Heavy Theology | The Hardest Concepts in Christian ThoughtSample

“Lover, Beloved, Love”

The Athanasian Creed says, “The Father is God, The Son is God, The Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three gods but one God.” Here in the Trinity, the Father begets the Son by eternal generation and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Aside from this original distinction, the three persons of the Trinity remain co-eternal and co-equal, all uncreated, all omnipotent. Christ revealed this mystery to us while upon the earth. 

So if God’s infinitely simple — if he’s never composed of parts — how does that work with the idea of Trinity?

Though a key distinction, people overcomplicate this. Just remember: when we’re talking about this, a “nature” means what one is, but a “person” is who one is. The words we use to describe trinity? 

Consubstantial hypostases.

Three consubstantial persons. God in three divine persons: Father, Son, and Spirit. God’s three persons maintain distinction yet never divide his substance, his nature, or his essence. His persons remain consubstatial: they share his substance, his nature. 

So what is God? Asiety. Simplicity. Unity. Infinity. Eternity. Immutability. Primacy. Truth. Goodness. Beauty. 

Who is God? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This is where unity comes into play. God’s both divinely simple — not composed of parts — and yet his relation to himself contains everything that any relation would ever need. That’s why it’s important that we don’t call God our Mother, first and foremost. It’s all about initiation and begetting.

The Father and the only begotten Son is self-sufficiency and asiety — God holds within himself sufficient reason for his own existence or as the philosophers call it, “uncaused.”

That self-sufficiency and self love — a unity of diversity — is so strong that it precedes as a third person, another “who” that shares the substance of “what” God is. We call that third person the Holy Spirit, and he tends to take on matronly qualities at times. 

Father. Son. Holy Spirit.

Lover. Beloved. And Love. 

Unity in simplicity.

Consubstantial persons. 

Trinity.