The Holy Trinity in Unity

 WHEN the Church speaks of Three Persons in One Divine Essence, it seems at first sight that she must imply and mean, if she would avoid contradiction of ideas, either that the "Three" or that the "One" expresses an abstraction of our minds.

 If God is numerically one, if the Divine Essence is undivided and simple in that strict sense in which we speak of each man as an individual, then the term Person must surely denote nothing more than some aspect, character, office, or assemblage of attributes, which belongs to the Almighty, as when our Lord is spoken of as Prophet, Priest, and King, which are mere titles or appellatives, not existing re but ratione . But this is Sabellianism.

 On the other hand, we may consider the Three Persons actually to exist, not being mere ideas or modes of our viewing God, but as realities, intrinsically distinct from each other, separate and complete one by one, re as well as ratione, Persons as we men are persons, or at least in some analogous way. In that case we should go on to consider, as a necessary inference, that "One" expressed only a logical unity, Ens unum in multis, a nature or class, as when we say " Man is mortal;" but this conclusion brings us either to Arianism or to Tritheism.

 There is no incompatibility of ideas involved in the doctrine of Sabellian, Arian, or Tritheist, that is, no mystery; but the Catholic believes and holds as an article of faith that the Divine Three, and again the Divine One, both as One and as Three, exist re not ratione ; and therefore he has to answer the objection, "Either the word 'Trinity' denotes a mere abstraction, or the word 'Unity' does; for how can it be at once a fact that Each of Three, who are eternally distinct one from another, is really God, and also a fact that there really is but one God?" This however is the doctrine of the creed of S. Athanasius, and certainly is to be received and held by every faithful member of the Church, viz., that the Father is God and all that God is, and so too is the Son, and so too is the Holy Ghost, yet there is but one God; that the word God may be predicated of an objective Triad, yet also belong to only One Being, to a Being individual and sole, all-perfect, self-existent, and everlasting.

 To state this in the language of Petavius, who is the most learned expositor of the doctrine of the Fathers as distinct from the medieval Church, "Non omittendum Personas Tres, etsi invicem reapse distant, re tamen idem esse cum essentia, et ab eâ non nisi ratione discrepare." de Trin. iii. 11, 7. It is a Three or Triad, Each of whom is intrinsically and everlastingly distinct from Each, (as Prophet, Priest, and King are not, but as Priest and his people, King and his subjects, Teacher and taught are,) yet Each is One and the Same individual Divine Essence.

 Let it be observed the mystery lies, not in any one of the statements which constitute the doctrine, but in their combination. The meaning of each proposition is on a level with our understanding. There is no intellectual difficulty in apprehending any one of them. "God is a Father; God is a Son; God is a Holy Spirit; the Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Holy Ghost; the Holy Ghost is not the Father; God is numerically One; there are not Three Gods." In which of these propositions do we not sufficiently understand what is meant to be told us? For devotion, then (and for devotion we may conceive these high truths to be revealed to us), the mystery is no difficulty; such understanding of its separate constituent propositions as we have is sufficient for devotion, which lives and thrives upon single objects rather than on a collection.

 The difficulty then is not in understanding each sentence of which the doctrine consists, but in its incompatibility (taken as a whole, and in the only words possible for conveying it to our minds) with certain of our axioms of thought indisputable in themselves, but foreign and inapplicable to a sphere of existences of which we have no experience whatever.

 What in fact do we know of pure spirit? What do we know of the infinite? Of the latter just a little, by means of mathematical science, that is, under the conditions of number, quantity, space, distance, direction, and shape; just enough to tell us how little we know, and how little we are able to draw arguments and inferences when infinites are in question. Mathematical science tells us that one and one infinite do not, put together, make two; that there may be innumerable infinites, and that all put together are not greater than one of them; that there are orders of infinites. It is plain we are utterly unable to determine what is possible and what is impossible in this high region of realities. And then again, in the case of infinitesimals, do not three lines become one line when one is placed upon another? yet how can we say, supposing them respectively coloured white, red, and blue, that they would not remain three, after they had coalesced into one, as entirely as they were really three before?

