I'd like to discuss with you how the dogma of our God being a Trinity of Persons sharing one divine Nature is manifesting in our prayer life. When I was a child I always thought about God just being "God" and I didn't understand at all the notion of the Trinity. After my conversion in my early twenties I had a deep relationship with God-Jesus, with the Son, to the exclusion of the Father and the Spirit. In fact, it was very hard for me to open my prayer to the two other Persons of the Trinity and to the Triune God.

My first obseravation is that our psychological equipment may influence our openness to different aspects of the Triune God. For example, a difficult relationship with the father-object in our own psyche may totally hinder our ability to pray "Abba", using the traditional images of loving and caring Daddy. The same case may be if we invoke an image of the Mother (referring to the First Person of the Trinity). I think some may have problem with relating to Jesus for some reasons or to the Holy Spirit (perhaps the most "abstract" and to a certain degree "impersonal" notion - the Breath, the Fire etc. - outside the charismatic movement, at least). For some this impersonal quality of the Spirit may be actually to some avail.

Second, there may be simply a variety of ways in which the Grace is moving us in prayer. We just might be close to the Father through our whole life without any psychological reason, and this could be ok. The same case might be with Virgin Mary - some may have great devotion for Her, some not. The psychological factors may be also important.

Third, there is a Trinitarian dynamics of prayer. During the holy mass we pray TO the Father THROUGH Jesus Christ IN the Holy Spirit. So maybe an ideal situation would be to pray to the Triune God like this? But there may be some evolution as well. Basil Pennington wrote that a man he knew after many years of centering prayer changed his word from "Jesus" into "Dad" and it was accompanied by a spiritual transformation. So maybe a deeper identification with Christ makes us leave Himself as an object of prayer and shift it to the Father of Jesus? John of the Cross mentioned a shift from Jesus to the Holy Spirit, quoting the Scripture: "If I don't go away, the Paraclete won't come to you". So there might be a letting go of Christ as a primary object and turning to the Spirit instead. So have you experienced such changes and shifts in your prayer life and how do you interpret them?

Fourth, there are different sorts of prayers. For example, there is "Our Father" which leads us to the First Person, there is "Hail Mary" which isn't turned towards the Triune God directly. There is "Veni Creator Spiritus", and plenty of Spirit-oriented prayers and songs in the charismatic movement. There are prayers to Jesus specifically. There is also the Chaplet of Divine Mercy by St. Faustina Kowalska in which we "offer" Jesus to the Father, so I always feel we really can't pray TO Jesus in this prayer.

Fifth, the Persons are distinct only via their inner relationships and maybe by historical actions as Rahner suggests, but there's no disctinction in will, power, action, divinity etc. So if we pray to Jesus, we automatically pray to the Father and the Spirit. St. Augustine says it's not totally true that the Spirit is the Love between the Father and the Son, because if God is Love, then the Father is Love, and the Son is Love, and the Spirit is Love - all equally. So the Persons share all the qualities of God except for their relationship of "giving birth" or "proceeding from" etc.

I hope you find something here relating to your experiences and reflections. After all, Christianity is the only theistic religion that came up with this strange idea of the Trinity, which is somewhat blasphemous to Jews and Muslims, so it's worth reflecting at some point, isn't it?

Great topic, mateusz. I'm off for a couple of days on the road and will get back to you. I do believe it's just fine to relate to the Persons differently; they are, after all, different Persons. Their being of one mind and will doesn't diminish this in any way. I suspect that when we come closer to one of Them, the other Two rejoice.

Later . . .

Mateusz, finally getting back to this discussion.

I should reference the following thread, where we covered many areas relevant to the Trinity. As you noted in your closing comments above, it is unique to Christianity, and has many relevant implications.
- http://shalomplace.com/ubb/ult...;f=1;t=000043#000000

Yes, Mateusz, these are interesting questions you pose. I find that I relate / pray to the three Persons of God differently at times. Other times, they feel like exactly the same eternal Creator. It seems to depend on something inside me maybe, the prayer setting, what others pull out of me.

