Considering that this Sunday we will be celebrate Trinity Sunday on the liturgical calendar, I thought it fitting to not only go over what the Trinity is but, to apply it to one of today's hotly debated topic, same-sex "marriage." I will be putting out two posts, the first one deals with the apologetical view of the Trinity having come from the Roman Catholic Church and, the second, will demonstrate just how the Trinity negates the notion of homosexual marriages.
Of all of the Christian concepts, the Holy and Blessed
Trinity is somewhat of a conundrum due to the fact that most Christians believe
that our God is Triune but, that same majority, cannot clearly define what the
Trinity is and how we as Christians know it to be a truth.
This is definitely a sad thing to behold because the
greatest case for the Church’s teaching against same-sex marriage can be
succinctly seen if we understand what and who the Trinity is. But, before I can
unpack this truth, let’s first get a clearer understanding of who God – as the
Trinity – is. This post will be divided into 2 parts, the first one will demonstrate
and affirm the Trinity as a revealed truth given to the Catholic Church and,
the second post will deal exclusively with the Trinity and homosexual unions.
INTRODUCTION
One of my favorite anti-sola scriptura proofs is that of the
Trinity due to the fact that so many Protestants hold true to the fact that God
is Three-In-One but, NEVER ONCE do the Scriptures ever state this and, NEVER
ONCE does the bible ever use the term “Trinity” to describe who or what God is.
Indeed, the bible-alone Protestant cannot rely on the bible-alone in order to
prove that God is a Trinity. While they can use several verses to prop-up the
evidence, a fundamentalist and literal reading of the bible will never yield
the dogma of the Trinity nor the name Trinity itself. This is very important
because any Protestant denomination that holds that God is triune is not holding
an explicit biblical belief but a belief based on historical Christianity, that
is, they are holding an explicit Catholic belief. This brings us to our first
analysis:
WITHOUT THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH THERE WOULD BE NO TRINITY!
This is without a doubt a very troubling supposition to make
to a Protestant Christian; to tell them that the only reason they know about
the Trinity is primarily due to the Roman Catholic Church, is a sure fire way
to get them in a tizzy. But, the fact of the matter is that the Trinity itself,
that is, the fact that God is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, was a proclamation
made, unerringly by the Catholic Church at the Council of Constantinople in 381
A.D.
This was the second ecumenical council that the Catholic
Church undertook, with Nicaea being the first one. At Nicaea, the early church
fathers did away with the Arian heresy, a heresy that denied the divinity of
Christ and, by definitively declaring that Jesus as the Son of God is
consubstantial with God the Father, they decreed that Christ was Divine.
However, towards the end of the 4th century, another group of
heretics started to challenge who God was.
This new group of heretics were called the Macedonians or,
as they were known in Greek, the Pneumatomachi – which translates to “combaters against the
spirit.” They held that both God the Father and God the Son were deific but,
they did not view God the Holy Spirit as divine. Along with several other
heretical movements that were discussed at the Council of Constantinople (Anomeans,
Eudoxians, Saballians, Marcellians, Photinians and, the Apollinarians), the
150 Church Fathers of that council stated in the First
Canon that the Nicene’s council’s
declarations have not been repealed, that is, the faith that the 318
father’s professed at Nicaea in 325 A.D. when they stated it in the Creed was
not null but, the Creed itself would now incorporate the following:
“And in the Spirit, the holy, the lordly and life-giving
one, proceeding forth from the Father, co-worshipped and co-glorified with
Father and Son, the one who spoke through the prophets; in one, holy, catholic
and apostolic church. We confess one baptism for the forgiving of sins. We look
forward to a resurrection of the dead and life in the age to come. Amen.”
This is why the official term for the creed that we profess
every Sunday as Catholics isn’t the Nicene Creed but, properly stated, it is
the Nicene-Constantinople Creed – due to the fact that it originated in Nicaea
and concluded in Constantinople some 50 years later because of the heretical
movements of the 4th century. And, it was in the Fifth Canon of the
Council of Constantinople that the Trinity is explicitly expressed:
“…we have also recognised those in Antioch who confess a
single Godhead of Father and Son and holy Spirit.”
What the 150 Church Fathers stated here was that they
believed that God was 3-in-1 as it was recognized by those in Antioch, that is
to say that, the philosophy behind the Trinity originated with the Church
Fathers at Antioch. One need only look to the Patriarchs of Antioch to find the
early remnants of the Trinitarian belief: St. Ignatius was the third Patriarch
of Antioch and, in his Epistle to the Magnesians
written in the early 100’s A.D., he states the following in regards to God being
Three Persons:
“…Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before
the beginning of time, and in the end was revealed (Chapter
6)…Jesus Christ, who came forth from one Father, and is with and has
gone to one (Chapter 7)…so all things whatsoever you do, may prosper
both in the flesh and spirit; in faith and love; in the Son, and in the Father,
and in the Spirit…Be subject to the bishop, and to another, as Jesus Christ to
the Father, according to the flesh, and the apostles to Christ, and to the
Father, and to the Spirt…(Chapter 13)…”
In Chapter 6 of his epistle, we see St. Ignatius state that
Christ was with God the Father from the beginning of time, hence, Jesus wasn’t
created and, if not created, He had to have been begotten from the Father from
all eternity. In Chapter 7, he states that Jesus is “with” God the Father, if
He is with God the Father, then Jesus must be part of Him. Hence, the fact that
– for the Trinity to properly understood – Jesus is homoousios
with the Father, that is, Jesus shares of the same substance as God the Father
(homo = same, ousia = substance). Lastly, in Chapter 13, St. Ignatius of
Antioch makes it unquestionably clear that the Son, the Father, and the Spirit
are all interconnected.
