For us there is one God,
the Father, of whom are all things,
and we for Him;
and one Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things,
and through whom we live.
First letter to the Corinthians 8:6
In this chapter we will try to understand the reality of the Trinity, which is fundamental to reach the conclusion of our study. In fact, it is not possible to outline a theory of salvation regardless of the intrinsic nature of the one who brought it about. As proof of this, during the early centuries of the Church, the theological debate was almost entirely centred on the nature of Christ, rather than on the ways in which he brought about salvation. This means that the Fathers of the Church had well understood that more important than “how” we were saved was the nature of the one who had been the architect of that salvation. In this chapter and in the concluding one, we will discover that the “how” and the “who” of salvation are not separate topics, but indeed coincide, namely that God saves us by virtue of who he is.
19.1. The Trinity
It is quite complicated to try to “explain God”, to outline his nature and define his contours, our limited understanding and language do not allow us to fully approach this unfathomable mystery. Nevertheless, it is our duty to try, by putting together the traces that the Lord has left in his word. After all, Jesus said to Philip: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”528
Everyone should be familiar with the general idea of the Trinity, according to which to one undivided God correspond three distinct persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. All three persons are “consubstantial”, i.e., they share the same nature, and are eternal. The Son is begotten of the Father, but there has never been a moment when he has not existed from eternity. Moreover, the relationship between the Father and the Son generates the Holy Spirit, and they are in turn generated by him; the Holy Spirit also exists from eternity, since the Father and the Son are in relationship from all eternity. So, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one reality in three distinct entities, each with its own role, in a mutually generating relationship. I have tried to graphically represent the idea of the Triune God, and this is the result (where the arrows represent this generating relationship):
First of all, we can see that all three persons share the same nature, represented by the grey shading, that is God's Holy Spirit, which fills every space; therefore God, in his entirety “appears” as Spirit.
John 4:24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
The Spirit, which is God’s nature, is the substance of which both the Father and the Son are made; this substance is the love generated in the relationship, since God is love.
1 John 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
It follows that the intrinsic nature of God is constituted by the very love that he generates; the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit is love. Now, there is no such thing as love without at least two subjects who love each other; we understand this well. These two subjects are the Father and the Son; the Father generates the Son out of love, and the Son reciprocates the Father with equal love. It follows that God is made up of three distinct entities in communion with each other: the one who loves, the one who is loved and responds to love, and finally the love itself which is generated in the bosom of this relationship. The love born of this infinite exchange is what constitutes the life of both the Father and the Son and confers identity on God; in turn, the Spirit pours out love on the Father and the Son and in this sense generates them in their essence of love.
The Word is also called Son because he receives the divine essence, just as every child receives from his parent the human nature of his being, the same as the one who generated him. Being the perfect and total expression of the first person of the Trinity, the second person is also love which, in turn, perfectly corresponds to the Father with the same total gift of self. This relationship of intimate unity based on mutual giving contains in turn something divine that is a person of the same divine essence as the first two. It is love personified: the Holy Spirit.529
God is therefore a three-dimensional relationship, a kind of “whirlwind of love” (which we have represented in our drawing with the arrows), consisting of a nature that is love, an infinite generator of love. The Father is love by nature and generates the Son who is of the same nature of love; their relationship generates the Spirit who is love, but in turn they themselves are generated by the Spirit, since their nature is made up of love. It is an infinite loop that escapes our understanding precisely because it is eternal.
Three Persons who are one God because the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit is love. God is all and only love, most pure, infinite and eternal love. [...] The strongest proof that we are made in the image of the Trinity is this: only love makes us happy, because we live in relationship in order to love and we live in order to be loved.530
Trinitarian faith witnesses to the divine reality as living, active, dynamic, and relational. Relationship is at the heart of God’s being. One yet richly differentiated, God’s being is in communion. God lives and acts in mutual, self-giving love.531
There could not be a God who was not love and who was not made up of three distinct entities, as we have tried to represent. For if there were a God made up of only one entity, he would be static, incapable of love, infatuated with himself and in a state of eternal narcissistic self-contemplation; this is the Aristotelian God, but also the God of Islam, for example. Similarly, if only two distinct entities existed but were not in a relationship of mutual love, they would end up entering into “competition”, annihilating each other or one would crush the other and return to the previous case; this is the dualistic universe represented by some Eastern religions (the Taoist idea of yin and yang for example). In the first case (the solitary God) we would not exist because this God would have no interest except in himself (or at best we could be his toy). In the second case (the dual God) we would not exist because he would be unable to act, because for every action there would be an equal and opposite reaction of force, and everything would be reduced to nothingness or to a continuous alternation of sterile creation and destruction.
