FILE: DOG20.WMV Q Trinity Sunday is the one day that we use the Athenesian Creed. It talks about one God and three persons, three persons and one God, and how the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God. But they are not three gods but one God. Can you help me understand its teaching better? DR. ROLAND ZIEGLER: The Athenasian Creed on trinity Sunday, some people think it's good that you say it only once a year and some people think that's actually too much when you go through it and you have all these distinctions, and I can empathize because it is difficult to understand. You have all that language to which you are not normally used to. What do we mean with that? We go back again to the fundamental problem and that is that God is truly unique. There is no other being who is, at the same time, three and one. Plus, of course, we cannot see God. All we have is His revelation in His word. What do we mean when we say that the 21 Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but they are not three gods but one God? Basically it is that each person of the trinity is truly God. That means there are no degrees in God. As if God is some kind of a fountain where you have three basins and the water is kind of running through. The Father, so to speak, on top, the highest, and then it flows down, it gets, of course, a little dirty or not so pure anymore and that's the Son and then it flows over and then you have the Holy Spirit so you have this kind of pyramid. On top the Father, and then the Son, and then the Holy Spirit, and they are somewhat still God but of course to some lesser degree, whatever you want to call that then. No. They are equally God. Of the same power. Of the same honor. Of the same knowledge. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When we look at Christ, we don't see some kind of semi-god. It's not like the gods in the -- or semi-gods in the ancient mythology. If you look, for example, at Hercules, well, his father was Zeus but his mother was an earthly woman, so he was, so to speak, divine potential but he wasn't truly God. Now, if you look at Christ, we look at God. If we can point to Christ and say, that's how God is. He is God. The problem with coming to grips with the Trinity is that we normally learn by connecting what's new with what we already know. But since God is truly unique, how do you connect that with what we already know? In the history of the theology, there was a search for analogies that could help us to understand the threeness and oneness in God. One famous though legendary is St. Patrick's. St. Patrick's coming to the pagan Irish proclaimed God and proclaimed God as the Trinity and the Irish, as probably you, everybody who is not used to that thought, that was rather strange. Now, either you have one God or you have three. But how can it be one and three? I mean, they were used to having many gods, but that really puzzled them. Then St. Patrick went down to the lawn and got the shamrock and said, look at the shamrock. Three and one. You have the one stalk. That's the divine nature. And then you have the three leaves. The three persons of the trinity. And that's a legend. You might have less success when you try that in your confirmation class or Bible class. The Irish said, yeah, that's good. And got baptized. There are other analogies. For example, when you say, look at water. Water is the same substance, but it can exist in different forms. It can be ice, firm, or it can exist as liquid, or as steam. Now, that shows us one of the dangers if we look at -- if we use analogies. One of the dangers of using analogies is that they make a point, and that's why we use them, and if you push it, then it gets wrong. What if nothing exists at the same time as ice, liquid, and steam? If you push that 22 analogy, then you end up with a modalistic view of God that God in succession exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And, of course, if you look at the shamrock, you see there is the stalk, but of course you can take the stalk away and you still have the three leaves. But you cannot take away the essence of God and still have the three persons. The essence of God exists in the essence of the three persons and the three persons exist in the one and same divine essence. Well, ******* (Gotstin), the Latin church Father, started with the notion that God is love. And he said, if God is love, then there must be the one who loves, the lover, then there must be the beloved, and then there must be, of course, also the love that unites them. And that's what the Trinity is. The Father is the lover. He loves the Son. The Son is the beloved. And the love that unites them is the Holy Spirit. That explains the threeness, but not really the oneness. So he used other analogies. He used the analogy of the human mind. That in the mind, you have the mind itself, you have the knowledge of itself, the self-conscious, and that the mind loves itself. So it's one mind, but they are three relations. You also saw a parallel to the trinity in the makeup of human intellect where he said there was memory, understanding, and will and it's still one intellect. Or he saw it and said, well, look at how the mind remembers God, knows God, and loves God. And it's one mind. I don't know if these kind of analogies help you. They might carry you some way, but only some way. Like all analogies again, they are similar and dissimilar at the same time. They always lead, if pushed, to one of the two down falls in Trinitarian thought. Either modalism or tritheism. You see that also, for example, the few depictions we have of the Christian art of the trinity. By depiction, I mean the types you have. How is the trinity depicted? Well, in the Eastern Orthodox church, since you cannot actually make a picture of the Father, they use the three angels visiting Abraham in Genesis. Because that's a foreshadowing or actually the appearance of the trinity in the Old Testament. So that's how they picture the Trinity. The three angels sitting around the table. If you look at that, the danger here is, of course, again tritheism. As if the three persons were three different beings. Three different substances. One famous image of the trinity in the Western church is the so-called mercy seat. It is God the Father holding the Son, oftentimes holding the Son who is hanging on the crucifix and hovering over them is the dove of the Holy Spirit. This shows us something about God's revelation in time. And it says something true about God, of course, as the one who exists as the Father sending the Son and the spirit who is upon the Son. These pictures of the trinity, nevertheless, again have the 23 danger of misleading us into some form of tritheism. As if you can separate them. That's why we need this kind of abstract language. It helps us not to fall prey to the power of these images but to remember that these images and analogies convey one truth. And it is true that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct. But they lack to convey the entire truth, that they are also one. When I was in confirmation class, we talked about the Trinity. After class, then I asked the pastor, I have a problem. I don't understand the Trinity. And the pastor said, nobody does. That was kind of a short answer. I was kind of a little bit baffled. Of course I was eager and wanted to learn. And it seems to contradict our whole enterprise. What we have to see is we cannot, in the ultimate meaning of the word, understand the Trinity. And God does not reveal Himself that we have a sufficient, clear-cut understanding of Him. He reveals Himself that we have a saving knowledge of Him. So He tells us enough so that we can address Him properly, that we can relate to Him properly, that we can phrase Him properly, that we can grasp an understanding of Him, so that we can trust in Him and have faith in Him. But there is a lot that is still beyond us. And that's not too bad because, after all, that's something we have to wait for and actually be expectant that the mysteries of the divine trinity hopefully will be more fully revealed when we actually see God in the after life. (End of DOG20.WMV.)