Table of Contents
Christian monotheism is a divine revelation that focuses on the Blessed Trinity. It is the claim that there are three persons in one God: God the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit. This idea is not limited to John 1:1-3 and John 14, that is, the incarnation and the via et veritas et vita discourses. Many other biblical writings and conciliar decrees attest to it. It is claimed that the incarnation reveals the Blessed Trinity.
The Catholic
Preface Prayer of Christmas 1, The Weekday Missal expounds on the mystery of
the incarnation as leading to the glory of the Blessed Trinity because in
Jesus, God is made known, and we become overwhelmed by the love of God. [i]
The Preface
Prayer of the Blessed Trinity delineates more the underlining of
Christianity’s claims to a Trinitarian faith. Hence, God’s glory has been
revealed as the glory of his Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit; confirming the
Godhead as three Persons that share the same majesty, and equal splendour as
one Lord and God. [ii]
This writing will examine the biblical foundation of the Blessed Trinity
by thematically considering McGrath’s three major personifications of God in
the Old Testament: Wisdom, The Word of God, and The
Spirit of God. This writing does not have the scope to examine the
historical development of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. The Trinitarian
controversies and ensuing heresies have no place here either however,
references to them might be made in the course of some analyses.
Biblical Foundation of the Blessed Trinity
If a non-Christian asks a Christian to prove to him that the doctrine of
the Blessed Trinity is biblical, the Christian will immediately have recourse
to the baptismal trinitarian form:
Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you (Matthew 28:19-20).
Or, the Christian can cite a Pauline benediction formula:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all (2 Corinthians 13:13).
Both trinitarian frameworks seem ordinary because they are not
prerequisites to the existence of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Christian
concept of God is greatly beyond those. According to McGrath the above two
verses, either taken together or in isolation can hardly be considered as
making up the doctrine of the Trinity. Trinity as a doctrine of faith is more
than the (Matthew 28:19-20) and (2 Corinthians 13:13) conspectus.[iii] In Rahner’s
renowned rule, the doctrine of the Trinity is an emphasis on “the
economic Trinity as the immanent Trinity.”[iv] This economic Trinity
derives from the incarnation theology (God appearing in the world, in Jesus
Christ). “No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is close to the
Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18).
Following McGrath’s three major personifications of God (Wisdom, The
Word of God, and The Spirit of God) in the Old
Testament (OT), which he argues could lead to the Christian interpretation of
the doctrine of the Trinity,[v] this writing will now examine the idea of God
personifications in the Bible.
Wisdom in Wisdom Literature
The Wisdom literature consists of the Book of Job, The Psalms, The Proverbs, Ecclesiastes or Qoheleth, The Song of Songs, The Book of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus as listed in New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) or the Book of Job, The Psalms, The Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs as listed in New Living Translation (NLT). The Wisdom literature treats the “attribute of divine wisdom” as if “it were a person with an existence apart from, yet dependent upon God.”[vi]
In NJB it is argued that “the single most important contribution
of the book” of wisdom in particular, “consists in its reflections on Wisdom,
and especially the personification of Wisdom as God’s agent in the world, yet
sharing intimately in his nature (7:22).”[vii] With this understanding, it substantiates the
interpretation accorded to Jesus Christ as the incarnate Wisdom of God but
raises the question of gender:
For within her is a spirit intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, incisive, unsullied, lucid, invulnerable, … she is so pure, that she pervades and penetrates all things. She is a breath of the power of God, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; so nothing impure can find its way into her (Wisdom 7:22-25).
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth …. for whoever finds me finds life and obtains favour from the Lord: but those who miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love death. (Proverbs 8:22-36)
God alone understands her path and knows where she is to be found (Job 28ff:23)
If Jesus is considered as the incarnate Wisdom of God, why is this
Wisdom referred to as a woman, hence the use of feminine pronouns? What is very
clear in wisdom literature is the personification of the concept of wisdom
as a woman. According to Claudia V. Camp, the personification of wisdom as a woman is more pronounced in Proverbs and the Wisdom of Solomon and in both
texts, it is “referred to as Woman Wisdom to distinguish the
personified figure from the more general use of the term.”[viii] David Beldman
considers Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly as
prominent personifications noted throughout the scripture. He argues that the
“composite portrait of wisdom, the intimate connection between Lady Wisdom and
God is unmistakable.”[ix] The next question to
ask is: Why female personification?
