There is no doubt that from the start Christians were distinguished from other believers, Jews and non-Jews alike, by the fact that they admitted converts to the community of Jesus Christ by baptising them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.[1] In fact, the notion of God as Trinity represents the specifically Christian understanding of God.

However, with the passage of time - and the first part of this essay will venture to explain how - the dogma of the Trinity came to be presented as seeming to be "totally isolated within the general body of Christian doctrine, unconnected with other areas and practically irrelevant to living Christian faith."[2] In this respect, I think it would help to quote Imanuel Kant's and Karl Rahner's oft-quoted statements:

"Taken literally, one absolutely cannot arrive at anything practical from the dogma of the Trinity ... The novice will accept the fact that we have to honour three or ten persons in God with equal ease because he has no idea of a God in more than one person (hypostasis), or better still because one cannot take form this difference any different rules for the conduct of his life."[3]

"Despite their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere 'monotheists'. We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged. ... The treatise on the Trinity occupies a rather isolated position in the total dogmatic system. To put it crassly, and not without exaggeration, when the treatise is concluded, its subject is never brought up again. ... It is as though this mystery has been revealed for its own sake, and that even after it has been made known to us, it remains, as a reality, locked up within itself. We make statements about it, but as a reality it has nothing to do with us at all."[4]

The importance of the latter work is, according to Thomas Marsh, that "there can be no doubt that the real catalyst catapulting the theology of the Trinity towards the centre of attention was this short study."[5]

However, without debasing this claim, I would identify other sources for this renewed interest in the doctrine of the Trinity. Surely of great importance was a renewed interest in the study of the Fathers together with the convocation of the Second Vatican Council and the theological work and research which it brought into relief. Another factor was the rise of certain movements, especially the Charismatic Movement and the Opera di Maria - Focolari Movement, which as a kairos or gift of the Holy Spirit to the universal Church during this century have brought back a renewed interest in the Trinitarian doctrine.[6] This, I would argue, came about not as a result of theological reflection but as a result of charisms which slowly but surely grew in the Church giving rise to a renewal of Christian life which later on, upon reflection, led to a renewed interest in the theological formulation of their experience just as in the first Christian centuries Christians were faced with the task of theological reflection and the formulation of their Christian experience: lex orandi lex credendi [Prosper of Aquitane].[7] Though it would be interesting to review the importance of such movements in their contribution to this renewal, I would like to evaluate the situation from mainstream theology.

I would like, however, in the last part of this essay, to extend the above principle into: lex orandi et lex credendi statuunt legem vivendi. As Marsh writes "our specifically Christian understanding of God ... should ... determine the Christian vision of life in all its forms, down to the simple practicality" [Marsh, 163]. This position is also reiterated by Enrique Cambón: "our confession of faith in the Trinity is full of practical indications and the more we live according to the Trinity the more we understand the truth, the unimaginable greatness and the social relevance of those affirmations."[8] Indeed J. H. Newman wrote that "this revelation has been given to us not to satisfy our curiosity but to make us better."[9]

Identifying the theological renewal involved in this issue necessarily implies identifying the basic cause of dissatisfaction leading to Kant's and Rahner's statements. So, if you would be patient, I will briefly go into the basic concepts involved trying to be as simple as possible without losing sense of the arguments involved.

The Trinity: Immanent and Economic

The basic "problem" is the separation which the scholastic approach introduces between God in Godself [the immanent Trinity] and God as God relates to us [the economic Trinity]. Thus, though God in Godself is a Triad, God as God relates to us is simply one, a Monad, seemingly devoid of Trinitarian character.

"The end result of the separation which this theological understanding has introduced is that in actual reality Christian faith reverts to a practically simple monotheism... One has but to notice how incapable this theology is of giving any real meaning to the triadic language and structure of Christian prayer, which in principle it should elucidate, to see that something here is seriously out of joint" (p. 164).

This scholastic distinction is based upon the principle of opera divina ad extra and appropriation. Though it is certainly true that scholastic theology would insist that there is no real distinction between the divine nature and the persons, that is, that the persons are the divine nature, yet the distinction of the persons leaves the opera ad extra untouched: there is but one principle acting. As the pseudo-Athanasian Creed puts it: "the Godhead (divinitas) of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty equally eternal." The personal distinctions in God are operative only within and as regards God in Godself. Marsh (p. 167) points out that one might counteract this position by simply canceling this separation and asserting with Karl Rahner the identity of the economic and the immanent Trinity: "The 'economic' Trinity is the 'immanent' Trinity and the 'immanent' Trinity is the 'economic' Trinity" [The Trinity, 22].

