Holy Trinity

HOLY TRINITY. - The Trinitarian mystery, the revelation to humanity of the intimate constitution of God, is enunciated in the following terms: "God is absolutely one and relatively three; that is, in a single nature or essence, most simple, there subsist three distinct Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, to whom all the essential divine attributes equally belong."

I. SACRED SCRIPTURE

In the Old Testament God did not openly reveal the mystery, perhaps to avoid giving the Jewish people, surrounded by idolaters, an occasion to fall into polytheism. Nevertheless, traces of a distinction of terms within the Godhead are found there, especially in the Sapiential Books; Divine Wisdom is described there as assisting and cooperating with God (Prov. 8:22); in Eccl. 24:5: "I came forth from the mouth of the Most High before every creature," and in Wis. 7:25 it is said: "Brightness of eternal Light..., spotless mirror of the majesty of God, image of his goodness." It will not be out of place to note, moreover, that in these same books mention is made of the Word — Λόγος — of God, divinely operative (Wis. 9:1; Eccl. 42:15, etc.). Other hints are found in the messianic texts (Ps. 2 and 109; Is. 7:14; Dan. 7:13 and others), in the Theophanies or divine apparitions, called the "Angel of Yahweh" (for example, that of the burning bush, Ex. 3:2). Even vaguer and more obscure are the indications of the Old Testament concerning the Holy Spirit. All these indications, however, vague in themselves, acquire value and substance in the light of Christian Revelation. The Synoptics present the Trinity in concrete expressions, accessible to popular understanding. Without in any way diminishing the unity of God, the heritage of the ancient Revelation, the three Divine Persons — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — are indicated distinctly and with real mutual relations of existence and action. Jesus is the Son of God; upon him the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove, while the voice of the Father resounds: "This is my beloved Son" (ἀγαπητός = only, according to the language of the time). Thus in the waters of the Jordan and on Thabor (Mk. 17:11; Mt. 3:16 and 17:1; Lk. 3:21). Jesus acts as God: he forgives sins (Lk. 5:20), perfects and completes the law of God (Mt. 5:21), is master of the Sabbath (Mt. 12:8; Mk. 3:1), is judge of all men and promises eternal life to those who love him above all things (Mt. 7:22 and 25:31; 8:21 and 10:37; 19:21; Lk. 9:59 and 6:22; Mk. 10:21); only the Son knows the Father perfectly, as the Father knows the Son (Mt. 11:27 and Lk. 10:22). Peter's cry: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," at Caesarea, is a superhuman truth, manifested to the Apostle directly by the heavenly Father (Mt. 16:16-17), and Jesus himself confirms it forcefully before the High Priest in the Sanhedrin; indeed, for this declaration of his he is condemned to death (Mt. 26:63-65; Mk. 14:61-64; Lk. 22:70).

The Holy Spirit, even if his personality is not indicated with unequivocal clarity in the Incarnation of the Word (Lk. 1:35; Mt. 1:18), is certainly attested in connection with John the Baptist (Lk. 1:15), with Simeon (Lk. 2:25), with the baptism of Jesus (Mk. 1:9-11), with the blasphemy against him (Mt. 12:31-32) and in the promise of Jesus (Lk. 24:49). The testimonies of the Synoptics conclude with the trinitarian formula of Baptism: "Go therefore and teach all peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt. 28:19). In the Greek text one reads: εἰς ὄνομα = "to the name"; and the conjunction καί = "and" is repeated, with the article τοῦ = "of the," before each of the three Persons, emphasizing their absolute equality, even in the real distinction of the three Terms, to whom the baptized person is consecrated. The attempt made by some critic (Conybeare) to undermine the authenticity and integrity of the baptismal formula is vain (cf. J. Lebreton, Les origines du dogme de la Trinité. I, 2nd ed., Paris 1927, pp. 599-609).

From the Acts of the Apostles, which echo the Synoptics, it is sufficient to cite the following text: "The Holy Spirit has placed them (the Bishops) to rule the Church of God, which he purchased with his own blood" (Act. 20, 28). Auguste Sabatier (L'Apôtre et Paul, Paris 1896, p. 366) wrote that the Trinitarian dogma is foreign to the thought of St. Paul. This assertion, gratuitous and false, is contradicted by the innumerable texts in which the Apostle explicitly names the three divine Persons, as in the Trinitarian formula that became usual, especially in the opening of his letters. The divine personality of Christ in relation to the Father is emphasized with power of language and thought. The expression is frequent: "Grace and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 1, 7; Gal. 1, 3). Jesus is sent by the Father to save the world (Gal. 4, 4; Rom. 8, 3), he is the own Son, ἴδιος, of the Father (Rom. 9, 5; Tit. 2, 13). Christ, continuing to subsist as God in the divine nature, took our nature, making himself man (Phil. 2, 6) and he: "is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation: for in him all things were created in heaven and on earth... All things were created through him and in him and he is before all things and all things exist by virtue of him" (Col. 1, 15 ff.). The two terms, Father and Son, are really distinct and operative Persons, to whom the name of God is equally attributed, because they communicate in the same identical divine nature.

The person of the Holy Spirit is less defined, but texts are not lacking that assert without doubt his divine personality, such as that of Rom. 8, 11: "That if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you... and the other in 1 Cor. 3:16: "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (cf. Eph. 6:19). In Tit. 3:5 it is said that the Spirit is sent to us by the Father through the Son. Furthermore, the mutual relation of the three divine Persons is clearly signified, in such a way that the Son proceeds from the Father and the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son: "When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son... so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Father'" (Gal. 4:4 ff.). If St. Paul's doctrine is eminently soteriological and Christocentric, it is nevertheless neither lawful nor possible to erase from his doctrinal framework the concept of God One and Triune.

