doctrine y rinitthe t f o doctrine of the trinity st506

Doctrine of the Trinity

Transcript - ST506 Doctrine of the Trinity © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 18 of 24ST506

Christian Worship

Doctrine of the Trinity

I begin with a prayer, Almighty and everlasting God who hast revealed thyself as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and dost ever live and reign in the perfect unity of love, grant that we may always hold firmly and joyfully to this faith, and living in the praise of thy divine majesty, may finally be one in thee who art three persons in one God, world without end. Amen.

Today in this lecture, I want to think about Christian worship and the place of the doctrine, the dogma, of the Holy Trinity in Christian worship. I want to read to you a paragraph from a journal which I was given just a short time before I came to give this lecture, and this paragraph is from a review of a recent book on worship. I won’t name the book and I won’t name the reviewer because it’s not necessary for my purpose. I merely want to indicate how there appears to be general confusion about what is worship today.

I quote:

Perhaps no area of contemporary church life is embroiled in greater controversy than that of worship. Some confuse worship for evangelism, repackaging it to be more appealing. All too often a sensitivity to culture that is both important and necessary is subsumed by a culturally driven agenda. Others perceive worship as a means of inspiring stewardship or recruiting teachers or church workers. Still others exploit liturgy to embarrass or spread enough shame on congregations to heighten their social awareness and response. Although all of the above components are crucial dimensions of the church, they tend to minimize and distort a healthy and biblically balanced view of God and worship.

Peter Toon, DPhil Cliff College Oxford University

King’s College University of London Liverpool University


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It seems to me that the Fathers of the church, at whose writings we have been looking and whose thoughts we have been following, would have found that kind of paragraph, those kinds of statements, most difficult to appreciate or even fathom because they had rather clear views as to what is worship. I want to begin by quoting again from the book by T. F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith, and again from his foreword. “Hence,” he says,

when movements of thought questioning the deity of the Holy Spirit arose, the church assembling once again in Ecumenical Council at Constantinople not only reinforced the Creed of Nicaea, but wrote into it additional clauses in affirmation of the belief in the Holy Spirit, parallel to its declared belief in the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. It became indubitably clear to the church in the fourth century that it is only when the gospel is understood in this fully Trinitarian way that we can really appreciate the New Testament teaching about Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and appreciate the essential nature of salvation, prayer, and worship.

The Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed was thus essentially Trinitarian. The central hinge upon which the whole confession of faith turned was the declaration of the oneness in ousia between Jesus Christ and God the Father. In the gospel God has revealed Himself to us as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but in such a way that we know that He is in Himself what He is towards us in His saving acts in history, eternally, that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in His own one divine being, and that what He is eternally in Himself as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, He is in His activity toward us, through the Son and in the Spirit.

The general formula which the Nicene and post-Nicene fathers implied to speak of the Triune God and His one activity was from the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit in respect of the God-manward relations and in the opposite direction in the Spirit, through the Son and to the Father in respect of the man-Godward relations. Since all this would fall to pieces in the faith of the church, if the divine nature of the Son and of the Spirit were brought into question, we can understand the determination of church fathers at the Council of Nicaea and at Constantinople to clarify and secure the grounding of Christian belief in the


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indivisible relations of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the tri-unity of God.

I remember listening both to Professor T. F. Torrance and his brother, also Professor Torrance, speaking of Christian worship and emphasizing the kinds of things which I’ve just read: that in worship we come to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit and emphasizing in particular what they call the vicarious humanity of Jesus the Christ who is the High Priest so that we come to the Father and our worship and our prayers ascend to the Father from members within His body through the Son to the Father. And this is what I want to point out as being so fundamental to the way of worship that we find in the early church, and I want to make use of a book on the liturgy of the early church. It’s by an Italian, Vagaggini (V A G A G G I N I), Ciprian Vaggaggini, and it is entitled The Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy. I merely want to take some of his thoughts from the chapter where he speaks of the Christological and Trinitarian basis of Christian liturgy.

