he who is the Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son but only the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, himself, too, coequal to the Father and to the Son and belonging to the unity of the Trinity" (The Trinity 1:4:7 [A.D. 408]).
Fulgence of Ruspe
"See, in short you have it that the Father is one, the Son another, and the Holy Spirit another; in Person, each is other, but in nature they are not other. In this regard he says: ‘The Father and I, we are one’ (John 10:30). He teaches us that one refers to their nature, and we are to their Persons. In like manner it is said: ‘There are three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit; and these three are one’ (1 John 5:7). Let Sabellius hear we are, let him hear three; and let him believe that there are three Persons. Let him not blaspheme in his sacrilegious heart by saying that the Father is the same in himself as the Son is the same in himself and as the Holy Sprit is the same in himself, as if in some way he could beget himself, or in some way proceed from himself. Even in created natures it is never able to be found that something is able to beget itself. Let also Arius hear one; and let him not say that the Son is of a different nature, if one cannot be said of that, the nature of which is different" (The Trinity 4:1–2 [c. A.D. 515]).
"But in the one true God and Trinity it is naturally true not only that God is one but also that he is a Trinity, for the reason that the true God himself is a Trinity of Persons and one in nature. Through this natural unity the whole Father is in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, and the whole Holy Spirit, too, is in the Father and in the Son. None of these is outside any of the others; because no one of them precedes any other of them in eternity or exceeds any other in greatness, or is superior to any other in power" (The Rule of Faith 4 [c. A.D. 523).
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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