For instance, I will often ask the Father to send His Holy Spirit when I'm praying for direction or healing for another person. Since I've experienced the Holy Spirit in great power a few times, I sense this Person of God, just a glimpse, is very real in a way that I didn't realize before the power encounters. I recognize the need for God's Power through the Holy Spirit when I minister to others and often say Francis MacNutt's prayer: Father, share with us your Holy Spirit's Power and Compassion.

I know what you mean about the psychological obstacles in relating to "Father" or even "Son"--there's tons of them as emotional associations evoke our deepest wounds and conflicts, with male superiority ranking up there. And there seems to be some movement to feminize the HS pointing to the OT use of Shekinah as a feminine noun (if I recall correctly?).

I became open to praying directly to the Father after years of hearing others pray to Him in a way that sounded and looked to my spirit as though they actually believed in a loving, tender Father. This was weird to me at first, but I was blessed by their modeling such a personal relationship with such a huge God.

My relationship with God was primarily through Jesus Christ after my conversion (though right after that it was somewhat God seen without any awareness of His trinitarian nature). So Jesus was my God and the relationship was very "Song of Songs" or "Spiritual Canticle" like.
I noticed that I wasn't able to pray to the Father at all. The Holy Spirit seemed a vague idea, also. I became aware of psychological obstacles involved, but it didn't help much.

In my darkness period my relationship with Jesus lost its passionate, love dimension, but I still connected mainly to Him as the God-Man. Yet, at the end of my dark night I noticed that my interest in the Holy Spirit began to grow. I experienced an infusion of the Holy Spirit earlier, at the peak of my first ecstatic spiritual period, but I didn't pray to Her. I prayed to Jesus-God, even if the Holy Spirit was very present at the time. So I guess, we can experience the action of a Person within the Trinity, but nevertheless not being moved to relate to Her directly, that's my observation. Similarly, if the Father is the Creator, the Lord and the Abyss of God, I definitely had my encounters with Him, but still didn't pray to Him directly. So I think it's good to make this distinction - the Trinity can be active in our prayer life, even if we focus on one Person exclusively.

Now, since December I've experienced I major shift in my prayer life, also in terms of the Trinity. I experienced Jesus leading me into the bosom of the Father and my exclusive focus on the Person of Jesus reached an end. Instead, I feel able to relate more freely to the Three Persons. I'm able to pray to the Father and I believe I also had a powerful encounter with Him. I saw an infinite abyss of darkness, out of which an infinite love and tenderness flows. So the Father remains unknown (no-one has seen the Father, only the Son), but His love becomes manifest through Jesus and the Spirit. It was important to me, although there are still obstacles in my relating to the Father.

I also developped or rather was given a relationship with the Spirit Herself. I even joined a charismatic renewal group in my city and was given the prayer in tongues, which I practice and after some time I'll share with you how I experience it.

So now I feel that my relationship with Jesus changed into something different (while remaining intact as such) and also Jesus opened me into relating to His Father and to His Spirit. So now it's seems to me almost natural and obvious to think of God in trinitarian terms, since I feel at times the Trinitarian dynamics and life within the heart. I think this is definitely an improvement in my prayer, although it's probably possible that someone just sticks to one Person and everything is fine .

One obstacle: a theological/metaphysical one.
Sometimes I start to engage in a reflection on the nature of the Trinity, most often considering the Western/Eastern controversy and it seems to be a distraction and a temptation even.
For example, I think about the St. Augustine's idea that the only difference between the Persons are their relationships. I mean, that Father is different from the Son in nothing but the fact that He gives birth to the Son, and the Son is different from the Spirit only because He is born from the Father. This goes into some kind of heresy, which name I don't remember, namely, that the Persons have no "qualities" of their own. On the other hand, I think about the Eastern Orthodox ideas of the Persons as being totally different and the Father's "monarchy" and even the fact that the Spirit comes solely from the Father, and not from the Son. All sorts of theological disputes which doesn't seem to enhance my prayer, but just confuse me, because there seem to be unsolvable metaphysical issues here.
And, of course, the metaphysical nature of the Trinity is beyond our grasp, anyway, so what's the point...
I think better is to think in "economic" terms...
But I'd like to point out that the idea of the Trinity can be used by us, sinners, as an obstacle for our prayer, if we get too intellectual.