St. John, moreover, not only affirms the distinction of the three Persons, but also indicates the ways of the divine processions and relations, setting forth in concrete language those relationships between the nature and the Persons which the Fathers and theologians would translate into philosophical language. The fourth Gospel opens with the proclamation of the divinity of the Word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The eternal Word is the Only-begotten of the Father, μονογενής (ibid.), and cannot be confused with the creatures all made through him, while he is not an instrument of the Father, even though he is after the Father in the order of nature: he is sent and given by the Father (Lk. 3:16), receives from the Father (16:5), but is one thing with the Father, who is immanent in him: "Philip, whoever sees me sees also the Father... do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?" (14:9). "I and the Father are one" (10:30). The Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and by the Son (14:16 and 15:26); it is the Spirit who must complete the sanctification, the instruction and the strengthening of the Apostles, in the truth already preached by the Lord (3:5 and 16:13-14). St. John, while preserving as predominant the concept of the intimate vital unity of God, at the same time vigorously affirms the three divine Persons as terms really distinct and operative in that unity. Thus the master lines of the Trinitarian mystery are not so much traced as so deeply embedded in the consciousness of the Christian community that the Fathers and theologians were able to develop from them a rich and harmonious conceptual elaboration.

II. TRADITION

The enunciations of the dogma of the Holy Trinity, which in the earliest tradition remain on the plane of concreteness and simplicity, are found from the 1st century of Christianity onward in the creeds, in the liturgy (especially the baptismal liturgy), in prayers and in art. The Didache (second half of the 1st century) admonishes that Baptism must be conferred "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." In the 2nd century St. Justin (I Apol., 61, 3-13), St. Irenaeus (Demonstratio, 3 and 7) and Tertullian (Adv. Prax., 26) concordantly preserve the schema of this baptismal liturgy, trinitarian and christological in character. One must cite the words of Tertullian (loc. cit.): "(Christus)... mandans ut tingerent in Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum non in unum. Nam nec semel, sed ter, ad singula nomina in personas singulas tingimur." In Tertullian, St. Hippolytus, St. Cyprian, St. Dionysius of Alexandria and others there are traces of a profession of faith, in common use in all the Churches, with a trinitarian baptismal formula in terms so clear as to leave no room for doubt or discussion. Echoes of this profession are found in the doxological formula of St. Clement of Rome, in the celebrated letter to the Corinthians (58, 2): "As God lives, and as the Lord Jesus Christ lives, and the Holy Spirit, the faith and hope of the elect," and in a very ancient Greek evening hymn, which hails Christ as "joyful Light of the holy glory of the immortal Father," and concludes: "We praise the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit of God."

Around the year 265 St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, substantially anticipating the Creed that was sanctioned at Nicaea, had thus synthesized in the Expositio fidei the faith of the Church in the mystery: "One God, Father of the living Word... perfect begetter of the perfect (Son), Father of the Only-begotten Son. One Lord... God from God... true Son of true God... And one Holy Spirit, who receives his substance from God... in whom God the Father and God the Son are manifested... perfect Trinity, undivided in glory, in eternity, in kingdom... Nothing created or subordinate in the Trinity... Never was the Son absent from the Father, nor the Holy Spirit from the Son, but there was always the same immutable Trinity." The Council of Nicaea, sixty years later, would fix the fundamental expression of the mystery with the term ὁμοούσιος (= consubstantial). To understand and evaluate, however, the Nicene definition of 325 and the Arian heresy that determined it, it is necessary to recall the genesis of trinitarian theology, which was laboriously developing from the 2nd to the 3rd century.

The Christian preaching of the one and triune God had, from the beginning, two adversaries: Judaism, opposed to the Trinity, and polytheism, opposed to the divine unity. Over the more or less decadent religious practices, especially of polytheism, there were superimposed philosophical currents, with a Stoic and Neoplatonic background, which aimed to rationalize religion, reducing it to the metaphysical sphere. Stoicism, having cleared the field of polytheism with a naturalistic interpretation of its mythological basis, constructs its religious world in a form of pantheism, whereby the universe is conceived as the living whole, which embraces and unifies spirit and matter, God and cosmos. In this whole the principal part belongs to the Λόγος or universal reason (sometimes identified with fire, πῦρ νοητόν), which is the vital force immanent in matter and which in man becomes thought and word (Λόγος ἐνδιάθετος - προφορικός). Neoplatonism, on the other hand, on religious ground, in opposition to Stoicism, asserted itself as a transcendent monotheism and on the cosmic-psychological plane as an irreducible dualism. The Neoplatonic Divinity is inaccessible, wholly severed from the material world: between the eternal God and eternal matter are ranged infinite intermediate divine beings (aeons and demiurges), which, operating on matter, transform it into our sensible world, imitating the ideas; absolute perfections, subsistent, closer to God. Among the intermediate beings there also emerges here a Λόγος, the principal architect of the universe.

Now, while Philo attempted in Alexandria the reconciliation of Neoplatonism with the Jewish religion, in Gnosticism there was the attempt at a more universal synthesis, on the basis of Persian dualism (Mazdeism), also accepting elements of various Oriental religions, called "mystery" religions. The aims of conquest on the part of a "gnosis" so complicated in a mystical-rational hybridism extended also to the new Christian religion and its mysteries. As regards the Trinity, God the Father was identified with the transcendent divinity: Jesus was considered as a simple man, into whom Christ descended, one of the aeons, to liberate the spirit, that is, the soul, from the slavery of matter.

Valiant apologists, such as St. Irenaeus and Tertullian, rejected the Gnostic deformations, appealing simply to tradition; others, however, such as St. Justin, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, coming from philosophical schools not alien to Neoplatonism and to Stoic elements, more boldly took upon themselves the task of demonstrating that the data of Revelation were not at all in contrast with human reason, and thus there arose the first schemas for translating the trinitarian mystery into the categories and formulas of a philosophical language.

The first object of study was the mysterious relationship between Christ and the Father. The apologists certainly did not call into doubt what Revelation has suggested to reason, especially through the fourth Gospel, which presents Jesus Christ as true God, distinct from the Father, and bound to the Father by a bond of spiritual generation, according to the process of divine knowledge, to which belongs the term Λόγος = "Word." But the Λόγος awakens in them memories of Stoicism and Neoplatonic nostalgias, from which they derive certain ways of expressing themselves that seem to lower the divine dignity of the Word to the level of the intermediate beings of Neoplatonism, which, however lofty, always remain in the category of "creature." The consequence of this somewhat confused state of affairs is an exaggerated separation of the Son from the Father, under the influence of Neoplatonic transcendence, and the tendency to reduce the eternal generation of the Word to a temporal generation, coinciding with the creation of the world, given also the important function attributed to the Word by the prologue of St. John: "Through him all things were made and without him nothing was made." Stoicism, moreover, favored this tendency, leading to understanding the Word first as hidden in the bosom of the Father (Λόγος ἐνδιάθετος), then as generated or manifested in the act of universal creation (λόγος προφορικός). It was thus that Origen called the Father ὁ Θεός, the God par excellence, and the Son simply Θεός, without the article, and also δεύτερος Θεός (God in the second degree). Equally unfortunate expressions are found also in St. Justin, Athenagoras and Tertullian.

