Though the doctrine of the Trinity is the central mystery of our faith, it can have surprisingly minimal impact on our spiritual lives. We affirm that in God there is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but how the relationship among the Divine Persons might guide our efforts to grow in prayer and virtue is not immediately clear. Even those well versed in Trinitarian theology may be hard pressed to explain what the doctrine means for day-to-day Christian living. Yet, when we are in a state of grace, we have the gift of charity, by which we love as God loves and share in God’s inner Trinitarian life, and so it is good to reflect on the distinct loves that the Divine Persons have for one another.
To this end, we would do well to turn to an unjustly neglected work of theology: Fr. Paul Quay’s The Mystery Hidden for Ages in God. Taking Christ’s “Farewell Discourse” as his jumping off point, Fr. Quay moves from who each Divine Person is, traditionally understood in terms of the relations that arise from the order of origination, to how each Person distinctively loves one another, with an eye toward better understanding the infused virtue of charity.
From all eternity the Father begets the Son. The traditional psychological imagery for this is that of God understanding Himself, and thereby forming an inner word or concept of Himself that is nothing but God. What characterizes the love of God the Father for God the Son? Generosity. From all eternity, the Father pours Himself out for His Son. He gives Himself so completely that the Son perfectly shares in the Father’s divine nature. And the Father gives Himself to the Son without any expectation of return. The gift of His divinity is gratuitous.
We too are called, in our imperfect and creaturely way, to be generous givers. And yet, because of the effects of sin, both original and actual, our gifts are not always so freely given. Often we give with an expectation of return, or to place someone in our debt, or even to manipulate. In short, unlike the Father, our gifts can come with strings attached.
The Son, in turn, from all eternity receives the Godhead from the Father. What characterizes the love of God the Son for God the Father? Gratitude. The Son perfectly accepts the Father’s gift of divinity with infinite gratitude. He does not seek to alter or change the gift in any way. He simply receives and is grateful.
We too are called, in our imperfect and creaturely way, to be gracious receivers. And yet, because of the effects of sin, both original and actual, we do not always receive gifts so graciously. Often we view a gift as something owed to us, something we deserve. Or we try to alter that which is given. Or (and this is really curious) we can resent a gift, because it shows that there is something lacking in us that we cannot supply — a gift can make us feel “less than.” In short, unlike the Son, we can receive gifts with anything but grateful acceptance.
Traditionally the Holy Spirit has been understood in terms of the subsistent love between Father and Son. Following St. Gregory of Nyssa’s understanding of Jesus’ petition to the Father to “glorify me with the glory which I had from the beginning beside you before the world was” (Jn 17:5), Fr. Quay identifies the Holy Spirit with the mutual glory between Father and Son. What characterizes the love of God the Holy Spirit for God the Father and God the Son? Delight. To glorify another is to praise and delight in his or her goodness. The Holy Spirit delights in the generosity of the Father and the gratitude of the Son, for no other reason than these are good things to delight in.
We too are called, in our imperfect and creaturely way, to delight in others, and ultimately to delight in God. And yet, because of the effects of sin, both original and actual, we do not always easily acknowledge the goodness of others. Often when we see some good in others that we lack, we are sad rather than joyful. Or worse, we try to take credit for that good, to claim it as our own. In short, unlike the Holy Spirit, we can resent rather than praise the goods that we find in others.
Now, it may seem an impossible task, this call to imitate the love of God, and specifically the love of each of the Divine Persons. But God became man precisely to make us capable of such love. In John’s Gospel, we read that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). Here we find the inner life of the Trinity mirrored in God’s relation to the world. The Father so loves the world that, in His generosity, He sends His most precious Son to save the world from its sins. The Son so loves the world that, in His gratitude, He perfectly receives and carries out the mission given Him by the Father. And the Holy Spirit so loves the world that, in His delight in the saving mission of the Son as given by the Father, He accepts His own mission to sanctify the Church, especially by the gift of charity. May we, in turn, accept this gift and be images of Trinitarian love in the world today that badly needs it.
About Fr. Paul Kucharski
But if there is a Father and a Son, that means one came before the other. So how can they be co-eternal? The Father had to exist before the Son.