However, Marsh also points out that some commentators have seen a danger that this could be understood to mean that God's being in Godself is determined by and exhausted in God's being with the world. Though this danger is to be avoided, it should equally be stressed that the external activity of the Godhead retains a triadic character. Such activity may be common to all three but each one will make a distinctive contribution in accordance with their personal character. This recognition leads us to see the importance of the concept of order or taxis in the Trinity. God's relation with us proceeds from the Father through the Son in the Spirit; ours with God in the Spirit through the Son to the Father.

One God - Three Persons

In trying to formulate the Church's orthodox position on the Triune God, the Church Fathers, beginning with the Cappadocians used the terms one ousia and three hypostasis which then passed into the Latin tradition in the way Tertullian translated them: "una substantia - tres personae." This formulation was necessary for the Church Fathers in order to find the via media between modalism and subordinationism and thus express and formulate the Church's orthodox teaching. It was not without its problems, however. Jerome, for example, was of the opinion that the language of the three hypostases was like honey in which poison was concealed (Ep. Xv, 4). Augustine, being aware of a linguistic inadequacy and a poverty of concepts, asks: three what? ... "three persons - not because I want to say this but because I may not remain silent" (De Trinitate V, 9). Anselm of Canterbury even goes to the extent of mentioning a 'three something or other' (trias nescio quid - Monologion 79). On the other hand, Aquinas says that the adoption of the concept of person, though not scriptural, is however needed due to the need of debate with heretics (S. Th. I, 29, 3).

Therefore, how are we to understand this term? This is not only a linguistic problem; neither is it reserved solely for theology. It has been the subject of much discussion in both philosophy and psychology. There seems to be, however, two main lines of thought. On the one hand, the idea that person "proceeds" from relation; on the other hand the idea of the absoluteness of the person in its being-for-itself or its being-in-itself. Though it would be interesting to see what philosophers - such as Sartre, Camus and Heidegger[10], Buber, Levinas[11] and Whitehead[12] - and psychologists - such as Bandura - have to say about this question, I will not go into this detail here. I will instead focus on how the concept of person developed and its relevance to our discussion taking M. Theunissen's thesis as my starting point.

Theunissen[13] begins from the ancient concept of 'person' [Greek prosopon; Latin persona]. At first this signified the mask of the actor; later however, it came to mean the actor himself. Thus, Theunissen reproposes a distinction between person and individual. In Greek tragedy and drama, person did not mean the individual but his role. Hence this presupposes a "meta-level" between the individual who recites and the individual who assists to the recitation. As a result, a person is understood to exist between individuals; a person is a person among other persons. It is this inter-relationship which manifests the Christian context wherein Christians not only thought but lived in the world as theatre, their life being a sort of 'scene'. The Christian, therefore, is a person in the world. Furthermore, Theunissen holds that it is God Godself who attributes man's role thus helping him to become a person.[14]

However, the concept of person evolved. Writing in the 6th century, long after the Trinitarian controversies had abated, Boethius' definition of person as individua substantia rationalis naturae [individual substance of a rational nature] came to stay, so to say, for a long time. This concept of person was not constructed from the theological discussion where the concept had originated but from the logic of Aristotle - [Marsh, p. 176]. Needless to say, especially with the note of autonomy and incommunicability which many mediaevals added to the Boethian definition, this reinforced the emphasis that one is a person because one is distinct from and independent of all other persons. Thus, the note of relationship, so basic to the Cappadocian fathers, is here lost and has to be added as an extraneous consideration.

From the sixteenth century onwards, due to the development in political theory and philosophy, the concept of person developed further. The main concern here was to define the status of the human being as a member of a political society. With theologians such as Francesco de Vitoria (d. 1546) and philosophers such as John Locke (d. 1704) 'person' now came to mean a rational individual capable of taking his own decisions and who was therefore responsible for them. Thus, person came to mean a responsible decision-maker, a subject of rights and duties, a moral and legal subject. Though this invariably led to the positive development and understanding of the human individual's inalienable human value and rights, this further emphasized the distinctive independence of rational subjects. Thus, a distance had by now opened up between the meaning of 'person' in common usage and its meaning in theology - [Marsh, p. 177.]

God : Absolute Being-in-Relation

Having retrieved the relational aspect of person, God is therefore understood as Absolute Being-in-Relation, a Being-in-Relation which involves a threefoldedness which Christian faith names as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In fact, Gregory of Nazianzus wrote: "Father is the name of relationship (schesis), of how the Father is related to the Son and the Son to the Father" (Theol. Orat, 3). And Augustine, after him: "The determinations "Father" and "Son" have to do not with substance but with relations" (De Trin., 5,6). Thus, since God is this Absolute Being-in-Relation we can understand the relation between God and man in Salvation History as the opening of the relations which God is (in Godself) to us humans and our participation in this threefold relational Being of God.