The trinity is utterly different. Instead of self-centeredness, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are characterized in their very essence by mutually self-giving love. No person in the Trinity insists that the others revolve around him; rather each of them voluntarily circles and orbits around the others. […] If this is ultimately reality, if this is what the God who made the universe is like, then this truth bristles and explodes with life shaping, glorious implications for us. If this world was made by a triune God, relationships of love are what life is really all about.532
19.2. What is love?
In the previous paragraph, we have mentioned the word “love” countless times as the essence and substance of God himself; at this point it is necessary to give a definition of what love is:
The Father gives all of himself to glorify the Son; the Son gives all of himself to honour the Father; this continuous reciprocal giving gives life to a third entity/person who is the Spirit of giving itself. Each of the two persons, Father and Son, is only interested in the good of the other and this generates a Spirit which is himself a generator of love for both. As we have said, there is no moment in eternity when the three entities have not existed simultaneously, because they have always existed in a reciprocal relationship. Therefore, the Father is love because he gives all of himself, the Son is love because he gives all of himself and the Holy Spirit is love because he is the continuous and inexhaustible gift of love between the Father and the Son, and he has the sole desire to give all of himself to the Father and the Son. It follows that if the substance of which God is created is love, then the eternal (uncreated) life of God, that which flows through his “veins”, is love.
As already mentioned, we could therefore define God as a kind of inexhaustible “whirlwind of love”, and here we come into play. What could a God who is in his nature, essence and substance, entirely and solely a generator of love, interested only in giving all of himself, possibly do? He could do nothing but mould other creatures similar to himself, who could and would receive this gift and participate in what C. S. Lewis called a “dance”.533 That is why we have represented, in our diagram, arrows moving outwards, since love is open, not exclusive but inclusive, and rejoices in sharing and participation:
It is communion therefore the essence of the triune God and not only is the triune God communion but also invites to communion since the triune unity is not an exclusive but inclusive unity.534
And so, God created the heavens and the earth and every creature so that they could participate in this cosmic whirlwind of love, as Lewis furtherly explains:
God is love, and that love works through men – especially through the whole community of Christians. But this spirit of love is, from all eternity, a love going on between the Father and the Son. And now, what does it all matter? It matters more than anything else in the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to happiness for which we were made.535
An essential requirement, for these created beings to be able to participate in the wonderful love dance, is the freedom to choose whether to do so because, as we understand well, love, to be such, cannot be imposed, but only freely chosen. Thus, God withdraws partially, he makes room within himself, just as the woman makes room within herself to give birth to a new creature; he creates a place where good and evil are possible, so that there is freedom of choice, through which the great spectacle of love is realised in relationships among men.
God as Trinity is not a unit but a union; not self-love but shared love. God is communion and as Trinity is mutuality, self-giving, “I and Thou”. If this is true of God as Trinity then it is also true of the human person created in God’s Trinitarian image. My human being is also a relational being. My personhood is fulfilled in relationship and community. I am truly personal and truly human only so far as I show love to others, in “I-Thou” relationships. My salvation then as a human person in God’s image can only be attained in union with other persons, and through mutuality and interpersonal encounter, as expressed in Jesus’ life and mission.536
In this space we perceive the presence of God, yet we have no direct knowledge of it, paradoxically precisely because we are completely immersed in it, in the same way that a baby in its mother's womb perceives life around him, even though it cannot comprehend it. Consequently, without being aware of it, we feel inexorably drawn to pursue (not always in an appropriate way) the love of relationship, because it is the origin, essence, fabric and unique purpose of all creation.