In speaking of what he calls “the scheme,” and what that is will become clear in a moment: “The scheme,” he says, “which appears sometimes in its entirety and sometimes only in part in Christian liturgy is the following: every good comes to us from the Father through Jesus Christ His incarnate Son and by means of the presence in us of the Holy Spirit. And similarly, it is by means of the presence in us of the Spirit and through Christ that everything returns to the Father, From the Father, through His Son, Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit to the Father—a Patre, per Filium eius, Iesum Christum, in Spiritu Sancto, ad Patrem.” “Such” he says, “is the descending and the ascending movement in which the New Testament reveals the Trinity to us. Such is the vast parabola of the mystery of salvation, the going out from God and the return to God—Exitus a Deo et reditus ad Deum—in which the Father reveals Himself essentially as the One from whom, a quo, and to whom, a quem, the Son as the One through whom, per quem, and the Holy Spirit as the One in whom, in quo—the Father, a quo, and a quem because He is the beginning and the end, as it were, the Son as the one through whom in both directions from the Father to us and from us to the Father and the Holy Spirit, again in both directions, in quo—a Patre, per Filium eius, Iesum Christum, in Spiritu Sancto, ad Patrem—from the Father, through His Son, Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit back to the Father.”


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Now you will note that in this way of doing it and stating it, it must be noted that the Son in this context is primarily the Son incarnate, Christ Jesus considered in His incarnation, considered in His redemptive action. It is not only in a Trinitarian perspective, therefore, but in what may be called a Christological and Trinitarian perspective that the Scripture looks at this.

And then I move on to something that he says on a later page, and this takes us into what I have previously distinguished as God as God is toward us, and everything that I’ve said up to now from this Italian liturgiologist belongs to God as God is toward us and that is, as he says, where basically the New Testament is in its, what I previously called common-sense presentation, and that is where, as we shall see, the very early liturgies of the church are.

So let me quote to you again from this Italian scholar: “The most ancient text remain strictly faithful to the biblical perspective.” That is, God is God is toward us in the way I have just explained, and you will notice that the explanation of Professor Torrance, the great Presbyterian theologian, and of this well-known Italian Roman Catholic liturgiologist were much the same. So the most ancient texts, that is, the ones from the second and third centuries, “remain strictly faithful to the biblical perspective, but beginning with the Arian controversy an undeniable shift of emphasis takes place in the liturgy. Though keeping as a general framework the scheme,” that’s the scheme that I previously read to you from the Father, through His Son Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, and then returning in the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ to the Father, “though keeping as a general framework, this scheme applied to what we may call the divine activity and presence in the world, the liturgies answer the denials of Arianism by multiplying the texts which affirm the equality of the persons within the Trinity.” You see the point, that because of Arianism and because of the wrong use being made of the teaching concerning God as God is toward us, the liturgies of the church as we study them begin to take into account the Arian misreading of these texts and thus begin to include statements concerning God as God is in Himself.

“Alongside of or even instead of the economical,” that is, God in the economy, “the economical perspective which throws the spotlight on the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Spirit in their relations within what we may call the history of salvation an ontological perspective finds a place in which attention is brought to bear principally on the equality of the three persons and the unity of their nature. After having affirmed as heretofore that everything


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comes to us from the Father through Christ and thanks to the Spirit, and everything returns to the Father by the Spirit through Christ, the liturgies now add that the Father, the Son, considered independently of His incarnation, and the Holy Spirit, considered only in the ontological sense, are one and the same God. It might be said that starting with the Arian controversy, the complete formula of the liturgy becomes from the Father, through Jesus Christ, His Son, in the Spirit, to the Father, blessed Trinity, one God—a Patre, per Christum Filium eius, in Spiritu, ad Patrem beata Trinitas unus Deus—from the Father, through Christ, His Son, in the Spirit, to the Father, blessed Trinity, one God.”

This author points out that this move from what we may call the economical to the ontological takes place more in the Eastern liturgies than in the Western ones. In other words, the Eastern Orthodox, as we now call them, were more keen to or felt the more need of adding the ontological Trinity to the already present economical Trinity in order to deal with heresies. And, of course, they did have to deal with the heresy of Arianism in a big and vital way.

To make this more practical and down to earth, what I want to do now is to quote to you from one or two of the liturgies. I’ve done this already before in part, but this time we’re doing it with the specific intention of noticing the entry of what we call the ontological Trinity into liturgical text, to stand alongside the economical Trinity. And my first illustration is from a text which goes back to the early part of the third century. It’s from the “Apostolical Tradition of Hippolytus.” The book where you will find these texts, well one book, which is rather easy to come by, is entitled The Liturgies of the Western Church, selected and introduced by Bard Thompson, and it was published by Fortress Press a few years ago, and I think has been reprinted, but you can usually pick up copies of this rather easily. And “The Apostolical Tradition” which contains the outline and some of the content of the prayers within what was called “The Liturgy” or “The Holy Eucharist” are found and translated there on pages 20 and following.