Thanks, Byron, for your question. The question—“If there is a Father and a Son, doesn’t that imply the Father came before the Son?”—raises a fundamental and ancient difficulty in understanding the doctrine of the Trinity. At first glance, the terms Father and Son seem to suggest a sequence, as in human generation, where a father exists before his son. However, our Catholic dogmatic theology, drawing from Scripture, the Church Fathers, the great scholastics, and the Magisterium, affirms that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and thus they are co-eternal and consubstantial, not temporally separated.
The Nicene Creed (Council of Nicaea, 325; expanded at Constantinople I, 381) gave us the Creed, still recited in the Roman liturgy today, which decisively affirms:
“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father…”
This creed insists that the Son’s being begotten does not imply a beginning in time but an eternal relationship of origin: the Father eternally begets the Son.
The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) gives us the definitive Catholic expression of divine simplicity and eternal generation:
“The Father is from no one, the Son is from the Father alone, and the Holy Spirit is from both equally. None is before or after another, none is greater or less than another, but all three persons are co-eternal and co-equal.”
The Council is clear: there is no temporal priority in God. The Son’s origin from the Father does not involve a “before” and “after.”
Saint Augustine of Hippo, in his De Trinitate I.14 (PL 42:833), addresses this issue, De Trinitate :
“The Father is not the Father in time, but from eternity… As the Father is eternal, so also is the Son eternal: he is the Son, not after the Father was, but because the Father never was without the Son.”
Augustine argues that to be truly Father, God must eternally beget the Son. Otherwise, God would have changed—becoming Father at some point, which contradicts divine immutability.
In Confessions XI.13.15, Augustine writes:
“In your eternity, O God, nothing passes away, but the whole is present to you at once… Your years are one day, and your day is not repeated, but always is.”
God exists beyond time. Temporal notions like “before” and “after” cannot apply to His inner life. To import human time into divine generation is a category error.
Saint Thomas Aquinas systematically affirms and clarifies this in the Summa Theologiae: I, q. 42, a. 2, Whether the Son is equal to the Father in eternity:
“The Son is necessarily co-eternal with the Father. For the Father could not be a Father if He had not a Son… Therefore, the generation of the Son is from eternity, and the Son is co-eternal with the Father.”
For Aquinas, eternity does not mean an infinite length of time, but the simultaneous, whole possession of being (tota simul). Since the Father’s being is eternal, the Son’s generation is also eternal.
Aquinas also writes in ST I, q. 33, a. 2:
“Although the Son proceeds from the Father, it does not follow that the Son is posterior to the Father in time; since He proceeds not by motion or change, but by an eternal act of the intellect.”
This distinction between procession without temporal change is crucial. The Son proceeds as the eternal Word (Verbum) of the Father, in an eternal, intellectual generation.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms the Church’s continuous faith in the eternal generation of the Son.
CCC §257:“God is eternal blessedness, undying life, unfading light. God is love… But God’s very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.”
CCC §246 (on eternal procession): “The eternal origin of the Holy Spirit is revealed in his mission in time. The Spirit is sent by the Father in the name of the Son, and by the Son ‘from the Father.’ The Church teaches that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son…”
Although this speaks directly of the Holy Spirit, it presupposes that the Son, through whom the Spirit is sent, is eternally God.
We have to remember that the terms Father and Son are analogical, not univocal. They are meant to reveal something of the inner life of God but cannot be understood in a purely biological or temporal sense. The Son is Son not by human birth but as the eternal Logos, generated in the divine intellect.
Aquinas states (ST I, q. 34, a. 1): “It is more fitting that the Word of God be called Son than anything else; for the name of Son corresponds to the idea of a word proceeding by way of nature.”
The Son of God is eternally begotten of the Father, not created, and not temporally posterior. This is a necessary and eternal relationship within the divine essence. The Church has consistently taught, against all subordinationist and Arian tendencies, that:
The Son is from the Father by eternal generation.
This generation is not in time, but from eternity.
The Father and the Son are therefore co-eternal, consubstantial, and co-equal.
As the Athanasian Creed succinctly declares: “ Thus the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord. Yet there are not three lords; there is but one Lord. Therefore, In divine generation, there is order of origin, but not order of time or being.”