Ok, so much for now.

Wonderful sharing, Shasha and mateusz. Thank you! I relate to much of it.

Obviously, Jesus is the easiest Person for us to understand and relate to, which is one of the reasons for the Incarnation, I believe -- that God might become more accessible and knowable to us. My own relationship with Him has changed much through the years, and I now speak of knowing him through four modes: personal/historical, ecclesial, sacramental, and cosmic. At different times, one of these modes has predominated over the others, but they seem to all be present, to some degree, at this time in life.

I, too, find it difficult to use a metaphysical approach to the Trinity as a basis for relating with the Persons. As you note, the "economic Trinity" makes more sense (how God has been manifest through salvation history as Father, Son and Spirit). I do like the Orthodox approach as well in its emphasis on the Persons being as distinct from one another as we human persons are (even as we share the one, human nature). We are images of God in that sense, though there is much about the "metaphysical Trinity" that goes far beyond our understanding.

In my relationships with the Persons, I tend to view the Father as the unmanifest transcendent One, the Son as the manifest One who is "with-me," and the Holy Spirit as unmanifest-immanence. So we have: God beyond, with, and within -- a total embrace! Nothing can separate us from the love of God (Rm. 8) because we are so thoroughly held in grace and being by the Persons of the Trinity. At times, I am drawn to Jesus-with-me, others to opening to the Spirit, and, of course, praise to God-beyond-all. The contemplation that flows from this seems increasingly open to all three orientations simultaneously, rather than, say, to the immanent presence alone, as was the case for many years. This seems a more complete and mature spirituality, to me, but it is difficult to find much written of it in the literature -- Elizabeth of the Trinity is very good, however.
- http://www.ettinger.net/carmelcov/prayertrinity.html

Also, at this time in my journey, I am no longer able to think about God apart from Trinity. While metaphysical reflection on the divine nature is beneficial, too much of this can lead to an overly abstract image of God, which certainly goes against the divine intent made manifest in salvation history.

For those interested in going more into the four modes of Christ's presence and/or hearing a lecture I recently presented on the Trinity, see our Lent 2009 resources page, which will give you access to both.
- http://shalomplace.com/inetmin/lent09/index.html

Thanks, Phil, I heard your Lent-talk on the subject and it's really clarifying. I do like the idea of God-beyond-us, God-with-us, and God-in-us.
Few things:

(1) The Spirit is God within us, but there is a spirituality of Christ within us as well. Christ is our "Christ-self" through His ressurection, and I remember you saying once that the One who is looking through the eyes of people, and even animals and plants in the enlightened state, can be identified with Jesus. Is it Jesus - the divine Word or you mean Him by virtue of His glorified humanity?
What's the difference between the Spirit in us and Jesus in us? What are implications for spiritual practice? I have never heard, though, of the Father in us.

(2) I think it's an interesting topic to compare the Father with God's Being. The Father seems to be the transcendent Abyss from which the Word emerges eternally, the Unmanifest, but exactly that Eckhart and the like say about the Godhead. I think in Christian tradition there is a lot on the unmanifest Nothingness of God, out of which everything comes to being and manifests. But can we identify the Nothingness with the Father?
About Eckhart I will say sth below, so now I just want to say that the Father could be view as Nothingness, but only if we think of Him in personal terms. He is not metaphysical Nothingness or Emptiness, but a Father of infinite compassion, He is Good as Jesus tells us. Yet there is something like Nothingness of God, and we can wonder if this is a impersonal experience of the Father's transcendence or the experience of God's Being. Can God's Being, that sustains us in existence, be identified with His Godhead, with the Nature that Persons share? Or there are three things here - Godhead, Persons and Being?

I'm reading the thread on the Trinity that you suggested above. It's interesting, but I found there a post by Jon, I think, which I disagree. It's about Eckhart.

