Threefold nature

It was mentioned in Chapter 14 that, “God is manifested as an undivided unity in a threefold nature of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit being of equal substance and are tangible wherefore are called persons.” We have to define the words applied here to obtain clarity of the terms used.

Being equal in substance here means being of the same essence and not of being of a physical matter. It can be conceptualized having essential significance. The Godhead being tangible does not limit its nature as can be touched or felt by touch. The word tangible here means being definite or precise in purpose wherein you can specify its nature; and you can relate it likely to your own.

Lastly, “being tangible wherefore are called persons”, means they being of definite fashion whether visible or intelligible, are classified like the pronouns, as of the three classes of them in grammar. In the baptism of Jesus, the Father was indicated as the speaker (the first person) with Him saying “my” beloved Son; the Son was disclosed as the subject spoken to (the second person, ‘you’ or as in ‘this’); while the Holy Spirit (falling as the third person, ‘He’ though if indicated was found in other scripture texts) was symbolized as the subject spoken somehow attached and is identified to the Godhead being apparent or visible to John the Baptist.

It is revealed in the Old Testament that the word for God is “Elohim” or ‘persons’ (plural) and is different from “El” or ‘person’ (singular) though God in a threefold nature is considered as one thus forming the Trinity in an undivided unity. This explanation reiterates that God being Triune though the Holy ‘One’ is beyond human comprehension and is therefore classified as “a mystery”.

According to a fellow man of God in one of the other Trinitarian churches, “The Trinity is a biblical concept that expresses the dynamic character of God, not just a Greek idea pressed into Scripture from Philosophical or Religious speculation. He further elaborates that while the term Trinity does not appear in the Scripture, the Trinitarian structure appears throughout the New Testament to affirm that God Himself is manifested through Jesus Christ by means of the Spirit.

In the documentation compiled through a certain Jerry M. Henry, it says that two errors appear in history while considering the Trinitarian doctrine. These were ‘Tri-theism (Three-gods)’ and ‘Unitarianism’. In Tri-theism, the error is made by emphasizing the distinctiveness of the Godhead to the point that the Trinity is seen as three separate Gods, or ‘Christian Polytheism’. On the other hand, Unitarianism excludes the concept of distinctiveness while focusing solely on the aspect of God the Father. In this way, Christ and the Holy Spirit are placed in lower categories and made less than divine. Both errors compromise the effectiveness and contribution of the activity of God in redemptive history.

Somehow in the magazine ‘Know the Truth’, a catholic publication, in its banner statement in an article ‘TRINITY’ IN THE BIBLE, it says that those who deny the Divinity of Jesus are compelled to deny the Divine nature of the Holy Spirit. For them, “The Trinity of God” is beyond human understanding. So they deny it. They just forget the fact that God, who created man, can never be a slave of human intelligence. Furthermore, they consider the Holy Spirit as an angel or one of the seven spirits before the throne of God, this doctrine being erroneous as opposed to the doctrine of the Catholic ‘Trinitarians’.

We can find in Genesis 1:26 the following passage: Then God said: “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.” In the succeeding verse, it says, “God created man in His image; in the divine image, He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:27).” Thus, herein, the likeness of God is plural as He creates both the male and the female human beings, Adam and Eve. To Fr. Paul Kaiparambadan, as Adam and Eve shared one flesh, the Father and the Son shares also in one substance. Adam and Eve were one spirit, just like Father and Son shares one Spirit (Malachi 2:15). Thus, the whole creation becomes the ‘image’ reflection, or mirroring of the manifold life of Divine nature of Trinity.

Likewise, the Lord who came down to see the tower of Babel said, “If now, while they are one people, all speaking in the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do.” Then he further conveyed, “Let Us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says (Genesis 11:5-7),”

Anti-Trinitarians said that the above occurrence of the name of God in the Old Testament being in plural form was possible because he was talking with the angels and cherubim surrounding him. But the above passages clearly testifies that the Triune God is in threefold nature consisting of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, and they converse together even before angels, seraphim and cherubim are created. A great example of God that is plural being in singular form was that occurrence when Jesus called his Father in singular form while he was about to die on the cross. He had these words while on the cross, “El, El, lema sabachtani,” meaning, “My Lord, my Lord, why had you forsaken me.”

God as a single individual “El”, with him defined as Love, is invalid, and without the experience of ‘love’ if there is an absence of the one whom he loves in the person of the Son. Their deeds were made manifest through the Holy Spirit with the Bible saying that the Holy Spirit exists with God in the passage, “Now the Lord has sent me and His Spirit.”

Let us implore the name of the Triune God in our prayers.

One as we are

The scripture says that we are victors over the world if we believe that Jesus is the Son of God. This Jesus is the one who came through water and blood. Likewise Jesus Christ came not by water alone, but by water and blood. On the other hand, the Spirit is the one that testifies, and the Spirit is truth. So there ‘are three’ that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and the ‘three are of one accord’ (I John 5:5-8).