However, before passing on to man's participation in the divine life, I would like to consider the nature of the relations between the Persons of the Trinity.

The Paschal Event and a Trinitarian Ontology

It is only in the Christ-Event that we can understand the mystery of the Trinity; indeed this mystery is especially revealed in the Paschal Event. Only in this Event do we understand that the modus vivendi of the Trinity is self-giving Love. Indeed, according to Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944), the Johanine expression "God is Love" does not only mean that love belongs to God, because He is the One who loves, but precisely that He Himself is Love, that such is His own being. Over here we do not have a descriptive but an ontological definition.[15]

Before proceeding, however, I think it would be best to explain two related concepts: kenosis and perichoresis. Kenosis refers to the emptying of one Person in the other in the Trinity through Absolute Self-giving. Thus, the Father gives himself completely to (empties himself completely in) the Son except for his Fatherhood; so also the Son donates himself completely to the Father except for his Sonhood. It is in fact because of the Father's emptying (kenosis) through and in the Son that He is Father. Thus, each of the Persons, through not being, is. Indeed, the ontological "attitude" of the kenosis is, so to say, the paradoxical acquisition of one's identity through one's emptying in the other. This paradox is only solved because of one's identity being re-acquired through perichoresis. This is a fundamental concept in Trinitarian theology and is used in the Greek original because of lack of an adequate translation in modern languages. It means the compenetration between the Persons, the mutual presence of one in the others, which permits the profoundest communion while respecting their identities. When one donates a relation of this type, everyone is himself by being the other.[16] This does not mean however, the annulment of one's identity; on the contrary, it is through emptying of self that one acquires his identity. It is because of His total self-emptying into the Son that the Father is the Father. Thus, we can understand the gospel sayings: "I am in the Father and the Father in me [John 14:11] and "as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee [John 17:21] Jesus does not annul himself in the Father; neither does he disappear in the Father. It is interesting to note in the above quotations that there is no mention of the Holy Spirit. However, as Galot observes, Jesus "does not mention the Holy Spirit, but the intimate union that unites him to the Father is a union in the spirit of Love."[17]

This kenosis - perichoresis dialectic is the core of the mystery of the Trinity. It would be interesting at this point to mention Hemmerle's Trinitarian ontology.

Hemmerle speaks of kenotic intra-Trinitarian acts through which each of the divine persons empties itself completely in the other. We can say that each of the divine persons does not have existence (in the classical philosophical sense) but is (ontologically) because it is not (kenotically) and because contemporaneously it receives (perichoretically). In fact, Hemmerle says that the intrinsic divine actus essendi (act of being) is the gift of self.

Now, the kenosis or emptying of one person to the other in the Trinity through the totality of self-giving is revealed even horizontally as auto-emptying of the divinity of Christ in order to divinise mankind. In the Paschal-Event Christ donates (empties himself from) his divinity and, reaching man in his extreme forsakeness by God (Mk 15, 34), having assumed the condition of a slave obedient unto death (Phil. 2, 7-8) he also donates (empties himself from) his humanity (Is 53,14). In fact, man is capable of reaching God in his "divinity" because this corresponds to the exitus of God from Godself in the estasis [being outside] of love in order to reach man in his humanity,[18] conducting him to Godself through the mediation of the Holy Spirit through the Crucified One. Thus we become sons in the Son [Gal 3, 26 - 4, 6-7] through the Son's kenotic emptying of his divinity to divinise us. Is this not, after all, what the Church Fathers used to say: "God has become man so that man might become God" (theosis, deification or sanctification).[19] Thus, Jesus is the door (Jn 10, 7) through which God exits from Godself (to enter) in man and man exits himself (to enter) in God. Thus, man cannot return to his Father if not kenoticised by participating in the Paschal-Event, ontologically becoming one in the Son and in his kenotic act towards his Father (Col 3, 3) and by kenoticizing oneself through the Spirit (Rom. 7, 4) [indwelling of the Spirit]. This is the essence of the long journey of man from the Trinity into the Trinity [exitus-reditus].

Trinitarian Ethics

Trinitarian ontology becomes Trinitarian ethics (Cf. GS 24). One's relationship with and in God as participation in God's own life will be reflected in inter-human relationships. We have to see this in the light of the Easter-Event, that is, in Christ in whom Being and Act (ontology and ethics) cannot be separated.

