What is the Trinity? How has human understanding of God changed?
Introduction
There is only One God. He has always existed and will always exist. That God is One, Unity and Unique, is indisputable and is the basis of all true religion. This high recognition of God is a fundamental experience for all mature human spirits. Creation arose from Him and out of Him.
In Creation we recognise Him as a Trinity of Father, Son (Love) and Son (Holy Spirit or Creative Will) and so, for us in Creation God Manifests as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This does not mean that there are three Gods in one but that there is only One God who manifests to us in Creation as three personalities. This is also not the same as the understanding of Father and son in the World of Matter. Here, on earth, a Father is a different individual with unique personality and activity. The Trinity however is One in all senses of the word.
God has no form in which we can recognise Him and the gender specific characterisation we apply to Him is mostly conventional. He cannot be described as either male of female and so cannot have children.
God, the Source of everything is Light and Life. Therefore, all that emanate from Him has life to an extent defined by its intrinsic motion arising from the Power of His Radiation. The more intrinsically mobile an entity is, the more connected to life and therefore, the more capable of higher recognitions about the Creator. On earth human spirits are the beings capable of the highest recognitions but even this is subject to the individuals spiritual striving and alertness.
In His Sublimity, God is One and it is only in His relationship towards Creation that we recognise Him as a Trinity. His unbounded Love that later manifested in Material Creation as Jesus, the Saviour and His Creative Will that later manifested as the Holy Spirit, the direct origin of Creation, have always been in Him and of Him.
God is one
Our God, my God is One and indivisible. There is a mystery in this that will never be fully understood by human spirits because this is well above our origin. Nevertheless, in our experiencing we are permitted to recognise the Trinity in a personal way.
It is because our recognition of God is connected with our experiencing and level of consciousness that the recognition of the Trinity evolved over time as human spirits increased their consciousness in Creation. Indeed, it is only with the coming of Christ that humanity slowly recognised the concept of the Trinity. Before Christ, the embodiment of the Love of God, human recognition of the Creator was limited almost exclusively to His Power and Justice embodied in the Holy Spirit, His Creative Will. It is thus not surprisingly that there is no clear teaching in the Bible about the Trinity.
Only vague references appeared about it in the epistles. The more pointed references to the concept in the teachings of Christ were largely ignored such as when He talked about being One with the Father or about sins against the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit being dealt with differently, indicating clearly that these three, although One have different personalities and characteristics whereby we may recognise them.
It is this neglect that has resulted in the fact that today many devout Christians still have difficulties fully accepting the Trinity. The Christians who advocate the Trinity in most cases are also often on uncertain grounds. They do not always understand what they believe, nor are they sometimes sure that they do believe and so the concept floats like a half-formed picture defying living experience.
Many of the so-called believers, limit their understanding to accepting Jesus, the Son of God as One in the Trinity. But most nevertheless see Him as an earthly son born through the agency of Mary, much like ancient Greek and Roman gods were believed to have children with mortal women. Some Christian sects even believe that although Jesus is God, He is not as high as the Father and regard Him as a small god.
The understanding about the Holy Spirit is even more limited as most still see the Holy Spirit as a vague, impersonal power emanating from God; at best as the power of God in Creation.
This limitation in understanding has severe consequences not least of which is the fact that many do not recognise that in using the name of the Lord, Jesus in vain or invoking the Holy Spirit as a fire for destruction they abuse the concept or the name of the Almighty Creator.
I will dismiss in passing the belief of those who talk about a duality of power, who therefore believe in a power of good and a power of evil. These people believe in two gods, a good one and an evil one. This can only arise from movements originating in Material spheres, for there is no evil in the Creation of the Almighty.
Evil arose entirely from the activity of fallen beings in the Material Spheres who wrongly use the pure neutral power of God to produce evil. Foremost amongst these are Lucifer and his following of fallen human beings. In this belief Lucifer places himself as the alternative power for deluded and intellectually bound human spirits to worship.
The Grail Message tells us that:
“There is only One Creator, One God and hence One Power which streams through all that exists”.
