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§ 1

THE MYSTERY OF GOD IN REVELATION

We shall now address the first point: In what does the very mystery of God in revelation consist? First, in the New Testament texts. In second place, in the dogmatic definitions of the Church, leaving aside the question of the nature of these definitions, a subject we shall cover in due course.


I. What is God in the actual text of the New Testament?

We have already pointed out when dealing with the idea of monotheism that it entered the world with one God, ‘Elohim, and friend of the family of Abraham. It reached maturity in the preaching of Christ for whom God is not simply the friend of a family, but the Father of all men¹. I have also demonstrated that human intelligence, in a strictly intellective manner, can access and actually accedes to admit the reality of God². One now asks: What is the relationship between what the human intelligence can acquire by itself and this notion about God being Father?

Obviously, many answers can be given to this question. I personally give one, that actually “Father” can be understood in two senses. One sense, {97} which I will try to explain later, in which the Father is different from the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is the Father insofar as Father. Another sense is the Father as radical principle of everything real, and in addition of the very internal divine life. In this case, materially, the God reason proves is precisely the Father. In other words, the Father is the absolutely absolute reality and principle of everything real, inside God and outside God. This is the absolute radicality.

Furthermore, the New Testament tells us this God has a Son and a Holy Spirit. The question now becomes more complicated. In no place of the New Testament we are told what we have been taught in the catechism, i.e., that there is only one God and three different persons. This is not what the New Testament says; if it had said it the dogma of the Trinity would not have had the complicated history it has had throughout the centuries. This position has several supports.


A) In the first place, there is no text in the New Testament where the three persons are mentioned copulatively as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Except, of course, at the end of the Gospel of Matthew. There St. Matthew tells us that Jesus spoke to the disciples and told them: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt 28:18). And then adds: “Go, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). Here, obviously, the phrase is copulative and cannot be clearer. But it is hard to believe Christ put it in those terms for the simple reason that in Acts, as it is well known, the apostles did not baptize in the name of the Trinity, but in the name of Christ.

St. Thomas considered once that it was a privilege Christ {98} had given them during His life³. But St. Thomas was not aware that in the VI, VII and VIII centuries in many places they were baptizing in the name of Christ. It seems quite difficult that they also had a privilege. Of course, the matter is simpler. After all, there is the belief that Christ is the Son of God and that He sends the Holy Spirit. Therefore, to baptize in the name of Christ does not mean that the baptism is not made in the name of the Trinity, but that the Trinitarian formula is not used, which is a different matter.

Besides, it is obvious this is so. If Christ had said it, no one would have baptized except with that formula. Who would have dared to amputate a phrase of Christ in a point so important as the formula for baptism? On the other hand, it seems quite normal that one evangelist may have developed the thought of Christ and put the Trinity where Christ, as God, commanded to baptize. This text is not useful to us for our task. It is a text where the biblical exegesis is in agreement to recognize this is a case of development, fully inspired and legitimate, but a development nevertheless.


B) In the second place, it is said they are three persons. The term “person” never appears in the New Testament, but only later in the history of the Church with Tertullian. The Greeks employed the term hupóstasis, which really means substance. Only further on did they manage to distinguish substance from person, calling the substance ousía and the person hupóstasis. At any rate this term did not have a formally revealing and revealed characteristic in the first centuries of Christianity. It is important to remember this because when we say today that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three persons, one {99} thinks that the person is an entity each having its own freedom, initiative, and responsibility. To say, in this sense, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three persons is a perfect heresy, this would be a tri-deism. This is absurd and monstrous. Not even remotely are they three persons. Because of this I rather prefer to use the innocuous term of three “termini”. If I continue mentioning persons it is because the use of tradition imposes itself, but person in those places means purely and simply terminus.