Eighty years or so after St. Ignatius, we come to the seventh
Patriarch of Antioch, Theophilus. In the second book of his Apology to Autolycus,
written in 181 A.D., we see in Chapter 15 that Theophilus is contemplating the
Creation Narrative and, in analyzing the 4th day of Creation, he
formulates the Trinity:
“In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of
the Trinity, of God,
and His Word,
and His Wisdom.”
In exegeting the
Creation Narrative, Theophilus becomes the first person ever to use the word “Trinity”
to describe the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Therefore, we can see why the Fathers
at the Council of Constantinople in 382 A.D. stated that they recognized what those
in Antioch had already professed, namely, that God is one under 3
different auspices.
The question here
is, where these Antiochians Catholic? Well, we know that in the Book of Acts, 11:26,
it states that it is in Antioch that the first followers of Christ were called “Christians.”
We also know that the book of Acts date to the mid 60’s A.D and, we also know that
St. Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch from 68 A.D. to
his death in 107 A.D., what this means
is that Ignatius was the leader of this new group of people who were calling
themselves “Christians.” Now, this is where the ecclesiastical rubber hits the
road: On his way to be martyred, St. Ignatius writes a series of letters to
different churches and, it is in the 8th Chapter
of his Epistle to the Smyrnaeans,
that he states something rather remarkable:
"See that you follow the bishop, even as
Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and
reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything
connected to the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper
Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom
he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude
[of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the
Catholic Church."
In
other words, the leader of the group of Christians in Antioch, was THE FIRST
person to state that the true Church of Jesus Christ was called the Catholic
Church! And, even more astonishing is that he stated this before his death in
107 A.D.! The point that I’m trying to make is this: the very first instance of
a Trinitarian formula came from St. Ignatius, a bishop who was the shepherd of one of the
very first Christian communities and, that very same bishop, referred to the
church that he and his flock belonged to as the Catholic Church. And then, 2
generations later, the 7th bishop of Antioch – who belonged to the Catholic Church – is THE FIRST person to state the word “Trinity” when
describing who God is. Therefore, when the Council of Constantinople stated in
Canon 5 that they will be observing the Godhead as it is “recognized by those
in Antioch,” the Catholic Church was simply validating the revelation
that it had received through the bishopric of Catholic Church at Antioch!
We could
also include Athenagoras of Athens, as yet
another Catholic priest who was one of the very first men to mention God as a
Trinity. In his 177 A.D. work, A Plea for the Christian, Athenagoras states in the 10th chapter
the following regarding the worship of the Christian God:
“Who, then, would not be astonished to hear men
who speak of God the Father, and of God the Son, and of the Holy Spirt, and who
declare both their power in union and their distinction in order…?”
We can make a proper assumption that Athenagoras also
believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist due to the fact that,
in Chapter 35,
he renounced the charge of cannibalism that has been brought against the Christians*;
why would such an allegation be made against Christians by the pagan Romans if
they didn’t think that there was some truth to it? Truth be told, the early
Christians weren’t cannibals, they simply did what the early Church did in her
liturgy, that being, they celebrated the Eucharist as the real Body and Blood
of Christ…the same way that the Roman Catholic Church still does to this day!
The huge takeaway here is that it was the Roman Catholic
Church who was at these first ecumenical councils that resolutely helped defined
the Trinity - with help from the Holy Spirit of course. THIS IS A FACT THAT
NO PROTESTANT CAN DENY. The fact of the matter is that no Protestant church
can ever make a substantial or demonstrable case that demonstrates that their
denomination/communion was at these councils. Indeed, it would take over 1,100
more years after the Council of Constantinople before the Protestant Revolt
would seize Europe and fracture the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ.
Therefore it is noteworthy to state that, because of the authority that the Catholic Church has, she was able to definitively define a dogma of the Christian faith (the Trinty) as well as elucidate as to the nature of the relationship between God the Father and God the Son (homoousios). This is very important because EVERY sola-scriptura Protestant denomination that may believe in the Holy Trinity must attribute this divine revelation, not to the Scriptures - because they weren't canonized yet - but, to the work of the Holy Spirit guiding the one true Church.
*Note how Athenagoras strongfully rails against abortion as
well!
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