Dumitru Stăniloae

Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. Volume 1 – The Experience of God – протоиерей Думитру Стэнилоаэ Download

select excerpts from Chapter 10:

Dumitru Stăniloae’s Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: The Experience of God

Page 247

Holy Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love

Over against other teachings, it is only in the sense that such a deity, as

the basis for loving communion with us in eternity, can alone be a

saving God. But in what this dogmatic formula provides for our

understanding, it comprises the framework of genuine infinity

and opens for us the prospect of our personal participation in the Godhead

for all eternity. For it is within the perfect and eternal communion

of the three persons, in whom the unique supraessence of the Godhead

subsists, that the infinity and perfection which mark the loving life

of the Trinity and of each divine person are given. Moreover, only

through the Trinity is our eternal communion with the infinite love

of God assured as such, together with communion among ourselves

as those who partake of this infinity and yet remain distinct. The

Trinity thereby assures our continuance and perfection as persons

to all eternity. As something simultaneously revealed to us and yet

transcending all understanding, the doctrine of the Trinity constitutes

the foundation, infinite reservoir, power, and model of our growing

eternal communion; yet it also spurs us on to grow and think con-

tinuously in spirit, and helps us both pass continually beyond any

level we may already have reached in our personal communion with

God and among ourselves, and also strive for an ever more profound

grasp of the mystery of supreme communion.

Thus Dionysios the Areopagite affirms the certainty of irreducible

distinction among the three divine persons within the unity of

being just as powerfully as he asserts the character of the divine be-

ing as a mystery inaccessible to our understanding.

“The unified names apply to the entire Godhead…Hence, titles

such as the following–the transcendently good, the transcendently

divine, the transcendently existing, the transcendently living, the

transcendently wise. These and similar terms concern a denial in the

sense of a superabundance. …Then there are the names expressing

distinctions, the transcendent name and proper activity of the Father,

of the Son, of the Spirit. Here the titles cannot be interchanged, nor

are they held in common.”2

Holding in what follows to the framework provided by these two

essential patristic directions, we will refrain from explaining the

generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit, that is,

the mode of being of the three persons. Instead, we will confine

ourselves only to casting their unity of being and of love into relief.

Thus we seek to avoid the psychologizing explanations of Catholic

Page 248

The Experience of God

theology, which has recourse to these only from its desire to find human

arguments in favor of the Filioque, the doctrine that the Holy Spirit

proceeds also from the Son.

As a work of raising up believers to intimate communion with

God, salvation and deification are nothing other than the extension

to conscious creatures of the relations that obtain between the di-

vine persons. That is why the Trinity reveals itself essentially in the

work of salvation, and that is why the Trinity is the basis on which

salvation stands. Only because a triune God exists does one of the

divine persons–namely the one who stands in relationship as Son

vis-à-vis the other, and who, as man too, can remain within this affectionate

relationship as Son–become incarnate, placing all his human

brothers within this relationship as sons to the heavenly Father, or

indeed placing his Father within a paternal relationship to all men.

Saint John of Damascus suggests that the incarnation is the mode

of union between two subsistences, proper only to the Only-Begotten

Son and the Word, so that his personal attribute might remain un-

changed, or so that as man too he might remain in filial relationship

to the Father.

Saint Gregory the Theologian says: “Be reconciled to God (2 Cor

5.20) and do not quench the Spirit (1 Thess 5.19); or rather may Christ

be reconciled to you, and may the Spirit enlighten you. But if you

are too fond of your quarrel, we at any rate will hold fast to the Trinity,

and by the Trinity may we be saved.”4

Through the incarnate Son we enter into filial communion with

the Father, while through the Spirit we pray to the Father or speak

with him as sons. For the Spirit unites himself with us in prayer. “It

is the Spirit in whom we worship, and in whom we pray…. Therefore,

to adore or to pray in the Spirit seems to me to be simply himself

offering prayer or adoration to himself.”5 But this prayer which the

Spirit offers within us, he offers to himself in our name, and into this

prayer we too are drawn. Through grace the Spirit identifies himself

with us so that, through grace, we may identify ourselves with him.