III. ERRORS AND DEFINITIONS

The exaggerated "henotheism" of the Stoic school, with its single God immanent in the world, of the Judaizing sects and of the Oriental religions, which were spreading rapidly throughout the Roman Empire, was creeping through the whole West under the name of "divine monarchianism" and was closing the way to every truly Trinitarian conception, even compromising the divinity of Christ. The teachers of this current were, among others, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Noetus of Smyrna, Praxeas, Artemon and especially Sabellius, whence the name "Sabellianism." This system is a nominalistic modalism, which in fact annihilates the mystery of the T., because the three Divine Persons are reduced to three aspects or modes of being of a single God (Father = God the Creator; Son = God the Redeemer; Holy Spirit = God the Sanctifier). Alongside this modalism (v.), adoptionism (v.) also developed, especially through the work of Theodotus of Byzantium, who sought to propagate the erroneous doctrine precisely in Rome, whence however he was immediately expelled by Pope Victor (2nd century). The adoptionists, consistently with modalistic doctrines, being unable to recognize in Christ a true God, natural Son of the Father, taught that he was, in reality, only a man, and Son of God only in an adoptive sense. The patrons of this error in the East took the name of subordinationists (v. SUBORDINATIONISM) and denied the equality of the Son with the Father, making of Christ a being inferior to the Father, however excellent in comparison with the other creatures. Modalism, adoptionism and subordinationism, intimately connected with one another, are found clearly in the writings of Paul of Samosata (v.), bishop of Antioch, toward the middle of the 3rd century. Connected with him is a controversy that might appear, at first sight, purely verbal and is instead the prelude to a long duel fought between Catholic orthodoxy and Arianism, with the critical peaks of the 4th century, on the basis of the term ὁμοούσιος = consubstantial, which passed to the Antiochene school by derivation from the philosophy of Aristotle. The Stagirite distinguished in his philosophy a first essence (or substance), οὐσία πρώτη, and a second essence, οὐσία δευτέρα. First substance is being in its real, physical concreteness, as it is found in the individual, for example: man in Titius; second substance is the specific, abstract essence, in which several individuals of the same species agree, for example: humanity. Ὁμοούσιος could, therefore, mean both a subject that agrees with another in the same specific nature (as, for example, Titius and Caius) and a subject that has the same concrete substance, numerically one, as another. It is clear that the term ὁμοούσιος cannot be attributed to the divine Persons in the first sense, but only in the second.

In Rome, from the 2nd century onward, ὁμοούσιος was used in the correct sense, as is demonstrated by a letter of Pope Dionysius to Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, whereas Paul of Samosata, in the following century, abused that term in a modalistic sense, confusing the οὐσία πρώτη with the οὐσία δευτέρα, thereby reducing the Word not only to the same substance as the Father, but also to the same Person. But the interpretation of the Samosatene was bound to remain isolated, because the Council of Antioch of 268 proscribed the term ὁμοούσιος, which he had abused, without worrying too much about the fact that that term, rightly understood, was used at Rome and more or less everywhere.

But even apart from the technicality of that term, it is certain that the concept signified by it was already acquired by pre-Nicene tradition, and the first ecumenical Council did nothing but sanction it definitively against the heresy of Arius. The novelty, therefore, lay not in the definition of Nicaea, but in the Arian heresy (v. ARIANESIMO), which may be summed up in these principal points: 1) The true God is ἀγέννητος, that is, unbegotten, nor can he communicate himself to anyone because of his transcendence; 2) God is not Father ab aeterno, because he created the Word, his Son, and through him all other things, at a determined time; 3) the Word is not properly God, because he is heterogeneous to the Divinity, like any other creature, and one cannot even say that he knows God perfectly: both the Son and the Holy Spirit are clearly separated from God, because they were made from a substance that is not that of the Father; 4) the sonship of the Word cannot be called absolutely natural, but merely adoptive. Errors so pernicious demolished the Trinity of God and the divinity of Christ.

