Many people
explain Trinity as the Father the Creator, the Son the Redeemer, and the Holy
Spirit the Sanctifier, as this way of explaining Trinity reflects the three
personalities in one God. In Trinity, “creator”, “redeemer”, and “sanctifier”
are the three characteristics in union or the three hypostatic unity of one
God.
Some people
use the three hypostases of Trinity with a metaphor of the three states of
water: vapor (gas), water (liquid) and ice (solid). But, I prefer to use a metaphor of light: one
white light showing three distinctive rays of color as it passes through a
prism. All these three rays can be put
back into the same white light with another prism. In fact, light was created by God the Father,
the Creator, on the very first day of Creation , when the earth was still dark
and not fully formulated (Genesis 1:3). In fact, God is light, as there is no
darkness in God (1 John 1:5). Thus, using one light that comes with three rays
of colored lights as a metaphor for Triune God – one God of three hypostases –
is more appropriate.
Our Triune God
reveals Godself and God’s three hypostases gradually through the Bible, from
the beginning of the Book of Genesis on, all the way to the end of the Book of
Revelation. The way I see this gradual self-revelation of God of three
hypostases is based on the Creation and God’s responses to the defilements of
the Creation caused by our sins.
Revelation of the three divine hypostases (the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit) of one God reflects God’s desire to keep the Creation good, as it
was good when it was made by the Father the Creator (Genesis 1:31). That is why
God revealed Godself as the Son to redeem the original goodness of God’s
Creation, including the original goodness of us, God’s beloved (1 Thessalonians
1:4; James 2:5), as we are being created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26). As God the Redeemer restores the goodness in
us through reconciliation with God’s mercy and enlightening with God’s wisdom
and logos, we are being prepared to be entrusted again by God the Father the
Creator not only for the fiduciary stewardship of His Creation but also to
build His Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, because this is to carry on the
mission of God the Son the Redeemer. For
us to be commissioned, God the Holy Spirit the Sanctifier comes from God the
Father the Creator to us, as on Pentecost.
This Trinitarian revelation of one God continues on and remains with us
all the way until the end of time, until seeing God finally face to face
(Revelation 22:4).
God’s self- revelatory
evolves from Genesis 3 all the way to
Revelation 22, following the Creation and a brief period of harmony among God
and His Creation, including the humans (Genesis 1-2).
In Genesis 1,
God, as Elohim, which is a masculine
Hebrew word, reveals Himself as the Creator.
It was when the Holy Spirit was present as blowing winds (ruah , which is feminine). As Elohim creates a human with clay, he put
his breath (neshmah, which is
feminine) to give life and animate the human (Genesis 2:7). At that time, only the God is revealed as Elohim (masculine) the Creator and Ruah and Neshmah (feminine), the two hypostases. This two-out-of-the-three
self-revelation of Triune God continues throughout the Old Testament, though
God in the Old Testament is also called Adonai
(master), El Shaddai (almighty God), El Elyon (God most high), Yahweh
/ Jehovah (“I am”), El Oram (everlasting God), El
Roi (seer God), El Gibbor (God of
strength), and El chay (living God) while
all of these names of God come with masculine impression, the Holy Spirit in
the Old Testament, Ruah and Neshmah,
are feminine.
While these
feminine Hebrew words for the Holy Spirit, Ruah
and Neshmah, precedes the neutoral Greek
word on the Holy Spirit, Pneuma, and
the masculine Greek word, Parakletos,
God as Elohim in the Old Testament
precedes God the Father in the New Testament, as the Hebrew word, Abbha, is used by Jesus in calling God
in heaven – El Elyon. It was when Jesus was going through
psychologically and spiritually agonizing time in Gethsemane on the night
before his death (Mark 14:36).
In John’s
Gospel, Jesus reveals Holy Spirit as Parakletos
in his Last Supper discourse, signaling to the disciples that the Holy Spirit
is not just pneuma, because, by
naming pneuma as parakletos, it will stay with them as their guide, counselor,
advocate, and comforter, just as he, the Son, has (John 14:16, 14:26, 15:26,
16:7).
