By virtue of their eternal love they live in one another to such an extent, and dwell in one another to such an extent, that they are one.
—Jürgen Moltmann
In the context of the rampant polytheism of the ancient world, God first established in Israel that there was only one true God: “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!”1 Apart from the politically charged and strange confession “We have no king but Caesar,” uttered by the Jewish leadership before Pontius Pilate,2 the abiding truth of Israel’s faith was the fact that there was only one true God, and Yahweh (the LORD) was his name. But from the moment Jesus appeared in Israel’s history, a new nonnegotiable was forming within Judaism. For all who encountered Jesus in the Spirit, whether fishermen like John and James or Pharisees like Saul of Tarsus, there was no doubt that Jesus was the Lord God in person. Even Doubting Thomas confessed, “My Lord and my God!”3
The Jews and the Greeks accused the Christians of polytheism, for they worshipped the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But the Christians weren’t budging. Whatever else they knew, they knew that Jesus was the Lord himself. But then, so was his Father, and the Holy Spirit. Such a confession was blasphemy to the Jews, and utter nonsense to the Greeks. The Christians found themselves in a perplexing situation. On the one hand, they shared Jewish belief in one God. On the other, they would rather die than betray the worship of Jesus as Lord—and many did. But how could the Christians worship and glorify the Father, Son, and Spirit, and baptize in their names, and not worship three Gods? How could three be one, and one be three? How do we talk about this relationship without falling into polytheism on the one side, or denying the divinity of Jesus and the personhood of the Spirit on the other? These questions fueled the controversies that eventually led the Christians to perceive and develop the revolutionary vision of the triune God.
Did Jesus just happen to win the divine lottery? Is he merely a highly favored man who achieved an unthinkable relationship with God? Is his relationship with his Father one of random and exceptional grace on God’s part toward the man Jesus, and of exceptional obedience on Jesus’ part toward God, forming a divine-human relationship in and through the Spirit that is unparalleled in biblical history? Was Jesus Christ simply a man who knew God to a much greater degree than the rest of the human race?
Could it be that this astonishing relationship between the Father and the Son in the Spirit is not something new? Could it be that this relationship did not begin in the womb of the virgin Mary, but is a divine relationship predating Creation and subsequently entering into our world? Could it be that this remarkable love and fellowship between the Father and the Son in the Spirit is in fact the eternal life of God being lived out before our eyes and revealed to us? Are we dealing here with the truth of God’s eternal being, with the way God is and always has been and always will be, or is this seeming tri-unity simply one of many forms that the solitary God assumes from time to time?
Somewhere around AD 200, a priest and theologian from Rome named Sabellius put forward the idea that the one, indivisible God revealed himself in different ways in his relationship to humanity. For Sabellius, there is only one divine Person, but he manifested himself first as the Father, then later as the Son, and finally as the Holy Spirit. This view, known as Sabellianism or modalism, was popular in the Church, as it offered a way of affirming the deity of Christ while maintaining the fact that God is one. The one God appeared in different modes at different times. The problem with this view, of course, is that it admits of no relationship, no interaction between the Father, Son, and Spirit, as there is only one Person who appears in three different modes, but never at the same time. By definition there is no “they,” no three distinct Persons, and thus never any relationship between them.
In a way this view guards the deity of at least the roles of the Father, Son, and Spirit, but it makes a mockery of Jesus living his life in relation to his Father, and of the Holy Spirit in their midst. Why would the one Person, while he donned the temporary mode of the Son, for example, be so confused and misleading as to pray to another that he called his Father? And why would he baptize himself with the Spirit while another voice from heaven was declaring, “Thou art my beloved Son, in whom my soul delights”? Both Sabellius and his view were condemned as heretical around AD 220.
A second possible solution, and one that was far more popular, was put forward by a Presbyter named Arius (AD 256–336). He was a well-known preacher, and very bright. We don’t have much of what he actually wrote, as the Church has a tendency to destroy the work of its detractors; but what we know from those such as Athanasius,4 who argued against him, seems sensible, at least on the surface.