I really don't like Eckhart's theology of the Trinity, although I liked it very much in my old Zen times.
Eckhart seems to think that Godhead, which is unmanifest and formless, is above Persons which are manifestations of It. Godhead is impersonal, apparently. The Trinity for Eckhart is God "clothed", in relation to the creatures, whereas "naked" God, in Himself, is Godhead without any plurality. It is interesting that in his Latin works Eckhart instead of Godhead talks about the Father as the unmanifest source of the Persons. So Eckhart would identify the Father with Nothingness.
I think this Eckhart's idea, it might be orthodox, but it's taken by many (Wilber, of course, and Bede Griffiths among others) to mean sth like Shankara's nirguna brahman and saguna brahman. Godhead is nirguna brahman, non-duality, and Persons are expressions and forms of it. For Shankara saguna brahman is illusory, which for Christian cannot be said about the Trinity.

Jon in his posts links this to Pseudo-Dionysius. I'd not agree with that. Pseudo-Dionysius, along with Greek tradition, says that it's not Godhead which is transcendent, but the Trinity is transcendent and "above being" (hupekeina ontos - Platonic phrase). It's contrary to Eckhart's idea, I think. And, furthermore, the "energies" (energeiai) in Greek tradition don't refer to the Persons, not in the least. Energeiai are of the whole Trinity, it's Trinity's action in the world (en-ergeia means "activity" - "ergon" is "work"). So in the divinization process, according to the Orthodox theology, we become God through energeiai, we become the "activity" of God, but not the transcendent Persons or their ousia. BTW, ousia is not something that can be distinguished from Persons. Ousia means literally "is-ness". And energeiai are one with the Trinity, because they are God, uncreated.
Third thing is that "hupostaseis" don't mean "expressions" of the ousia. In Greek hupostasis means "that which stands by itself", something that exists in itself, not in sth else. So three Hypostases are not expressions of Ousia, they are distincly self-existent Beings, which share one Isness. And Latin Personae are of course an interpretation of that. But in that time it's no longer only "a mask", but "a person" as well. So Latin Fathers chose the word "person" because it was closer to the Gospel than Neoplatonic "hypostasis".

What are the consequences? Of course, we are talking about metaphysical Trinity and this is always complicated and koan-like. But I think we should avoid the advaitan theology putting God's Nothingness beyond Persons, because it always leads us to the conclusion that Persons are somehow relative and less-real expressions of the Godhead, and that we can perhaps leave Persons behind and plung into the Godhead.

Somewhere in between is the theology of blessed van Ruysbroeck, who lived few decades after Eckhart. He emphasizes the Trinity very much and refrains from Eckharts concept of the Godhead, but at the same time he allows the Godhead as the unmanifest aspect of God, probably, because the idea was so popular in Germany and Netherlands at this time.
Ruysbroeck says that the Persons and the saints in heaven "lose themselves" in the Godhead, where everything is one, while their distinctions are intact. The "losing oneself in the desert" of the Godhead is done through the deepest part of human soul, while the rest stays. The desert is not like Eckhart's, but it is "bliss", so there's love involved.
Anyway, I think that even such metaphysical and theoretical things can influence our practice and experience.

Phil, if this post doesn't fit here, you can move it to the thread on the Trinity or anywhere.

And I'd like to share an experience which, I think, is relevant to what we discuss here.
It is Love, extremely pure, uncreated and really hard to bear for a longer period of time. It is not Love in the form of Living Flame , but it seems just like darkness, even black-ness.

It has this quality of the unmanifest. But when I compare it with the experiences of Emptiness or Nothingness, this is something much different. It is similar in that it's impossible to describe, and there's a strong need NOT to talk about it at all.

But at the same time it's not the abyss of pure is-ness, it's a Source of Love and Glory. And at those times I really feel like "looking into" the face of the Father. But it is dark, so I cannot "see" anything, it's just being embraced and hypnotized by the Source of Love, and this is focused in the heart.

I wondered if it's more like the Spirit or the Father present in this experience. I'd say that it's the Father, but I remember that "no-one has ever seen the Father" and I feel a sort of holy fear thinking about looking at the Father. But, on the other hand, the Son sees the Father and can share this with us, and He promised this during the Last Supper.


The whole experience is "dark" to the intellect, but very real and tangible to the will.