By the time
Jesus, the Son, died, all the three hypostases of Triune God, the Father (Elohim, Abbha), the Son (Jesus the
Christ), and the Holy Spirit (ruah, neshmah,
pneuma, parakletos) were revealed in the Bible, to mark the climax of God’s
evolving salvation process, moving from Genesis 3 into Revelation.
It is also
important to note that the revelation of the Son is in response to our
persistent defilement by our sins, which corrupted priests and defied judges
and prophets throughout the time of the Old Testament, as metaphorically
juxtaposed in Jesus’ parable of the defilement of the vineyard (Matthew 21:33-44).
With the above
background in mind, I must begin with God’s Creation, as the Father is the
Creator. But, God’s Creation was defiled by our sins. So, the Father the
Creator has sent the Son the Redeemer to restore the goodness of His Creation.
Through the death and the resurrection of the Son the Redeemer, we rectify our
relationship with the Father through the Son. Then, the Holy Spirit the
Sanctifier is poured upon us not only to sanctify our faith, making us the
sacramental beings, and to commission us to carry on the salvific work of the
Son the Redeemer, as it is the Will of the Father, who initiated this process
and has sent the Son the Redeemer and the Holy Spirit the Sanctifier.
Now, let’s put
this view of Trinity through the creation and salvation history from Genesis
on.
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One way to
approach Trinity is to view it as an evolving way of God’s self-revelation
through His salvific process, which started in response to the Original Sin committed
by Adam and Eve, all the way into the restoration of the beauty of the Garden
of Eden into the New Jerusalem in Revelation 22.
First, God the
Elohim revealed Himself as the
Creator. As Genesis 1:1 says, God
created heavens and the earth. Then,
Genesis 1:2 describes that the earth was not fully formed yet, it was still
empty and dark. However, waters and the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, as ruah, were already present on earth. The
presence of the Holy Spirit before the earth took its form and all the
creatures on it were formed indicates that the Holy Spirit is of critical
importance when something is formed with God’s will. In this context, the
Hebrew word used for the Holy Spirit is ruah,
which is feminine and literally means winds, movements of air.
When God
formed a human and gave life to it, he put his breath into its nasal cavity (Genesis
2:7). In Hebrew, another feminine Hebrew word, neshmah,
is used both for the breath of God (Genesis 2:7), which turned a molded clay
into a living human, Adam.
There is a
juxtaposition between ruah (Genesis
1:2) and neshmah (Genesis 2:7), as ruah was necessary for God the Elohim
filled the void of the earth, making the earth a living place in God’s whole
Creation, while neshmah of God the Elohim was necessary to create and give
life to the humans. The common denominator between ruah and neshmah is life, as the former is to give life to the
earth and the latter is to give life to the humans. Also, given the fact that neshmah is also a movement of air, but
it is coming out of a living being, in this case, it is coming out of El chay (living God, i.e. Psalm 84:2) as
His breath.
Later in the
New Testament, Jesus the Son indicates his breath as the Holy Spirit to his
disciples, on the evening of his resurrection (John 20:22), suggesting that ruah and neshmah can become essentially the same as the Greek neutral word, pneuma, as the Holy Spirit, whether it
comes as a form of wind or breath. In
Trinity, the breath of the Son (John
20:22) is a new form of the breath of the Father (Genesis 2:7). It is when the
Son has proven that his life is everlasting, as it has overcome death. Thus, the Son, in his essence, is El chay (living God) and El olam (everlasting God), as it is what
the Father is.
The Holy
Spirit was also necessary to bring forth the Son, as it was the Holy Spirit
that made Mary pregnant with Jesus (Matthew 1:20), making the Word become flesh
to dwell among us (John 1:14). In making Godself appear in a tangible human
form, as Jesus, as the Son, there is a parallel between the Holy Spirit (pneuma) and the Word (logos).
Furthermore, the Word was at the beginning, as it was with God and is
God (John 1:1). Thus, the Word and the
Holy Spirit are reciprocal in Trinitarian sense, as both of these relate to the
Son in the same way. God the Holy Spirit
was made flesh as God the Son (Matthew 1:20), the Word, which is God (John
1:1), was made flesh as the Son to dwell among us (John 1:14).