C) In the New Testament it is never said that these three termini are one. Certainly, there are some passages in the Gospel of St. John where the three termini do not appear, but only two: the Father and the Son. It says: “as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (Jn 17:21-22). Naturally, there is a unity there, but it is a unity of concord. No one would even suggest that the Christians are one with Christ physically. They are two termini, not three, and it is purely and simply a unity of concord. It is the case of a concord, which will present a problem at a deeper dimension. However, be that as it may, the term hén, one, used in that text is the unity of a life, of an activity, but not the unity one wishes to express by saying there are three different persons and only one true God.

Also, there is a passage in the first Epistle of St. John where we read: “So there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and the three are of one accord (eis to hén eisin)” (1 Jn 5:7-8). It does not say here that they are one, except in the text of the Vulgate, where it adds that the three are testimonium {100} dicunt in caelo, pater verbum et spiritus, et hi tres unum sunt (1 Jn 5:8). Everyone agrees that this phrase represents a marginal gloss from a commentator, which eventually slipped into the content of the text. Therefore, there is nothing here that would announce in an explicit and formal way that there is a real unity between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This does not mean that this unity may be excluded, but that it is perceived in a more or less undiscerned way, like so many things that allow precisely that the history of dogma may exist. Conversely, there would not be a history; there would simply be a treatise and a proof. In the end, the revealed text tells us that we have just one God and that this God has three termini: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, these three termini do not constitute a triplicity, but something more difficult to apprehend, the meaning of a Trinity. The very term Trinity (triás) appeared for the first time with Theophilus of Antioch towards the end of the II century, where he mentions the first three days of creation and tells us they are “images of the Trinity (triádos)”⁴. And in the year 675 the XI Council of Toledo precisely defined that haec est Sanctae Trinitatis relata narratio: quae non triplex, sed Trinitas (DS 528). God is not triplicity, but Trinity.

Naturally, this is the content of the formally revealed text. We then ask: How has the Church understood this revelation? That is the second part of this exposition.


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II. The dogmatic definition of what God is

For this purpose it is usual to list in chronological order the heresies and errors that have appeared until the Council of Nicea in the IV century. No doubt all of it is very interesting. However, I have always thought that, without defending those errors and heresies, the essential thing is to know why those errors surfaced and what is the positive content they may carry. Erroneously and heretically there is something in them, which is not entirely to be discarded.

It was necessary, of course, for the Church not to reduce the revelation of the Trinity (and it has not been) to the level of a theoretical proposition, but to make it a progressive movement revealing the Trinity in its different aspects and levels. Therefore, within its legitimate sphere, it is required that all these levels and steps be formally maintained within the scope of the Trinitarian dogma. After all, the Trinity has not been revealed to satisfy an intellectual curiosity, but to be the fundament of a religious life.

From my point of view these three stages correspond to three concepts, each one of them founded on the next one, and each of the following having as a mission not only to say something, but to make the previous one possible. These are the concepts.

A) In the first place what I call functionality. Revelation is not a mere cognitive communication about what God is in himself, independently of men and life. Certainly, revelation tells us what God is in himself because without that He could not fundament a religious life. But the goal of revelation is to make possible and to fundament the religious life. However, from this {102} point of view the revelation of God as He is in himself, as fundament of the religious life, involves the whole world. In such fashion that, in this sense, the whole world in one form or another manifests, denotes, and reveals precisely what God is as He fundaments the reality of the world and the religious life in it. The world reveals God precisely by being the support of religious life and referring it to God. Revelation has the intention, in this concrete case and in all cases to tell us something about God himself, but in order to fundament the religious life. And all creation itself, the whole world, is in one form or another a revelation and a denotation of that fundament. Therefore, taken simultaneously these two characteristics are what I call the functionality.

1) It is the case that the Trinity in its first revealing phase, and in its first movement facing the human spirit consists in precisely expressing the function God has as the support and fundament of the world, the truth, and the religious life of man. The New Testament has a wealth of texts concerning this. About the Father, for example, it says He has the function of creator, provider, moral legislator, etc. The Son is attributed with the function of being a revealer, a redeemer, of interceding before the Father for us to make us sons of God, i.e., sons of the Father. And both together, the Father and the Son, have as a function to send the Holy Spirit who has the function to sanctify, illumine, assist the Church, reside in a formal and radical way in the soul of the just, etc. And this Holy Spirit, precisely in the measure it is sent by the Father and the Son, has the function of being a gift of the Father through the Son. This is the first structural moment of the revelation of a Trinitarian God: revelation as fundament and formal structure of every religious life.