Through grace the Spirit eliminates the distance between our “I” and

his “I,” creating between us and the Father, through grace, the same

relation he has by nature with the Father and the Son. If in the incar-

nate Son we have become sons by grace, in the Spirit we gain the

consciousness and boldness that come from being sons.

By becoming incarnate the Son is also avowing as man his filial

Page 249

Holy Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love

love of the Father, but it is an obedient love; likewise, he reveals the Father

to men so that they may love him precisely as Father. At the same

time, to the Son in his character as incarnate Son–and through the

Son to us as well–the Father is avowing his own love as Father.

Moreover, the Holy Spirit makes spiritual the humanity assumed by

the Son and deifies it, which is to say, it makes it fit to participate in

the love which the divine hypostasis of the Son has toward his Father.

The revelation of the Trinity, occasioned by the incarnation and earthly

activity of the Son, has no other purpose than to draw us after grace,

to draw us through the Holy Spirit into the filial relationship the Son

has with the Father. The trinitarian acts of revelation are acts that

save and deify, acts that raise us up into communion with the persons

of the Holy Trinity. For this reason, the Fathers take all their proofs

for the Holy Trinity from the work of salvation accomplished in Christ.

A unipersonal god would not have within himself that eternal love

communion into which he would wish to introduce us. Nor would

such a god become incarnate; instead, he would instruct us from afar

about how we were to live rightly. Indeed, were he to become incar-

nate, he would not, as man, be established in relationship with God

as with a different person, but, even as man, would impart to himself

the consciousness of being the supreme reality. Furthermore, such a

god would either impart this same consciousness to all men or, even

in his character as man, would appear devoid of that humility a human

being has in relation to God, whom he approaches not as his own

hypostasis but as one distinct from himself. In Christ, however, we

are saved because in him we have a relationship to God that is at

once correct and intimate. We are saved in Christ because in him and

from him we possess the fullness of exaltation and the fullness of

humility; we experience the total warmth of communion and yet are

maintained eternally each in his own personal reality. Christ is the

Son who is equal in being with the Father while standing in filial

relation to the Father, and at the same time he is the man who prays

and sacrifices himself to the Father for the sake of his human brothers,

teaching them how they are to pray and sacrifice themselves in their

turn.

An incarnate god who was not the Son of a Father would not re-

main a person through relationship with another person equal to

himself. The humanity such a god had assumed would sink down

within him as into some impersonal abyss and have no share in the

love of the Son for the Father.

Below is a single, consolidated version of the text you provided, arranged in ascending page order (250–260) and lightly edited for spelling, spacing, and punctuation. Headings are preserved as they appear in the original, and footnote references remain intact. Scanning errors (e.g., “witbout” → “without,” “simultanously” → “simultaneously,” etc.) have been silently corrected for readability. Otherwise, the text’s style, structure, and theological vocabulary remain faithful to the source.

Page 250

The Experience of God

There was a time when the coincidence of opposites was considered

incompatible with reason. Wherever a synthesis of such a kind was

encountered–and the whole of reality is like this–reason would

break it up into irreconcilable and contradictory notions, setting up

some elements over against others or trying to melt them all down

by force into one new element. In the understanding of reality, however,

reason has now become accustomed to unifying the principles of distinc-

tion and unity to such an extent that it is no longer hard to see the

antinomic model of being that characterizes the whole of reality. It

is an accepted fact for reason that plurality does not break apart uni-

ty, nor does unity do away with plurality. In fact, plurality necessarily

exists within unity–or, to express it another way, unity is manifested

in plurality. It is a fact that plurality maintains unity and unity main-

tains plurality, and that the decline of either of them means the

weakness or disappearance of the life or existence of any individual

entity. This conception of the mode of being of reality is recognized

today as superior to former ideas of what was rational, while under

the pressure of reality the idea of what is rational has itself become

complex and antinomic. Assertions formerly considered irrational

because of their apparently contradictory character are now recognized

as indications of a natural stage toward which reason must strive, for

the understanding of this stage constitutes the natural destiny of

reason, and the stage is itself an image of the supernatural character

of that perfect unity of what is distinct within the Holy Trinity.

