Episode 134: Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C
In today’s episode, we reflect on four details that relevant to doing apologetics found in the second reading and Gospel reading for this upcoming Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C. The first detail comes from the first reading, taken from Romans 5:1-5, and the topic it relates to is the nature of justification. The other three details come from the Gospel reading, which is taken from John 16:12-15. The related topics are the inspiration of the apostles’ teaching, the divinity of Jesus, and the doctrine of the filioque (the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son).
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Hey everyone,
Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
I’m Dr. Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
In today’s episode, we’re going to reflect on four details that relevant to doing apologetics found in the second reading and Gospel reading for this upcoming Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C. The first detail comes from the first reading, taken from Romans 5:1-5, and the topic it relates to is the nature of justification. The other three details come from the Gospel reading, which is taken from John 16:12-15. The related topics are the inspiration of the apostles’ teaching, the divinity of Jesus, and the doctrine of the filioque (the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son).
Let’s get started with the second reading, which, again, is taken from Romans 5:1-5. Paul writes,
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have gained access by faith
to this grace in which we stand,
and we boast in hope of the glory of God.
Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions,
knowing that affliction produces endurance,
and endurance, proven character,
and proven character, hope,
and hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
This passage has often been appealed to by Protestants who hold to the doctrine known as “forensic justification.” This belief involves the idea that our justification is not rooted in the interior holiness that God brings about within us by grace, like in the Catholic view. Rather, the ground or root of our justification is solely in the forensic/external declaration by God that we are just. And God declares us so, so this view holds, on account of the imputation of the personal and perfect righteousness of Christ.
But the passage for our second reading here can just as easily be read through the Catholic lens as well. Take, for example, Paul’s statement, “since we have been justified by faith.” Christians who hold to the forensic model of justification interpret this as revealing how faith is merely the instrument through which Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, thereby giving us peace with God rather than faith being the inhering quality of the soul on account of which we are at peace with God.
However, Paul’s teaching doesn’t necessitate this view. It can just as easily support the view that the theological virtue of faith, animated by charity, infused within the soul by God is that on account of which we are at peace with God, i.e., justified. More evidence would have to be given to show which interpretation is best.
Also, Paul’s teaching that we have peace with God through Jesus Christ doesn’t necessitate the view that we’re justified by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. It can just as easily be interpreted as Christ being the meritorious cause of the grace of justification, or it can be interpreted as a reference to the fact that only in virtue of being incorporated into Christ’s mystical body, which happens via sanctifying grace, can we have peace with God. Again, more evidence would have to be given as to which meaning of justification Paul envisions.
Now, I think we do have evidence within this very passage to make the Catholic view of justification the more plausible one. Notice, within the context of saying we are justified by faith and thereby have peace with God, he speaks of God’s love being poured forth within our heart. What is such love? It’s the theological virtue of charity, which orients us to God as our supernatural end or goal. It’s the principle in virtue of which we have friendship with God. This is why I said earlier that the Catholic view on justification is that we are justified by faith animated by charity. Both, together, constitute the soul as being rightly ordered to God and thereby at peace with God. This means that our justification as Christians is rooted in the interior holiness of the soul that God brings about through these spiritual gifts.
So, it seems that for Paul our peace with God is not merely on account of the faith God gives us as a gift but also the charity that comes with such justifying faith.
Now, by itself I don’t think this passage is as strong as other passages we could appeal to throughout the Bible in support of the non-forensic view of justification. But when this passage is considered in light with others, then I think the “interior righteousness” view of justification is the more probable one.
So much for the second reading. Let’s turn to the Gospel for this upcoming Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Here’s what Jesus says to his disciples, as recorded in John 16:12-15:
“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,
he will guide you to all truth.
He will not speak on his own,
but he will speak what he hears,
and will declare to you the things that are coming.
He will glorify me,
because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
Everything that the Father has is mine;
for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine
and declare it to you.”
The first detail to focus on is Jesus’ promise that the “Spirit of truth” would guide the apostles “to all truth.” Now, some Christians appeal to this passage as support for the gift of “inspiration”—that’s to say, the apostles were moved by the Spirit to give us public revelation. And such inspiration is generally interpreted as what theologians call verbal inspiration, the idea that the very words of Scripture are inspired by God. For Christians who look to Scripture alone as their infallible rule of faith, they see the verbal inspiration of Scripture as a belief that can be accounted for Scripture alone.
However, this passage doesn’t get us all the way to verbal inspiration. Rather, it only gets us to what theologians call general inspiration, which is the idea that the apostles were inspired by the Spirit merely to know the content or the ideas, and not the very words that they used. For Catholics, this is the type of inspiration that we believe the apostles had in their apostolic preaching, unlike the verbal inspiration they had in writing the New Testament books. This is the reason why we believe Sacred Tradition, together with Sacred Scripture, makes up God’s Word, or divine revelation.
I bring this to your attention simply so you can be aware of the attempt made by Protestants to root their belief in the verbal inspiration of Scripture with this passage. It simply doesn’t work.
Now, there are other passages that Protestants appeal to this same end, which provide a bit more success for Protestants, like 1 Cor. 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:21. But in the end these other passages only allow a Protestant to root verbal inspiration of some of the New Testament books in the Bible, not all of them.
The second detail that’s worth highlighting relates to two topics that are intrinsically related: the divinity of Jesus and the filioque, which is Latin for “and the Son,” and is the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. Here’s the relevant line from our Lord:
Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
That Jesus says he has everything that the Father has implies that Jesus has the very divine being of the Father, thereby revealing that he believes himself to be equal to the Father. As the old theological maxim goes, Jesus is everything that the Father is except being Father.
It’s this line of reasoning that led St. Thomas Aquinas to affirm the filioque. In his Summa Theologiae, I:36:4, he writes,
The Father and the Son are in everything one, wherever there is no distinction between them of opposite relation. Hence since there is no relative opposition between them as the principle of the Holy Ghost it follows that the Father and the Son are one principle of the Holy Ghost.
In his reply to the second objection in the prior article, he stated,
[T]he same spirative power belongs to the Father and to the Son; and therefore the Holy Ghost proceeds equally from both, although sometimes He is said to proceed principally or properly from the Father, because the Son has this power from the Father (ST I:36:3 ad 2).
The Council of Florence would follow this same line of reasoning in its Decree to the Greeks, stating,
Since the Father has through generation given to the only-begotten Son everything that belongs to the Father, except being Father, the Son has also eternally from the Father, from whom he is eternally born, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son.
So, we might summarize this think as follows:
P1: Whatever power the Father has the Son has.
P2: The Holy spirit proceeds from the spirative power of the Father.
C: Therefore, the Son has the spirative power of the Father from which the Holy Spirit proceeds.
The thing to note about this line of reasoning is that it preserves the Father as the first principle of the Trinitarian life, since the son only has this spirative power of the Father insofar as he is begotten of the Father, which logically presupposes the Father as the Begetter.
So, the Gospel reading gives us some biblical grounds for affirming the doctrine of the filioque.
Conclusion
Well, my friends, that’s all I have for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The readings for this upcoming Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C, provides us with a few details that are relevant for doing apologetics:
- We have Paul’s teaching on justification in the second reading, and
- We have the Gospel reading revealing to us the inner Trinitarian life, the equality the Son of God has with the Father and from such equality follows the doctrine of the filioque.
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I hope you have a blessed Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C. Until next time, God Bless.