19.3. Love in the Jewish conception
To further support what we have seen so far, we can refer to the Jewish concept of love because, let us not forget, whenever Jesus referred to the idea and we find the expression “love” in the Bible, we have to strip it of its meaning for us today and transpose it to the context in which the word was used. The Hebrew word for love was ahavah, the root of which hav means “to give”, so to love was something that involved giving. Unlike our way of thinking, where love is an emotion or a feeling of deep affection, for the Jews, love ahavah, was putting oneself at the disposal of the loved one, acting with fidelity and loyalty towards him or her. Jewish love was a commitment based on a covenant of mutual fidelity, which is why the words emunah and ahavah, almost overlaps in meaning. Love for God was conceived as a commitment to honouring the covenant he had established, remaining faithful to it, without straying into the worship of other gods. Spousal love was fidelity to one's spouse, disdaining adultery and devoting oneself loyally to pursuing the good of the other. Love was therefore not just a feeling, as we understand it today, it was rather a faithful and loyal commitment to cherish, cultivate and nurture a covenant between two people. The emotions and feelings that eventually followed and matured over time were neither the incipit nor the goal of the relationship, whose sole purpose was the protection and building up of the beloved.
Judaism understands love to be covenantal — the dynamic and persistent integration of the inner emotion/virtues of affection, empathy, desire, yearning and delight with deeds of tzedek (justice), shalom (wholeness/integrity) and berakhah (blessing/wellbeing). […] Such covenantal love is both dynamic and persistent. Love is sometimes misunderstood as a fleeting fad or passion. Or even worse, it can be taken to be a cool intellectual assessment of value. Between the incinerating heat of passion and the icy chill of assessment, there is no room for a love that lives. Jewish love is alive, which means always open to change, always in relationship. As the philosopher Franz Rosenzweig reminds us, “Love brings to life whatever is dead around us.”537
Another fundamental Hebrew word, used to describe the character and nature of God, was hesed, translated into English as mercy or loving-kindness. This translation is rather limited because hesed is a stable, rock-solid loyalty in a loving relationship. It does not depend on the response of the loved one but is founded on the immovable resolution to act in loyalty.
Based in a covenantal relationship, hesed is a steadfast, rock-solid faithfulness that endures to eternity: […] Hesed is a love so enduring that it persists beyond any sin or betrayal to mend brokenness and graciously extend forgiveness: “No one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love [hesed]” (Lamentations 3:31–32). Like other Hebrew words, hesed is not just a feeling but an action. It intervenes on behalf of loved ones and comes to their rescue. Because hesed is often active, it is translated as “mercy” or “loving-kindness,” but neither of these words fully conveys that hesed acts out of unswerving loyalty even to the most undeserving.538
As we have seen, the profound meaning of these Hebrew words, used to describe love, was the giving of one's whole self, acting faithfully for the good of others, with loyal respect for the loved one. This is the reality of love, this is what the Bible wanted to communicate to us about the intimate nature of God. We will see in the next chapter that God's faithfulness and total self-giving constitutes the whole of salvation.
19.4. The cross as a result of love
We have seen that God is love and that love is the complete gift of oneself for the good of another, in fidelity and loyalty. In what can we admire the supreme manifestation of love, that is, the irrevocable and absolute act of giving one's life for the good of others? We can obviously contemplate it in the event of the cross, on which Jesus gave his whole self for love of us and of the Father. The cross, then, was the supreme manifestation of God's nature, the revelation of his very essence; if we want to understand who God is, peer into his heart, understand how he acts and probe his Spirit, we must fix our gaze on Jesus crucified. He is the full and perfect representation of the nature of God, who empties himself (kenosis) and allows himself to be humiliated to the extreme, out of love for his creatures. There is no more powerful manifestation of God's inner vocation than Jesus on the cross, so much so that someone said that there was a cross planted from eternity in God's heart even before it was on the hill of Golgotha.539
Jesus saves by virtue of the cross not because with it he has resolved some sort of juridical compensation or cosmic transaction; Jesus saves not because of the cross in itself, but because of the love that flows from it; it is the total gift of Jesus, of his life, of his very nature that is love, what saves. The greater the love, the greater the sacrifice one is willing to endure; to perfect love, corresponds total sacrifice. Love is in fact measured in terms of what we are willing to lose, it is the “price” we are prepared to bear for the good of others. In Jesus on the cross, God decided to renounce his own justice and suffer all injustice; he renounced his own honour and dignity to bear dishonour and scandal; he renounced strength and power to embrace weakness and failure, and finally he laid down his own life completely.