 Nor in its doctrine of infinites only, does mathematical science illustrate the mysteries of Theology. Geometry, for instance, may be used to a certain point as an exponent of algebraical truth; but it would be irrational to deny the wider revelations of algebra, because they do not admit of a geometrical expression. The fourth power of a quantity may be received as a fact, though a fourth dimension in space is inconceivable. Again, a polygon or an ellipse is a figure different in kind from a circle; yet we may tend towards a conception of the latter by using what we know of either of the former. Thus it is by economical expedients that we teach and transmit the mysteries of religion, separating them into parts, viewing them in aspects, adumbrating them by analogies, and so approximating to them by means of words which say too much or too little. And if we consent to such ways of thought in our scientific treatment of "earthly things," is it wonderful that we should be forced to them in our investigation of "heavenly"?

 "You have the Son, you have the Father; fear not duality ... There is One God, because Father is One, and Son is God, having identity as Son towards Father ... The Father is the whole fulness of Godhead as Father, and the Son is the whole fulness of Godhead as Son ... The Father has Being perfect and without defect, being root and fount of the Son and the Spirit; and the Son is in the fulness of Godhead, a Living Word and Offspring of the Father without defect. And the Spirit is full of the Son, not being part of another, but whole in Himself ... Let us understand that the Face (nature [ eidos ]) is One of Three truly subsisting, beginning in Father, beaming in Son, and manifested through Spirit." Pseudo-Ath. c. Sab. Greg. 5-12. "I hardly arrive at contemplating the One, when I am encircled with the radiance of the Three; I hardly arrive at distinguishing the Three, when I am carried back to the One. When I have imaged to myself One of the Three, I think It the whole, and my sight is filled, and what is more escapes me ... And when I embrace the Three in my contemplation, I see but One Luminary, being unable to distinguish or to measure the Light which becomes One." Greg. Naz. Orat. 40. 41. "The fulness of Godhead is in the Father, and the fulness of Godhead is in the Son, yet not differing, but one Godhead ... If of all believers there was one soul and one heart, ... if every one who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit, ... if man and wife are one flesh, if all of us men in respect of nature are of one substance, if Scripture thus speaks of human things, that many are one, of which there can be no comparison with things divine, how much more are Father and Son one in Godhead, where there is no difference of substance or of will," etc. Ambros. de Fid. i. n. 18. "This Trinity is of one and the same nature and substance, not less in Each than in All, nor greater in All than in Each; but so great in Father alone or in Son alone, as in Father and Son together ... For the Father did not lessen Himself to have a Son for Himself, but so begat of Himself another Self, as to remain whole in Himself, and to be in the Son as great as He is by Himself. And so the Holy Ghost, whole from whole, doth not precede That whence He proceeds, but is as great with Him as He is from Him, and neither lessens Him by proceeding nor increases by adhering ... Moreover, He who hath given to so many hearts of His faithful to be one heart, how much more doth He maintain in Himself that these Three and Each of Them should be God, and yet all together, not Three Gods, but One God?" August. Ep. 170, 5.

 It is no inconsistency to say that the Father is first, and the Son first also, for comparison or number is not equal to the expression of this mystery. Since Each is [ holos theos ], Each, as contemplated by our finite reason, at the moment of contemplation excludes the Other. Though we profess Three Persons, Person cannot be made one abstract idea, certainly not as containing under it three individual subjects, but it is a term applied to the One God in three ways. It is the doctrine of the Fathers, that, though we use words expressive of a Trinity, yet that God is beyond our numbering, and that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, though eternally distinct from each other, can scarcely be viewed together in common, except as One substance, as if they could not be generalised into Three Any-whatever; and as if it were, strictly speaking, incorrect to speak of a Person, or otherwise than of the Person, whether of Father, or of Son, or of Spirit. The question has almost been admitted by S. Austin, whether it is not possible to say that God is One Person (Trin. vii. 8), for He is wholly and entirely Father, and at the same time wholly and entirely Son, and wholly and entirely Holy Ghost. Vid. also Orat. iv. § 1 and 2, where Athan. argues against the Sabellian hypothesis as making the Divine Nature compound (the Word being a something in It), whereas the Catholic doctrine preserves unity because the Father is the One God simply and entirely, and the Son the One God simply and entirely (vid. next paragraph); the Word not a sound, he says, which is nothing, nor a quality which is unworthy of God, but a substantial Word and a substantial Wisdom. "As," he continues, "the Origin is One substance, so Its Word and Wisdom is One, substantial and subsistent; for as from God is God, and from Wise Wisdom, and from Rational ([ logikou ]) a Word, and from Father a Son, so from a subsistence is He subsistent, and from substance substantial and substantive, and from existing existent," etc. Vid. art. Coinherence .

