THE ONENESS OF GOD
List of contents:
I. God is one
II. The knowledge of God
III. The mystery of the Holy Trinity
IV. The biblical teaching on the Holy Trinity
V. The unity of the triune God
I. GOD IS ONE
The oneness of God is a foundational doctrine in the Holy Bible:
1. The Old Testament (Torah):
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6: 4);
“There is no God besides Me” (Deuteronomy 32: 39a);
“You alone are God” (Psalms 86: 10b);
“Thus says the Lord, the king of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last; besides Me there is no God” (Isaiah 44: 6);
“Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45: 22).
“Before Me there was no God formed, Nor shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the Lord, And besides Me there is no savior” (Isaiah 43: 10c-11).2. The New Testament (Injil):
“Jesus answered him, ‘The first of all the commandments is: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one’” (Mark 12: 29);
“There is one God” (Romans 3: 30a);
“We know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no other God but one” (1 Corinthians 8: 4b);
“God is one” (Galatians 3: 20b).In fact, the Church taught that God is one since early Christianity.
II. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
(return to list of contents)God is the most positive reality. The reality of God transcends human reason. He is the cause and the source of existence of all things. God is a personal being who self-subsists as a simple supreme personal reality. In orthodox theology, a distinction exists between the uncreated inner divine being (essence/nature) of God, and his uncreated divine energies (operations and acts) which issue from him. St. Basil says: “We know our God from his operations, but are unable to draw near to his essence. For his operations come down to us, while his essence remains unapproachable.” God is not knowable in his divine essence. We believe in his essence because we experience his energies. We know him in his energies. The divine energies signify God himself in his activity and self-manifestation. God’s energies permeate all his creation. God does not create the world from his essence, but by his energies. By each operation (energy mode), God creates or sustains a certain aspect of reality. The divine operations are attributes of God expressed in actions. In these operations/energies, God himself, the originator of all diverse operations, is whole and beyond movement and change. All God’s energies are infinite. They will never cease to proceed from God.
We experience and know God through his varied operations in relation to the visible world, and ourselves. The divine operations aim at leading creation toward deification. It is possible to be in real communion with God by participating in his energies, though the divine nature is transcendent and unparticipated. The Christian believer is progressively deified, and his knowledge of God’s divine energies is increased, by participating in God’s grace, which is one of the uncreated energies of God. The Christian believer believes strongly in the living God because he knows him directly through his energies in his own personal experience, not because of logical proofs and reasonable arguments, which, albeit helpful, may not necessarily be conducive to strong faith.
God does not change in his character as the altogether true and righteous One. God is perfect in every way. He does not need to change to become more perfect: “For I am the Lord, I do not change” (Malachi 3: 6a). In order to remain true to his character, God’s feelings and response toward a person or a group of people may change for good or ill in response to a change in the person or the group: “But if a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; because of the righteousness which he has done, he shall live. ‘Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?’ says the Lord God, ‘and not that he should turn from his ways and live?’ But when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and does according to all the abominations that the wicked man does, shall he live? All the righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered; because of the unfaithfulness of which he is guilty and the sin which he has committed, because of them he shall die” (Ezekiel 18: 21-24).
III. THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY TRINITY
(return to list of contents)By definition, the finite creature, man, could never fully comprehend the nature, inner workings and thoughts of his infinite Creator. The much higher form of divine existence is mysterious to the lower form of human existence. If we cannot fully understand our own being, how can we comprehend fully the mystery of our Creator! Man's knowledge is restricted by the mode of his learning, which takes place through finite reality in this life. It is relevant to recall the story of St. Augustine walking on the beach, trying to figure out the mystery of the Holy Trinity. As he watched a little child with a pail trying to put the sea into a hole he had dug in the sand, Augustine said to the child, "you cannot do that." The child (actually an angel) replied, "neither can you fit the mystery of the Holy Trinity into your finite mind." The mystery of God is beyond human reason. A god, whom we claim to understand exhaustively by our human reason, is no more than an idol fashioned in our own image. This is not the true living God of the Holy Bible and the Christian Church: “Behold God is great, and we do not know Him; nor can the number of His years be discovered” (Job 36: 26). God said through the prophet Isaiah: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55: 9).