So this might be a glimpse of the Father as the unmanifest source of Love, Glory, Power and Goodness. I don't fully understand it, but this experience, ineffable as it is, made me definitely think of God in terms of the Trinity, though I don't see the connection yet.

mateusz, I'll respond here to what you describe above, which is very beautifully shared.

One thing that's been impressed upon me many times through the years is that it is Jesus who shows us the Father. It may well be that the Emptiness described in Zen is God, but is not known as the loving transcendent One because one's receptivity is not configured to know the Emptiness as Love. Christ is the One who enables us to know the Emptiness as Father, Loving Source, etc., and it is our faith in Him and the workings of His Spirit which enables the configuration of this loving receptivity. I hope that makes sense, and maybe sheds some light on the inquiry about Trinity that you raise.

- - -

I understand your disagreement with Jon and think you expressed it very well. In the end, Eckhart is rather difficult, and, as you noted, there are consequences for how we understand Godhead and Trinity. It does seem that, at times, Eckhart pushed things too far in the direction of impersonality. As we know, he was confronted by the Magisterium on a number of issues.

mateusz wrote:

quote:

(1) The Spirit is God within us, but there is a spirituality of Christ within us as well. Christ is our "Christ-self" through His ressurection, and I remember you saying once that the One who is looking through the eyes of people, and even animals and plants in the enlightened state, can be identified with Jesus. Is it Jesus - the divine Word or you mean Him by virtue of His glorified humanity?
What's the difference between the Spirit in us and Jesus in us? What are implications for spiritual practice? I have never heard, though, of the Father in us.

Good questions, and not easy to clarify.

My understanding of the Trinity is that the Persons "indwell" One another. That's not easy for us to understand, as we we're so accustomed to persons being separate beings. So, really, there's a sense in which the entire Trinity is present within, with and beyond -- that where any one of the Persons are to be found, the Being of God is there, and so are the other two. Looking at things from the perspective of "metaphysical Trinity," then, it doesn't make much sense to say that the Persons are found in separate places or even dimensions of reality. Not easy for us to wrap our minds around, of course.

From the perspective of spirituality and mystical experience, one hardly ever hears talk of the Father being "within," although the Father surely must be if the Son or the Spirit is present there. Rather, it seems this sense of the Spirit as immanent presence comes mostly from the experience of being empowered. Some writers say that Jesus lives within us through the Spirit, which leaves me wondering in what sense His own life is joined with us? His soul lives, for sure, as does the Word, and we receive Him into our very bodies in Communion.

What I shared, then, about the Father beyond, the Son with us, and the Spirit within is my own way of orienting myself to the Trinity in my prayer and spirituality. When I wrote about the Word looking out through all creatures, that, too, is more just a mystical intuition than anything I'd want to try to back up theologically. All creatures have their existence in and through the Word, and there are times when this sense of Christ's cosmic presence is impressed upon me.

I'm curious if any of you notice a change in flavor during the Mass. For me, during those old hymns of solemn praise, there is a shuddering sense of the Father: unapproachable except for Christ, which some of those hymns capture. This blighting majesty He calls "Daddy." Sheesh! But in the hymns somehow this awe-full presence is made almost bearable, as though looking out of the corner of one's eye. It is like we are singing with the angelic hosts, who are perpetually in this state, covering their eyes, with the saints in their beatific vision beholding His radiance as the Son. If singing is the language of the seraphim and cherubim, then perhaps the power of hymns is not surprsing. Sometimes I can't get through them for weeping. Embarrassing . . . . .

Yes, I hear you, w.c. And many of the more contemporary hymns approach the mystery with such familiarity, even to the point of having us sing God's words in the first person. The older hymns seemed to preserve a sense of the mystery and transcendence of God, along with the amazement that we have been given access to God through Christ.

While attending a wake at a Lutheran Church recently, I opened their hymnal and came upon this hymn to the Spirit, which I'd never heard. Beautifully worded, it was entitled "Praise of Creation," but I can't find it anywhere on the net. Extraordinary creation theology and spirituality was expressed. I'll try to find it again.