As It Is Written . . .
God the Father
by Patrick Henry Reardon
When we Christians profess that Jesus is God's eternal Son, when we affirm that he came to us from God, it is important that we do not misidentify the God who sent him. Jesus is not the Son of a general, universally recognized, non-descript and conventional, all-purpose divinity. The God who sent Jesus is neither the Brahmin of the Hindus nor the Allah of the Muslims (who, let us remember, claimed not to have a Son).
Likewise, the God proclaimed and made known in Jesus is neither Aristotle's primum movens—the Unmoved Mover—nor "the One" of the Neo-Platonists. There is not the slightest resemblance between to Hen of Plotinus and ho ¯On revealed to Moses. Only this latter God—the God of the Burning Bush, the God who later addressed himself to Isaiah in the year King Uzziah died—is the God known to Jesus and confessed by Jesus.
And, like Jesus, this God is and must be a person. Some Christians, alas, seem not to have taken the measure of this truth. We may detect their misunderstanding, in fact, even when they go on to speak of the Holy Trinity. I have lost count of the times that I have read in Christian theological literature such lines as: ". . . the one divine being, who subsists in three modes of existence. . . ."
Since this formulation of the Faith is so common, it is important to understand why it is wrong: It gives priority to the divine "being," as something in common to the three Persons in the Trinity. It is "being" first, not person.
The Error of "Being" Before "Person"
In truth, I have many times seen the relationships of the Trinitarian Persons illustrated in the form of a triangle in which each of the three angles is joined to a central point designating the divine essence. Thus, there are four points in the illustration: the point at each of the three angles (the divine Persons) and the fourth point in the center (the divine being). Each of the Trinitarian Persons receives divinity from the divine "nature" or "being" symbolized in the central point.
I submit that, if this geometric figure represents an accurate account of the Holy Trinity, there is no essential difference between the Christian faith and certain tenets common in Hinduism, inasmuch as both religions give precedence to "being" over "person."
With respect to Hinduism, the Maitri Upanishad says that Brahman has two expressions: Brahman It and Brahman He; Brahman formless and Brahman formed; Brahman hidden and Brahman manifest. In this religious theory, the hidden and impersonal expression of Brahman is prior and precedent to the personal. Brahman is first "being," not person.
I cannot think of any religious theory more alien to the Trinitarian faith. The Nicene Creed does not first identify God as "being" but as person—the Father almighty; only later does the Creed speak of the divine "being," and then only as an adjective modifying the Son—homoousios, "of one being with the Father."
Personal Incomprehensibility
Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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