TRINITARIAN PONDERINGS ON A SUNDAY
The Father as the infinite wellspring of being and as eternal act of giving is only complete with the reception of all his gift, only in the infinite abyss of reception, his Son, can the Father be. He is the gift giver, the originator and terminus, beginning and end.
His Son is the receiver of the gift, the gift being the Father himself, only in this reception is the Son who He is, the very image, icon, receptacle and glory of the Father. He receives the Father, and in receiving, gives back the gift, for in the Son’s receiving is the Father truly the Father, and in this relation is He distinguished from the Son. One God, three orders of relations. The Father is given the gift of the Son in His giving of Himself, the Son gives Himself to the Father in His acceptance of the Father's self-gift. He who loses his life will find it, the scripture says, hinting at Trinitarian realities.
The Spirit is then the act by which the two are conjoined in a unity marriage can only be a faint shadow of. The Spirit is the "distance" between Father and Son, the "distance" that only is because of the eternal gift itself. The Spirit is the desire of Father and Son for each other. Their infinite love that is separate, yet united to their "position" in the relation. If the Son is the reality of Creation's being, the Spirit is that which makes it so.
The miracle of Christian monotheism is then shown in its ability to take the best of polytheism (the acknowledgement of difference) and Jewish monotheism (the acknowledgement of unity), and conceive of an understanding of the One God that is at once differentiated yet United beyond mere numerical unity. A synthesis that is the ground of Christian understanding of communion and fellowship, and even atonement. Difference is revealed as a good, and violence due to difference revealed as evil. Love thy enemies suddenly looks like what God would do. To be is to Love and be loved, for God Loves and is Loved. Happy Sunday.
συμμετρία
P.S. A wealth of meditations on the Trinity can be found in David Bentley Hart’s The Hidden and the Manifest (2017). These are my thoughts based on the far more extensive meditations found in that wonderful book. Other influences include Milbank et al’s Radical Orthodoxy (1998), and some others I can’t remember at this point.