{103} a) This functionality, in the first place, has an individual characteristic. Man in his religious life addresses God, but to whom do we pray? On this matter the mind of most seems to be in a fog. One of them was St. Ignatius Loyola himself⁵. Christ taught how to pray: “Our Father...”. And this is addressed to the Father not to Christ. Obviously, the efficiency of the prayer depends on our praying with Christ. He said it: “if you ask something from the Father in my name He will grant it” (Jn 16:23). But it is precisely in union with Him. The prayer is addressed to the Father, but through the Son, and in the movement that takes us from the Son to the Father, which is the Holy Spirit. The prayer is addressed to the Father by the Son in the Holy Spirit. Although some argue that the prayer is addressed to the Father indiscriminately, i.e., to the divine essence, with the support of the famous text of St. Thomas Aquinas⁶, I have never been able to share that opinion. We pray to God the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. But we do not pray to the divine essence or the whole Trinity, except in that absolutely precise order. Functionality has the characteristic of making a very particular structure of the religious life possible. It is no accident that the liturgy of the Mass before the Our Father affirms: “Faithful to the recommendation of the Savior and following His divine teaching we make bold to say...”. It is not the case of a useless introduction, but precisely the very essence of the Our Father: we pray to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Functionality has an essential characteristic there. Without {104} this we could not understand the Trinitarian structure of the prayer, of the supplication of the faithful to God.

b) Functionality not only has an individual characteristic; it also has a historical characteristic. Certainly, God has acted in history from the origins of monotheism. There is no doubt about that. Christ sent the Holy Spirit, even though referring to the Holy Spirit the First Council of Constantinople said “He spoke through the prophets” (DS 150). Be that as it may, it cannot be denied that in a somewhat fragmentary way the realm of the Old Testament is the realm of the Father. In the life of Christ we have the realm of the Son, and in the Church the realm of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the unity of revelation that I defended above against Marcion consists precisely in saying that revelation is one, whereby in the Holy Spirit the Son takes us to the Father in a historical way. That is the radical unity of the movement of monotheism, and the divinization of the way of transcendence.

c) Not only this, but in addition functionality has a cosmic characteristic. Let us remember, actually, how St. Paul in that obscure passage tells us that the material creation is groaning for a glorious transfiguration (cf. Rom 8:19-22).

At any rate, functionality in this sense corresponds and concerns, in its most elemental, most profound, and most radical stratum to the religious life, the structure of the history of revelation, and the very structure of the cosmos with respect to God.

2) Functionality is essential. First, in itself, because that is the way it is really and actually. Second, in order to be able to have an internal intellection of the very Trinity.

Latin theology, which did not follow this path, but started on its own way with the Aristotelian concepts of nature and essence, understood {105} something else. It would not deny what I have called functionality, but would ultimately say with St. Thomas that it is a case of appropriations⁷. The three persons would act ad extra in an undivisive way, because creation is the work of the divine essence. And, naturally, if we speak about the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit it is by appropriation, attributing what is common to the three persons either to one or the other depending on the characteristics of the work in question. Because He died on the cross redemption is attributed to the Son. That is precisely the difficulty because neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit died. Still, putting aside this difficulty, which is not small, and looking at other works, for example, sanctification, it is said that the whole God sanctifies, etc. But they are not appropriations. Greek theology had the energy to see precisely in the structure of the Trinitarian mystery a triple formal functionality of the Trinity, and not simply an extrinsic appropriation. Indeed, this is the only thing that is explicitly revealed in the New Testament.