One
interesting aspect of this parallel between the Holy Spirit and the Word in
regard to the Son, Jesus, God incarnate, is that God’s intent to put an order
in the World has become evident with bringing the Son to the World. Revelation
of God through the Son was to bring order to the World, and it is a very
critical step in God’s unfolding salvation plan.
When God
created the earth and filled it with everything, including all living beings,
it was good (Genesis 1:25). Then, God created a man in His image, making both
male and female (Genesis 1:27) and entrusted them to manage the earth (Genesis
1:28). Namely, the earth is the World. At that time, both the World and the
humans were very good (Genesis 1:31). So, the humans, Adam and Eve, were living
in the Garden of Eden, which means paradise in Hebrew, as they were entrusted
and commissioned to take care of it (Genesis 2:15).
The goodness
of God’s creation, including the
goodness of the World, began to be stained with human defilements upon the
Original Sin, as described in Genesis 3 and on.
The Original Sin marks the
beginning of the ongoing corruption of the World, continuing as the deuteronoic
cycle of sin, as one sin bled into another and more, in spite of being punished
and having repented.
First, God’s
judgement was to evict Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, making human life
mortal and subject to suffering (Genesis 3:15-19). By kicking Adam and Eve out of Eden, God was
no longer able to entrust the humans the tree of life (Genesis 3:24). In spite of this judgement, the humans did
not take a lesson well, as their sin escalated into murder out of jealously,
resulting in further judgement (Genesis 4:1-16). This cycle of sin continues on
to a boiling point for God to send the Flood (Genesis 6).
Though He
ensures that we know due consequences of our sinful acts through His judgement,
God also wanted us to repent and improve ourselves so that He would not have to
punish. This reminds us that God cares. For this reason, God sent prophets to
warn us when we are slipping into sins and heading toward the danger of
receiving due judgement. However, as the
deuteronomic cycle throughout the Old Testament shows, we beat and killed the
prophets, rather than respecting and following God’s will through their
messages. In spite of our such a despicable sinfulness, God’s mercy prompted
Him to send Himself as the Son to us in the World, hoping that we would really
learn this time and break the cycle of sins.
This was when the Son came into the picture. However, did we respect the
Son and listened to him? In other
words, did we repent the sins we had committed – repent for offending God and
for failing to be good stewards of His Creation?
No. We
betrayed him, mocked him, and killed him. To some, the ignorant, it was out of
anger (Mark 14:63; John 5:16), as the jeering crowd, shouted to crucify him. To
others, the narcissists, it was out of jealousy (Mark 15:10), as his presence
disturbed their deep insecurity.
In fact, the
way we have let our sins offend God the Father the Creator and killed God the
Son the Redeemer reflects Jesus’ parable of the tenant workers of the vineyard
(Matthew 21:33-44), which is related to the Vineyard Song in Isaiah 5. In this
parable, God the Father the Creator is the landowner, who created the vineyard
and entrusted the tenant workers to manage the vineyard. This parallels the
fact that God the Father the Creator gave us the humans the fiduciary
stewardship of His Creation – the World or the earth, as it is like the
vineyard of the parable.
In this
parable, Jesus meant the vineyard for the Kingdom of Israel or the Northern
Kingdom, which perished in 722 BC, because of their persistently unrepentant
sins. Many prophets, who are the
servants of the landowner in the parable, warned the Israelites to repent and
return to God. But, they refused and continued to sin and offend God. So, God
finally took the ultimatum action.
The parable
tells that the landowner took the vineyard from unfaithful tenant workers and
gave it to others, after the original tenant workers murdered the son of the
landowner, upon killing all of his servants.
This suggests that God the Father the Creator, who created the earth,
metaphorically referenced to the vineyard, gives His Creation to those who are
faithful to Him. But, the World has to be redeemed and the goodness of the
people also need to be redeemed for them to be faithful. For this, God the Son
the Redeemer, died, as the son of the landowner died, and was raised from the
dead by the power of God the Father the Creator through God the Holy Spirit the
Sanctifier.
Because the
Son was raised from the dead, God has proven that our sins cannot defeat the
power of God , even though our sins once killed the Son.
