Christian belief in the Trinity—that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is evident from the very beginning of the Church, appearing in our earliest Creed, the Apostles’ Creed. The early Church councils were preoccupied with addressing confusion about this dogma or combating blatant attacks against it. The doctrine of the Trinity was so important that the Council of Constantinople in 553 declared that “If anyone does not confess that there is one nature or substance of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and one power and one might, and that the Trinity is consubstantial, one Godhead being worshipped in three substances or persons, let such a one be anathema.” Anathema, that’s a strong word. It means officially excommunicated, outside of the body of believers, the body of Christ, outside of reasonable hope for salvation.
That God is a Trinity of Three Divine Persons is hinted at, foreshadowed, hidden in the Old Testament. On the sixth day of Creation, God says, “Let US make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” Also in Genesis we read of the three mysterious heavenly strangers sitting down to eat with Abraham and Sarah. Isaiah the prophet reports hearing the Lord say, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for US?” The Old Testament is not shy about calling God Father, but we also hear of the Son of Man coming upon the clouds on the day of judgment from the prophet Daniel, and the Spirit of God descending upon David when he was anointed in the first book of Samuel.
The monotheistic Jews had great difficulty explaining this mysterious language of plurality. But the doctrine of the Trinity becomes clear in the New Testament, in the preaching of Jesus, who speaks of his Father, his oneness with the Father, and how He and His Father Will Send The Holy Spirit Upon the Church. This doctrine was so important, that in the very last lines of the Gospel of Matthew, we find our Lord telling his disciples to go and Baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The mark of the Christian disciple is to be their baptism using the names of Three Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity.
When St. Paul discovers a group of believers who had only received the baptism of John the Baptist, the ritual washing for the repentance of sin, St. Paul says that John’s baptism is not enough, they must be baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The great doctor St. Athanasius wrote, “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith…And the Catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the substance.”
Why does this belief matter…that God is a Trinity? Well, for one, Our God revels in revealing Himself—he wants us to know about Him. He wants us to cultivate a relationship with Him, with each of His Three Divine persons. Jesus taught us to call upon the Father. We need to invoke the Holy Spirit throughout the day. We need to pray for Sweet Jesus, Pie Iesu, have mercy on us, poor sinners.
Secondly, this doctrine matters because the preaching of Our Lord is pretty clear, St. Paul and the Apostles are pretty clear, the early Church councils are pretty clear, belief in this doctrine is required for membership in the body of Christ and for eternal life.
St. Francis Xavier, perhaps the greatest missionary in Church history after St. Paul, baptized thousands of people. As a missionary in the far east, he wrote about the difficulty he had in catechizing all these people—preparing them for baptism. Thousands of people would be in the villages, clamoring for baptism, yearning for membership in the Church. Francis Xavier wrote that he considered it enough if he could properly teach them that in making that sign of the cross they were professing their faith in the one true God—if he could teach them that, that God the Father, sent God His Son to die on the Cross, and that God the Holy Spirit has been sent to the Church--he felt that that was enough for baptism.
Friends, there is a terrible trend in both academic theological circles and also among laity and I dare to say even among some members of the clergy, to diminish the importance of this dogma, to seek to refashion God or redefine God using modern terms. But to do this is to essentially deny that God has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When we start messing with this doctrine it leads to a sort of creedless Christianity like the Unitarian Universalists. And maybe that’s what some people want, some sort of undefined God so that they can refashion God in their own image and thereby refashion religion in their own image. But this is not the Gospel preached by Jesus Christ, True God and True Man. Creedless Christianity is not Christianity. To deny this doctrine is to be separated from the font of Divine Revelation—separated from clear Scriptural evidence and Sacred Tradition.
But O! When we cultivate a love of the Holy Trinity—when we seek to know and love the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we begin to understand who we are as adopted children of God, who we are as instruments of God in this broken world. We are marked by the trinity, changed by the trinity, forgiven by the Trinity, made fearful to the devil by the trinity, justified by the Trinity, and given hope of heaven by the Trinity.
The Father is not some psychological symbol for the unknowable origin of Creation. The Son is not merely a psychological symbol for the importance of the spirit of self-sacrifice and love of neighbor. The Holy Spirit is not merely a symbol for sociological improvement or psychological growth. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are Three Persons who love you. Who call you to believe in them and worship them to Communion with them, that you might have life. For the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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