The new heresy, notwithstanding the Apology of Arius and his followers, was condemned, and the doctrine of the faith was sealed in a Symbol which, with slight revisions by the First Council of Constantinople (a. 381), has passed into the liturgy of the Mass. Here is the principal formula of the symbol: «We believe... in Jesus Christ, our Lord, Son of God, born only-begotten of the Father, that is, from the substance of the Father... born not made, consubstantial (ὁμοούσιος) with the Father». The epigones of Arianism (Anomoeans, Acacians, Homoiousians) strove in vain for almost the whole of the 4th century to twist the meaning of ὁμοούσιος or to erase it outright from the doctrine of the faith. St. Athanasius and many other Fathers strenuously defended the Nicene definition until its complete triumph, thus saving the basis of trinitarian theology, which, after the elaboration of the three Cappadocians and of Hilary of Poitiers, found its definitive systematization in the fifteen books De Trinitate of St. Augustine. Some hypercritics of our times have attempted to maintain that the Nicene definition would be founded on an equivocation, because ὁμοούσιος would have been understood by the Westerners in the sense of numerical unity of substance or nature, whereas the three great Cappadocians would have understood it only in the sense of specific unity; but the false interpretation of the pure doctrine of St. Basil, of St. Gregory Nazianzen and of St. Gregory of Nyssa (proposed by Harnack, Loofs and Turmel, who have equivocally called it «neo-Nicenism») would not only mark a step backward or an involution of the trinitarian mystery, but would entail a true tritheism (v.). The in-depth study of those Fathers, of the most genuine Catholic tradition, has demolished the foundations of this Protestant attempt to rehabilitate the Arian heresy (cf. St. Basil, Homilia contra Sabellium, Arium et Anomaea, 3: PG 31, 605); St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31, 9; St. Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio Catech., 3). In the year 381 the First Council of Constantinople confirmed the Nicene definition and reaffirmed the concept of consubstantiality, applied to the Third Person in relation to the Son and the Father, against the heresy of the Macedonians or Pneumatomachi, who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. The following year, a particular Council assembled at Antioch compiled a profession of faith, to be sent to Pope Damasus, in these terms: «We believe that the Divinity, the power, the essence (= οὐσία) is one in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit; equal the glory, coeternal the dominion in three perfect Hypostases, that is, in three perfect Persons». It remained to explain how, given the numerical unity of the divine essence, a real distinction of the Persons was conceivable. First the Cappadocians, with St. Basil at their head, then more acutely St. Augustine, elaborated the doctrine of the divine relations, which constitute the logical presuppositions of the real distinction of the Divine Persons, without in the least impairing the essential unity. Their doctrine passed directly to Scholasticism, which was able to present trinitarian theology in an organic and systematic treatment. The Church does not for this reason dispense herself from vigilance and intervention, when new opinions threaten the purity of the dogma fixed in the conciliar definitions. Thus, in the 13th century, the Fourth Lateran Council intervened to specify the terms and concepts of the mystery, against the errors of Joachim of Fiore (v.), who was connected with the father of nominalism (v.), Roscelin (v.), already energetically combated by St. Anselm. In the 15th century, the Council of Florence clarified, with the decree Pro Jacobitis, the concept of the relation of origin and the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (ab utroque), in the face of the positions of the schismatic Eastern Church, which rejected the Filioque inserted into the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol, beginning in the 6th century (for the first time in Spain).

IV. THEOLOGY OF THE MYSTERY

Human reason, faced with the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, can follow two paths: either start from the Trinity of Persons in order to arrive at the unity of nature (substance), according to the itinerary of Greek thought, synthesized by St. John Damascene; or move from the unity of the substance (or nature) in order to reach the Trinity of Persons, according to the itinerary of Latin theology, set forth above all by St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 1a, qq. 27-43). For the trinitarian speculation of Scholasticism it is necessary to start, as regards the Trinity, from the meaning of the two terms "nature-person" and from their mutual relations. Indeed, all trinitarian and christological heresies and errors arose from the confusion of these terms.

But the antecedents of scholastic speculation are already found in the Fathers. St. Augustine had insisted on the analogies that the spiritual soul presents with the Trinity, on the basis of the cognitive and volitional processes, while nevertheless holding firmly to the infinite distance between the created reality of the soul and the uncreated Divinity. In fact, in the soul Augustine discerned and brought out the following ternary states: "mens, notitia, amor" (= intellect, cognition, love); "memoria, intelligentia, voluntas" (memory, understanding, will); "esse, nosse, velle" (= to be, to know, to will). St. Thomas fixed his attention on the two specific and immanent operations of the human soul: intellection and volition, which even within the individuality of the human spirit, a spiritual and simple monad, lead to a duality on the operative plane. Now when the soul proposes to its own knowledge, not an external object, but itself, and turns to itself with love, there is a thinking subject, which in the mental word or idea of itself contemplates itself and loves itself with a total adherence of itself to itself. The thinking subject thus becomes a thought object, and between the two terms a line of conjunction is established, which is love. Even in the supreme spirit, which is God, by way of analogy, two operations can be considered, intellection and volition — though as perfectly immanent — which, without affecting its essential simplicity, are identified with its very nature. To understand this immanent dynamism of God, the following diagram may be in some way useful:

GOD
thinking thought thought thought
love

Thus one can more easily understand the two divine immanent processions, explicitly contained in the Symbols of faith and in the definitions of the ecclesiastical Magisterium, which necessarily imply distinct terms. In fact, every operative procession cannot be understood without starting from a terminus a quo and arriving at a terminus ad quem; divine intellection and volition, in themselves, will therefore require four terms, two for each operation. Now intellection has all the characteristics of a spiritual generation, as appears from the very terminology used for human cognition (to conceive, concept, to reproduce, etc.). The first divine procession, understood according to intellection, will have as its terminus a quo God, the subject and principle of thought (= Father), who, by thinking, conceives and therefore generates the Word (= Son). The second procession, which is to be understood according to volition, is more obscure and does not have the character of generation. God the Father contemplates himself in the Son (Word) and loves himself: the love that ineffably unites the Father with the Son constitutes the third term, which we call the Holy Spirit. And so the Son proceeds, by intellectual generation, from the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds, according to the operation of the will, from the Father and the Son. The mystery has barely been delineated through the processions of origin, as theologians call them, and already grave difficulties arise. The real distinction of the terms, which would be the Persons, would seem to clash with the absolute simplicity of God, in whom existence and nature, the attributes and the operations are one single and identical thing, in the most absolute way, thus rendering impossible any real distinction in the Divinity. Theologians nevertheless admit, rightly, a distinction of reason, with a real foundation (distinctio rationis ratiocinatae), among the various divine attributes, which for this reason are not synonymous. In this way it becomes possible to speak, distinctly, of intellection and volition in God, with their respective terms, while always preserving the absolute unity and simplicity of the divine essence. The difficulties are not yet overcome, because it is not seen how one can pass from this distinction of reason, even though "rationis ratiocinatae", to the affirmation of three terms or Persons, really distinct and subsisting in the same unique divine nature or essence, as faith requires. The Fathers and doctors of the Church found another logical presupposition of the trinitarian mystery in the doctrine of relations, which are already hinted at, concretely, in Sacred Scripture, which presents a paternity and a filiation in God, called now Father, now Son, now Holy Spirit. Aristotle, grasping its intimate meaning, defines relation as "τὸ πρός τι" (= ad aliquid), that is, a mutual reference of two things, as, for example, of the father to the son. It belongs to the categories of accidents, but has entirely special characteristics. While, for example, quantity and quality express a perfection that inheres in the subject and enriches it entitatively, relation expresses essentially a reference to another, a dynamic order of reference of one term to another term. Its consistency is not entitative, and, although it is a real relation or reference, it remains almost at the margins of reality, bringing no increase of perfection in the subject on the metaphysical plane. In it, therefore, one is accustomed to distinguish a twofold formality, namely the esse in, by which it is in a given subject, and the esse ad, by which it refers to another subject. The true constitutive note of relation is, without any doubt, the esse ad. From this it follows that relations, precisely because they bring into the subject no perfecting of an entitative order, but simply a state of reference to another, cannot be distinguished from one another except by way of opposition. Transferring, again by way of analogy, this doctrine to the plane of the Divinity, the two divine processions give rise to four relations: paternity, which expresses the reference of the Father to the Son, and filiation, which expresses the reference in the Son to the Father; the divine spiration, which refers the Father and the Son together to the Holy Spirit, and passive spiration (also called simply procession), which refers the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son. The absolute simplicity of the divine essence certainly does not permit us to understand the relations as accidents inherent in God himself: they are said instead to be subsistent, precisely by virtue of the one divine nature, with which they are identified according to the esse in. According to the esse ad, however, they cannot be identified with the divine essence, because the two formal concepts, being in oneself and being toward another, cannot be reduced to identity.

