Deacon Ray Ortman
Credo in unum Deum. I believe in One God. Belief in one God is the cornerstone of God’s revelation of Himself to ancient Israel — monotheism in contrast with what was then widespread polytheism — and it lies also at the heart of our Christian faith. Thus, the signature faith statement of Judaism is the Shema: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” Jesus Himself recited this very creed.
So far, so good. But today we Christians celebrate Trinity Sunday. Tri-unity. One God in Three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If that sounds complicated or confusing to you, welcome to the central mystery of our faith. And yet, this mysterious revelation comes to us not by mere semantic intrigue, nor by theological speculation, but rather it comes from our Lord Jesus Himself. Jesus, who scandalously claimed co-eternity and the Divine Name for Himself when He declared, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” Jesus, who just weeks ago in the Gospel explained to a bewildered disciple, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Jesus, who at His Ascension sent His disciples to go and baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The name. Singular, but also somehow and mysteriously three names. In the second reading today, Saint Paul evokes this same Trinitarian reality in his blessing to the Corinthians. Where the love of God the Father is, there also is the grace of Jesus and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Distinguishable but inseparable.
If your head is still spinning, then perhaps you can understand why it took the Church more than 300 years to articulate a rigorous, robust and nuanced creedal statement of One God in Three Persons. The Creed that we recite today is the product of two Fourth-Century Ecumenical Councils: one at Nicaea in 325 and further elaborated at Constantinople in 381 AD. The result was the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, or Nicene Creed for short. The Council at Nicaea was convened to address a crisis in the fourth century Church precipitated by the teaching of Arius, a priest, who maintained that Jesus — though he was the son of God — did not share the same Divinity of the Father, but rather was begotten, generated and created by the Father at a point in time. Arianism, as it was called, could not reconcile the plurality of Persons in one God, so it subordinated the son and the spirit to the Father, who alone, Arius contended, was the only One eternal and transcendent God.
Not so, the Council finally declared with one voice. The teaching of Jesus must take precedence over any human desire for simple answers. Is it three or is it one? The Church’s answer? Yes. Both. But how can this be? The full and complete “how” of it is in God’s knowing alone, but the Council did its best to articulate the implications of One God in Three Persons. Let’s take a brief look.
The first article in the Creed addresses God the Father, since the Father is the First Person in the Trinity. Jesus frequently calls God “Father” in the Scriptures, and this tells us that God is a loving God, active within His creation. The Father is the origin or source of the Trinity, in the sense that both the Son and the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father. As such, God the Father was often called “God Unbegotten” in early Christian thought. God the Father is the maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. If the reference to “visible and invisible” seems awkward or redundant, you can thank Gnostic heretics who (perhaps influenced by Greek Platonist philosophy) believed that the Good God, who we name Father, created the pure world of the spirit, but that an evil demiurge (lesser god-like character) created the evil material world. The Creed squarely rejects this notion. There is one Creator.
The second article declares belief in One Lord, Jesus Christ. The title Lord means that Jesus is the master of all, and it also has connotations of deity since the Hebrew word for Lord (“Adonai”) was applied to Yahweh in the Old Testament. Thus, to say that Jesus is One Lord is to invoke the very heart of the Shema. Further, to confess that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God is to recognize that Jesus is in a unique relationship with God the Father, that He shares the essential nature of God with the Father. Since God is eternal, the Son, being begotten of God, is also eternal. God the Son exists in relation to God the Father. The Son is not the Father, but they are both God. True God from True God, Jesus fully shares the divinity of the Father — distinct but not divided. Being “consubstantial”, sharing the same substance or essence of divinity, means that the Father and the Son are in reality one God, but it does not mean that they share identity of Person. Arian thought was anathema to this understanding. To emphasize that wherever the Son is the Father is (and vice versa), the Creed declares that even in the act of Creation, the Son was inextricably co-active with the Father. The second article then presents the Mystery of the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery, each of which merit their own homily at a later date. Suffice to say, these creedal statements recount the redeeming work of Jesus for our salvation.
The third article declares “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” the Third Person of the Trinity. The creed of Nicaea — having achieved its objective to condemn Arianism — abruptly ended at this point without further elaboration. Thankfully, the creed of Constantinople went a bit further. The Holy Spirit, like the Father and the Son, shares the same divine nature, essence, substance. The Holy Spirit shares the same Lordship, and also was present and co-active in Creation, being the Giver of Life.
And that’s the creedal formulation of the Trinity: One God in Three Persons. Or is it?
The Creed actually has FOUR articles of faith, not three. The fourth article concerns the Church, that is to say, all of us. Like God, the Church is One and Holy. Like the Son and the Spirit, it proceeds in a sense from God, insofar as it is apostolic, meaning “sent forth” by God. And in a mysterious way, the Oneness of the Church is somehow realized in a “Catholic” or universal relationship with God and among many persons. If this seems shocking, it is. But this is essentially what Jesus told His disciples in John 14: The Father will send the Spirit to you, who will remain with you and in you, so that one day “you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.” Possessing a share of God’s Divinity, not in our nature but by God’s gracious gift, we are invited into the Eternity, the Glory, and the Blessed family of the Most Holy Trinity.
The Creed ends where it begins: I believe. “Amen” is our solemn oath, our personal testimony. And by our faith, by cooperating with God’s amazing love, we are saved.
In a few moments, we will give our testimony by proclaiming our faith. May our Amen always be as loud and as clear in how we live our faith and it is when we speak it.