 Nothing is more remarkable than the confident tone in which Athan. accuses Arians, as in Orat. ii. § 38, and Sabellians, Orat. iv. § 2, of considering the Divine Nature as compound, as if the Catholics were in no respect open to such a charge. Nor are they; though in avoiding it, they are led to enunciate the most profound and ineffable mystery. vid. supr. art. Son of God . The Father is the One Simple Entire Divine Being, and so is the Son. They do in no sense share divinity between Them; Each is [ holos Theos ]. This is not ditheism or tritheism, for They are the same God; nor is it Sabellianism, for They are eternally distinct and substantive Persons; but it is a depth and height beyond our intellect, how what is Two in so full a sense can also in so full a sense be One, or how the Divine Nature does not come under number in the sense in which we have earthly experience of numbers. Thus, "being incomposite in nature," says Athan., "He is Father of One Only Son," Decr. § 11. In truth the distinction into Persons, as Petavius remarks, "avails especially towards the unity and simplicity of God," vid. de Deo ii. 4, 8.

 "The Father," says Athan., "having given all things to the Son, in the Son still hath all things; and the Son having, still the Father hath them; for the Son's Godhead is the Father's Godhead, and thus the Father in the Son takes the oversight of all things." Orat. iii. 36. Thus iteration is not duplication in respect to God; though how this is, is the inscrutable Mystery of the Trinity in Unity. Nothing can be named which the Son is in Himself, as distinct from the Father; but we are told His relation towards the Father; and distinct from and beyond that relation, He is but the One God, who is also the Father. Such statements are not here intended to explain, but to bring home to the mind what it is which faith receives. We say, "Father, Son, and Spirit," a transcendent Three, but when we would abstract a general idea of Them in order to number Them as we number things on earth, our abstraction really does but carry us back to the One Substance. There will be different ways of expressing this, but such seems the meaning of such passages as the following: "Those who taunt us with tritheism," says St. Basil, "must be told that we confess One God not in number, but in nature. For what is one in number is not really one, nor single in nature; for instance, we call the world one in number, but not one in nature, for we divide it into its elements; and man again is one in number, but compounded of body and soul ... If then we say that God is in nature one, how do they impute number to us, who altogether banish it from that blessed and spiritual nature? For number belongs to quantity, and number is connected with matter," etc. Basil. Ep. 8, 2. "That which saveth us, is faith, but number has been devised to indicate quantity ... We pronounce Each of the Persons once, but when we would number them up, we do not proceed by an unlearned numeration to the notion of a polytheism." (vid. the whole passage,) ibid. de Sp. S. c. 18. "Why, passing by the First Cause, does he [S. John] at once discourse to us of the Second? We will decline to speak of 'first' and 'second;' for the Godhead is higher than number and succession of times." Chrysost. in Joan. Hom. ii. 3 fin. "In respect of the Adorable and most Royal Trinity, 'first' and 'second' have no place; for the Godhead is higher than number and times." Isid. Pel. Ep. 3, 18. "He calls," says S. Maximus, commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius, "fecundity, the Father's incomprehensible progression to the production of the Son and the Holy Ghost; and suitably does he say, ' as a Trinity,' since not number, but glory is expressed in 'The Lord God is one Lord.'" in Dionys. Opp. t. 2, p. 101. "We do not understand 'one' in the Divine Substance, as in the creatures; in whom what is properly one is not to be seen; for what is one in number, as in our case, is not properly one ... It is not one in number, or as the beginning of number, any more than It is as magnitude, or as the beginning of magnitude ... That One is ineffable and indescribable; since It is Itself the cause of all that is one, [ pases henados henopoion ]." Eulog. ap. Phot. 230, p. 864. "Three what? I answer, Father and Son and Holy Ghost. See, he urges, you have said Three; but explain Three what? Nay, do you number, for I have said all about the Three, when I say, Father and Son and Holy Ghost. Not, as there are two men, so are They two Gods; for there is here something ineffable, which cannot be put into words, viz., that there should both be number, and not number. For see if there does not seem to be number, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, a Trinity. If Three, Three what? number fails. Then God neither is without number, nor is under number ... They imply number, only relatively to Each Other, not in Themselves." August. in Joan. 39, 3 and 4. "We say Three 'Persons,' as many Latins of authority have said in treating the subject, because they found no more suitable way of declaring an idea in words which they had without words. Since the Father is not the Son, and the Son not the Father, and the Holy Ghost neither Father nor Son, there are certainly Three; but when we ask, Three what? we feel the great poverty of human language. However, we say Three 'Persons,' not for the sake of saying that, but of not saying nothing." Aug. de Trin. v. 10. "Unity is not number, but is itself the principle of all things." Ambros. de Fid. i. n. 19. "That is truly one, in which there is no number, nothing in It beyond That which is ... There is no diversity in It, no plurality from diversity, no multitude from accidents, and therefore no number ... but unity only. For when God is thrice repeated, and Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is named, three Unities do not make plurality of number in That which They are (in eo quod ipsæ sunt). [n.] ... This repetition of Unities is iteration rather than numeration ... A trine numeration does not make number, which they rather run into who make some difference between the Three." Boeth. Trin. unus Deus, p. 959.