There is therefore, between the nature of God and the relations, if according to the formality of the esse ad, a distinction rationis ratiocinatae with a foundation far more substantial than that which holds among the simple divine attributes. From the distinction between the essence of God and the divine relations, theologians pass to the real distinction among those same subsistent relations. Nor should one fear that, through this process, one might arrive at affirming four terms or persons instead of three, because the relations, identified with the divine nature according to the esse in, are really distinguished among themselves only according to opposition. Since active spiration is not opposed to Paternity and Filiation, there are only three really distinct relations — Paternity, Filiation, and passive Spiration — and consequently only three (really distinct) Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Since, in God, the Persons are identified with the subsistent relations, the Father is Paternity itself, the Son is Filiation itself, and the Holy Spirit is (passive) Spiration itself. In conclusion, one may say that if the relations, according to the esse in, remain identified with the utterly simple and unique essence of God, according instead to the esse ad, they are really distinguished among themselves and constitute the Persons. The itinerary followed by theology thus goes from procession to relation and from relation to person. The rest of the treatise on the Trinity is a series of corollaries of the fundamental points that have been touched upon. In this way one understands the perfect equality of the Persons on the absolute metaphysical plane of the divinity; for the Persons differ among themselves, not by an entitative perfection which, present in one, would be lacking in the others, but only by a relation or relationship of origin, whereby the Son signifies derivation from the Father and the Holy Spirit signifies derivation from the Father and the Son. The Father, therefore, is not more perfect, nor more powerful, nor prior to the Son, whom he begets ab aeterna, and similarly the Holy Spirit, though proceeding from the Father and the Son, is not inferior to them; with them he shares the identical and unique nature, the indivisible basis of all absolute perfections. Everything that is essential belongs equally to each of the three Persons; but each Person possesses (or is) the divine essence with its respective attributes, according to the modalities of its own relation. A useful example for understanding this is the triangle, in which each angle embraces the whole surface in a direction distinct from the other two, precisely because the surface itself is one and identical. What instead refers to the divine relation as such remains incommunicably proper to each individual Person, and there are the personal properties known under the name of notions and notional acts: thus innascibility, that is, not deriving from another person, is exclusively proper to the Father, as is also begetting; whereas spiration is proper to the Father and the Son, and being spirated is a property of the Holy Spirit. Finally, circuminsession (v.) too, that is, the perfect immanence of one Person in the other two, though without identifying with or being absorbed into one another, is nothing but a consequence of the absolute unity of nature and of the real distinction of the relations subsisting in God.

V. TRANSCENDENCE OF THE MYSTERY

Catholic theology has certainly not claimed to resolve, and therefore to nullify in rationality, the lofty mystery, but has left it above any human conception. On the contrary, superficial and faithless scholars of modern times, driven by blind trust in the power of reason, have attempted, but in vain, to eliminate the Christian mystery, classifying it among the inconsistent triads of the various pagan religions and philosophies. More than Greco-Roman mythology, it is the rich literature of the Eastern religions that offers material for comparison with the Christian T[rinity] and, principally, of the Babylonian, Indian, Egyptian and Persian religions. In the Babylonian pantheon the prevailing triads are two: one cosmic composed of Anu (= heaven), of Enlil (= earth) and of Ea (= water) and the other astral, composed of Sin (= moon), of Samaš (= sun) and of Ištar (= Venus planet). Other triads are constituted by a man, a woman and a son. These triads are nothing but polytheistic groupings of three subjects endowed with their own nature and personality and united among themselves only accidentally. Moreover it is demonstrated that among the Babylonians they never had theological or ritual character (cf. G. Boson, La religione sumero-accadiana e babilonese-azzira, in P. Tacchi-Venturi, Storia delle religioni, I, 3rd ed., Turin 1949, p. 201 ff.). To some, the Indian religion has seemed better suited to the purpose. Within the multitude of its gods, a popular trimurti (triad) stands out, composed of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (= creator God, preserver God, destroyer God), which took shape at the beginning of the Christian era (after the 5th century A.D.). The common people see in it simply three gods; theologians see in it three aspects of the one divinity (Brahma), in relation to the world. The theological schools of Chankara, Ramanuja and Vallabha, starting from the "Upanishads" and the "Vedanta," elaborated a higher trimurti, composed of Sat (= being), Cit (= thought) and Ananda (= bliss), which together form the supreme divinity (= Brahma), and the triadic expression "saccidananda" met with success. Impartial critics, after long study, have reached the conclusion that these trimurtis, at first sight so astonishing, are either formally polytheistic or figurative explanations of the various aspects of the divinity. In none of them is there properly the idea of one substance in three persons, and this apart from the question of the mutual influence between the Christian religion, spread very early in that part of Asia, and the Indian religion, a question difficult to resolve for lack of reliable chronological data (cf. A. Ballini, Le religioni dell'India, in P. Tacchi-Venturi, op. cit., I, p. 416 ff.). The Egyptian religion too presents ternary and novenary classifications of its countless divinities. The most famous triad, also because of its diffusion in the Roman Empire at the birth of Christianity, is the one composed of Osiris (= father and husband), Isis (= wife and mother) and Horus (= son), in which Isis, who gathers the scattered limbs of her husband Osiris and raises him to life, ends by prevailing in the cult, becoming an enigmatic symbol in which many aspects of the divinity and of nature are personified. A simple exposition is enough to make one understand that the Egyptian triad has nothing to do with the mystery of the Christian Trinity (cf. A. Calderini, La religione degli Egiziani, in P. Tacchi-Venturi, op. cit., I, p. 289). Nor can a different judgment be passed on the late Persian triads, linked to the cult of Mithras (= sun), composed of Ahura-Mazda (= supreme and true God), Mithras (= sun) and Sraosha (= a hero), or else of Mithras, Cautes (= rising sun) and Cautopates (= setting sun). The first is a heterogeneous grouping and the second is the personification of the sun in its phases. One may confidently conclude with the following judgment of Fr. Lebreton, a specialist in trinitarian matters: "Je ne pense pas qu'il soit utile de discuter toutes ces fantaisies; elles marquent une phase curieuse, mais bien dépassée maintenant, de l'histoire des religions. En réalité la mythologie n'a rien fourni par elle-même à la théologie trinitaire" (Histoire du dogme de la Trinité, I, Paris 1927, pp. 17-18). Finally, another term of comparison is drawn from Neoplatonism: it is the philosophical triad of Plotinus, the mystical philosopher who lived in the 3rd century A.D., who taught that the transcendent Divinity, in the Platonic manner, is the Εὖ (= One), from which emanates the Ἠθῶς (= Intellect), which in turn gives rise to the Ψυχή (= Soul). The Plotinian triad, to which Christian influences are not, moreover, foreign, is the pantheistic degradation of the divinity, in perfect antithesis to the mystery of the One and Triune God of Christianity, who in his transcendence is clearly distinct from the created world. So that the alleged resemblances between the Christian trinitarian mystery on the one hand and the triads of polytheistic religions and of the various philosophical systems on the other, go no further than a verbal analogy and present no other affinity than that of the ternary number.