Today many see the plurality of the entire creation as something

made specific in all manner of trinities. Bernhard Philberth, for ex-

ample, declares that the whole of creation is a threefold reflection

of the Trinity.

The effort to understand the constitution of reality as both unitary

and distinct helps us rise toward the suprarational paradox of that

perfect unity of three distinct persons which is represented by the

unity of being of the three divine persons. As we rise toward this

understanding, we move also to promote an ever greater unity among

ourselves as distinct human persons. For the most suitable image for

the Holy Trinity is found in human unity of being and personal distinc-

tion. Naturally, this effort we make is not enough to raise us up toward

a greater understanding of the Holy Trinity–known through revela-

tion–and make unity among us a deeper thing. For that we must be

helped by the very grace of the Holy Trinity, which is to say, by the

power of the Trinity that strengthens unity within us without

simultaneously weakening us as persons, and so aids us in understand-

ing more deeply a supreme unity of this kind between persons who

remain unconfounded.

If we are to grasp this supreme unity of a number of distinct per-

sons, we have need of power from that very unity itself, and must

make use of the imperfect unity among human persons as an obscure

image of the Holy Trinity.

Page 251

Holy Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love

Replying to those who objected that human beings also form a

single humanity while men are many, and, consequently, that in the

Godhead too we must admit that there are three gods, Saint Gregory

of Nazianzos says: “In this case the common nature has a unity which

is only conceivable in thought; and the individuals are parted from

one another very far indeed, both by time and by dispositions, and

by power.” When he affirms the unity of God in Trinity by con-

trast with the many gods of the Greeks, Saint Gregory declares: “To

us there is one God, for the Godhead is one, and all that proceeds

from him is referred to one, though we believe in three persons. For

one is not more and another less God; nor is one before and another

after; nor are they divided in will or parted in power; nor can you

find here any of the qualities of divisible things; but the Godhead

is, to speak concisely, undivided in separate persons; and there is

one mingling of lights, as it were of three suns joined to each other.

When, then, we look at the Godhead, or the first cause, or the monar-

chia, that which we conceive is one; but when we look at the persons

in whom the Godhead dwells, and at those who timelessly and with

equal glory have their being from the first cause, there are three whom

we worship.”

Saint John of Damascus states the same: “In three suns joined

together without any intervening interval there is one blending and

the vision of the light.” And a troparion from the Orthodox liturgy

of burial has the following expression: “one Godhead in triple

splendor.”

Saint Basil the Great says that in the case of men being is dispersed

and in hypostases we see this dispersed being. “In the persons of

the Holy Trinity, however, a continuous and infinite community is

visible.”1 Now thought conveys no gradation that might exist as a

space between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, “for there is nothing

inserted between them; nor beyond the divine nature is there anything

so subsisting (prâgma huphestós) as to be able to divide that nature

from itself by the interposition of any foreign matter. Neither is there

any vacuum of interval, void of subsistence, which can make a break

in the mutual harmony of the divine essence, and solve the continuity

by the interjection of emptiness.” When we think of the Father as

incomprehensible and uncreated, we think also of the Son and the

Holy Spirit, for the infinity, glory, and wisdom of the Father are not

separated from those of the Son and of the Spirit, but in them is

contemplated what is uninterruptedly and undividedly common: “For

it is in no wise possible to entertain the idea of severance or divi-

sion, in such a way as that the Son should be thought of apart from

the Father, or the Spirit be disjoined from the Son. But the commu-

nion and the distinction apprehended in them are, in a certain sense,

ineffable and inconceivable, the continuity of nature being never rent

asunder by the distinction of the hypostases, nor the notes of proper

distinction confounded in the community of essence.”3

Moreover, Saint Athanasios too declares: “Yet, in saying that the

Son is in himself (ka’ hautón) and both lives and exists like the

Father, we do not on that account separate him from the Father, imag-

ining place and interval between their union in the way of bodies.