If you are purified, in your heart that is the vessel of love dwells the Holy Spirit. It is apparent also that the likeness of the Father inhabits in you the same, as he gave you his own breath that you may obtain life; this aside from being gifted with the Spirit, a proof of the Holy Spirit baptism that goes along with your infant baptism. Even if the Spirit you received through water baptism is choked as one grows old and is exposed to evil, it is released through the Holy Spirit baptism that we can derive from Life in the Spirit Seminar (LSS), and other means like laying of hands coupled with an act of worship, which yield us to speak in other tongues.

In John 3:5, Jesus said “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and of the Spirit.” This means being baptized in water and in Spirit. This Spirit being the one who gives us His gifts, of which one among those is the ‘speaking in other tongues or languages’. In accordance with this, Jesus who stood up in the last and greatest day of the feast in Jerusalem has this to say, “Let anyone who thirsts come to me (Jesus) and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: ‘Rivers of living water will flow from within him’ (John 7:37-38).”

As we continue, it is explained that Jesus said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive. There was of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified (John 7:39). Somehow there was the presence of the spirit of the Father that exists in the Rock in the desert that Moses strikes that water may come out.

In the New Testament, it says that the Rock was Christ. It is clear that the water being derived from the “well” that springs from everlasting flowing from the Rock before the eyes of Moses is symbolized as the nearness of the Father. In the crucifixion of Jesus (in place of water), blood flows instead. But as mystics and theologians say, what flows out of Jesus are both water and blood. To prove that Jesus has the Spirit of the Father apparent in him, we read in Isaiah 11:2 that, “The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.”

Since we can live longer even with just the water as sustenance compared to that without food, the water here represents to “the life” we obtained from the Father, of which He makes our body as his dwelling place, or in place of the body, we have the heart where our God inhabits in, where therein he speaks as a still small voice. We also live with the blood of the Lamb who is Jesus being this as our protection that covers us like the mantle of Mary.

Blood also was poured out from the Christ or from the Son in his crucifixion of which Jesus Christ is now represented through the blood, he being the son of Mary, the woman Israel, and was born in flesh according to the law. The same blood and water do we have, that flowed from the heart of Jesus in the holy image of the Divine Mercy. So aside from the Holy Spirit, there is this blood and water, the three giving testimony of each other.

On the other hand, we can also say that it is through the blood of the Holy Spirit that Jesus was conceived making God as the Father to Jesus because the Holy Ghost is the spirit of the Father. Wherefore, this blood of the Lamb was made present to the Gentiles, which aside from the circumcision of the flesh are then circumcised in the heart. The blood and water springing from Jesus in the Divine Mercy proves of his Divinity represented by the water, and his humanity represented by the blood.

The scripture proves correct: So there are three that testifies, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and the three are of one accord (I John 5:7-8),” meaning they are united as one agreeing with each other in a triune communion. The Father does the planting, where the Son harvests, and the Spirit testifies about their works.

So there are these three Deities in which each among them is true having the plurality of the One God in three divine persons: there was this God the Father in the creation or the Divinity present in the Father; and there was this God the Son, where the Divinity is also present in the Son as the true God and eternal life; and last amongst was God the Holy Spirit being the Deity who was also present in the Holy Spirit, as the one who testifies in churches, with Ananias who kept part of the sold property lying not to a human being but to God. The Father testifies of the Son, while the Son testifies of the Father, with the Holy Spirit speaking in churches according to what he hears.

In John 17:11 Jesus said: “And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me so that they may be ‘one just as we are’.” So it proves here that the Son inherited the name of the Father who is the name in Divinity being the God with us, or the Emmanuel, and that God has the name “Jesus”.

To continue, Jesus added: “… so that they may all be one, as you Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one as we are, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me (John 17:21-23). So it is clear that there was this dual relation, the Father loving the Son, and the Son loving the Father, with the Spirit as the active force.

Likewise it is evident that the Son was sent by the Father, with the Son present in the disciples as the Father is also in the Son which proves correct the words of Jesus: I in them and you in me (John 17:23). These he proclaimed, as Jesus has to say: that they may be one as we (Jesus and the Father) are.

So there is the plurality of pronoun “we” in the phrase “one as we are”, with the Father and the Son being one as One God, though in clear terms, are absolutely distinct from each other, with the two of them consisting of different natures: the Father being a spirit present in the creation, and the Son being both body, soul and spirit, with the Spirit present in Mary from whom Christ was conceived, believed to be the spirit of the Father (Isaiah 11:2) and that spirit is the Holy Ghost.

Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things are and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and through whom we exist (I Corinthians 8:6). So there is one God the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ, and as not to forget we mention also the Holy Spirit that is another Deity. These three are distinct from each other, they being merely of one accord but these three although not exactly fused as one, each being different; also exist as One God with Jesus as the name of this God.

Herewith we convey our prayers, invoking the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, these three in one Deity.