God has always existed and has remained the same from the beginning. He did not suddenly with the coming of Christ become three, but our recognition of Him as the Almighty, as Love and as Justice was consolidated as our spiritual consciousness increased with the recognition of Christ as a part of the Godhead, just as we had previously recognised the Holy Spirit.
This recognition and the acceptance or rejection of this manifestation of our Creator is an important step to further maturity. God Is. He Is the same today as He has been since Eternity and will always be. He has always been a Trinity with the Love and Justice as part of Him.
We must ask ourselves, Why this poor understanding of such a vital concept? A close study of the path of Man in Creation shows clearly how the milestones to our poor understanding were set.
The path to our recognition
The Lord God is without any form that we can recognise since the spiritual mobility intrinsic in us is insufficient to recognise His real being. However, aspects of His nature intended for us take on a form that approaches our nature for an understanding to be possible.
Creation came into existence as an act of Will of the Creator. With the Creative fiat, ‘Let there be Light’ The Creative Will of God, also called His Spirit or the Holy Spirit hovered over the void to bring Creation into existence. For all humanity, therefore, the Creative Will has always been personal in a unique way, since we issued out of the activity of this Will.
Thus, the Creative Will described in sacred literature as the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit has always been perceived as a personality. This is a logical extension of our ego consciousness because in recognising our own personality and individuality we were bound to recognise the immediate source of our being as such.
But although we perceive Him as a personality, He is not a different person but rather a part of the one Unsubstantiate God we have come to recognise and which has taken on form for us. For us this was the first step in our recognition of God.
The Holy Spirit, the Creative Will of God, has also been called ‘Imanuel’ (meaning ‘God with us’), because in this form He is with us unto all eternity – we issued from the Spirit, we are of the Spirit and indeed our essence, the breath of life is Spirit – hence ‘Imanuel’.
From the time of our coming into being, the Love of God has also inclined towards us. Indeed, the whole of Creation was brought into being and is sustained purely as an act of Love on the part of God, who does not need Creation – neither for His existence nor for His ego. He is sufficient unto Himself and without human spirits He still has myriad servants to do His Will. Hence the act of sending His Spirit to bring Creation into existence with the great fiat ‘Let there be Light’ is an act of Love the scope of which we may never be able to understand. Therefore, from Eternity the Love of God has also been personal, working from out of the Father just as the Creative Will.
The eternal renewal of Creation by an outpouring of the power from the Holy Spirit over all of Creation, which occurs regularly, is an act of Divine Love. If God were to withdraw His radiation or His power poured forth each year, everything including all human beings will wither away and die. This outpouring of the power by the Holy Spirit is a covenant of Love between the Creator and His Creation.
In so many other ways the Love of God has been with us, has always touched us and has sustained us from eternity. However, our experiencing of this Love could not take on form in the same way that His Creative Will did since its sublime nature and purity remained too far removed from our nature and therefore incomprehensible. It is therefore not surprising that for millennia of early existence on earth, human beings were more conscious of His Power and Justice personified in His Creative Will than of His forgiving Love.
The history of the spiritual development of man contained in sacred literature from all over the world bears out this fact. In the Old Testament with its roots in the Torah for instance (which is actually a chronicle of the experiences of maturing human spirits), it is easy to note that the essential recognition of God revolves around His Power and His inflexible Justice.
It is not surprising that their experiences suggested a personal, powerful and sometimes vengeful God. Hence the many rules that evolved out of observing the operation of the Will of God around them. For example, the adamantine law of reciprocity which demands that what you sow you must reap, was interpreted mostly in terms of severity and punishment such as ‘an eye for an eye’, etc.
The fall of man was also a great set back, obscuring a more mature and clearer perception of His Love. Those who sought Him and returned to the path had first to experience His Justice and Power. However, as the relatively few striving human beings, largely limited to the offspring of Abraham, slowly matured, His Love inclined more and more towards humanity.
Simultaneously the general plight of humanity was becoming more and more desperate as the activity of the majority inclined further away from the Light of God towards the darkness. And eventually the darkness threatened to choke even the few striving ones.
But the ever-watchful Love of God did not wish that any of us should perish but that all will be saved, unless they themselves wished it otherwise. And so, as the activity of the darkness intensified over the earth in spite of the chain of guidance prepared for mankind in the form of prophets and messengers, the Love of God had to intervene directly.