For we believe that they are united with each other without media-

tion or distance, and that they exist inseparable; all the Father em-

bosoming the Son, and all the Son hanging from and adhering to

the Father, and alone resting on the Father’s breast continually.”4

In fact, continuity of nature exists even among us men. The Holy

Fathers did not see this completely, for the degree of development that

marked the consciousness of nature and spiritual reflection in their time

gave them no possibility of observing it. In comparison with the unity

of God’s being, however, the unity of our nature is much reduced. “For

we are not only compound beings, but also contrasted beings, both with

one another and with ourselves; nor do we remain entirely the same

for a single day, to say nothing of a whole lifetime, but both in body

and in soul are in a perpetual state of flow and change.”5 “For in

these (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) there is no distinction in time, nor

are they torn away from their connection with each other.”6

Page 252

The Experience of God

Each person of the Holy Trinity, revealing himself in the world

and active in and among human beings, manifests perfect unity vis-

à-vis the other two persons both through his own being and through

his perfect love for them. Yet at the same time, from the love he has

for the other persons, each person also conveys his love to men. The

love we have among ourselves is not perfect, because the unity of

being among us is not perfect either. We are called to grow in perfect

love among ourselves and in perfect love for God through the un-

created divine energies, for these represent God’s unity of being which

is conveyed among us and extends the unity of our own human being.

The continuity of human nature subsisting concretely in many hypos-

tases can be imagined graphically as a string on which the hypostases

appear, one after the other, like different knots. The knots are not sep-

arated by total emptiness, but by a thinness or diminution of the nature

that appears in the knots in thickened form, that is, in the actualization

of all its potencies. Without that continuity between human persons,

represented by the attenuated string of nature, the various concrete

forms nature takes in persons could neither be grasped nor preserved.

Nevertheless, we cannot say that the string exists first and only then

come the knots, or that the attenuated string between the knots does

not belong to the latter in common. Nor can it be said that the knots

produce the string between them. Both string and knots–or at least

some of the knots–exist simultaneously. The knots communicate

through the string and bring one another into existence. They are able

to become more and more interior to one another. In a way, each human

hypostasis bears the whole of nature as this is made real in the hypostatic

knots and the string which unites them. Individual human beings, in

the proper sense, cannot be spoken of as if they were concrete expres-

sions of human nature existing in total isolation. Each hypostasis is linked

ontologically with the other, and this bond finds expression in the need

they all have to be in relation. They are thereby characterized as per-

sons, and they develop genuinely when they develop as persons by

strengthening continuously the communication between themselves.

When this relationship is a positive one, the string between the

knots can grow thicker, whereas distance and struggle between the

knots make the string grow thinner until human nature almost snaps

or is torn asunder–not as an ontological unity, but as a unity which

is called to show itself also in the unity of the will. Saint Maximos

the Confessor says: “We were created at the beginning in the unity

of nature, but the devil divided us and separated us from God and

divided our nature into many opinions and fantasies by making use

of the choice of our will.”7

By means of the fine string of human nature linking human

persons, a continuous movement from one person to the other occurs,

a mutual penetration and reception that goes on without each per-

son ceasing to maintain his own distinctiveness by preserving this

bridge between them.

Page 253

Holy Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love

Yet among human persons there is more than just one such linear

string. If there were only the one, then each person could relate directly

only to one other person distinct from himself. In fact, however,

threads lead out from each person toward all other persons, and these

threads can be made actual through direct relations or they can re-

main at the level of potentiality only. Like a star, every person is the

center of endless rays, and through these rays persons are joined

together as in a huge net of mesh. Through their rays they both give

and receive, and in this way their rays are something they have in

common, while the persons themselves remain distinct centers of those

rays which go out from them and come toward them. Within this

mesh each person is the center of as many actual threads as there

are persons in relationship with him, and the center of so many vir-

tual or potential threads as there are persons who could be brought

into relationship with him. Moreover, each person can function as

center in relation to any other person at all, and so this netting of

mesh grows continually from within itself, one part passing, another

being added on, as the mesh comes to resemble a sphere of greater

and greater density.

Human consubstantiality does not consist, therefore, only in the

fact that one and the same nature is possessed by persons who are

remote from one another. It consists also in a unique being which

all the hypostases bear in solidarity with one another, even though

some persons, engulfed by the Spirit of Christ, are being saved,

whereas others are not.