The beginning of the so-called Eucharistic Prayer is addressed to the Father, “We render thanks unto thee, O God, the Father, through thy beloved child, Jesus Christ, whom in the last times thou did send to us to be a Savior and Redeemer and the Messenger of thy council, who is thy Word, inseparable from thee, through whom thou madest all things and in whom thou was well-pleased.


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Whom thou did send from heaven into the virgin’s womb and who conceived within her was made flesh and demonstrated to be thy Son, being born of the Holy Spirit and a virgin, who fulfilling thy will and preparing for the holy people stretched forth His hands for suffering, that He might release from sufferings them who have believed in thee.” And so it goes on, and then the end of the summary of this prayer is as follows: “That we may praise and glorify thee through thy beloved child, Jesus Christ, through whom glory and honor be unto thee with the Holy Spirit in thy holy church now and forever and world without end. Amen.”

You can see there that it is simply addressed to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, and the whole movement is as I described earlier and as we read from the Italian scholar, it is a movement from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, to God’s people, and from God’s people in the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. That is the structure of all these ancient prayers, whether they be prayers in the Holy Eucharist or prayers in holy baptism or collects, as certain prayers are called, that was their structure.

Now I want to move on, staying in the city of Rome because Hippolytus, although he spoke Greek and wrote in Greek, lived in Rome. I want to stay in Rome and go to the earliest form of the Holy Eucharist in the Latin which is called by scholars the Roman Rite (R I T E), and I want to read to you. I’ve already used this as a prayer, but I want to read to you now one of the prefaces which comes at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer. The Eucharistic Prayer begins with what we call in Latin the Sursum Corda, which is “The Lord be with you and with thy Spirit, lift up your hearts. We lift them up unto the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God. It is right and meet that we do so,” and then comes the following preface before we get to the Trisagion, the thrice holy—holy, holy, holy art thou, etcetera.

You will notice as I read this to you, that we are still thinking of “from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit,” and vice versa, but here now within this Eucharistic Prayer there is a very heavy dose of what we may call the ontological Trinity. Now I’m, as you’ve probably realized, 100 percent in favor of stating the truths concerning God as God is in Himself, but I am very much aware, and I’m sure you are, as I read this of the different approach, the different way of speaking. So this is the preface of the Holy Trinity translated into English: “Just it is indeed and fitting right and for our lasting good that we should always in every way give thanks to


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thee, O Lord, Holy Father, almighty and eternal God, who with thy only begotten Son and the Holy Ghost art one God, one Lord. Not one as being a single person, but three persons in one essence. Whatsoever by thy revelation we believe touching thy glory, that to we hold without difference or distinction of thy Son and also of the Holy Spirit so that in acknowledging the true eternal Godhead, we adore in it each several person and yet a unity of essence and a coequal majesty in praise of which the angels and the archangels, the cherubim too, and the seraphim lift up their endless hymn day by day with one voice singing, ‘Holy, holy, holy art thou, Lord God of Hosts, thy glory fills all heaven and all the earth.’”

Well, as I read that not only did you notice what I’ve been calling the ontological Trinity or the imminent Trinity, but no doubt also you heard echoes of Saint Augustine and parallel echoes to those you heard in the Athanasian Creed. But there you have the famous Roman Rite (R I T E), the classic Eucharistic Prayer of the ancient church in Rome, which formed the basis for the prayer which was used throughout the whole of the Middle Ages and was added to here and there and continued to be used into the sixteenth, seventeenth century. The structure of it is God as God is toward us, but yet into it after the Arian controversies and the heresies into it was inserted for the sake of the faithful that they would be taught aright and they would worship the Lord aright, into it was inserted those clear statement concerning the ontological Trinity.

I want now to move from the West to the East. I’ve already suggested to you in earlier lectures that if you want to get the most perfect form of the expression of the imminent, ontological Trinity in words for worship, then you are to turn, I believe, to the liturgies created back in the fourth century in the Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire and specifically those liturgies known as the Divine Liturgy of Saint Chrysostom and the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil, and it is from those sources that I now want to read to you so that you can catch the flavor of this ontological Trinity being, as it were, imposed upon or being placed within a structure which is based on the economical sense of the Trinity, God as God is toward us. At the beginning of the divine liturgy, the deacon asks the presbyter or the bishop to bless and the presbyter or the bishop takes the book containing the four Gospels called The Gospel Book, he takes it in his hands and he blesses the congregation and says these words, “Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages.”


