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Question: P.T. Chacko
Is a Christian believer a monotheist or a believer in Trinity? What is the difference?
Answer: Jacob Parappally MSFS
The revelation of God through Jesus Christ is that God is a communion of three Persons. The biblical articulation of that faith-experience names them as Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the Christian God-experience affirms and confesses that God is Oneness or Absolute Communion. Unlike other Semitic religions like Judaism and Islam which believe in strict, monolithic monotheism, the Christian faith affirms the diversity and distinction of the three Persons but the Absolute Oneness of God. So the simple answer to the question whether the Christians believe in God as other strict monotheists of Semitic religions believe is an emphatic “No!”
A Christian believes in One God who is a Trinity of three Persons in Absolute Communion or Oneness. It is difficult for human minds to comprehend the mystery of the Oneness of God as a Trinity. But there is sufficient revelation about God as Trinity in the Bible. There is a progressive revelation of God as Father and the foreshadowing of God as Word and the Spirit in the Old Testament and the explicit revelation of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. Though the Holy Bible reveals that God is a Trinity of Persons and the Christian liturgy and prayers celebrate it and confess it every day it does not make much impact on Christian life because it is only presented as a mystery. Certainly, it is a mystery. But what is revealed of that mystery can be understood and the implications of it can be lived and must be lived in the Church.
Karl Rahner once observed that in spite of confessing their faith in triune God the Christians live as “mere monotheists.” Why? They prefer to be mere monotheists because it can justify inequality and discrimination found in any society. By living as mere monotheists they can justify all kinds of hierarchies of domination and subjugations and all types of discriminations in the name of gender, caste, class, religions, cultures and ethnicity and so on.
Our human tendency to dominate and control others or the “will to power” as the German philosopher Nietzsche calls it, can be justified by believing in strict monotheism or in any polytheism. Any type of tyranny, autocracy, dictatorship or the rule of one over all others who are considered subjects or slaves can be justified by affirming that the autocrat or dictator represents the one Almighty God. The divine right of kings was based on this blasphemous ideology. A strict monotheism can justify patriarchy, paternalism, condescension and extolling of the male qualities over female qualities, domination of the father in a family and privileges given to male children over the female children. Laws are created by the one who rules and puts himself or herself above the laws. It would create myths and stories explaining that it is the will of God that the subjects or slaves must submit themselves to dictator and obey the dictator as they would obey their God.
Triune God as absolute Communion
How did the early Church come to believe in God as a Trinity of Father, Son and the Spirit? We have to keep in mind that they were strict monotheists. They would not have believed and confessed that God is a communion had they not experienced him as a communion. They came to experience God as a Triune God and they began to celebrate in their baptismal liturgy, in their norms of faith, in their creeds and doxologies. When the Jews who were strict monotheists experienced Jesus as Lord and God after His resurrection from the dead, they knew from the disciples that Jesus called God, Abba or Father and related with Him in such intimacy they too began to invoke God as “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” At the Pentecost they had a transforming experience of the Holy Spirit. Their faith- experience of the Father was different from their experience of the Son and the Holy Spirit. But they knew for certain they were experiencing the same God as the Father, the Son and the Spirit. They did not speculate about it but encountered this mystery of God as the Absolute Communion of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Though the early Church called God as Father and Son they did not think in terms of gender. Of course, the Jewish society before Jesus Christ thought of God as Father because they experienced God as their creator, liberator and protector as any father would do for His children. Being a male- dominated or patriarchal society the legal, personal and social role of a father in the Jewish society was attributed to God in an absolute or infinite way. Though motherly qualities were attributed to God they would not call God mother because they thought that it would reduce the transcendence of God in their thinking about God and in the fertility cult of the Canaanites, women were used for temple worship. They experienced that God was caring for Israel more than a mother would do for her suckling child (Isaiah 49:15). Like a mother God would teach Ephraim to walk and carry Him in His arms (Hosea 11:3). God was, indeed, experienced as a motherly Father and a fatherly Mother!
Against all heretical teachings the Fathers of the Church defended the original Christian experience in the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, confessing that Jesus Christ, the Son or the Logos/Word, is of the same substance or the essence of the Father. They confessed the true faith that the Son is “light from light, true God from true God, begotten and not made.” Eventually, the same faith with additional confession of faith in the Personhood of the Holy Spirit in the Council of Constantinople (AD 381) became the official Creed of the Church recited during the Eucharistic celebration as well as in the official prayers of the Church.
Radical Challenges of Trinitarian Faith
All three Semitic religions, namely, Judaism, Christianity and Islam affirm that humans are created in the image and likeness of God. In the Christian preaching this is an oft repeated faith affirmation based on the Bible. But which God is the subject of the Christian preaching and theological discourse? Is it the strict monotheistic God which Judaism and Islam proclaim? Certainly not! It is the Trinitarian God. Therefore, we must affirm that we are not just created in the image and likeness of God, but we are created in the image and likeness of God, the Trinity. So according to the Christian faith every human being is an image of the Father and the Son and the Spirit. Every human being has by nature a Father-dimension, a Son-dimension and a Spirit- dimension.
The Holy Trinity is the source, model and reference point for human communities. Since all humans have the Trinitarian dimensions by nature all humans are inter-related. The Trinitarian revelation challenges any type of division and separation in the name of religion, caste, class, gender, culture etc. The Kingdom of God which Jesus preached was the call to actualize the Trinitarian nature of every human being. The Trinity is the model for any human societies whether it is the family or the Church or any other human groupings or associations. In the Holy Trinity there is absolute communion because there is no higher or lower, no superior or inferior, no before or after. Though Father is mentioned first and the Son and Spirit proceed from the Father, there is no before or after in the eternal Trinity. There is absolute equality of the Father and the Son and the Spirit. The Father is not superior to the Son or the Spirit. There is no hierarchy! One may wonder, how can we justify hierarchy in the Church. Does it not go against the Trinitarian revelation? Certainly it would, if the hierarchy in the Church is a hierarchy of power to dominate and subjugate others. But the hierarchy in the Church is instituted for self-emptying service like that of the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep! It is a ministry or a service to the people of God. The leadership of the hierarchy in the Church is a servant-leadership to build up communion.
The Holy Trinity is also a reference point for all communities to judge whether they are living the faith in the Trinity which they profess in their creed. Wherever and whenever there is division, discord, discrimination and disharmony in a community it is a clear sign that the community or the Church is not living its vocation to be the sacrament of Trinitarian communion. God’s revelation as a Trinity of three absolutely equal Divine Persons demand that there must be equality of persons in all communities. Any discrimination in the name of gender, caste or class is an affront to the Trinitarian revelation. Our social commitment to struggle with the marginalized to secure human rights and our commitment to stand for the values of equality and communion have their foundation in our faith in God, the Trinity.
Tertullian says that in the Trinity the Persons are different but not divided, distinct but not separated. Therefore, the basis for all the diversities in the world both in the society and in the nature is the Trinity. The diversities are founded on the differences or the distinctions in the Trinity in the sense that the Father is not the Son or the Spirit. They are distinct but not separate. Communion is possible only where there are distinctions or diversities. Therefore, the three Persons in the Trinity are in absolute communion. Only the revelation of God as Trinity gives us an insight into the reality of diversities of persons, languages, cultures, religions and so on. Further, the Trinity invites to celebrate our diversities and enter into dialogue with other religions and cultures, ideologies and movements to promote harmony and unity. Any person or ideology that forces uniformity in the society is a satanic force that stands against God’s revelation as Trinity in the salvation history which is designed by God before the foundation of the world!
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