The definition of Chalcedon tells us this same thing when it states

that Christ is consubstantial with us according to manhood.

Thus, in the created human order–just as in the order of the

other genera and species–there unfolds the paradox of unity in

plurality.

But the hypostases of the Holy Trinity are not united in the same

nature only through such fine threads as these, which would bind them

together but, to a certain extent, also keep them apart. No kind of

attenuation of the divine nature is conceivable among the persons.

All three are perfectly one in the other, together possessing in common

the whole of the divine nature with no weakening of the continuity

between them. In order to have even any understanding of this, we

must keep in mind that the divine nature is entirely spiritual, and

that its spirituality is of a kind that transcends all spirituality known

or imagined by us. As such, the divine hypostases are free of any of

that impermeability or persistent tendency to annex the other from

which human hypostases–whom we have accordingly imagined as

knots on a string–are never wholly exempt.

The divine hypostases are totally transparent one to another even

within the interiority of perfect love. Their consubstantiality is neither

preserved nor developed by those fine threads which, on the human

analogy, might unite them as bearers of the same being. Rather, each

one bears the entire nature in common with the others. They are

thereby wholly interior to one another and have no need to leap over

even the thinnest of bridges between them so as to achieve a greater

unity among themselves by means of such communication. The in-

finity of each leaves no possibility for any such attenuation of the

divine nature among them. They might be likened, after the fashion

of the Fathers, to three surpassingly bright and transparent suns which

are reciprocally comprised in and appear in one another, bearing un-

dividedly the whole of a single and infinite light. “He who has seen

me has seen the Father…. Believe me that I am in the Father and

the Father in me,” said our Savior (Jn 14.9, 11), and Saint Basil

declares: “He who has, as it were, mental apprehension of the form

of the Son, prints the express image of the Father’s hypostasis …

gazing at the unbegotten beauty in the Begotten.”8

Page 254

The Experience of God

The Father–the sun in the sense of the paternal subsistence

of infinite light–causes the Son to appear in him, that is, the sun

in the sense of a reflection of the whole of that infinite light which

subsists in the Father. The Father projects himself within himself

as a filial sun and views himself henceforth through the latter while

comprising the latter in himself, or better, while revealing himself

still more luminously through the latter. Moreover, the Father also

projects himself within himself as another sun, as Holy Spirit, revealing

himself even more luminously as paternal sun and revealing the Son

in the same fashion as filial sun. They are three real hypostases, three

real modes in which the same infinite light subsists. Each appears

shining through the other two as bearer of the same infinite light,

being himself interior to them and having them interior to himself.

But in the spiritual order the subsistence of the light as sun implies

a conscious subject. The subject cannot be divided from consciousness,

nor consciousness from the subject, for consciousness is at one and

the same time reality and power inasmuch as it is always the predicate

of a subject.

The fact that we speak of the divine hypostases as subjects does

not mean that we are reducing the divine nature to a nonsubjective

reality. The person is nothing other than the mode of real subsistence

that belongs to a nature. But neither does this mean that there exists

an impersonal being which gives itself the character of subject. Being

does not exist really except in a hypostasis, or–in the case of spiritual

being–in the conscious subject.

We can say more: the spiritual essence that is subsistent only in

a subject always implies a conscious relation between subjects, and

consequently a hypostatization of that essence in numerous subjects,

in perfect reciprocal interpenetration and transparency–what Saint

John of Damascus termed perichôrēsis. For a subject can have no

joy in existence apart from communion with other subjects. In the

perfect unity of the Trinity, the consciousness of the other two sub-

jects–and thereby the very subjects themselves who bear that con-

sciousness–must be perfectly comprised and transparent in the con-

sciousness of each subject.

