The Trinity means unity

Since the days of the Apostles, there has been a tendency to approach Scripture and tradition according to pagan principles of opposition. That’s because pagan philosophy has permeated ancient thought.

One of the first of these to affect the church was the opposition between heaven and earth, soul and body, materiality and immateriality. How can conflicting opposites co-exist?

This developed into questioning the Holy Trinity, three people in one essence. How can unity and multiplicity, or the one vs. the many, coincide without conflict or contradiction?

This further developed in the dispute about how Christ can have a human will and a divine will at the same time. How can difference and sameness agree? This even extended into issues of the Virgin Mary vs. the nonvirgin Mary, the church vs. the state, as well as others.

Most modern Christians no longer appreciate the way the early Christians approached Scripture and tradition. We certainly do not always believe how they resolved theological problems derived from them. For this reason, it is seen as strange why the early Christians never had destructive divisions over issues such as faith vs. works, Scripture vs. tradition, clergy vs. laity, free will vs. predestination and other dichotomies that tore up modern Christendom. This is because of the empty tomb of Jesus Christ, seen in the light of the Holy Trinity.

When Christ was put in the tomb, it was already a pagan sign of reality’s limits. All tombs represented the inflexible boundary between life and death, existence and nonexistence, flesh and soul, physical and spiritual, clean and unclean, time and eternity, all of which came as a result of man’s fall from paradise. But when his female disciples found the tomb empty, such dualistic conflicts became ultimately moot.

Just as the Holy Trinity was revealed when Jesus was baptized, so does his resurrection end man’s conflict with the sacred. There is no longer death vs. life, physical vs. spiritual, flesh vs. soul. Creation is renewed so that oneness and many-ness are no longer a contradiction, nor is evil an accidental way to see good. The father’s kingdom is on earth as it is in heaven. The body of Christ, the church, is one and many. Time and space are sanctified and unified. Not even history is a boundary, thanks to Pentecost. The Apostles are still on our altars every Sunday morning, and the saints still can interact with us because God is the God of the living.

Indeed, wherever the Bible mentions holy mysteries, it is always about two as one. Jews and Gentiles, husbands and wives, heaven and earth, Christ and Church, all are one in the Mystery of the Cross. Thus, faith and good works are equally necessary for salvation. The church is a hierarchy of clergy and a royal priesthood of laity, a historical institution and a mystical body, a private faith and a corporate sacrament. The Virgin Mary was a virgin before, during and after giving birth to the Lord.

By obeying Trinitarian theology, the ultimate mystery, the early Christians did not approach the Gospel as this Bible doctrine vs. that Bible doctrine. In fact, the Gospel and church existed before the New Testament was even written. Thus, the Bible does not explain how to harmonize its conflicting verses (faith vs. works, Christ’s divinity vs. his humanity, etc.) because it is not supposed to. Scripture only presents the harmony.

Where there is no Trinitarian principle, there is only this vs. that or a man-made unity. Of course, in this age of sin, this and that do thrive, but the empty tomb tells us that the darkness already is passing away. Without admitting evil and sin, where division refuses correction, the Holy Trinity shares and harmonizes all divine energies, for God is this form of love.

Difference is affirmed and denied in the empty tomb. God is infinitely beyond all boundaries and dichotomies. But most discussions about Christian re-unification seem to miss all this.

Reunification is what Christ manifests just by being God and man, joining heaven and earth, revealing Trinitarian thought, where God is infinitely the distance and nearness, infinitely the difference and sameness. Because of the Father by the Holy Spirit, Christ is all in all, sanctifying every opposition, ever-healing the boundaries separating them. And the Lord always has been this way.

The Rev. Andrew Gromm is pastor of St. Michael Orthodox Church in Youngstown.