Just as the
Holy Spirit left the body of the Son with his last breath on the Cross, the
World turned dark, echoing God banishing from Eden, as Adam and Eve were
evicted. But, it did not mean that God abandoned the World and us, as He sure
did not abandoned the Son. So, God the Father raised (John 5:21) God the Son
through God the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:11) on the third day, in order to
continue on His salvation process further unfold. Thus, the risen Son reached
out to the disciples, who abandoned, and restore their faith in him by sending
pouring his breath and commanding them to receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:
19-23). The Holy Spirit was back in the
World upon the Resurrection of the Son. Because of the Holy Spirit in the
post-resurrection world, our history has been moving forward on to redeeming
the lost Eden – to redeem the defiled and lost vineyard, until the end of time.
As the
Eastertide Sunday Gospel narratives describe, and as the risen Christ taught
the two disciples about his teaching on their way to Emmaus, the risen God the
Son the Redeemer refreshed his teaching for us as he prepares us to become true
fiduciary stewards of God’s vineyard – God’s creation and to join God the Son
the Redeemer’s unfolding work of building the Kingdom on earth.
The
establishment of the Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven is the purpose of God
the Son the Redeemer to be sent to this world through God the Holy Spirit the
Sanctifier impregnating Immaculate Mary and to send God the Holy Spirit the
Sanctifier directly to us on Pentecost after the Son returns to the Father.
The Kingdom
completes in Revelation 22, which is the very last book of the Bible.
By Pentecost,
Triune God makes all three hypostases known to us: the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit. The Son explains all these three to us the disciples of this day
before his Ascension so that he can send the Holy Spirit upon us to enable and
empower us to carry on his mission as our mission to continue building the
Kingdom. Thus, with grace of our Triune God, especially with the gifts of God
the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:4-11),
we become more able to build the Kingdom as our mission, as the trusted
co-workers of God’s new post-resurrection and post-pentecost vineyard.
Today, we live
in the time of an extension of the Acts of the Apostles, past the Old Testament
and the Gospels. The old defiled
vineyard is replaced with the new vineyard through the death and the
resurrection of the Son by the love of the Father. The loving Father has given us a new chance
to be His fiduciary stewards and His Son’s friends (John 15:15). This continues all the way into the time of
the Book of Revelation.
Until we see
the Father, we continue to work diligently and faithfully, utilizing the gifts
of the Holy Spirit. But, for this, we first must encounter the Son – not only
through the Holy Spirit, which is omnipresent, but also through the Word and
through the Sacrament of the Eucharist as it is Corporis et Sanguinis Christi, instituted by the Son during the
Last Supper.
No wonder that
Trinity Sunday, which follows Pentecost Sunday, is followed by Corpus Christi
Sunday.
Now, we are
much more familiar with how all three hypostases of one God – the Father the
Creator, the Son the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit the Sanctifier, are related
not only to each other but also to us – to our purpose as God’s fiduciary
stewards, servants, beneficiaries, children, and friends.
By the
adoptive nature of the Holy Spirit, we are in Triune God’s family (Romans
8:14-17, the Second Reading for Trinity Sunday B), as God’s beloved children
and the Son’s friends, as well. In this
way, with the full revelation of all three divine hypostases of Trinity during
Eastertide, we celebrate Trinity Sunday and acknowledge our existence drawn
into the divine space of Trinity, as we continue to journey into the
establishment of the Kingdom and the realization of the New Eden, the New
Jerusalem, as imaged in Revelation 22.
Blessed are we
to be called the Father’s beloved Children, just like the Son, and the Son’s
friends, as advocated, counseled, comforted, and guided by the Holy Spirit!
We encounter these
hypostases of our Triune God in everything, as reflected in the Spirituality of
St. Ignatius of Loyola, as everything in the Universe is created by God the Elohim, who is also El chay , who breathes
and give neshmah – making us living
beings to practice fiduciary stewardship of Elohim’s
Creation. Let us keep the Creation
undefiled, while keeping our soul clean, as we continue to strive on the
salvific mission of the Son.
Just as the quality of a prism or the way it is
set determines what rays of color come out of white light, what hypostases we
encounter depends on the situation and time between God’s Creation and the
realization of the New Eden (New Jerusalem) as we continue to journey on
eschatologically.
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