Ethics would therefore mean and be measured by the intrinsic kenotic structure of the act itself. Starting from this new vision one may speak of Christian ethics only in so far as human acts acquire a decisively kenotic connotation. Though this might seem to be an exaggeration at first, for me it becomes a paradigm for a moral theology which is not minimalist but maximalistic in a positive way. Hence, this would not be based on laws to fulfill but on man's call for an always greater love. Thus, as Theunissen held that the individual becomes a person by assuming his role which makes him relate to other individuals, theologically and Christologically we may say that the individual becomes a realized person by assuming the 'design' (or role) which is given to him by God his Creator: that of becoming a person in the Person of Jesus Christ, a son in the Son of the Father through the mediation of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.

However, the Spirit does not only indwell in Christian individuals but in Christian persons and therefore in the Christian community. George T. Montague notes that "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" [1 Corinthians 3:16-17] is to be understood not as referring to the individual body of the Christian but to the Christian community as such.[20] This is the Church, the "body of the Three" - [Tertullian, De Baptismo, 6], "icon of the Trinity" (Bruno Forte). Indeed, it proceeds "from the love of the eternal Father, ... was founded by Christ in time and [was] gathered into one by the Holy Spirit" (GS 40).

De Lubac wrote : "God ... has created us in order to be introduced together in the bosom of his Trinitarian life. Jesus Christ has offered himself in sacrifice so that we may be one in the unity of the divine Persons. ... There is a Place in which, already on this earth, this reunion of all in the Trinity begins ... [this is] the Church [which] is full of the Trinity."[21]

In fact, Cyril of Alexandria affirms that "it is through the power of the Trinity" and in its image that we can be one. He shows how this unity is the result of divinisation: man in his entirety is made capable of participating in the divine life both corporeally and spiritually through the Son who "mixes" with us in the Incarnation and makes us con-corporeal with him and between us in the Eucharist, and through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us and who unites us in the bond of charity. Thus, concludes, Cyril, "we are one in the Father, in the Spirit and in the Son" (In Jo. ev., lib. XI).

However, one may ask: why is humanity so slow in moving towards a reality in which the Trinitarian life permeates all human reality? "With the passage of time this question has allowed me to discover more clearly to wht extent God's Love takes the human being and his story seriously without "paternalism" and without letting us lean on false securities. It is typical of love, in fact, to offer space for the other to be himself in order to become a protagonist of one's own realization. This is one of the profoundest, most serious and most liberating mysteries of human existence: in our life and in the construction of history, everything depends on God and everything depends on us. Is not this the only way possible and worthy of God - a Trinitarian way in fact - of relating to man?"[22]

"The Trinity as our social program"

Though this phrase is to be found in the writings of Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran theologians of the last century, it seems to have its origin already in the great orthodox Russian monk of the 14th century: Sergio of Radonez (1314-1392).[23] What is meant by this is that the Trinity serves as a point of reference and a hierarchy of values towards which to aim and upon which to build and construe our style and quality of life.[24] Igino Giordani even goes to the point of describing the Trinity as "the perfect society."[25]

"The Trinity, a version of the Absolute which has been unheard of in any non-Christian religions, fights with man just as the angel with Jacob, in order to make itself be received by man in order to receive him in Self. It is the Trinity which pushes on thought, on interpersonal relationships, in order to inform them of Self ... until man transforms in Trinity his categories by transforming his life in Trinity. ... From the abyss of today's culture a new life and new thought must explode. A life which is already from now Trinity ... An elaboration of institutions and structures which translate as much as possible this reality in our everyday praxis.... We need to dilate this reality, making it enter in all of man's expressions."[26] Indeed, the Latin-American catholic bishops at Pueblo have affirmed clearly that the Trinitarian communion "should manifest itself in all life, even in the economic, social and political spheres" (n.215).

Mary

Man, therefore, in as much as he has been created in the image of [the Triune] God, is capable of living in this Trinitarian way. However, one person stands out among the people of God as having been the "Icon of the Trinity": Mary.[27] Now, a basic element common to various Christian traditions is that one should imitate Mary.[28] Thus, Mary's openness to the Word has given a Trinitarian dynamism and imprint to her life, thus offering herself as a created icon (image) of the Trinity and a model of being open to God's infinite love. She is a paradigm of that feminine genius of personal love, concretness, welcoming [the other], loving silence ... all these are Trinitarian virtues because they render Trinitarian relationships possible.[29]

Conclusion

We may say that in his pilgrimage towards the Trinity, man is called further to make of the earthly society an image and likeness of the city of God in which, as St. Augustine said: "Truth is king, charity is law and eternity is the measure."[30] Thus, the kingdom of God which Jesus preached as "being at hand" - already but not yet - is none other than the dwelling of the Trinity among us. The kingdom of God is the Triune God himself. And "just think", Igino Giordani writes, "about what good the City of God would bring: the city which has as its power the Father, as its mind the Word, and as its inspiration the Holy Spirit, adding beauty to wisdom because it has as its heart the Tota Pulchra: Mary."[31]