Mystery of the Trinity

 

A theological coup of the first order, you just solved the mystery of the Christian Trinity in under

___ words.

 

A wonderfully simple clarification of a point that the Trinitarian nature of God proposed in Christian theology valiantly attempted to make -- a doctrine that became so confused (only slightly less confused than Christology itself) that it came to be called “a mystery” (to excuse its intellectual unintelligible), and, therefore, useless to its intended purpose as a better way of pointing to the One underlying/overseeing All.

 

The original intent of the concept, as I understand it, was to make an intellectual/rational distinction between the simultaneously transcendent, incarnate and immanent nature of the Absolute One (State, Condition or Being). The ultimate result, however, was a hopeless confusion of terms and concepts that eventually got written off as the “Mystery of the Trinity”. Confusion that is simply resolved when we finally get (and keep) our terms/concepts straight (and don't let them circle back on us). Something you succeeded in doing above with a minimum of words. In this regard, most theological confusion arises from using the term "God" as a “catch all” forthe three levels of (or ways of looking at) the Absolute One that the concepts "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" are intended to express. Seen in this light, the terms Father, Godhead, God Uncreate or Un-manifest or Brahman all point to the Absolute One in Its transcendent, infinite, eternal, impersonal, void, still, silent, unmoved, unitary or pure state. Whereas, the terms Son, Lord, God Create, God manifest or incarnate, Atman, Adonai the Word, Logos, Christ and I AM all point to that same Absolute One one step down from absolute, infinite and eternal (which is a quantum leap and/or fall of the first order) to the a relative (although universal) incarnate, personal level of central or supreme identity The Holy Spirit, Presence of God, Shekinah, Mother Mirror, Ananda, Divine Energy, Prana, Chi, on the other (third actually) hand, all point to the immanent, all-pervasive or universal nature of that Self-Same Absolute One in a Relative (to Itself) State of Being.

 

The difficulty, confusion and mystery, if we must use the term, only arises when we ascribe first order qualities and/or terms to second order conceptions. For example, if I illogically claim that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co-equal persons, I not only flatten the implicit hierarchal nature of the trinity, I succeed in ascribing personality and relativity to that which is definitionally impersonal, non-relative and absolute. From an intellectual perspective, this would be equivalent to saying that the solid, liquid and gaseous states of H20 were co-equal states (manifestations or personifications of the same water). When, in fact, the states are not equal, and neither can it be said that they are “one”. Rather, the H20, as the single underlying entity adopting or assuming these different states and forms (based on the environment condition we call temperature) is one and the same.

 

In the case of the distinction you made above where the term "God" was being used as a second level term, instead of first, it was necessary to point out that the "One playing God" at level two, the Absolute One at level one, is the One (absolute, infinite, eternal) that most people are pointing to when they use the term "God." Likewise, to say that the Lord, or the Son of God, is Absolute, Infinite or Eternal is to ascribe first level (absolute) qualities to a second level (relative, although of a universal nature) state of that self same Being (or One). Jesus Himself, was always very careful to make this distinction when spoke of the unspeakable (re: “Not I but the Father in me, he doeth the work”; “…I of mine own self can do nothing…”; ”Why calleth thou me good, for none are good, save one, which is God.”)

 

So when we choose to use a particular “pointing finger” (be the word God or any other) we must be sure to identify, as you rightly did with your clarification, which state or level of that Absolute One we are referring and/or relating to when we speak of IT, whether in terms of its self-existent and non-relative (absolute), energetic (spiritual), gaseous (mental), liquid (emotional) or solid (material) states (metaphorically speaking), or any other conceptual characterizations (fingers) we may be fond of applying (pointing).

 

Yours I AM/WE ARE…Rich Hay

 

PS: Further along these lines, I once had a friend who used a “God/man, Absolute/relative” convention in which the term on the left, which he capitalized, represented both the highest state on that level of a continuum, as well as the whole continuum, or the next level up, and thus served double duty. As such, he used the "/ " or slash, to represent the one that both embraced and transcended all such paired or dualistic conceptual opposites. More simply, all such conceptual opposites are really two ends of one and the same stick and the stick as a whole is the “higher state” of being that includes and transcends its own lower states. So take IS (Isis or

yin/female) married it to RA (Ra or Yang/male) and you get EL (The Higher or Tao), and rather simply sole the inner mystery of contained or hidden in the word ISRAEL