PIETRO PARENTE

VI. LITURGY

Since the purpose of the Catholic liturgy is to render to God, One and Three, the worship of latria or adoration, everything in it is ordered to this supreme end, from the sacrifice of the Mass to the Sacraments, to the Divine Office, to the cult of Mary and the Saints, and to catechesis itself. It is therefore no wonder that Rome, until the 14th century, considered it superfluous to honor the Most Holy Trinity as such with a special feast. Moreover, the Eastern Church still does not have a feast for the Trinity, whose mystery, in the Byzantine rite, is commemorated in a particularly special way on the day of Pentecost (v.). It is also worth bearing in mind that the few Latin liturgical prayers that are addressed directly to the Trinity are not in keeping with the genius of the ancient Roman liturgy, which addresses itself in principle to God the Father, and they reveal a late era: such are, for example, the Suscipe S. Trinitas and the Placeat S. Trinitas of Frankish origin, which begin to appear in the Ordo Missae in Sacramentaries and Missals between the 9th and 11th centuries (cf. P. Batiffol, Leçons sur la Messe, Paris 1927, pp. 20, 22). Even the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, which is celebrated on the 1st Sunday after Pentecost (raised by Pius X, on July 24, 1911, to the double rite of the first class: AAS, 3 [1911], p. 351), is not of Roman origin: it was born from private devotion to the mystery of the Trinity, which flourished in the Frankish lands during the Carolingian era and which must have received a notable impulse from the Admonitio generalis (§ 32) of 789 and from the Capitulare XXVIII (§ 33) of 794, which prescribed the exposition of Catholic doctrine concerning the Most Holy Trinity (cf. A. Boreitus, in MGH, Capitularia regum Francorum, I [1883], pp. 56, 77). The first centers of this devotion were the monasteries of Aniane and Tours: in the former, its founder St. Benedict dedicated the abbey church to the Most Holy Trinity in 789 (cf. Vita, 5: Acta SS. Februarii, II, Antwerp 1658, p. 614; other examples of dedications in Brown, cited in the bibliography); in the latter lived Alcuin, an ardent supporter of this devotion and author of the treatises: De fide s. et individuae Trinitatis (PL 101, 11-58); De Trinitate ad Fredegesium questiones XXVIII (ibid., 58-64; the Confessio fidei, ibid., 1027-98 has now been reclaimed for John of Fécamp [v.]). It is worth bearing in mind, in order to fully understand the purpose of the present solemnity, that since the Carolingian era this devotion had the peculiar character of a profession of faith in the august mystery: it suffices in this regard to recall the prayers to the Most Holy Trinity contained in the Libelli precum of that era, published not long ago by A. Wilmart (Precum libelli quattuor aevi Karolini, Rome 1940, p. 188, index), of which at least three come from Tours.

1. The Mass

To Alcuin, in addition to the aforementioned treatises on the Trinity, is also owed the Mass of the Trinity still in use today, with the exception of the Epistle, the Gospel and other slight modifications introduced by St. Pius V. In fact, in the letter addressed between 796 and 804 to the monks of St-Waast, he says he extracted from a Sacramentary, undoubtedly of Tours, a series of votive Masses, of which the first is that of the Trinity (Ep. 296: ed. E. Duemmler, in MGH, Epp. Kar. Aevi, II [1895], p. 455), and to the monks of Fulda he sends between 801 and 803 the Cartula missale, that is, his Liber sacramentorum, containing the well-known series of private votive Masses for the whole week, of which the first, for Sunday, is that of the Trinity (text of the Mass in PL 109, 445-46; Ep. 250, ed. cit., pp. 405-406). Now, this Mass appears in first place among the votive Masses in various Frankish sacramentaries from the first half of the 9th century onward