Arius took seriously the fact that the Father and the Son were distinct persons, and that their relationship was real. But he could not shake his Greek notion of the indivisibility of the one God. For Arius, God is single, end of subject. So for Arius, the Father alone is God, and Jesus is the first and greatest of all God’s creatures, through whom God created the rest of the cosmos. In this scenario the singleness of God is safeguarded and Jesus is uniquely honored. And there is even room for an incarnation of sorts, for as the first and greatest of God’s creatures, Jesus was not originally a human being.
Arius offered what appeared to be an extraordinary place for the Son as the mediator of creation and of salvation. It is through Jesus, said Arius, that the one God relates to all creation, now and forever. This place of honor spoke to what the Christians knew of Jesus in their Spirit-inspired worship, and thus gained considerable popularity. And Arius was quite adept at arguing his case from the Scriptures. But, as Athanasius was quick to point out, the Arian Jesus—exalted as he was—was nevertheless still a creature and not God, and could not be considered “the Lord” in the same sense that God the Father was “the Lord.”
While Arius was trying to be faithful to the notion that God is one, and find real honor for Jesus, he fell short of the mark. His subtle but real denial of the deity of Jesus Christ carried several serious consequences. First, it didn’t square with the apostles’ teaching, nor with the believers’ worship, nor with the Church’s practice of baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as commanded by Jesus. Second, it raises questions about the integrity of this Jesus. If he is not divine, why does the Arian Jesus insult the one God by allowing himself to be worshipped and glorified? What kind of God-honoring creature would receive the adoration due alone to the one true God? Third, the character of the Father is also in question. If Jesus is a creature and not God, then there was a time when there was no Son and the Father existed alone and solitary, so that even the Father was not always Father; and if he was not always Father, what is his essential character? Fourth, if Jesus is only a creature, then the salvation and the life he gives, while perhaps better than what we could do as mere humans, falls seriously short of divine salvation, and the eternal life of God.
Arius and his teaching forced the Church to engage in serious reflection about its faith in Christ. The Church responded at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, and then at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381, with a clear affirmation of the deity of Jesus and his utter oneness with the Father:
the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from his Father before all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made….
The Nicene confession, with its litany of Christological affirmations culminating in its strong statement that Jesus is “of one substance with the Father” and its pronouncement of anathema on anyone denying this, was designed to call a halt to the notion that Jesus was a creature of any sort and not equal to God the Father. It placed Jesus inside the circle of everything it means to be God.
At Nicaea the teaching of Arius was declared heretical and the oneness of Jesus with the Father was affirmed in no uncertain terms. But what did that actually mean? What does it mean to speak of the utter oneness of the Father and the Son? How can we worship the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit and not be polytheists? How can three be one, and one be three? After the Council of Nicaea, through the leadership of Athanasius and others, the Church followed the apostle John’s lead in thinking deeply about relationship, and as it did so a brilliant and revolutionary move took place. The Jewish and Greek notion of “one” was baptized into the world of relationship, and filled with “togetherness,” or “oneness.”5
To the Jewish mind, “one God” meant a single, individual, or solitary divine Person. For the Greek, “one God” meant indivisible, simple essence, not subject to partition or liable to change. For the Christian mind, “one God” came to mean three Persons utterly together. This is the point of capital importance. “One” undergoes a dramatic shift from an individual thing to relational togetherness or union.
It may seem like a trivial matter, but just think of your relationships, or of your marriage, or of your deepest desires in life. Does your heart not cry out for oneness rather than singularity or isolation? No one wants to be alone. And why not? If we were created in the image of a solitary Person, why would we so crave to be known, and to share our lives with another? Why are our deepest joys and pains relational? It makes sense that if we were created by a single-personed God, we might be wired to live in relationship with this God. But why would a single God wire us with a bent for relationships with one another?