With the world mostly under the influence of the darkness, Divine Love in its sublime purity was utterly inaccessible to the fallen human spirits. There was no hope that we could on our own penetrate the ethereal darkness that surrounded us, to follow the normal course of recognition and development. It was no longer possible for prophets to lead us.
The darkness was thus rapidly driving Subsequent Creation, the Material Creation that arose subsequent to Spiritual Creation1 to a terrible abyss, and the few flickering flames of striving spirituality were in danger of being lost. In an unprecedented act, the Love of God sent a part from out of Him into the World of Matter. Naturally to be effective in Matter, this direct radiation out of God needed a material vessel. This vehicle was Jesus of Nazareth.
The Sacrifice of Love
Jesus came as an emergency act of Love for our salvation. He is the direct embodiment of the Love of God. He did not come to Judge the World as that is the office of the Creative Will, the Justice of God. Jesus is a great sacrifice of Love from God for humanity, but returns to the Father after His Mission.
The Creative Will of God, who is Eternally anchored at the summit of Creation as the power of God in Creation is an eternal Sacrifice from God for His Creation, the Holy Spirit. It is His radiation that sustains Creation, His Eternal presence or Immanence in Creation that ensures the continuing existence of man or humanity and so He is also regarded as the ‘Son of God with Man’ or the ‘Son of Man’. This is also why He is called Imanuel, or ‘God with us’.
Unlike Jesus who remains in the Father and who went back to the Father after His Mission, to become One again with the Father, the Son of Man although in the Father is anchored Eternally with Creation. Thus, while Jesus the Love of God may be regarded as the in-born Son of God, the part that remains eternally in the Father, the Holy Spirit may be regarded as the out-born Son, the part that stands and works outside the Father while remaining in Him.
Both are Sons of God, but not in the conventional or mundane sense as when we call ourselves sons and daughters of God or son of men. These mundane uses were also documented in the Bible and have caused serious confusion especially with distinguishing the actual meaning when Christ is referred to as Son of Man and when He talks about ‘The Son of Man’. This will be discussed in more details in a another blog.
Thus, with the coming of Jesus, we could experience the Love of God directly. From then on, human spirits not only experienced the Creator as the Creative Spirit, as Justice but also as Love. Again, the more mature the human spirit, the more intense is the experiencing and vice-versa. Out of this experiencing arose the recognition of the reality of the Trinity. Because it evolved with human increasing spiritual consciousness the concept of the Trinity remained vague even among Christ’s disciples and became to some extent distorted in their followers.
It is documented that when the Lord asked His disciples who they think He is, none of them had an answer until Peter made his landmark recognition – ‘thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God’[i]. Even then the Lord confirmed that Peter’s statement was really a revelation from above rather than a personal knowledge.
This recognition of Christ as the Son of God, which is the first step in our recognition of the Trinity, is the foundation on which the membership of the body of Christ, His Church was to be built. To whomsoever Peter and the disciples could then mediate this recognition, they would thereby simultaneously be handing the key to Paradise.
With this recognition, human understanding of the Creator reached its highest level. We must recognise the Trinity if we are to achieve our goal in Creation which is to recognise our Creator and serve Him in the Laws of Creation.
Jesus is a personification of the Love of God and He has returned back to the Father. He is a part of the One God in eternity that took on earthly form for our sake and that we can now recognise in a personal way just as we should recognised the Holy Spirit. But the recognition of the Trinity, the high point of the early church gradually became distorted. God, the Eternal Lord is One! He cannot beget a son and no other can share His Majesty. These are Truths that vibrate in the inner core of all genuine seekers.
Another Sacrifice of Love: A second coming
As stated earlier it is impossible for the human spirit to understand the nature of God, except to the extent to which He reveals Himself to us. All the help in the Word sent to humanity before the coming of Christ were but stepping stones to the Truth that finally came down in person, in its fullness in Jesus. Unfortunately, the Son of God could not give us all we need because of our level of maturity at that time. In part also due to our inability to fully understand the vital Message He brought and finally and perhaps most seriously, because our rejection of Him that led to the murder on the cross.
