Day 35: Formation of Trinitarian Dogma (249-252)

• Today we have a few short, action-packed paragraphs!

• What does that look like?

• We just talked about how The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father AND the Son

• OR…

• As our Eastern brothers and sisters profess…

• The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father THROUGH the Son

• BOTH OF THOSE ARE PHENOMENAL!!

• Today we are talking about The Formation of the Trinitarian Dogma

• Those are a lot of big words

• Sorry, but there are going to be even more big words today

• From the beginning, God has been revealing Himself as a COMMUNION OF PERSONS

• Right?

• He has been revealing Himself as ONE BEING

• BUT ALSO…

• God reveals Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

• So over the course of time we had foreshadowing in the Old Testament of God slowly revealing Himself as a Trinity

• In Jesus and sending the Holy Spirit, there is something about them

• Also in St. Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians and Ephesians

• He says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all…”

• There is this revelation of the Trinitarian dogma

• In order to clarify what we mean by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the Church has used certain words taken from philosophical traditions

• Words like SUBSTANCE

• PERSON

• HYPOSTASIS

• RELATION

• The Church used them from the beginning to try and capture what it is to say that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

• BUT…

• The Father ISN’T the Son

• The Son ISN’T the Holy Spirit

• The Holy Spirit ISN’T the Father

• BUT…

• THEY ALL ARE GOD!!

• So the Church has used a formulation of these kinds of words

• We will look at how the Trinitarian dogma was formulated

• Tomorrow we will talk more deeply about the dogma of the Holy Trinity

• Let us call upon the Trinity!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in heaven, we ask you, in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, to send your Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds, to enliven our hearts. Just please, help us to begin, even just begin to understand, or even capture. Help us to take one closer step into the mystery of who you are in yourself. Because, who you are in yourself is God. And we are nothing without you. And we're everything with you. So you love everything that is, that we are. You love us infinitely. Help us to know, as deeply as we possibly can, what and who you are, so we can love you and glorify you for what and who you are. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.”

• So let’s review these 4 paragraphs

• Paragraph 249 says, “From the very beginning, the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity has been at the very root of the Church’s living faith…”

• The CENTRAL MYSTERY of Christianity is the mystery of the TRINITY

• Which incorporates the mystery of the Incarnation

• IT IS A REALLY BIG DEAL!!

• Paragraph 249 continues, “It finds its expression in the rule of baptismal faith…”

• That word BAPTISM is VERY IMPORTANT!!

• Why??

• Because at the end of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 28:19) Jesus says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”

• THIS IS SO CRITICAL!!

• EVERY SINGLE CHRISTIAN PERSON IS BAPTIZED IN THAT TRINITARIAN FORMULA!!

• FATHER SON AND HOLY SPIRIT!!

• THIS IS REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT!!

• Here is St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 13, 1 Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

• So we have in that Scriptural designation both Jesus saying, “Baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

• Also St. Paul with his greeting, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

• There is this CLEAR revelation of God as Father Son and Holy Spirit

• But the question is, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

• How can we clearly communicate this to people who say that maybe the Lord Jesus is a “demigod” because he is MAN, we know that

• He is also GOD, we know that

• So maybe He’s like Hercules

• Hercules’ father was Zeus and his mother was someone

• Jesus’ Father is God and his mother is Mary

• So maybe they’re similar?

• In order to really figure out what and who is it that Jesus really is

• It is VERY CLEAR from the Gospels that Jesus is claiming EQUALITY WITH THE FATHER

• And also that He speaks of the Holy Spirit as CO-EQUAL

• BUT…

• At the same time, it seems like both of them DEFER TO THE FATHER

• So Paragraph 251 says, “In order to articulate the dogma of the Trinity, the Church had to develop its own terminology with the help of certain notions of philosophical origin.”

• Yes, we have BIBLICAL LANGUAGE which is ABSOLUTELY IRREPLACEABLE

• Right?

• Biblical language is God’s revelation to us through the Sacred Text

• AND YET…

• It says a lot BUT THERE IS MORE TO BE SAID

• The mind keeps wanting to apprehend but how can we articulate this?

• So we have these philosophical notions…

• SUBSTANCE

• PERSON

• HYPOSTASIS

• RELATION

• Paragraph 252 says, “The Church uses (I) the term ‘substance’ (rendered also at times by ‘essence’ or ‘nature’) to designate the divine being in its unity…”

• Fr. John Hardon has a definition for substance: “a being whose essence requires that it exists in itself.”

• He uses some Latin here

• He says, “It is an ens per se (which means a being by itself) or ens in se (meaning being in itself)” (so my brain really hurts right now and I’m quite dizzy 🤣)

• The being itself is the SUBSTANCE

• What is that?

