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Writer's pictureHadie Artiel

The Trinity Simplified





God is the Father, who eternally brings forth and is eternally with His Word and Spirit. God acts through His Word in the Spirit, as man speaks his word in his exhaled breath. There is one God, because there is one Father and Source, Who possesses and communicates one inseparable Essence to His co-eternal Son and Paraclete Spirit. So while the Son is fully God and the Spirit is fully God, the Godhead is one, because the Father is one, the Source of causation and unity is one, and the Essence is one. When I, a man, speak my word in my breath exhaled, this does not imply a division of my nature into three parts. I am not one nature, my word is not another nature, and my voice-bearing breath is not another nature. There is but one man, who speaks by his word in the voice-bearing breath which carries his logos. My word is fully human and my breath is fully human because they proceed from my self and from my essence. They are not identical to me, but they are not separable from me, and their operation is one and the same. They do not constitute two separate other human beings or persons or natures, but I remain a singular source of both these things and my essence is one. This is also the case at the level of Divine unity, but the Son and the Spirit are not mere faculties, like a generic spoken word or a breath brought forth from the mouth. They are perfectly subsisting Persons Who come forth from the Father, without separation of the Father's Essence. The Father is the singular Source of the Word Who acts through the Spirit, and the Spirit Who is Himself the Presence, not the Person, of the Father filling all things. And the Son and the Spirit share the Essence of the Father without separation, and are thus God by nature and by predication, but not by being identified with the Father. So God is one. This is the Trinity. And there are no logical problems in the Trinity.

The Father is the only true God. You cannot worship anyone except the Father. To worship anyone other than the Father is idolatry. And you can only worship the Father, through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Because the Son is the Image of the Father's Person, and the Spirit is the Image of the Son's Person. This Image is one and the same and indivisible. So to pay adoration to the Spirit, is to pass that adoration to the Son, even as it is passed on to the Father. Because God is one, His Essence is one, His Glory is one, and His Image is one, the adoration you pay unto Him, from the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father, is one adoration, and thus, is the proper worship of one God, and is the ONLY proper worship of the one true God. This also explains why the Filioque is wrong. It splits the singular Source in the Godhead into two, by the double procession, and it thus splits the adoration into two adorations of two Divinities. The Essence is one because it is of one Source, and of one Father. So to confess two Principle Sources is to confess two Essences in a dyad. By adoration is meant the worship given by man to God the Father, by worshipping His Son in Spirit and truth. Worship is solely a creaturely act. God is both a monad and a triad. He is monad in his essence but triad in how his persons relate to creation. The Trinity is a Monad in Essence but not in Persons. It is also a Monad in having one Source, the Father, from Whom the Essence is derived, and is communicated to the eternally generated Word and to the eternally proceeding Spirit. And the persons of the Trinity are fully self and interaware of each other wholy and their distinction is solely in Unbegottenness, begotteness and procession. And that is how God has chosen to reveal himself.



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