(cf. Leroquais, Sacramentaires, cited in bibl., I, pp. 13, 20; Ellard, cited in bibl.), in the Ambrosian ones of the 9th-11th centuries (cf. O. Heiming, cited in bibl., pp. 322-24) and, from the 11th century onward, in the Missals. Moreover: from the 2nd half of the 9th century, in two Sacramentaries coming from St-Thierry and from St-Amand (Reims, Bibl. municip., 213; Paris, Bibl. naz., ms. lat. 2291: Leroquais, op. cit., I, pp. 23, 57) this Mass already appears at the «dominica oct. Pentecostes», that is, on the 1st Sunday after Pentecost. This day later became traditional in the Latin Church, notwithstanding some exceptions; in fact in some Churches the last Sunday after Pentecost was dedicated to the T., and in others it was celebrated twice a year: the first and the last Sunday after Pentecost, which is therefore called «dominica S. Trinitatis hiemalis» (cf. Leroquais, Bréviaires, V, p. 317 [index]; id., Pontificaux, II, pp. 57, 70). It should be noted that from can. 10 of the Synod of Seligenstadt of 1023 it appears that the recitation of this votive Mass had a superstitious character for some (Hefele-Leclercq, IV, II, p. 921).

2. Diffusion of the feast

With the 10th century the feast of the T., whose institution had already been urged in vain around 775 by Catulfus to Charlemagne (Epp. Kar. Aevi, cited, II, p. 505), went on slowly establishing itself: it was in fact introduced at Liège, on the traditional date, by Bishop Stephen (903-20), who endowed it with a splendid office (text and melody) which still figures, with some retouching, in the Roman Breviary (cf. Auda, cited in bibl., pp. 67-121); at Reichenau ca. 1030; at Cluny before 1091; at Canterbury by St. Thomas Becket in 1162; at Citeaux in 1175; among the Carthusians ca. 1222; among the Dominicans ca. the middle of the 13th century; among the Franciscans in 1260 (Chapter of Narbonne), but in the Chapter of Assisi of 1279 this solemnity was suppressed because it was not celebrated by the Roman Church (Le Carrou, cited in bibl., pp. 194-95). The Synod of Arles of 1263 prescribed its celebration on the 1st Sunday after Pentecost with an octave (Hefele-Leclercq, VI, II, p. 115), an octave moreover already in use in other Churches, as in Belgium before 1109. Leroquais points out that it is not
rare to find in manuscript Breviaries, alongside the Office
of the T., the marginal note «a sede apostolica repellitur». In fact
according to the Micrologus, 60 (PL 151, 1020) Alexander II
(1061-73) did not show himself favorable to the feast of the T.
because it was superfluous «cum in omni dominica, imo quotidie
utriusque [trinitatis et unitatis] memoria celebretur» (the
Decretales Gregorii IX, II, IX de feriis: ed. Ae. Friedberg,
Leipzig 1881, p. 271 [Jaffé-Wattenbach, 14109] attribute instead this negative attitude to Alexander III). This contrast concerning the appropriateness of the feast
of the T. is reflected also in the liturgists of the 11th-13th centuries:
for example, the Micrologus, 60 (PL 151, 1019-20) is not favorable to it, Rupert of Deutz (De divinis officiis, XI, 1: PL 170,
293-95) is instead enthusiastic about it, while Sicard of Cremona
(Mitrale, VIII, 1: PL 213, 385-89) is not opposed to it,
but says that it is better to celebrate the Office of the Sunday.
Notwithstanding the opposition of Rome, the feast of the Most Holy T.
went on spreading more and more, so much so that John XXII
in 1331 deemed it opportune to extend it to the whole Church.
«Scito autem - writes an anonymous author of the 14th century - quod
anno Domini 1331, dominus Johannes XXII, de consilio
fratrum suorum, ordinavit et statuit quod deinceps Romana
et universalis Ecclesia faceret festum solemnpissimum de
semper benedictam Trinitate divinarum personarum et divine essentie unitate in tribus divinis personis. Statut
autem quod Romana Ecclesia et omnes qui faciunt officium ecclesiasticum secundum eam faciant predictum
festum dominica prima post Penthecostem et sine octavis,
non improbans tamen eos qui cum octavis et aliqua alia
dominica anni festum celebrant antedictum» (St. Baluzius, Vitae Paparum Avenionensium, ed. G. Mollat,
II, Paris 1928, p. 294). A note then inserted in a
Roman Breviary of the 1st half of the 14th century attributes
the Office that began to be «cantari in curia Romana tempore domini Iohannis pape XXII, alio
officio antiquo praetermisso» to John
Pecham (Leroquais, Bréviaires, III, p. 136).
The rhythmic office composed by Pecham, of
which there is now a critical edition (cf. W. Lampen, Jean Pecham O. F. M. et son Office
de la Ste Trinité, in La France Franciscaine, 2nd series, 11 [1928], pp. 211-29) was in fact received into many breviaries up to St. Pius
V who introduced anew into his reformed Breviary (1568) the splendid Office
composed by Stephen of Liège, retouching it here and there. It should be noted that the homily inserted then in the III Nocturn, already attributed to St. Gregory of Nazianzus by St. Augustine, must belong instead to Gregory
of Elvira (cf. G. Morin, Etudes, textes et
découvertes, Maredsous-Paris 1913, p. 492).
The magnificent Preface, which is recited not only
on the day of the T., but on all Sundays after Pentecost, during Advent
and after the Epiphany, already figures at the Sunday
«Octavorum Pentecostem» in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary (ed. H. A. Wilson,
Oxford 1894, p. 129), in the Gelasians of the 8th
century (cf. P. De Puniet, Le sacramentaire romain de Gellone, Rome [1938], pp. 102-103) and partly in the inlatio of the IVth daily Mass of the Lib. movarabicus Sacramentorum, cod. 55, 3 of Toledo of the 9th century
(ed. M. Férotin, Paris 1912, coll. 519-20).
The Micrologus, 60 (PL 151, 1020) asserts
then that this Preface is one of the nine prefaces prescribed by Pelagius II (579-90).

