7/28/2023 0 Comments Twinity loveHow we use the word “God” thus has a direct bearing on how we understand ourselves and what it is to be human: a faulty usage and understanding inevitably leads to an equally faulty understanding of ourselves. “Relatedness” is intrinsic to our human nature, as it is to God’s nature. It follows that if, as we believe, human beings are fashioned in the image and likeness of God, we are fashioned in the image of likeness of the Trinity. The Christian doctrine of God asserts that God is a Trinity of divine relationships or “relatedness” itself. As well as being distinct, a role is defined in interdependent relation to the other roles so, in its original sense, “person” implies relationship or, better, “relatedness”. The original Greek word of which the Latin, persona, is a translation, prosopon, meant both a role in a play and the mask that designated the role being played, and which helped to amplify the voice of the actor. But the word used by those who first articulated the doctrine of the Trinity might better be translated as “role”. For us, the word “person” denotes an individual subject, a distinct centre of consciousness, will and knowledge. Scare quotes are needed because the notion of “person” that was used when the doctrine was first formulated is not our modern understanding of the word. The Trinity, in other words, is what we mean when we say that God is love and love is what we mean when we say that God is a trinity or communion of “persons”. These early Church Fathers used the word to describe the relationship of mutual, indwelling love that unites Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In time, the dance becomes so fast and yet still so rhythmically harmonious, that the individuals appear to merge into one. The word is still used for a dance at Greek weddings, in which three people (at least) dance in ever faster circles, weaving in and out of one another in perfectly synchronised movements. But the early Church Fathers, especially the fourth century Cappadocians, used another image to describe the Trinity, namely, a dance, perichoresis. Many older Catholics will have first heard of the Trinity in the story told of Saint Patrick, who used a shamrock, with its characteristic three leaves, to teach that God is both one and three. Love implies relationship and the heart of the gospel is the affirmation that we have been created to share in that relationship of love which is God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Blessed Trinity. It is, in other words, an explicit celebration of what makes the gospel the good news that it is. It affirms that creation is an act of love by Love Itself. The defining Christian doctrine of the Trinity celebrates that fact that God is not only the creator of everything, but the lover of all he has created. Other feasts celebrate a saint, a church, an event, or an aspect of divine revelation, but this Sunday’s feast celebrates God Himself, the beginning and end of everything that exists and of existence itself. Trinity Sunday is unlike any other feast in the Christian calendar.
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