St. Augustine appropriately thought that God has left triune footprints everywhere around us. Examples on that abound. The sun consists of its matter/body, its glow/light, and its heat. A tree consists of its root, its branches/trunk, and its fruits. At what is known in Physics as the triple point of water, water exists simultaneously as liquid, gas (vapor), and ice. The human act of perception requires the mind, objects, and perceiving. Love requires a lover, a loved one, and love that unites the three in one. Just as God is three (Intellect, Word, and Spirit) in One; man who is created in God’s image (Genesis 1: 26-27) is a conjunction of intellect, intelligence (word), and spirit in one human being. Intelligence is begotten from man’s intellect, and his spirit is projected from it. Likewise, from God the Father, the Son is begotten and the Holy Spirit proceeds. In all these examples, we see unity, equality, and distinguishability. Although these analogies are suggestive and helpful in understanding the Holy Trinity, none of them is perfect.
The Holy Trinity is one of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. God is one single undivided divine essence (substance) in three distinct Persons: God the Father, His Word (God the Son), and His Spirit (God the Holy Spirit). Because of the single undivided divine essence of the Godhead, the three divine Persons of the Holy Trinity have only one single will or energy. This means that no one of the three divine Persons acts independently from the other Persons. There is always mutual concurrence (John 5: 19; 10: 30). In the Holy Trinity, the Father is the only common source--the first uncaused cause and unoriginated origin--of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The three divine Persons are united together in the essence of the Godhead without mediation or distance. Each divine Person abides in the other without confusion. In any of the divine Persons of the Holy Trinity, the other two divine Persons are continuously visible and revealed, as the acts of begetting and procession are interior within the infinite absolute Godhead. Each divine Person in the Holy Trinity contains all the others. Each possesses, not one third of the Godhead, but the entire Godhead; yet, each is personally distinct. God transcends the laws of finite mathematics. God is Three-in-one, and indivisible, hence simple. The three divine Persons are distinguished, but they are so interior in their unity as Being that knows no dispersal that they can in no way be separated so as to be counted as three entities having a certain discontinuity between them. The self-existent essence of the Godhead is undivided in separate persons. God’s unity is not a unity of separable parts, but of distinguishable parts. Thus, the divine energies of the entire Godhead is revealed to the Christian believer sometimes in the Father, other times in the Son and in the Holy Spirit.
The three divine Persons are of the same essence and have, by their very nature, the same attributes pertaining to will, energy, power, and authority. The distinction between them is based on their hypostatic attributes (properties) which are incommunicable: the Father – original cause, unbegottenness, and paternity; the Son – begottenness (from the Father) and sonship; and the Holy Spirit – procession (from the Father). The order given in the Scriptures of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as first, second, and third Persons in the Holy Trinity does not imply any rank, superiority, or subordination for them within the Trinity, as they are all co-eternal and co-equal. It only suggests the relationship of the Father as the cause of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Within the single divine operation, each divine Person shows forth what is proper to him in the Holy Trinity: the Father is the creator of all; the Son is the one by whom all things were made, and through whom redemption is effected; the Holy Spirit is the life giving and sanctifying principle.
The divine Persons are interior one to the other – and, hence, receive nothing from outside – but they are not confused with one another since they find themselves within a perpetual movement and communion of being and love. This total interpersonal communion intensifies the personal character of God to the highest degree. The perfect unity of the divine Persons in the Holy Trinity is based on perfect love characterized by complete self-denial. The concept of egoism does not exist in this unity. The Holy Spirit, the third divine Person of the Holy Trinity, is the comforter that establishes our communion with God. Through the Holy Spirit, God dwells in the Christian believer. The Holy Spirit progressively sanctifies and deifies the Christian believer in Christ. Through the Holy Spirit, the Christian believer participates in the energies of God. We can say that: the Spirit is God within us, the Son is God with us, and the Father is God beyond us.