 The last remark is also found in Naz. Orat. 31. 18. Many of these passages are taken from Thomassin de Trin. 17. Petavius, de Trin. iv. 16, fin., quotes St. Anselm as saying, "Though there be not many eternities, yet, if we say eternity in eternity, there is but one eternity. And so whatever is said of God's essence, if returned into itself, does not increase quantity, nor admit number; since there is nothing out of God, when God is born of God." Infinity does not add to infinity; the treatment of infinities is above us. With this remark I end as I began. Note

 The words from Boethius here translated "in Him which They are," are in the original (p. 273, Ed Lugd., and p. 1122, Ed. Basil.), "in eo quod ipsæ sunt," that is, rather, "in That which They are."  Unity of Emmanuel

 IT is well known that the illustration in the Athan. Creed, "As the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ," was taken by the Monophysites to imply that the Divine Nature was made dependent on the flesh, and was influenced and circumscribed by it. Man is partly soul and partly body; he is of body and soul, not body and soul; but Christ is wholly God, and wholly man, [ holos Theos, holos anthropos ], Orat. iv. 35. He is as simply God as if He were not man, as simply man as if He were not God; "unus atque idem est," says S. Leo, "et totus hominis filius propter carnem, et totus Dei filius propter unam cum Patre deitatem," Ep. 165, 8. Athan. has anticipated the heresy which denied this doctrine in a very distinct passage written apparently even before the rise of Arianism. "It is the function of the soul," he says, "to contemplate in its thoughts what is within its own body; but not to operate in things beyond its own body, or to act by its presence on what is far from the body. Certainly man at a distance never moves or transposes such things; nor could a man sit at home and think of things in heaven, and thereby move the sun, or turn the heaven round ... Not thus is the Word of God in man's nature; for He was not bound up with the body ([ sunededeto ]), but rather He hath Himself dominion over it, so that He was not in it only, but in all things; nay, He was external to the whole universe and in the sole Father," Incarn. V. D. 17. The same passage occurs in Serm. Maj. de Fid. 11.

 It could not be otherwise. The Divine Word was not a mere presence or manifestation of God in man, but He was God Himself incarnate. He was still what He had ever been, and will be from first to last, One, one and the same, impassible, immutable, in His [ autotes ], so to speak, as being one of the Eternal Trinity. His Divine Nature carried with It on His incarnation that [ autotes ] or Personality. So necessary, so cardinal is this truth for the right holding of the great doctrine under consideration, that the Alexandrians, St. Cyril at least, and perhaps St. Athanasius, spoke of there being only "One Nature" in the Incarnate Lord, meaning thereby one Person (for Person and Nature could not be divided; and, if our Lord's Nature was divine, His Person was divine also), and by saying "only one," was meant that, in comparison of the Divine Person who had taken flesh, what He had taken was not so much a nature, (though it was strictly a nature,) as the substance of a manhood which was not substantive.