Taking functionality in its second moment, i.e., as the world reveals God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit it was easy to slide towards a merely functional conception of the Trinity. If functionality were the only thing that is clearly revealed in the New Testament in an explicit way, it would provide the ground for a different perspective. In that case functionality could be seen having this enormous amplitude to cover the entire religious life of man, the entire history of revelation, and also the very structure of the cosmos. We could then say that not only does the Trinity have this functional dimension, but in addition consists precisely in that functional dimension.

This is a grave error, associated with the names of Paul of Samosata, and above all Sabellius. That the Trinity is not only functional, {106} but would formally and constitutively consist in the functionality itself. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would only be ways how a God who is just one person reveals himself functioning in the world. That single person that God is, insofar as creative we would call Father; insofar as revealing we would call Son, and as sanctifying we would call Holy Spirit. The three terms would be purely and simply three modes or ways God, as a unique person, functions in the world. That was Modalism, which also receives other names like Monarchianism and Patripassianism because in that case the one that suffered on the cross, although called Son, was only that person we also call Father, etc. According to the testimony of Theodoret, “Sabellius of Lybia...said that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are only one hupóstasis and only one person with a triple name. Sometimes called Father, sometimes called Son, and sometimes Holy Spirit. And in the Old Testament brought the Law as Father, but in the New He incarnated as Son and came to the apostles as Holy Spirit”⁸. The text is clear, except that the term hupóstasis appears. But it is a fact that in Greek hupóstasis is the same as substance, and the distinction between hupóstasis and substance had not been made yet. Therefore, what it means is that substantially there is only one God, and the triplicity of persons are three extrinsic relationships with respect to creation.

The Church rejected this interpretation with energy. The Trinity is not constituted by the relationship between God, and the world and man, but constitutes the very characteristic of God qua God independently of any creation, i.e., even if He had not created the world.

{107} Of course, this presents no obstacle to consider functionality to be an essential element in the revelation of the Trinitarian mystery, and in the action of the Trinity itself. Certainly the Trinity does not consist in functionality, but is functional. For this reason, the exposition of this concept should be the exordium of the Trinitarian theology as revelation itself was. Latin theology, in contradistinction to the Greek, has made an appendix of functionality labeling it with the name of appropriations and missions of the divine persons. From my point of view, the fact that some functions belong to the three persons does not mean they pertain to the divine “nature”, as if God in His action ad extra were not Triune. The divine essence as creative, for example, is presented as if creation were an act of a God who is certainly Triune, but that what He does has nothing to do with His Triune condition, that it is an effect of the one God. This is absurd. One case is that the three persons concern themselves with creation, and quite another that each has a specific function to accomplish inside the same. God never ceases to function as Triune in all cases. St. Thomas puts the matter as follows: “de processione creaturarum a Deo, et de omnium entium prima causa”⁹. Is that really and actually how creation has to be necessarily understood?

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¹ Cf. X. Zubiri, The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions (El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones, op. cit., pp. 208-231).
² Cf. X. Zubiri, Man and God (Man and God, op. cit., pp. 134-164).
³ Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, III, q. 66, art. 6, ad 1.
⁴ Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum, Bk. II, ch. 15, in J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, Vol. 6, Paris, 1857, col. 1077.
⁵ “I had much devotion to the Holy Trinity and for this reason I prayed every day to each of the three Persons individually. And praying also to the Holy Trinity the thought came why make four prayers to the Trinity”, in St. Ignatius Loyola, “Autobiografía” (Autobiography), no. 28, Obras completas (Complete works), ed. I. Iparraguirre y C. de Dalmases, Madrid, 1977, p. 107.
⁶ “Oratio autem fit ad Deum ratione attributorum essentialium, in quibus personae non distinguuntur”, in St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentum in quartum librum Sententiarum, dist. 16, q. 4, art. 6.
⁷ Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, I, q. 39, art.7.
⁸ Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Haereticarum fabularum compendium, lib. 2, cap. 9, in J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, t. 83, Paris, 1859, cols. 395-398.
⁹ Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, I, q. 44.