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The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten

Athanasian Creed

The Father, in His love for the Divine Son, was pleased to empty His life out entirely towards the Son, keeping nothing for Himself, requiring nothing in return.  And the son, as love, was pleased to humble himself to receive the generous outpouring of the life of the Father. 

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, [and] being made in the likeness of men. 

Philippians 2:5-9

In the last post I described love (as exemplified by the Father) as an endless generosity.  Humility is the complimentary principle by which love operates.  To be humble, to be emptied out, is the necessary condition for receiving that which is poured out upon you.  In eternity, this is the mode of being by which Jesus receives His life as a gift from the Father.  Jesus was begotten by the Father in order that He might receive the fullness of the Father’s life as His own.  Colossians 1:15 describes Jesus as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”  Heb 1:3 adds that Jesus “is the radiance of [the Father’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature, upholding all things by the word of His power.”  When we see Jesus, we see the Father, because Jesus’ life consists in all that the Father has and is, given to the son as a gift of the Father’s generosity.  The Father holds nothing back from the Son, but is content to have all of His fullness dwell in Jesus [Col 1:19]

Humility is Jesus’ mode of being in eternity, just as generosity is the Father’s. Jesus, being humble (being empty), offers no resistance to receiving the outpouring of the Father’s love.  It is the eternal, ongoing source of His life, as declared in John 6:56: “I live because of [up out of] the Father”. By receiving the Father’s life, Jesus comes to understand the generous side of love that is the essence of the Father’s participation in the love of God. 1 John 4:19 declares that we learn love the same way: by receiving it as a gift of God.

The generous side of love finds expression through Jesus the in many ways, one of which is the creation of the universe, described in the following passages:

He was in the beginning with God; all things came into being through Him.  As to that which has been made, He was its life.  In Him was life, and that life is the life of men.

John 1:1

For by him all things were created: both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Colossians 1:16-17

We see the generous side of the love of Jesus again in His relationship to the church.  

He is also the head of the body, the church; and he is the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness [of God] to dwell in Him.

Colossians 1:18-19

“First place” is not a place of prominence or fame.  It means that Jesus is the cause, the source of life, the fountainhead from which everything derives its own existence. The creation grew up out of Christ.  When that creation was marred by sin, Jesus humbled Himself through His incarnation, becoming through the crucifixion the fountainhead of new life for the Church:

And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as headover all things to the church which is His body; the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Ephesians 1:22

The word “head” in this passage (the Greek word ‘kephale’) means “source.”   The church is made up of all those people who have accepted Jesus as their source of life. We grow up out of His life, reproducing in ourselves the image of Christ who Himself is the perfect image of the Father.  The church is the aggregation of the life of Christ in each believer.  In this way it literally becomes the manifestation of the fullness of God.

Imitating Christ, or being Christlike is usually described as a pattern of behavior, conformity to an ethical.  These descriptions miss the point entirely.  Romans 8:29 tells s that the Father’s desire is that all those who are born of Him will share the likeness of His son.  This likeness is neither behavioral nor ethical. To be Christlike is to adopt His mode of being in the world.  That mode is the same as Jesus’ mode of being in relationship with the Father in eternity.  It is humility: being content to be emptied out of all that we think we are in order that we might receive the fullness of the life of God in exchange.  If we are children of God, brothers and sisters of Christ, how can we imagine that anything else will suffice?  The repeated calls to humility that we see in the New Testament are pointing us towards the imitation of the utter dependence of Christ on the generous love offered by the Father.  That love is the sap in the vine that gives life to the branches. The rivers of living water that are intended to flow from our inmost being are the same rivers of life that flow out of Jesus: the life that He, in humility, received from the heart of the Father.  