 Whereas the Apostle says, "One Lord Jesus Christ," that unity does not lie in the unity of two natures, (for they are two, not one,) but in His Person, which brings the two natures together, which is and ever has been indivisible from His Divine Nature, and has absorbed into Itself, and is sovereign over, not destroying thereby, but perpetuating, Its human nature.

 Hence, while it be true to say "Man is God," as well as to say "God is man," it is not true that "man became God," or "took on him divinity," as it is true to say "God became man," because from first to last the Son and Word is supreme, independent, and one and the same; and it is a first point in all orthodox teaching of the Incarnation to make this clear and definite. He is "Jesus Christ," indeed, but at the same time, "heri, et hodie, ipse et in sæcula; "He is now, and He was from everlasting.

 "While He received no hurt ([ ouden eblapteto ]) himself by bearing our sins in His body on the tree, we men were redeemed from our affections ([ pathon ])," Orat. iii. § 31. And so [ eblapteto men autos ouden ] Incarn. § 54, [ me blaptomenos ] ibid. § 34. In these passages [ autos ] means "in that which is Himself," i.e., in His own Person or Divine Self, [ autos ] being used when the next century would have used "Person." "For the sun, too, which He made, and we see, makes its circuit in the sky and is not defiled by touching," etc., Incarn. § 17. "As the rays of sun-light would not suffer at all, though filling all things and touching bodies dead and unclean, thus and much more the spiritual virtue of God the Word would suffer nothing in substance nor receive hurt," etc., Euseb. de Laud. Const. p. 536 and 538; also Dem. Evang. vii. p. 348. "The insults of the passion even the Godhead bore, but the passion His flesh alone felt; as we rightly say that a sunbeam or a body of flame can be cut indeed by a sword but not divided ... I will speak yet more plainly: the Godhead [divinitas] was fixed with nails, but could not Itself be pierced, since the flesh was exposed and offered room for the wound, but God remained invisible," etc., Vigil. contr. Eutych. ii. 9, p. 503 (Bibl. Patrum, ed. 1624). "There were five together on the Cross, when Christ was nailed to it: the sun-light, which first received the nails and the spear, and remained undivided from the Cross and unhurt by the nails, next," etc., Anast. Hodeg. c. 12, p. 220 (ed. 1606); also p. 222; vid. also the beautiful passage in Pseudo-Basil: "God in flesh, not working with aught intervening as in the prophets, but having taken to Him a manhood connatural with Himself ([ symphue ], i.e. joined to His nature), and made one, and, through His flesh akin to us, drawing up to Him all humanity ... What was the manner of the Godhead in flesh? as fire in iron, not transitively, but by communication. For the fire does not dart into the iron, but remains there and communicates to it of its own virtue, not impaired by the communication, yet filling wholly its recipient." Basil, t. 2, p. 596, ed. Ben. Also Ruffin. on Symb. 12; Cyril, Quod unus, t. v. p. 776; Dam. F.O., iii. 6 fin.; Aug. Serm. 7, p. 26, ed. 1842, Suppl. It is to show at once the intimacy of the union of natures and the absolute sovereignty of the divine, that such strong expressions are in use as God's body, God's death, God's mother, etc.

 [ theou en soma ], Orat. iii. § 31; also ad Adelph. 3 ad Max. 2, and so [ ten ptocheusasan physin theou holen genomenen ], c. Apoll. ii. 11. [ to pathos tou logou ], ibid. 16, [ sarx tou logou ], Orat. iii. 34. [ soma sophias ], 53, also [ theos  en sarki ], Orat. ii. § 10; [ theos en somati ], ii. § 12 and 15; [ logos en sarki ], iii. 54; [ logos en somati ], Sent. D. 8 fin. [ pathos Christou tou theou mou ], Ignat. Rom. 6. [ ho theos peponthen ], Melit. ap. Anast. Hodeg. 12. Dei passiones, Tertull. de Carn. Christ. 5. Dei interemptores, ibid. caro Deitatis, Leon. Serm. 65 fin. Deus mortuus et sepultus, Virgil. c. Eut. ii. p. 502. Vid. supr. p. 294. Yet Athan. objects to the phrase, "God suffered in the flesh," i.e. as used by the Apollinarians. Vid. contr. Apoll. ii. 13 fin. Vid. article [ mia phyis ]. Vapour

 Vid. art. [ aporrhoe ].