It is important to emphasize the fact that a uni-personal god, who is a lone person confined within his own being, cannot experience the fullness of the exceedingly rich communion, and love experienced within the Holy Trinity of the triune God. Therefore a uni-personal god cannot experience the fullness of existence. Since the almighty God of the universe is perfect in every way, he is self-sufficient, not needing his creation to experience loving communion with it. Creation does not add anything to the being of God. The sovereign God did not create the world to satisfy an essential need he had. The Trinity has no need for another where it pours out its exceeding love, since the other is already in the Trinity. The self-sufficient God is not dependent on any non-divine reality outside himself. Therefore, the true living God of the universe could not be a uni-personal god. Another imperfection in the uni-personal god is that he lacks the means of close intimate communion with his creation. This communion could not be provided by an angelic messenger sent by God, because this type of messenger is a localized and limited creature that could only communicate externally to one person at a time. In addition, an angelic messenger could not communicate with the human heart in order to effect internal divine illumination. The uncreated Holy Spirit of the living God is unlimited and unlocalized. He communicates the divine light of God into the inmost recesses of the human hearts of many Christian persons at the same time. The triune God dwells in his human creation by his Holy Spirit, the third person in the Holy Trinity. He is a God great enough to rule the universe, caring enough to live a full human life in Christ Jesus, and intimate enough to live in each Christian believer.
IV. THE BIBLICAL TEACHING ON THE HOLY TRINITY
(return to list of contents)The biblical teaching on the Holy Trinity is rooted in the Old Testament (the Torah) which points to it:
Christ, the promised Messiah, has spoken through the prophet Isaiah about seven hundred years before his incarnation and birth form the virgin Mary:“Come near to Me, hear this: I (the Son) have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, I was there, and now the Lord God (the Father) and His Spirit have sent Me” (Isaiah 48: 16); “The Spirit of the Lord God (the Father) is upon Me (the Son), because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Isaiah 61: 1).
In both verses, the Lord God is God the Father, and the Spirit of the Lord God is the Holy Spirit. God appeared to Abraham in the form of three men. They spoke to him as One, and Abraham worshiped the One (Genesis 18: 1-5, 9-19). The angels glorify God in the heavenly realm by singing the hymn of the Three-Holies: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6: 3b).
The New Testament (Injil) amplifies, clarifies, and emphasizes the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It affirms both the deity and the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: “For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one” (1 John 5: 7); “And the angel answered and said to her (Mary), ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest (the Father) will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1: 35); “And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him (Jesus), and a voice came from heaven which said, ‘You are My beloved Son; in You I (the Father) am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). The baptismal formula affirms the divinity, the distinctness, the equality, and the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28: 19). The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are distinguished and all present at Jesus baptism (Matthew 3: 16-17). St. Paul’s threefold apostolic benediction joins together equally and distinctly the Christ (the Son), God (the Father), and the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 13: 14). The Holy Spirit of God the Father declares the Son: “By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God (the Father), and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world” (1 John 4: 2-3). The Holy Spirit is a divine Person in the Holy Trinity, who proceeds from the Father and is sent by both the Father and the Son, as Christ said: “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me” (John 15: 26; Colossians 1:13-16; Hebrews 1: 1-4).
V. THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD
(return to list of contents)The oneness of God is not compromised by seeing complexity within that oneness. The unity of the triune God is perfected due to the following:
1. The three Persons of the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of the same one divine essence. They are of the same one divine substance and nature.
2. Although there are three divine Persons in the Godhead, there is only one will and one common energy in the Godhead. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have only one and the same divine will, not three; and only one divine energy, not three. Therefore, there can never be conflict of wills within the Godhead. None of the three divine Persons ever acts separately from the other two. They are one God, not three gods. Christ said: “I and My Father are one” (John 10: 30).
3. There is only one source in the Godhead: God the Father. He is the only unoriginated origin in the Godhead. God the Son is begotten by God the Father. God the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father.
4. Each of the three divine Persons of the triune God dwells and exists in the other two, without confusion or separation: “Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works” (John 14: 9-10).
5. “God is love” (1 John 4: 8b). Love is the very mode of God’s triune being as a unity. The unceasing mutual perfect infinite divine love characterizes the personal divine relations of the three divine Persons of the Holy Trinity.