Because of these He promised to send us another, like Himself from the Father, who will complete His Mission. He will come as the Spirit of Truth because He will complete the Mission of Christ, but He also comes with other roles as clarified in the gospel according to John in chapter 16. We will discuss this further later.
Jesus came as the Love of God that brought us salvation. He has returned and is re-united with the Father. He however remains personal and continues to support us indirectly through the presence of God in Creation but we will see Him no more. We will not experience another physical embodiment of the Love of God for our Salvation. The second coming of an Envoy from God will bring completion to the Mission of Christ but will also with His coming bring the judgment.
The Holy Spirit, the Creative Will of God is the eternal presence of the Father in His Creation. He also is personal and because He remains anchored at the summit of Creation supports us eternally as the direct Power of God in Creation. If the Radiation of God through His eternal presence were to be withdrawn, everything will cease to exist. He is God with us and any manifestation of God for us must go through Him. Because Creation is connected with Him, it is He that will bring the judgment. He is the Envoy of God for the end time.
Our recognition of the activity of the Creator in Creation has now reached the point where we recognise Him as the Father, the only One out of whom everything flows and also as Love, part of which was incarnate in Jesus and as the Creative Will, Imanuel also called the Holy Spirit.
The names indicate the specific activity in the Trinity. Jesus means Saviour, sent out of the Love of God to bring redemption and salvation by personally anchoring the Truth, of which He is a part, in the World of Matter and in the spiritual beings of Creation. He has finished the work of the Father in the Worlds of Matter and has returned back to the Father.
The activity of the Creator in His Creation is now as the Creative Will, Imanuel. The name Imanuel means ‘God with us’, because He is the Power of God in Creation out of whose radiation Creation came into existence and who remains eternally connected with Creation to sustain it.
It is He that will therefore ultimately judge Material Creation. It is the regular outpouring of power by Him for the sustenance of all Creation that Christ called the promise of the Father and which is also regarded as the covenant of the Creator with His Creation. As stated already, if this outpouring of power was ever to cease, everything outside the Divine realm will slowly wither and cease to exist.
The activity of the Holy Spirit has also been recognised by humanity as that of the part of the Creator connected with our existence and being and as such bear the alternative name, the Son of Man.
Conclusion
These different roles recognised as such by the human spirits define our reality; and the level of conviction in the recognition will finally also determine who will be saved, i.e. who matures into a viable human spirit worthy of eternal existence in the Kingdom of God.
This is why the Son of God Jesus repeatedly warned us that we must remain alert for the coming of the Son of Man. That we must listen to Him, to the last gift of the Word He will bring in person. This is also why Christ told us that the role of Judge does not belong to Him, as the Love of God in Creation but that another, the Son of Man, as the Creative Will of God will come to judge the World of Matter 2.
This judgment will also bring the end of the ages. This is not the end of the World of Matter as often portrayed but the World Turning Point. If we fail in the Judgment, our world will undergo disintegration of its present form but is permitted to reform anew from primordial seed following the Law of cycle 3 that all of Matter is subject to. If we are found worthy then our world will after a necessary purification be incorporated into the Kingdom of God; eternally under the protection of the Son of Man4.
From the beginning the Love and the Creative Will of God have been personal, standing in and working out of the Father. Yet our God is One.
Christ is not a different person or a God to be worshipped differently, but He may be experienced differently as the Love of God in Creation, just as the Holy Spirit is experienced as the Power of God in Creation. God Is! He is One, Indivisible, Eternal Love, Eternal Justice, All Powerful.
This level of recognition of our Creator is a Grace of the end time, granted with the coming of Christ and confirmed in the Mission of the Son of Man. The concept however will remain vague and without vitality for human spirits until they embrace the Word from God brought by the coming of the Spirit of Truth promised by Christ.
Worship belongs to the One God alone.
- The Grail Message
- John 16
- The Law of cycle determines that everything will return to its origin. The World of Matter that evolved from primordial seed, goes through development, maturity, over-ripeness, decay and a return to Primordial seed which then goes into another cycle of development. This applies to all things in Matter.
- Revelation to John
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