CII, CVIII, Cxvi and index; V, pp. 316-17; id., Les
Pontificaux..., ibid. 1937 (index, III, p. 148:
benedix. episc.); M. Andrius, Le Pont. romain au moyen âge, Vatican City 1934-41 (see index, IV, p. 421: benedix.
episc.). Cf. also John of Avranches, in PL 147, 58 (for the rank
of the rite); Radulphus de Rivo, ed. K. Mohlberg, II, Münster in W.,
1915, pp. 30, 104, 117, 146 (for the date of the feast and octave); Missale
Romanum, Mediolani 1474, ed. R. Lippe (H. Bradshaw Society,
17, 33), I, London 1899, pp. 252-54, 450-51; II, ibid. 1907, pp. 140,
274; P. Bruylants, Les orations du Missel romain, I, Louvain 1952,
pp. 55, 179. - Studies: S. Bäumer, Hist. du Bréviaire, II, Paris
1905, pp. 60-61 and passim; K. A. H. Kellner, L'anno eccles., 2nd ed.,
Rome 1914, pp. 110-12; A. Auda, L'école music. Liégeoise au Xe siècle. Etienne de Liège (Mém. de l'Acad. R. de Belgique, classe des Beaux
arts, in-8, 11), Brussels 1923; F. Cabrol, Les écrits liturg. d'Alcui,
in Rev. hist. eccl., 19 (1923), pp. 507-21; A. Le Carrou, Le Bréviaire
romain et les frères mineurs au XIIIe siècle, Paris 1928; F. Cabrol, Le
culte de la Trinité dans la lit. et l'institution de la fête de la Trinité, in
Ephem. lit., 45 (1931), pp. 270-78; G. Ellard, Alcuin and some favored votive Masses, in Theological Studies, 1 (1940), pp. 37-61; O.
Heiming, Die mailänd. sieben Votivmessen für die einzelnen Tage der
Woche u. d. Lib. sacr. des sol. Albain, in Miss. L. C. Mohlberg, II, Rome 1949, pp. 317-39; P. Browe, Zur Gesch. des Dreifaltigheidsfestes,
in Archiv. f. Liturgiewiss., 1 (1950), pp. 65-81.

A. Pietro Frutaz

VII. ART

It appears that paleochristian art did not use to represent the Most Holy Trinity; in any case, no work depicting it has come down to us. The figurative concept of the three Divine persons was at first rigorously symbolic. The hand seen from Heaven indicated the Eternal Father, the Lamb the Redeemer, and the dove the Holy Spirit. In this way the image of the Most Holy Trinity in the basilica of St. Felix was described by Paulinus of Nola (Ep. 32, 10: ed. G. Hartel, I, p. 286):

« Stat Christus agno, vox Patris cælo tonat

Et per columbam Spiritus Sanctus fuit ».

From the 10th century onward there appears the practice of representing the three Divine Persons in the guise of three identical human persons seated next to one another. Each of these nevertheless had its own attributes, namely: the Eternal Father, seated at the center, wore a crown on his head and held a golden orb in his hand; the Divine Son, seated at his right, carried a Cross, or had wounds in his hands and feet; and the Holy Spirit was indicated either by means of a dove or by a book. To emphasize the unity of the three Divine Persons, they were sometimes covered by a single mantle. This iconography persisted until the early 16th century. A typical depiction of it can still be seen in the parish church of Merano.

From the 13th century onward another figurative scheme of the Most Holy Trinity appears: a single human person with a head having three faces, or else only such a head. The Most Holy Trinity was represented in this way, for example, by Donatello (1495) in the tabernacle of St. Thomas in Or San Michele (Florence, v. fig. at the entry TOMMASO, APOSTOLO), by the Master of Villa d'Utta, late 15th century (Novacella), and by Andrea del Sarto around 1520 in the frieze of his Cenacle of St. Salvi in Florence. This seems to be the last example of this type. It should be noted, however, that the «vultus trifrons» is not always the emblem of the Trinity, but is also that of the devil.

These two figurative schemes of the Most Holy Trinity were abandoned in the course of the 16th century, and subsequently expressly forbidden by the constitution of Benedict XIV of 1 October 1745. Meanwhile a third iconographic scheme of the Most Holy Trinity developed in Gothic painting. This shows Christ on the Cross supported in the arms of the Eternal Father; the Holy Spirit is represented by its symbol, the dove (v.), which is seen above the Cross of the Redeemer. Numerous examples follow this scheme. Among them, very typical are those due to the masters of the Orcagna circle: in the 14th-century triptych by Jacopo di Cione in the National Gallery of London, in another triptych in the Academy of Florence, and in a panel from the early 15th century by Mariotto di Nardo, which adorns the Pieve of St. John Valdiano. In the grandiose adoration of the Most Holy Trinity, called the «All Saints altarpiece», by Albrecht Dürer (1508, Museum of Vienna) the same scheme is employed. Guido Reni still made use of it in his great altarpiece, painted in 1624, for the church of the Most Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims in Rome. A painting by Guercino in the Vatican Pinacoteca derives from this manner of depicting the Most Holy Trinity.

In the meantime a final scheme came to be formed in Baroque art, namely a scheme with a horizontal arrangement; it established itself as the usual figurative presentation of the Most Holy Trinity in modern art. This last and more modern iconography consists in the representation of the Eternal Father and of Christ seated on the clouds, with the dove of the Holy Spirit rising between them. The representations of the Trinity due to Raphael, namely his youthful fresco in the church of St. Severo in Perugia and the one with the grandiose «Disputation of the Sacrament» painted in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, foreshadow this last scheme and represent a kind of bridge of transition between the vertical figurative formula with Christ on the Cross and the modern horizontal one. In fact, even if in them a vertical arrangement of the three Divine Persons remains, Christ is no longer presented there on the Cross, but seated on the clouds. Among the very numerous Baroque depictions of the Most Holy Trinity, conceived according to the last horizontal figurative scheme, one may cite: the altarpiece by Pietro da Cortona on the altar of the Chapel of the Most Holy Sacrament in St. Peter's in the Vatican and the grandiose canvas by Anthony Van Dyck in the Museum of Budapest.

It should further be noted that the Coronations of the Virgin, where Mary is introduced into heaven by the Most Holy Trinity, often contain various most beautiful depictions of it, as is, for example, the case of the magnificent painting by El Greco, which is preserved in the Hospital of Charity in Illescas, Spain.

In the countries of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire one frequently finds churches and columns dedicated to the Trinity. - See plate LIV.

Witold Wehr