John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
The sacrifice of Jesus is not a payment, a compensation or a satisfaction made to the Father, but it is the absolute and unconditional gift of God who, in Jesus, delivers all of himself to lost humanity. God is not divided, there is not a Father who demands justice, a Son who offers mercy and a Holy Spirit who tries to balance the equation; but it is the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who offers all of itself to mankind in the event of the cross, since all three suffer, albeit in different ways:
The divine attributes are held in common by all three persons: all are holy, all are loving, all are wise and powerful. Similarly, an action of God cannot be restricted to one of the three persons. All of the acts of the triune God are indivisible. The persons of the Trinity do not work independently. Each of God’s acts is always the one work of the whole Trinity.540
There is no justice of God to be balanced with his mercy, because the very nature of God is hesed, merciful. The sacrifice of Jesus is not something that rises upwards from below as compensation but is a total and unconditional gift of the merciful God, proceeding from above to below.
The “atonement” (at-one-ment, reconciliation) is not a sacrifice to God that satisfies God’s neediness (that God is not needy for sacrifices has been established back with Psalms 50). The “atonement” illumines the truth that humanity has suppressed (Romans 1:18), truth that helps (or allows) sinners to see God’s welcoming mercy clearly. This illumination makes “one-ment” with God possible—not from God’s side (God has always welcomed sinners) but from the human side (when we see accurately, we will be freed from our fearfulness toward God that leads to ingratitude and trusting in idols instead of God).541
The cross is the inevitable “short-circuit” of this love descended from heaven, when it meets the evil of the world; it is the price that wicked men have made God pay for remaining faithful to himself and his own nature. The cross is therefore the consequence of the selfishness that lurks in the hearts of many men, in response to the action of love, which is instead a total gift of self. It manifests the horror of evil in men applied to God, but at the same time offers all the love of God to those same men, a love that can overcome the hearts of sinners and is capable of solidarity with the victims of all sin.
We must not forget that the cross is not only a gift of love for sinners, but also solidarity with the victims of those same sins. Evil is not something abstract, a perpetrator is always matched by one or more victims. When we imagine the cross, we often think of the redemption of sinners, but we frequently forget about their victims. Well, the event of the cross is God who participates, who takes part in human suffering; he is not an indifferent God, but one who knows pain, abandonment, shame, contempt, and for this reason can be in solidarity with all the victims of all abuse and injustice. If, on the one hand, he leaves the wicked free to do evil while giving them the chance to be redeemed, on the other hand, he does not abandon those who suffer that evil, because he is a God with us, in all circumstances, one who understands suffering. As Jürgen Moltmann said, a God incapable of suffering would be loveless and poorer than any man:
A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any man. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely insensitive, he cannot be affected or shaken by anything. He cannot weep, for he has no tears. But the one who cannot suffer cannot love either. So, he is also a loveless being.542
19.5. Conclusion
In this chapter we have seen what God's nature is and how it has to do with his Trinitarian identity. It is important to note that when we say that God is love, we are not referring to some kind of noble sentiment, but rather to his absolute and total inclination to give himself for the edification and glorification of his creatures. God has spared and will never spare anything in order to win his creatures to life, so that they may participate in the sublime love that constitutes his very existence:
Romans 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
Nothing to do with the punitive and angry God for the sins of mankind, but a God more like a mother, anxious for her wounded children, who would spare nothing to hold them, heal them and rejoice in their salvation.
Isaiah 66:13 As one whom his mother comforts, So I will comfort you; And you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
It is perhaps this maternal side of God that we have lost, because of the archaic patriarchal culture, and that should be recovered, to give a full meaning to God's love, as the source of all life. A God capable of compassion, of suffering with us, of caring for and supporting his creatures, as only a mother can do.