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Earlier he would not have said it in that way. He would have said more likely, “Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit now and ever and unto the ages of ages.” You’ll notice the difference. Instead of this blessing being the blessing of God as God is toward us—of the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit—it is the blessing of God as God is in Himself, and the reason it’s that way is to combat Arianism and to make clear that this is the God whom we worship, this is the God whom we know in Jesus Christ, and this is the God whom we know who dwells within our souls.

And then a little later, just a few minutes later in this liturgy, we have this anthem which is sung by the cantors and this, as you will see, is very much addressed to the Son, but it is addressed to the Son in terms of the ontological Trinity. “O only begotten Son and Word of God, thou who art immortal, yet didst deign for our salvation to become incarnate of the holy birth given of God in ever virgin Mary, and without change of essence was made man who also was crucified for us. O Christ God trampling down death by death who art one of the holy Trinity and art glorified together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Save us.” Now at an earlier period the Lord Jesus Christ would certainly have been addressed as the only begotten Son because that was the reading from John, chapter 1. He would certainly have been addressed as the Word of God, but it’s the way of making the economic Trinity into the ontological Trinity which is what the Arian controversy has done. Remember this anthem, this prayer to Christ, ends “who art one of the Holy Trinity and art glorified together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Save us.”

And now I want to give you a few lines from the actual prayer of the bishop or the presbyter much later in the service after the symbol of the faith, the Nicene Creed, has been sung or recited, the bishop or the presbyter offers this prayer. And again, I invite you to note how the ontological Trinity has entered into, to clarify and to make specifically clear who it is that is being addressed and who He is in His Trinitarian being. So he prays, “It is meet and right that we should laud thee, bless thee, praise thee, give thanks unto thee, and adore thee in all places of thy dominion, for thou art God ineffable, incomprehensible, invisible, inconceivable; thou art from everlasting and art changeless. Thou and thine only begotten Son and thy Holy Spirit. Thou from nothingness has called us into being and when we had fallen away from thee, thou didst raise us up again and thou has not ceased to do all things until thou hast brought us back to heaven and hast endowed us


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with thy kingdom which is to come. For all which things we give thanks unto thee, and thine only begotten Son, and thy Holy Spirit; for all the things whereof we know and whereof we know not, for all thy benefits bestowed upon us both manifest and unseen, and we rend unto thee thanks for this ministry which thou does deign to accept at our hands, although before thee stand thousands of archangels and myriads of angels with the cherubim and seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed who sore aloft, born on their pinions. O thou, who in verity existest, O Master, Lord God, Father Almighty, Adorable, meet is it in truth and just and befitting the majesty of thy holiness that we should magnify thee, praise thee, bless thee, adore thee, give thanks unto thee, and glorify thee, the only God which verily existeth and offer unto thee with contrite heart and humbleness of Spirit, this our reasonable service, for it is thou who hast graciously bestowed upon us the knowledge of thy truth. And who hath power enough to express thy mighty acts to make all thy praises to be heard or to utter forth all thy wonders at all times. O Master, O sovereign Master of all things, Lord of heaven and earth and of all created beings both visible and invisible, who sittest on the throne of glory and beholdest the depths who art from everlasting invisible, inscrutable, ineffortable, immutable, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, our great God and Savior, our hope who is the image of thy goodness, the seal of equal type in Himself showing forth thee, the Father, the living Word, the true God, the Wisdom before all the ages, the Life, the Sanctification, the Might, and the True Light through whom also the Holy Spirit was manifested. The Spirit of truth, the gift of adoption, the earnest of an inheritance to come, the first fruits of eternal good things, the life-giving power, the fountain of holiness, by whom enabled every creature endowed with reason and intelligence that serve thee and evermore descend up unto thee an everlasting tribute of praise for all things are thy servants. For angels and archangels, thrones, dominions, principalities, authorities, powers, and the many-eyed cherubim do laud thee. Before thee roundabout stand the seraphim, each having six wings for with twain do they cover their faces and twain their feet, and with twain they do fly, crying one to another continually with never-ceasing praises.”

