Catechesis · Inquirer
God and the Holy Trinity
Catechesis · Inquirer
God and the Holy Trinity
The Orthodox Church confesses one God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the first and most fundamental thing to know. Everything else in Orthodox Christianit…
Question
Who is God?
The Orthodox Church confesses one God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the first and most fundamental thing to know. Everything else in Orthodox Christianity flows from it.
The Church begins with the question of who God actually is, because everything else follows from the answer.
Other traditions answer differently. Islam confesses absolute divine unity admitting no internal distinction. Philosophical monotheism tends toward an Unmoved Mover, an abstract first principle. According to Orthodox theology, God is in His very nature communion. Before creation, before time, God existed as a perfect fellowship of three Persons united in love.
The teaching
One essence, three hypostases
The Church arrived at these words through centuries of Scripture, prayer, and fierce argument. The formula is one essence, three Persons. One God. Three who are fully that one God.
The Father is unbegotten. The Son is eternally begotten from the Father. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Three Persons, one God. The Church held to this because it believed that getting it wrong would mean losing salvation itself.
The Trinity is not a number which increases by addition, nor a compound which can be diminished. It is one God, in three complete and perfect Persons — a single movement of divine love that has no beginning, no end, and no outside.
Gregory wrote these words when the Arian party still controlled the churches of Constantinople. He was not writing for scholars. He was defending the God the Church had always worshipped.
St. Gregory the Theologian
Oration 31, c. 380 AD
Holy Scripture
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
Matthew 28:19
"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."
2 Corinthians 13:14
How this shapes your life