The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Faith of the Early Church

The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Faith of the Church

    The doctrine of the Trinity is at the heart of the Christian conception of God. However, there can be misunderstanding of what this doctrine entails regarding the nature of the being of God and the three persons of the Trinity. According to the doctrine, God is one divine being who exists eternally in three distinct but co-eternal and co-equal persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. Each person is fully God, and yet there is only one God. The Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit, the Son is not the Father or the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son. They are three distinct persons who share the same divine nature. While some have struggled to reconcile the concept of one God in three persons with the idea of monotheism, the doctrine of the Trinity is an essential aspect of orthodoxy by the majority of Christian denominations. 

    The nature that the three persons of the Trinity share is ontological consubstantiation. This means that each person of the Trinity possesses all the attributes of God, such as the great omni-properties. The three persons of the Trinity are equal in power, glory, will (this is the historical stance but some contemporary Christian analytical philosophers such as William Hasker maintains that there are three wills rather than one), and authority, and there is no hierarchy or subordination among them. However according to 5th century Church Father and Saint, Cyril of Alexandria, "To attribute individual operations to each separate divine person is tantamount to saying that there are three separate and distinct Gods."

    The term "eternally begotten", as stated in the Nicene creed in 325 AD, refers to the relationship between the Father and the Son. According to the doctrine of the Trinity, the Son is begotten by the Father from eternity past. This means that the Son has always existed and was not created at any point in time. The term "begotten" emphasizes the unique relationship between the Father and the Son, which is different from the relationship between the Father and the Holy Spirit, which is spiration. The Son's personhood is grounded in the Father because the Son is begotten by the Father from eternity past. Therefore the Son's existence is dependent on the Father's begetting. However, this does not mean that the Son is a created being or subordinate to the Father as described by Arius, a 4th century priest. The Son is fully God, equal in power and glory to the Father, and shares the same divine nature. Therefore, while the Son's personhood is grounded in the Father, he is still fully God and equal in every way to the Father. According to St. Hilary of Poitiers, a 4th century church father, in his On the Trinity, 

    “The Father is greater than the Son: for manifestly He is greater Who makes another to be all that He Himself is, Who imparts to the Son by the mystery of the birth the image of His own unbegotten nature, Who begets Him from Himself into His own form” (9.54) 

It is evident by the context that “greater” refers to origination, while equal belongs to the shared nature and glory. 

    The Holy Spirit is also one of the three persons of the Trinity. According to Catholic belief, the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, this is known as the filioque, or 'from the son'. On the other hand, the Orthodox Church believes that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, the Monarchia, or 'Monarchy' of the Father. 

    In the context of the doctrine of the Trinity, a "person" is not used in the same sense as it is in everyday language. A person in the Trinity refers to a distinct mode of existence or subsistence within the divine being. Each person of the Trinity is distinct from the others, with its own characteristics and attributes, but they are inseparable from each other as they share the same divine nature. To say that the Son is the Father or the Holy Spirit is the Son or the Father is the Holy Spirit is the heresy known as Modalism or Sabellianism, from its founder Sabellius, a 3rd century priest. Furthermore, the principle of causality distinguishes the persons of the Trinity apart from creation. In creation, the Word, the Son, became flesh and dwelt amongst us as one divine person who has two complete natures, human and divine, according to orthodoxy. 

    Why did the Father eternally beget the son? According to Athanasius, another 4th century church father, in his Against the Arians, 

    “Since then the Son is by nature and not by will, is He without the pleasure of the Father and not with the Father's will? No, verily; but the Son is with the pleasure of the Father, and, as He says Himself, 'The Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things.' For as not 'from will?' did He begin to be good, nor yet is good without will and pleasure (for what He is, that also is His pleasure), so also that the Son should be, though it came not 'from will,' yet it is not without His pleasure or against His purpose. For as His own Subsistence is by His pleasure, so also the Son, being proper to His Essence, is not without His pleasure.” (Discourse 3 Chapter 30). 

Athanasius argues that the Son's existence is not a result of the Father's will alone, but is also by nature of His love in the same way that the Father's goodness is not a result of His will alone, but is inherent to His nature and being.

Gregory of Nyssa, another 4th century church father, saint, and bishop, in his work, Against Eunomius, primarily focuses on the will of the Father in the eternal begetting of the Son, 
    "Neither does this immediate conjunction exclude the willing of the Father, in the sense that He had a Son without choice, by some necessity of His Nature, nor does the willing separate the Son from the Father, coming in between them as a kind of interval: so that we neither reject from our doctrine the willing of the Begetter directed to the Son, as being, so to say, forced out by the conjunction of the Son's oneness with the Father, nor do we by any means break that inseparable connection, when willing is regarded as involved in the generation." (Book VIII, Chapter 2)

The begetting of the Son by the Father was not done involuntarily by His nature although it is His nature but by His will. In other words, the Father necessarily causes the Son and Holy Spirit in accordance with His will but not as an act of will. Either way, if the Father causes the Son eternally by necessity then the Father has no free will. If it His will alone then the Son would be a contingent being as the Father could have done otherwise.