• THE ESSENCE

• This is from The Modern Catholic Dictionary

• He makes the DISTINCTION between SUBSTANCE AND ACCIDENT

• So this is a little philosophy lesson (I refuse to believe that Fr. Mike pronounces philosophy like that “PHIL-OH-SOH-FEE”😝)

• The SUBSTANCE and the ACCIDENT

• The SUBSTANCE is the being BY ITSELF or IN ITSELF

• The ACCIDENT whose ESSENCE is to EXIST IN ANOTHER

• For example the color purple DOES NOT EXIST ON ITS OWN

• The color purple is an ACCIDENT

• You only experience the color purple in something like purple linen (Or the Oscar nominated film The Color Purple starring Whoopi Goldberg and directed by Steven Spielberg? 🤔)

• So linen is the SUBSTANCE

• Linen is the ESSENCE IN ITSELF, the SUBSTANCE, the WHAT IT IS

• Purple is the ACCIDENT

• The linen would still be linen if it was red or white or not even dyed at all

• The ACCIDENT is the dye

• So we can sort of begin to understand how we are philosophically trying to apply these terms to the EXISTENCE and the ESSENCE of God

• WHO God is…

• WHAT God is…

• IN HIMSELF…

• WHAT GOD IS BY ITSELF…

• IS HIS ESSENCE

• IS HIS SUBSTANCE

• Now the term PERSON or HYPOSTASIS to designate the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the real distinction among them

• Fr. John Hardon, in The Modern Catholic Dictionary, says about hypostasis, “It is an individual complete substance existing entirely in itself and in communicable substance. The term used by the Church to identify the persons in the Trinity and the union of two natures in one divine person in Christ. A person is a hypostasis endowed with reason.” (??? 🫤😐)

• So what are we saying?

• We are saying that HYPOSTASIS and NATURE are related to each other in such a manner that the hypostasis is the bearer of the nature and the ultimate subject of all being and acting while the nature is that through which the hypostasis exists and acts

• That’s going to be the most helpful sentence

• THAT WAS HELPFUL??? DO I EVEN SPEAK ENGLISH?? DO I UNDERSTAND ENGLISH ANYMORE???

• Here’s why

• Hypostasis and nature are related to each other in this manner: Hypostasis is the bearer of the nature and the ultimate subject of all being and acting

• That’s the person right?

• While the nature or the substance is that through which the hypostasis exists and acts

• So the PERSON/HYPOSTASIS is Father

• The ESSENCE through which the Father acts is the NATURE OF GOD the very BEING OF GOD

• HYPOSTASIS is the Son (the PERSON is the Son) and the ESSENCE/SUBSTANCE through which the Son acts is the NATURE OF GOD 

• Right?

• The ESSENCE or SUBSTANCE OF GOD

• If that sounds CONFUSING that is ok!!

• What did St. Pope Paul VI say?

• This is used to signify an ineffable mystery, “infinitely beyond all that we can humanly understand.”

• I can’t even understand the WORDS YOU’RE SAYING much less the MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY

• So let’s tell this story once again

• St. Augustine, in the early centuries of the Church, is walking along the northern shores of Africa on the Mediterranean Sea

• He is trying to ponder the mystery of the Trinity

• He’s trying to figure out whether he’s using these terms HYPOSTASIS or PERSON or SUBSTANCE

• He’s trying to figure out the Trinity and realizes he can’t do it

• He’s MEDITATING and REFLECTING and PONDERING on this

• As he’s walking along he happens along a young boy who is digging a hole in the sand in the beach

• He has a shell or bucket of some sort

• He’s running to the sea and filling up the bucket and runs up to the hole he dug and pours the water into the hole

• He runs back to the sea and collects more water and then runs back to the hole to pour the water out

• St. Augustine asks the little boy, “What are you doing?”

• The little boy responds, “I’m trying to empty this sea into the hole I’ve dug.”

• St. Augustine says, “Silly child! You couldn’t possibly fit that entire sea into this small hole that you’ve dug.”

• That’s when the little boy stops and looks up at St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, and says, “Neither can you fit the infinite mystery of the Trinity into your finite mind.”

• AND DISAPPEARS!!

• POOF!!

• The story captures where we are at

• We can only grasp SOME THINGS about God

• That’s what these terms are trying to do

• Paragraph 252 says, “The Church uses (I) the term ‘substance’ (rendered also at times by ‘essence’ or ‘nature’) to designate the divine being in its unity, (II) the term ‘person’ or ‘hypostasis’ to designate the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the real distinction among them, and (III) the term ‘relation’ to designate the fact that their distinction lies in the relationship of each to the others.”

• The Father is Father BECAUSE OF THE SON

• The Son is Son BECAUSE OF THE FATHER

• The Holy Spirit is that BOND OF LOVE BETWEEN THE TWO OF THEM

• If your head is spinning that is OK!! 

• This is DEEP THEOLOGY

• We are only scratching the surface

• Why?

• Because our minds are limited

• The mystery of the Trinity is the CENTRAL MYSTERY of our Faith

• It is INEFFABLE AND UNPLUMMABLE

• So we try to capture as much and plumb as much as we possibly can

• “Lord, make up for what I lack.”

• AND THEN WE MOVE ON!!

• “Ok Lord, I trust in you. I know that you are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A Trinity of Persons. One God. Unity in being. And a Trinity in Persons. And I love you.”

• WE ARE CALLED TO LOVE HIM!!

• SO LET’S LOVE THE FATHER AND SON AND HOLY SPIRIT AS HE HAS REVEALED TO US!!

• Fr. Mike is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT to see you tomorrow!! (After I go put some ice on my head to keep it from spinning and pounding in pain 🤣🤣🤣)

Scripture References & Reflections

- compiled by Andrew Adamany

Bible Translation - RSVCE

CCC 249 "From the beginning, the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity has been at the very root of the Church's living faith, principally by means of Baptism."...

Matthew 28:18–20 

"And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

"It finds its expression in the rule of baptismal faith, formulated in the preaching, catechesis and prayer of the Church.  Such formulations are already found in the apostolic writings, such as this salutation taken up in the Eucharistic liturgy:"

2 Corinthians 13:14

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."

Ephesians 4:4–6 

"There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all."