I could continue to read. I wanted to give you a good flavor of it, but this is a very moving and a very powerful prayer addressed to the Father in the name of the Son and through the Son and by the Spirit, and it’s obviously of ancient vintage, but you can see how, and it’s only minimally here, not maximally, how the ontological Trinity has entered in here in what we may call a discrete way, a minimal way, but yet has entered in, because just before this


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prayer begins, the choir sings, “Meet and right it is that we should adore the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in essence and undivided.”

What I want to reflect upon in the last period of this lecture is this distinction which I’ve been possibly overemphasizing in order to make the point in the last thirty minutes or so, the distinction between the economy and theology. For the fathers, Greek and Latin fathers, theology came to mean the contemplation of, the meditation upon, and the speech concerning and writing concerning God as God is in Himself—God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that which is called by people today the ontological or the imminent Trinity.

As you have gathered, the necessity of reflecting upon God as God is in Himself came about not through in piety or not through philosophical interest or cerebral delight. It came about because the only way that the church had to counter the falsehoods, the heresies, heresies which were delighting to use scriptural phraseology and scriptural themes. The only way that the church had to deal with this was to step, as it were, over the line from thinking about God has God is toward us to reflecting upon in holy reverence and awe and contemplative zeal the reality of God as God is unto and as God is in Himself. And this is truly called theology. This is truly the study of God. And, of course, the Fathers whom we now look back to with awe and with great respect, they knew that they were treading on holy ground. To speak of and to think concerning God as God is in Himself is that which the soul begins and enters into not with any sense of right or any sense of human pride, but rather enters into in humility, and in this case, enters into in order to safeguard the salvation which the Scriptures speak of and declare and which the gospel message declares unto the world.

So I want to emphasize this because I think in modern times, in the great activism of contemporary culture and the great popularizations and simplifications which are occurring in the contemporary church, not least I would add in popular evangelicalism, people have the feeling and tend to get the idea that this is all mere cerebral activity which is not necessary. If it be the case, and I believe it is the case, that these heresies, on the one hand modalism; on the other hand one or another kind of Arianism, if these are still prevalent or related types of heresies are prevalent, and the heresies relate to the answer to the question, Who is God? then it seems to me that we, the members of the


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church of Christ, we who are in Christ to the Father, we have no alternative but to follow in such appropriate humility and holy reverence, the Fathers, the Cappadocian fathers, Athanasius, Augustine, and the holy fathers who followed them and dare, I say dare, but dare in holy humility, to do theology. Theology, that is the contemplation of God as God is unto and as God is in Himself.

Today we’ve so reduced the meaning of the word theology that any kind of human discourse or any collection of human words which contain the word God are now called theology, and so we have a theology of play, we have a theology of hope, we have a theology of politics, we have a theology of feminism, we have a theology of the third world, we have a theology of this, and a theology of the other, and as I said, this kind of talk usually means that you are looking at a subject religiously, but truly and really, theology is the study of God.

Certainly in our worship, it is absolutely proper and totally right and is based upon sound scriptural illustration and example to worship God according to the economy. That is, to worship God as God is toward us, and that is, as I’ve pointed out several times, including in this lecture, that is principally the way that is presented to us in the Scriptures and by the early church documents. In other words, we come to the Father through His beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, and we offer our worship to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, and to use biblical language and simple straightforward language is completely and totally appropriate and completely and totally right. However, since we are living in a context in which, as I said earlier, we find the recurring of many of the ancient heresies but expressed in modern types and dresses and forms, it seems to me that it is also necessary that we do seek also to include in the way we address God and the way we speak of God to include that reflection, that teaching, that holy dogma, which the Fathers called theology. This is why I, myself, if I may dare to give an apology for my own position, this is why I very much encourage the use of the classic liturgies, in my case, the classic liturgy of the Church of England and of the Anglican communion because that particular liturgy brought into being at the Reformation on the basis of the Fathers and refined and added to by the doctrine of justification by faith of the Reformers, that liturgy, it seems to me, has a wonderful combination of what I may call “theology and the economy.”


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Now that is a liturgical way of doing it. If you read the advice given by the Westminster Assembly concerning worship, you will find exactly the same principals set forth there in the directions for public worship of the Synod of Westminster, the Westminster Assembly. And there are other ways of doing it, but it does seem to me that it’s something we need to think about, and I hear very little talk of it. We need to work out how we can speak in the economy but not neglect theology.

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