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.”