The final act of generous love that the bible prophetically ascribes to Jesus is the giving back to the Father of all that the Father has given to Him. Throughout His incarnation Jesus made it clear that He acted only to reveal and bring glory to the Father. In 1 Cor 15:28 Paul writes that “when all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subjected to Him who put everything under [Jesus], so that God may be all in all”

A better translation of the phrase “subjected to” is the phrase “concluded in”. Everything that exists grows up out of the love of the Father, and has the Father as its purpose.  This is why the Psalmist declares that the heavens declare the glory of God [Ps 19:1], and why Paul writes in Romans 1:2 that everything about God’s nature is clearly visible to anyone who studies the natural world with an un-prejudiced eye.  As evidence of this, consider that Socrates, a philosopher growing up in a polytheistic culture, developed a philosophical monotheism through His observations of the natural world. 

And so it is that everything that Jesus creates by the love of the Father becomes an icon of the Himself, and of the Father whose life sustains Him.  Galatians 3:24 declares that the law is a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ.  True as this is, it is equally true that everything in the universe serves the same end. Col 1:16 tells us in particular that all rule and authority was created by and for Jesus. When Jesus returns all of these things will pass away; they will be concluded in [subjected to] Christ.  When the perfect comes, the imperfect passes away.

And then, when everything finds its fulfillment in Christ, He will take all that has grown up out of Him and returned to Him, and offer it in generous love to the Father, emptying out all that He is on the One that He loves, holding nothing back and expecting nothing in return.  And in this generous act, He returns to the state of humility, of empty trust, in which He was begotten.

And what happens next?  Who can know? What we can know is that the mutual generous outpouring and humble trust that we see in the Father and the Son is eternal and unending.  It is their perfect participation in the love that is God and is in God.  It is a cycle in which we, as God’s children, are destined to participate in throughout all eternity.  Walking in humility (emptiness and trust) is the way that we, as children of God, imitate Jesus, our elder brother, the firstborn child of God.  It is in this way we position ourselves to take our place in the eternal flow of love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Father is made of none; neither created nor begotten.

Athanasian Creed

For a large part of my Christian life, the Father has been a distant figure, hard to approach.  I am not alone in this regard.  When people talk about the Father they tend to portray Him as distant, removed; an all-powerful sovereign demanding both obeisance and respect.  When theologians talk about Him they tend to focus on three attributes: omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence.  In plain language, the Father is the one who knows all and sees all.  He has all the power; He is firmly in control.  This view is common among Jews and Muslims as well as Christians

But this view of the father is catastrophically wrong. It is untrue and toxic.  It poisons every part of our relationships with God and with one another.  It is an expression of our narrow obsession with power and control; an obsession that we inherited from the devil.  It is a fascination that God does not share.  Modern books, movies, and video games frequently express the idea that if we could know everything or force everything to be the way we wanted it to be, we would be like God.  These statements are utter rubbish.  If we could accomplish these things, we would not be like God at all.  We would be like Satan’s idea of who God is. When we fixate on any of the “power” attributes of God, we are looking at God through the perspective of the devil, who believed that by seizing that which belonged to God, he could make himself divine (Isa 14:12-14).  

Consider the following as an alternative view of the Father:

The One is perfect; it has nothing, seeks nothing, needs nothing, but it overflows, and this overflow is creative.  The eternal creative action, beyond spirit, sense, and life, involves no self-loss.  It is the welling forth of an unquenchable spring, the eternal fountain of life.

These words were written by the Greek philosopher Plotinus in the third century AD.  He was elaborating on a tradition begun by Socrates more than 400 years before the Incarnation of Christ.  What he is describing is the generous, desiring side of love; the nature of that eternal life that we see expressed by the Father as he begets the Son.  God the Father is the perfect manifestation in eternity of the love that is Divine.  But love is a verb.  It requires a subject and an object.  If the Father is the subject, the son is the object.  Jesus was begotten so that the Father could empty Himself out in love onto His Son.  This divine outpouring is the substance of Jesus’ own life.  He is utterly dependent on the generosity of the Father for His continued existence. He declares this to His disciples in John 6:56: 

“Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.”

A  more accurate translation of the statement “I live because of the Father” is “I live up out of the Father.” Jesus’ life depends on the Father in the same way that a glowing light bulb depends on of the flow of electrical current, or an ornamental fountain depends on the stream of water through the pipe that supplies it. This dependence is a continuous, relentless devouring of a source without which we will immediately perish. This is, in fact, the death that Adam and Eve experienced when they rejected the upwelling fountain of creative love as the source of their own lives.  The consequence of the fall is that human beings are born cut off from that source of life.  Now we “live up out of” whatever we can take from the world and from one another. This experience is, as Ecclesiastes assures us, deeply and relentlessly unsatisfying. It leads to the kind of selfish, destructive competition described in Galatians 5:15 and James 4:1-3.  

