Religion - Christianity - principal beliefs - the nature of god the the trinity

The Nature of God and the Trinity

Outline the beliefs about the nature of God and of the Trinity

Christians believe that there is only one God, who is the creator of all things. God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. In other words, God is all-knowing, all powerful and always present.

Christians also believe that God is expressed in three co-equal natures/parts, the Father (creator), the Son (redeemer) and the Holy Spirit (sanctifier). This ‘triune’ nature of God is called the Holy Trinity and  is a central tenet of Christianity. The belief that God can be one and at the same time co-exist as three persons is a ‘mystery of faith’. However it is not treated in the same way by all streams of Christianity. The origin of the spirit and his role in creation was one of the points of difference that led to the separation of the Roman and Eastern churches in 1054."

God's promise of salvation has been fulfilled through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In other words, God is revealed as the trinity. God the Father is revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures, God the Son in the Christian scriptures and God the Spirit is revealed through the Church.

Trinitarian doctrine

This plurality in God is evident in the way Jesus calls God "abba" which means Father. Similarly early Christian practice indicates a liturgical use of this Trinitarian formula, "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” The Trinitarian doctrine states that there are three co-eternal, equal persons in one God. This doctrine was further developed and defined at the councils of Nicaea in 325 CE and Constantinople in 381 CE. The difficulty is reconciling monotheism with the notion of the three persons. The various heresies and the councils which followed reflect a process of refining the understanding of the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the fourth century there was considerable debate and discussion on how God was One and yet also three persons.

The development of the Trinitarian theology the West tended to focus on the immanent trinity, that is, the interrelationship between the Father, the Son and the Spirit. The East on the other hand, tended to focus on economic trinity, that is, the role of trinity in relation to ourselves. These differences in the conceptualisation of the Trinity between the East and the West continued in the filioque controversy. Essentially, this debate is concerned with whether the Father breathes forth the Holy Spirit through the Son, as the East argues or whether both Father and Son breathe forth the Spirit, as Western Christianity claims.