The sharing between the Father and Son in the Spirit is so deep and genuine, the intimacy so real and personal, that our minds are forced to move even beyond the rich notion of face-to-face fellowship into the world of mutual indwelling and union. The relationship of the Son and the Father in the Spirit is a living and unobstructed fellowship of love of the deepest order. They know one another fully. They live a fellowship of unqualified personal interchange and communion in the Spirit, which is so flawless, so rich and thorough and true, that there is literal mutual indwelling. The Persons pass into one another and contain one another without losing themselves. When one weeps, the other tastes salt, yet they never get so entangled or enmeshed that they lose themselves and become one another. The beautiful word perichoresis (peri-co-ray-sis), my favorite theological word, says both things at once.6 Perichoresis means mutual indwelling, or interpenetration, without loss of individuality: “The doctrine of the perichoresis links together in a brilliant way the threeness and the unity, without reducing the threeness to the unity, or dissolving the unity in the threeness.”7
When Jesus says that he and the Father are one, or that if you have seen him you have seen the Father, he is not saying that he is the Father. Jesus remains his own person, as do the Father and the Holy Spirit, yet their fellowship is so unclouded that they dwell in one another; and they dwell in one another to such a degree that, for lack of a better way of saying it, they live in utter union—oneness.
Implicit in the preposition in as used by Jesus and John is the idea of perichoresis, mutual indwelling without loss of personal identity. It would take centuries of debate before this could be articulated, but the idea of mutual indwelling opened the way for relationship and fellowship and love to be included in the discussion of what it means to be “one.” In fact, it transformed the idea of “one” from strict individuality to profound togetherness—oneness. And oneness does not negate “one,” but fills it with new meaning.
In this move from isolation to profound togetherness, the truth that the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct Persons is held together with the truth that God is one. For this relationship is so deep, this fellowship is so true, this love between the Spirit, Son, and Father is so pure and unclouded, they so mutually indwell one another, that any description short of the word “one” betrays their sheer togetherness.8
In our lives such relational oneness is something we long to experience, but in the life of the blessed Trinity it is an abiding reality that continually expresses itself in love and in astonishing creativity and freedom. To me this is one of the most brilliant aspects of The Shack. Paul Young beautifully captures the equality, the threeness and the oneness, and the creativity of the relationship. At no point do we ever confuse Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu, and at no point do we think that they are separated in any way. As Sarayu says, “You can’t share with one and not share with us all” (108).
This togetherness of the Father, Son, and Spirit is free to express itself in an infant “in the lonely house of Adam’s fall,”9 wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger—and on a cross, suffering rejection and murder at the hands of the human race. Divine oneness is both the truth of the being of the triune God, and the way of trinitarian being, ever expressing itself in love and fellowship.10
In the context of the Jewish tradition, the disciples of Jesus found themselves walking with One they believed to be the Lord himself—yet One who had a Father, and was anointed with the Holy Spirit. Through their witness, and indeed through the ongoing revelation of Jesus in the Spirit, the Christian community came to perceive that the astonishing relationship of Jesus, the One he called his Father, and the Holy Spirit was not a form that God assumed for a moment, but a revelation to the human race of the way the one God is from all eternity and forever. What we see in Jesus’ life is an unveiling to us of the way God is, always has been, and always will be.
When Christianity says God, it says Father, Son, and Spirit, existing in a beautiful, intimate relationship of other-centered love expressing itself in boundless fellowship and unutterable oneness. It does not speak of a being that is isolated or unapproachable, detached or indifferent. It does not speak of a legalist, or a self-centered potentate, or an unmoved mover. God, for the Christian Church—at its best, anyway—is a relational being: three Persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, sharing life and all things in other-centered love and incomparable togetherness.
But we dare not stop here. The minute we mention the eternal relationship of the Father, Son, and Spirit, we have spoken volumes about the entire cosmos and the destiny of the human race. For this trinitarian relationship, this abounding and joyous communion, this unspeakable oneness of love, is the very womb of the universe and of humanity within it.