The life that grows up out of God abides in a state of perpetual contentment and perpetual fruition.  Plotinus properly speculated that this life is always seeking, and always satisfied.  It is endlessly emptying itself out, and yet is always full.  It multiplies life forever.  This is the life that Jesus participated in, the life that He invites usto participate in.  Consider the following scriptures:

“He that believes on me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.” 

John 7:38

“Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life”

John 17:22-23

Scripture is replete with image of God as a stream, a well, an upwelling fountain of life.  All of these images take for granted the idea that the fountain never runs dry; the Father never ceases to empty His life out on and through everything.  Let me remind you of Lady Julian’s vision of creation:

“I beheld a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball.  I looked at it with my mind’s eye and thought, “What can this be?” and the answer came to me, “It is all [I have] made.”  I wondered how it could last, for it was so [frail] I thought it might suddenly have disappeared.  And the answer in my mind was, “it lasts and will last for ever because God loves it; and everything exists in the same way [up out of] the love of God.”

First Showing, Revelations of Divine Love, Lady Julian of Norwich

God did not create the world the way an engineer “creates” a bridge, or the way a sculptor “creates” a work of art.  He is not a disinterested clockmaker who built everything and then sat back to watch it run.  He creates and sustains everything moment by moment the way that soil and sunlight and rain create and sustain an exotic flower.  What is created by God grows up out of the life He gives it, nourished by the sun of His love.  This is the point of Lady Julian’s vision of creation.  If the upwelling fountain of creative love stops, everything immediately dissolves.  God is intimately involved in everything, upholding and sustaining it by the force of His love.

Contrast this image with theologians’ insistence on defining the Father as the one who is omniscient and omnipotent; as knowledge and power.  In truth the Father is neither of these things.  Omnipotence, omniscience, and are not attributes that God possesses.  They do not define His nature.  They are artifacts that exist within time and space because of what creation is: a single word of love spoken between the Father and the Son.  The Universe was created by love, sustained by love, and love is what it means.  Because every atom and sub-atomic particle is held together by the love of God, we see Him as present in all things [omnipresent], knowing all things [omniscient], and exercising power over all things [omnipotent].  But these are not attributes of the divine.  They are artifacts of the limited perspective from which human beings interact with the universe.  Once the universe ends, these three artifacts will pass away and the upwelling fountain of creative love will remain entirely unchanged. 

The Father is the eternal generosity from which everything else receives its life.  That is the Father’s perfect participation in the love that is in God and that is God.

I have made the claim that if you want to understand the nature of the universe and of our place in it, you have to understand the life of the Trinity. In the previous post I described love as an animating principle, the fundamental nature that the Godhead shares. It is this, to be sure. But to really understand love we need to understand it not as a principle but as a verb.

As a verb, love is active.  It is directed.  It requires both a subject and an object, and this is what the Trinity shows us: three distinct persons, all sharing the same nature, expressing it perfectly in their relationship with one another.  This view is supported both by scripture, and by the most ancient creeds of the Christian faith. The two paragraphs that follow are a description of what I see when I behold the Trinity. In the days and weeks to come I will be breaking them down sentence by sentence, idea by idea. For the time being, simply read them and meditate on the picture they paint of the live of the Divine:

Before the beginning was God, the eternal conflagration of love that pluses and flares in the depths of the universe; love, pure and endless, potent and self-giving, having neither beginning nor end, but simply being.^⁠1  This upwelling life found its expression in the person of the Father, the one we call Jehovah, a perfect participant in the love that is in God and that is God.^⁠2  And because love requires both a subject and an object, there came, begotten by the Father, the eternal Son, a perfect sharer in the divine life of love that is in God and that is God.^⁠3  And the Father, in His love for the Divine Son, was pleased to empty His life out entirely towards the Son, keeping nothing for Himself, requiring nothing in return.^⁠4  And the son, as love, was pleased to humble himself to receive the generous outpouring of the life of the Father.  By it, he was magnified and enriched.  As the Son of God, He was moved to reciprocate, pouring His own life and all of the riches He had received back towards the Father, keeping nothing for Himself, requiring nothing in return.^⁠5  

