The Mystery of the Trinity

Abstract

The Trinity is the deepest of all mysteries, a mystery that is the very signature and seal of all orthodox Christianity, one calling forth the most ultimate worship and obedience, and thereby calling forth a uniquely Christian Godhead. At no other point are Eastern and Western Christianity more deeply united, just as nowhere else are Catholicism and Protestantism more fully conjoined. The dogma of the Trinity is truly the axis of all orthodox Christianity, and perhaps a refusal or reversal of that dogma is the axial center of all truly or deeply heterodox Christianity. Yet the doctrine of the Trinity was not fully evolved until the last quarter of the fourth century of the Christian era, and then only as a consequence of the most bitter dogmatic war that Christianity has ever undergone— one primarily centered on Christology—and it was the dogmatic victory of a new orthodox Christology that decisively generated and sealed the dogma of the Trinity. The center of this Christology is the dogma of homoousios, proclaiming that the Son is homoousios with the Father, a word that was introduced into the Nicene creed as approved by Constantine the Great at the first Ecumenical Council in 325 CE.