To answer this question, Camp said that it could be partly because “in
Hebrew, wisdom is a grammatically feminine noun.” She also argues
that the female imagery for Woman Wisdom is also closely connected to
her negative counterpart in Proverbs, that embodiment of evil referred to as
the “loose woman’ (“strange woman,” or “Woman Stranger”).[x]
Examining Proverbs 8:22-36, this personification of the Woman's Wisdom is quite incomprehensible. It is an imagery that suggests that
the Woman's Wisdom is present with God before and during the
process of creation, as a playful child, or a wise architect, or, in the artful
ambiguity of poetry, or both.[xi]
Camp likens this, so to speak, the deification of Woman Wisdom to
some ancient goddesses, for instance, the Egyptian goddess of justice known
as Ma’at. This goddess was understood as both the child of the
creator god and as the ordering principle of creation.[xii]
This idea of God could be a transcultural phenomenon and a buy-in from different ancient religious cultures. Christianity was not left out.
Thus, when Jesus is acknowledged as God’s incarnate, it means that he is the
revealed glory of God and thus makes the invisible visible.
The Idea of the Word of God Personified
The Bible also personifies the idea of God’s Word as an “existence
independent of God, yet originating with God.”[xiii]
For as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and do not return before having watered the earth, fertilizing it, and making it germinate to provide seed for the Sower and food to eat, so it is with the word that goes from my mouth: it will not return to me unfulfilled or before having carried out my good pleasure and having achieved what it was sent to do (Isaiah 55:10-11).
Forever, Yahweh, your word is planted firm in heaven (Psalm 119:89).
He sends his word to the earth, his command runs quickly, he spreads the snow like flax, strews hoarfrost like ashes...he reveals his word to Jacob, his statutes and judgments to Israel (Psalm 147:15-16.19).
The personification of the word of God as that, that “goes from my
mouth”, “planted firm in heaven” and “reveals his word to Jacob” is very
similar to the Qur’anic concept of the word of God as in “The Preserved Tablet” (Al-Buruj 85:21-22).
It is the Word through whom everything came into being and without him nothing
ever was (John 1:3).
The Spirit of God as God’s Presence in Creation
McGrath also argues that the Old Testament presents the phrase “the
spirit of God” as “God’s presence and power within creation.” The following
biblical citations buttress the argument:
Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights. I have sent my spirit upon him, he will bring fair judgment to the nations (Isaiah 42:1)
I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead. I shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws, and respect and practice my judgments (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
The hand of Yahweh was on me; he carried me away by the spirit of Yahweh and set me down in the middle of the valley, a valley full of bones (Ezekiel 37:1)
The foregoing does not establish the doctrine of the Trinity in its
entirety. McGrath argues that the “three hypostatizations of
God do not amount to a doctrine of the Trinity.” However, he contends that to
proffer a unitarian idea of God is not enough to understand the dynamic nature
of God and he concludes that the Bible is a clear indication that God wants
to be known as trinitarian.[xiv] Albeit, in the same Bible, St Paul would
argue that “there is...one God and Father of all, over all, through all and
within all” (Ephesians 4:5-6). The afore-quoted passage is a Pauline conclusion
denoting the Godhead as one.
Christianity’s claims to a Trinitarian faith could be interpreted as a
way of pointing at God or recognizing him. As Robert Jenson (1984) opined the Trinity can be thought of in terms of the proper name of the Christian God,
which establishes the identity of God based on an affirmation and
identification of God’s redemptive acts in history.”[xv] The Trinitarian
faith can be understood as not only a way to identify the Christian God but
also a way of interpreting the economic Trinity and immanent
Trinity as Rahner’s rule suggests.
[i] The Weekday Missal, 1987, a new edition, illustrations by Mark and
Anne Primavesi, Collins Liturgical Publications, London. P. 1339
[ii] Ibid. p. 1349
[iii] McGrath, A. E 1999, Christian Theology: An Introduction,
Blackwell, Oxford.
[iv] Rahner, K 1997, The Trinity, translated by Joseph Donceel, The
Crossroad Publishing Company, New York. P. 22
[v] McGrath, A. E op. cit. p. 293
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] The New Jerusalem Bible: Reader’s Edition. 1990. Doubleday. New
York. P. 783
[viii] Camp, Claudia V., “Woman Wisdom: Bible.” Jewish Women: A
Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 27 February 2009. Jewish Women’s
Archive. (Accessed 15 May
2021) https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/woman-wisdom-bible.
[ix] Beldman, David. The Portrait of a Lady (Wisdom): How to find and
keep up with a complicated Woman. In The Biblical Mind. February 10,
2021. https://hebraicthought.org/lady-wisdom-complicated-woman/
[x] Camp, Claudia V. Op. cit.
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] McGrath, A.E op. cit.
[xiv] Ibid. p. 294
[xv] McGrath, A. E (ed) 1995, The Christian Theology: Reader,
Blackwell, Oxford. P. 122
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