From this mutual outpouring of love between the Father and the Son, proceeded the Holy Spirit, the third sharer in the life of the Divine.^⁠6  He is content to have nothing for Himself, but to be at all times the message and messenger of love between the Father and the Son.  And so, in Eternity, love finds its perfect expression in the mutual, self-emptying flow of life between the Father and the Son by the action of the Holy Spirit.  In this all three are utterly humble, each receiving their lives as the gift of the others.  Each is utterly generous, offering all that they are to the others without reservation or fear.  And in this endless flow of love, all three are perfect, all three are whole, and all three overflow with the fullness of love and a joy that is complete and satisfying, utterly unspeakable and unknowable except by themselves.  

¹ Ath. Creed 3 – “The Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal”, 1 Jn 4:16

² Ath. Creed 17 – “The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten.”

³ Ath. Creed 18 – “The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten.”

⁴ Jn 5:20-23, Jn 3:35, Eph 1:22

⁵ 1 Cor 15:28

⁶ Ath. Creed 19 – “The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding.”

Ex 3:14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.'”

Eph 3:14-15 “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.”

“Fire ever doth aspire,
and make all like itself – turn all to fire,
But ends in ashes; which these cannot do,
for none of these is fuel, but fire too”
John Donne

The foundation of all things is simply God.  I do not mean any particular manifestation or attribute of God, but God Himself: the fountainhead up out of which everything else exists.  I AM, the name by which God revealed Himself to Moses expresses the idea that He is not contingent or dependent.  He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together [Col 1:17].  Everything in eternity and the created universe derives its substance and being from God.  Nothing exists outside of, or apart from Him

Early Christianity concerned itself with the direct experience of God through the Holy Spirit.  Jesus’ very name, Emmanuel, means “The God who is with us.”  Apostles John and Paul make it clear that their desire is to know God the way He knows Himself and to share that “knowing” with the rest of the church. The Apostles testify that what God is is unutterable.  He is not representable in any language, image, emotion, or thought.  This is why God prohibited the Hebrews from making any physical images to represent Him.  Biblical writers do converge on two fundamental ideas about God:

1. God is love.
2. God is a consuming fire.

These two statements define and explain the indivisible nature of God. The ancient Christian authors use the second concept to elaborate on the first: love is who God is, but fire is how His love acts. God’s love is a powerful and active force.  It permeates and sustains the universe.  We consider love to be a soft, or weak thing because we associate it with a particular kind of emotional effervescence.  But love, as God understands it, is a raging fire: powerful and indomitable.  God’s love takes everything that it not like itself and either transforms it or consumes it.

Early Christian authors describe the action of God’s love on the human soul through the metaphor of a wet log thrown into a fire. At first the fire causes the wood to smoke as the water evaporates from it.  As the wood dries out, dirt and moss burn off the surface and the log blackens and cracks.  The blackness spreads as the fire penetrates more deeply, removing impurities from the wood.  Eventually the wood ignites and begins to burn along with the fire instead of resisting it.  It seems to be two things at the same time.  It has a coherent physical structure, like wood, but it can give off light and heat and set other things ablaze, the way that fire can.  As the fire continues to burn, it entirely converts the wood to flame.  What it leaves behind is ash, which is the substance that would not submit to this transformation.

Classical authors believed that all matter was made up of earth, air, water, and fire.  Primitive as this sounds to us, keep in mind that the periodic table of elements that we study in school is only about two hundred years old.  The classical mind viewed wood as a mixture of earth, water, and fire.  The presence of fire “inside the wood” was the reason that it was combustible.

