In Anselm’s Proslogion, we notice his eagerness to see God. It is not because of a lack of faith that he wants to see God so as to prove that he exists. According to Hugh of Saint Victor, “faith believes what it does not see”. God cannot be entirely known to humans, though not entirely concealed either, and this is what makes faith beautiful, what makes faith what it is. Anselm’s longing is rooted in his deep faith that God does exist, and that He is the most beautiful and powerful. His prayer for God to be visible is a wish for a deeper intimacy with God, for God’s Revelation, for a deeper knowledge of God. On the other hand, it shows how difficult to see God, to perceive the wholeness of Him. God is immense, eternal, immutable, way beyond human perception and comprehension. Though we can see God through the incarnation of Jesus, how can we see God the Father who begets him, God the Holy Spirit who dwells in Him, and God as the all together Trinity when the incarnation does not take place in our age? How can we see Him who is an invisible spirit?
Hugh gives the answer--we see God through our heart and divine revelation. We can not say for sure that the divine revelation would come to everyone. However, we all have a human heart, or more precisely, a human mind, through which we all could have knowledge of Him. Even though we cannot see Him as visible beings, His beauty, wisdom, power, and love exists in the visible world that He creates. And we human beings are his precious works in this world, made from the His image.
Then what do we see in us that can help us to know God? First of all, we cannot see our mind, but we know that it exists because it gives the knowledge of my own existence. Our mind is a mirror of our creator, who is similarly invisible yet existing. Secondly, through the nature of our mind, we understand who God is, and how He is One God in Three Persons. Hugh points out that from our mind comes wisdom of the mind, and from wisdom comes to love--love of wisdom and the mind. Mind, wisdom, and love in us are created after the image of God, who is God the Father, God the Son Jesus and God the Spirit. Similarly, God the Father, with his creative ideas, begot God the Son, through whom makes this world incarnate as supreme beauty, and Father and Son begot the Holy Spirit, the love of the former two. Trinity is Oneness of the Three Persons like I am the whole body with my mind, wisdom, and love. Trinity is the perfect self-love of God, which makes the Three Persons a perfect unity.
I asked the question in class about the suffering of Jesus in relation to the Trinity. If Jesus is a different person from God the Father and the Holy Spirit, then did the latter two suffer when Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross? If the three Persons are individuals, how would two Persons suffer from the other’s physical pain? This will risk making God the Father a cruel sadist and a coward who sent His Son to suffer, instead of Himself. The illustrations of Trinity in the Rothschild Canticles, which usually depict the Three Persons at three points in a circle, made me realize my misunderstanding of the Trinity. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all God, and more importantly, it is the relationship among them, the perfect love of each other, that bonds them in perfect wholeness as the Only One God. The Three Persons of God are indeed individuals, but they are not separate from each other. They are One with each other. It is the circle that represents God, instead of the three points. And thus, though God the Father and Holy Spirit didn’t experience the physical torture of the Son in the human aspect, they experienced with Him his spiritual pain in the Godly aspect (as Jesus is both human and God). Just as if part of my body is amputated, I would experience the pain as a whole body, and I would feel sad because of my love for myself. And thus, God the Father, instead of being cruel, sent His Son to the world out of pure LOVE for human beings. He wants us, the lost sons and daughters, to know Him and reunite with Him so badly that He sacrificed Himself from us.
It was always hard for me to understand or feel God’s Love. Now seeing God’s Love for Himself and His Love for us through His suffering, I couldn’t help but think of 1 Corinthians 13, the chapter about the way of Love. God is perfect Love. He “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13. 7).
Professor Brown says in her essay Trinity is, first and foremost, for worship. Meditating on the Trinity, by logically understanding His nature as Three-in-One, I could understand and feel His Love for us. Before, I was searching for absolute truth, an absolute proof that God exists. I want to see God so that I could believe He is True. Now, feeling the Love in Trinity, it’s weird that it doesn’t seem necessary to find the absolute truth. Or rather, I realize that If God is the name of absolute truth for Christianity, then it is impossible for human beings to fully see what is absolutely immense, beautiful, powerful and wise. Maybe our current knowledge of God, including Trinity, cannot explain God as the infinite, but it helps us to glimpse His Glory and Love.
--YTL
I was also thinking about God's suffering on the cross in relation to the Trinity and the Incarnation. Sam raised the question in his post "The Titles of the Blessed Virgin Mary". He pointed out that there is a lot at stake in calling Mary not only "Mother of Christ" but also "Mother of God", for the very reason that the person who died on the cross is not only a person with a human nature, but also a person with a divine nature. In other words, it is essential that the person of Christ who dies on the cross is both human and divine, that we may be resurrected with him and participate in his divine life.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think this suggests a different relationship with respect to the Trinity. It is not the case that Christ's human nature and divine nature die upon the cross: it is rather that the person of Christ, who is human and divine, died upon the cross. Trevor's human nature did not write this comment. Rather, I, the person who is Trevor, wrote this comment.
For this reason, I think that we can't say that all of the persons of the Trinity suffered the passion simply because they are consubstantial. Rather, we can say that the one God suffered and died upon the cross not in his divine nature, but in the person of Christ, who is God. This is not an act of child abuse, because it is the one God. But only the person of Christ suffers and dies on the Cross. This preserves the unity of the Godhead and the distinctness of the persons. Does that make sense/seem right?
Hi Trevor,
DeleteThank you for your explanation! I totally agree that it is the human nature of Jesus the God suffered physically in the human world. But the divine nature of Him is always connected with the other two. I like to think that the Trinity is actually the unity of the Three, so that when Jesus fell to Hell, the whole also felt pain (like when part of me feels pain, I the whole person feel it as well). But then it makes Trinity/Jesus seem to be whole/partial? What do you think?
Also, do you think Jesus suffered in a spiritual way in his incarnation, that makes the whole Trinity feel pain?
I am happy that my argument about the Trinity as an object of worship helped shift your question from proof to faith. I am also happy that Hugh's description of how human beings are able to see God (through our hearts and through revelation) helped you reconceptualize the question of what it means to see that which cannot be seen. It is interesting that it was the images that I showed that helped you most with your question about the relationship between the crucifixion and the Three Persons. What Trevor says is right—the one God suffered on the cross in the Person of the Son—but your question is one that has troubled many Christians, too. RLFB
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