The Christian God

Now we come to the God of Christianity. Chapter 4 

of Karen Armstrong’s book ‘A History of God’ is titled ‘Trinity: The Christian God’. There is a reason for this. Though Christians claim they believe in monotheism, their God is not exactly one; He is three in One or One in Three – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 3=1. 1=3. For ordinary mortals, this is a mystery and that is how the Catholic Church wants it regarded. Do not try to understand it, just believe it! Jesus was a Jew and his initial followers were all Jews who believed in the one God Yahweh. How and why did the later followers of Christ change to a ‘kind’ of polytheist mode of thinking? 

St. Paul, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, who 

became a follower of Christ, claimed to hear disembodied ‘voices’ that he identified as the words of Jesus. He was instrumental in spreading the gospel to the gentiles who were used to a variety of gods. It was he who realized that the good news of the gospel would have greater acceptance if Christ, the Messiah, was projected as divine rather than human.  Hence, he claimed that Jesus was a preexistent ‘heavenly’ being; that he was created as the ‘firstborn’ of all creation; that he existed in the form of God and that he was equal to God.

Not everyone agreed. Around 320 C.E. Arius, a 

presbyter from Alexandria asked: how could Jesus Christ have been God in the same way as God the Father? According to Armstrong: “He (Arius) knew his scriptures well, and he produced an armory of texts to support his claim that Christ the Word (logos) could only be a creature like ourselves.” 

This caused such a controversy that Emperor 

Constantine convened the first ecumenical council of Nicaea in 320 C.E. Here it was declared that the Creator and Redeemer were one and the Nicaean creed came into existence. (More of it in an earlier blog)

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker 

of all things, visible and invisible, and in one Lord, 

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only–begotten of 

the Father, that is, of the substance (ousia) of the 

Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance 

(homoousion) with the Father, through whom all 

things were made, those things that are in heaven and those things that are on earth, who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made man, suffered, rose again on the third day, ascended into the heavens and will come to judge the living and the dead……….. 

So now we have Jesus as having the same substance as God the Father: hence He is God.  However, the inclusion of the Holy Spirit as the third in the Trinity sounds a bit sneaky. Who is He? What is His role?

Hans Kung, a brilliant Catholic theologian, whose 

honesty and forthrightness regarding some of the Church’s doctrines have antagonized the hierarchy, comes to hour aid here. His book “The Catholic Church: A Short History” is closer to the truth than most other books on the subject. According to him, the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, convened by Theodosius the Great in 381 C.E. defined the identity of the Substance of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son.  He further enlightens us on the interpretation of St. Augustine (354-430), one of the best Catholic theologians of the era. Augustine did not agree with the interpretation of the Greek Church Fathers. For them, God the Father was ‘the God’ (ho Theos). They defined the relationship of God the Father to the Son and Spirit in terms of this one God and Father. Think of a star giving light to a second star and finally to a third star.  To the human eye, though, all three stars appear as one. But for Augustine:

The Father knows and begets in the Son his own 

word and image. But the Spirit “proceeds” from the Father (as the lover) and the Son (as the beloved) “according to the will.”  The Spirit is the love between Father and Son become a person: it has proceeded from both the Father and the Son.

The Holy Spirit, the third in the Triad played an active role is the conception of Jesus. Jesus had a virgin birth – in other words, a miraculous non-sexual conception.

Here I would like to point out something common to 

many religions: the claim of God’s direct revelations to His chosen ones. E.g. Moses at the time of receiving the ten commandments; Zarathustra’s direct revelation from the one true god Ahura Mazda; St. Paul hearing ‘voices’ which he identified as those of Jesus; Mohammed hearing voices in the cave; there are many others found in the religious holy books. I suppose it is a very clever and unquestionable way of convincing the naïve of selective belief systems!