Knowing this, there are two perspectives from which we can imagine the action of fire on a piece of wood. From the perspective of the fire that is “trapped inside” the matrix of earth and water, “burning” is a liberation and multiplication.  The physical structure of the wood perceives the action of the fire as entirely destructive.  The fire burns against it until it is annihilated, leaving only unconvertible ashes behind.

The action of the love of God on the human soul is no different. The love of God seeks out the parts of us that are like itself, releasing and amplifying them.  Any genuine love within our souls is a participation in or echo of the love of God.  But that love is trapped within walls of selfishness, fear, and anger which must be converted or destroyed.  If we identify ourselves with these traits, we will experience the love of God as torment, because He is, by nature, opposed to everything that we think of as “us”.  

God gives us a choice to lay aside fear, anger, and selfishness so that we can identify ourselves only with what agrees with His love.  When we do this, we experience the love of God as ever-increasing glory: the fire of God’s love producing liberation and transformation.  A soul in this condition is one that burns continually, and yet is never consumed.  A soul that resists the transforming action of God’s love is one that suffers ongoing torment.  God’s love burns against it, seeking its freedom and transformation, but it refuses to be changed.  In the words of Thomas Merton:

“God is a consuming fire. If we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will be our eternal joy. But if we refuse His love and remain in the coldness of sin and opposition to Him and to other men, then will His fire – by our own choice, rather than His – become an eternal enemy, and love, instead of being our joy, will become our torment and destruction.”^⁠

New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton, p. 124.

The love that God is is so far removed from human experience that the Greeks used a distinct word, agapé, to refer to it. As I have already observed, love is not something weak, or soft.  His love is a potent force that keeps every atom in the universe from flying apart.  The 14th century religious writer Julian of Norwich received a revelation from God in which she saw:

“…a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball.  I looked at it with my mind’s eye and thought, “What can this be?” and the answer came to me, “It is all [I have] made.”  I wondered how it could last, for it was so [frail] I thought it might suddenly have disappeared.  And the answer in my mind was, “it lasts and will last for ever because God loves it; and everything exists in the same way, the same way [up out of] the love of God.”^⁠

Revelations of Divine Love, First Showing .

Compared to God, all of time and space is a fragile ball, prepared to fall into dust if the love of God did not hold it together.  God’s love is more potent than magnetism or gravity.  It is more powerful than the nuclear forces that hold atoms together. God’s love intimately and thoroughly permeates the universe.  He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. [Col 1:17]  

God’s understanding of love is so much more potent than ours because He does not define love through the lens of covetous affection, sentiment, or casual sex.  To God, love is not a warm blanket that you wrap up in when you feel cold.   It is not a rosy glow or a gentle, passive illumination. God’s love is a howling thermonuclear holocaust that shreds matter with incandescent fingers and flings it away at the speed of light. It is all consuming.  Nothing can stand before it.  Nothing can endure in its presence.  By nature, God’s love glorifies and enhances anything that agrees with it, but afflicts and destroys everything that opposed to it. 

1. And the faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost.
2. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal.
3. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost.
4. The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated.
5. The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited.
6. The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal.
7. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite.
8. So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty.
9. So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God.
10. So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord.
    And yet not three Lords; but one Lord.
11. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity; to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord; So are we forbidden by the catholic religion; to say, There are three Gods, or three Lords.
12. The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten.
13. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten.
14. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding.
15. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts.
16. And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal. So that in all things, as aforesaid; the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped.
17. He therefore that will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity.

I am including the first 17 lines of the Athanasian Creed to spare the reader the trouble of looking it up, especially as I intend to refer back to it in future posts. It was created to address the spreading heresy of Arianism which explicitly denied the deity of Jesus Christ. If you are looking for an effective devotional exercise, you could do a lot worse than meditating on any one of the 17 verses quoted above. It may needlessly pedantic, but every word is there for a reason.

Years ago, when “The Shack” was first released, there was widespread criticism of the portrayal of the Father as a black woman. There were a lot of other criticisms of it, most of which missed the point entirely. One thing that I found disturbing was reading many criticisms, some by pastors and theologians, who took issue with the portrayal of the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as being so egalitarian and “familiar”. I find that there is a growing body of believers who think that the Trinity is some kind of Divine corporation. They speak of the Father as the CEO who determines what goes on in the universe. The Son is His servant, and the Holy spirit is the power by which the Son acts. I hear the same language used when Christians talk about their relationship to God the Father. They talk about serving God, being faithful to God, and of treating Him with the proper respect. Somehow we have come to think of God the Father as a human monarch, who keeps Himself at a distance, and from whom the most we can hope for is to hear Him say “well done, good and faithful servant.”

This is arrant nonsense which borders on heresy. Dealing with the issue of the “familiar” portrayal of the Trinity, look at verse 16 of the creed: “in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another” You can not imagine or teach the Trinity as a hierarchy without doing violence to the foundational doctrines of the Christian faith. The relationship of the members of the Trinity is characterized by mutual humility and mutual generosity, in which all three empty the fullness of who they are onto one another, holding nothing back for themselves.  In John 5:22-23 and John 3:35, Jesus explains that the Father has taken everything that is His and given it unreservedly to His Son.  In the same way, Jesus does not hoard this treasure for himself, but uses it to bring glory to the Father.  In Jesus’ mind, the Father is not a superior or a competitor.  He is not a source of power or authority.  In Jesus’s mind, He and the Father are one and the same.

This is the relationship to which all who are born again have been invited to participate. We do not participate as servants, but as lovers who humbly receive our lives as a Gift of the Father the way that Jesus did [John 6:56], offering our lives to Him and to one another in the same way. Jesus makes this explicit in John 15:15: “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” Jesus raises the stakes in John 17:21 when he prays “that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”

If we are in the Trinity in the way that Jesus is in the Father, then we are enfolded in a perfectly generous and humble love that wants nothing more than the removal of all barriers to intimacy. The Father is not concerned with respect or devotion. The Father is not distancing Himself from us at all. Instead, He is striving at every moment to enfold us in an intimate, life-giving embrace. The question we need to be asking ourselves is why we have spent our time devising and spreading elaborate theologies that justify our refusal to let Him embrace us.

The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten.
The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten.
The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son;
     neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding.

ATHANASIAN CREED – 6TH CENTURY AD

Christianity is unique among even monotheistic religions for its portrayal of God as a Triune entity: three distinct persons who share a fundamental nature. When I first read about the doctrine of the Trinity I thought that the language seemed very stilted and needlessly technical. The lines quoted above from the Athanasian Creed are a prime example. Why is it important to say that the son is not created but begotten? Why is the Holy Spirit “proceeding” but neither created nor begotten? The answer is that the creeds were all constructed to refute heresy; they needed to be extraordinarily precise about what they claimed.

That having been said, it is easy to get lost in the weeds and to miss the point. The point, as I have already observed, is that the God of Christianity is both a community and a relationship. Christianity as a faith and as a practice only makes sense within the context of this relationship. If we do not understand the nature of the relationship of love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then we have no proper context from which to understand our relationship with God.

The Trinity is one of the foundational mysteries of the Christian faith. As a mystery, it inhabits a space that is darkness to the human mind. Mysteries are neither irrational nor anti-rational; they are supra-rational. Keenly aware of this, Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but love is its consummation.” God invites us to know Him by direct experience, rather than simply with our minds. The God who is love, may be known only by love. Christian meditation, properly understood, is an act of vulnerability and humility, by which we seek to experience the reality of those deep mysteries to which the words of scripture point. The words and concepts are shadows; by the reality is solid and eternal.

This blog is the product of 20 years of meditation on the nature of the Trinity and the implications that perceiving God as a relationship and community of love has on our lives as Christians. The observations I make are fragmentary and incomplete; we see in part and we know in part. My experience as an artist has shown me that truth emerges from a series of successive approximations. My views on the Trinity have changed countless times over the last 20 years, and doubtless they will continue to change as the work of love that the Holy Spirit does in me refines my ability to perceive Him. I invite you to consider the things written here, not as dogmatic doctrinal statements, but as starting points for your own meditations as you seek to penetrate the obscure darkness of faith that surrounds the divine and gaze with unveiled face on the Shining Mystery.