Hence that subsistent essence which is supreme and spiritual is

not a singular conscious subject but a community of subjects who

are fully transparent. The Trinity of the divine persons belongs to

the divine essence, and yet the three persons are not confused with

the unity of the essence. Saint Athanasios declares: “But to say of

the Son, ‘He might not have been,’ is an irreligious presumption

reaching even to the essence of the Father, as if what is his own might

not have been. For it is the same as saying, ‘The Father might not

have been good.’ And as the Father is always good by nature, so is

he always generative by nature; and to say ‘The Father’s good pleasure

is the Son,’ and ‘The Word’s good pleasure is the Father,’ implies,

not a precedent will, but genuineness of nature, and propriety and

likeness of essence.”9 And Saint Basil says that what is good is

always present with God who is over all, and that it is good to

be the Father of such a Son–“that hence what is good was never

absent from him, nor was it the Father’s will to be without the Son;

when he willed he did not lack the power, but having the power and

the will to be in the mode in which it seemed good to him, he also

always possessed the Son by reason of his always willing that which

is good.”10

Page 255

Holy Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love

In these two texts, the existence of the divine persons is inferred

from the goodness of God. But in Scholastic dogmatics, goodness is

held to be an attribute of the divine being. The thought of the Fathers,

however, is more complex. They do not conceive of the divine being

separately from person; for them the goodness of the being shows

itself in the relationship between persons. Of course, they do not

thereby confuse the persons, for generation is an incommunicable

property of the Father. But in the act of generation there is

simultaneously manifested, in a certain personal way, the attribute

of goodness belonging to the divine being. From his own position,

each person manifests those attributes common to the being.

A lone “I” cannot experience the fullness of existence proper to

the divine being, a fullness on which depend that complete joy and

happiness found only in the form of pure subjectivity. The joy of the

lone “I” is not a complete joy and, therefore, not the fullness of ex-

istence. And the joy of existence communicated by one “I” to another

“I” must be just as full in the one who receives as in the one who

gives. Hence there is also fullness of existence. But this implies the

complete self-giving of one “I” to another “I,” not merely the giving

of something from oneself or from what one possesses. There must

be a correlation of total giving and receiving between two “I”s who

nevertheless remain distinct within this very possession.

In perfect love persons do not merely engage in a reciprocal ex-

change of self; they also affirm themselves reciprocally and personally,

and establish themselves in existence through giving and receiving.

But the divine love is all-efficacious. The Father therefore establishes

the Son in existence from all eternity by his integral self-giving, while

the Son continually affirms the Father as Father from all eternity

by the fact that he both accepts his own coming into existence through

the Father and also gives himself to the Father as Son. The acts

through which the divine persons, in their distinction and through

perfect love, affirm one another reciprocally in existence are eternal

acts and have a totally personal character, although they are acts in

which the divine persons are active together.

If love belongs essentially to God, then the reciprocal relationship

in which the love of the persons manifests itself must also have an

essential basis, even though the positions occupied by the persons

in this relationship do not change among themselves. In God there

must be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But the persons do not change

these positions among themselves. On the other hand, since the be-

ing is one and is perfect love, the relationship is that of equal to equal,

not that of superior to inferior or stranger to stranger. If God needed

to relate to something outside himself, this would imply that he lacked

something distinct from himself. Divine relations must take place in

God himself, although between distinct “I”s, so that the relation

and hence the love may be real.

Page 256

The Experience of God

In order to maintain the definition of love as the essential divine

act and, simultaneously, the definition of this act as a relation while

the divine being remains one, we must see the divine being at one and

the same time as unity and as relation–as relation in the very heart of

unity. Unity must not be destroyed for the sake of relation, nor relation

abolished in favor of unity. Now the Holy Trinity transcends the distinction

between unity and relation as we understand them. Reciprocal reference

is act, and in God this act is essential and points simultaneously to a dis-

tinction of those who have reference one to the other. Reference is com-

mon in God, although each person has a different position in this com-

mon act of reference: the true subject is a relation of the three–but

a relation which appears as essence, that is, a substantial relation.11

To each subject of the Trinity the others are interior and at the

same time perfectly transparent as other “I”s of his own. Through

the act of generation the Son appears in the consciousness of the Father

as another self (állon heautón). According to patristic tradition, the

self of the Father would not know itself if it did not have the Son in

the mirror of its consciousness as another consciousness of its own.

This does not mean that the Son brings the Father knowledge of himself

from outside, but that the Father knows himself only insofar as he

is the subsistence of the divine essence as Father, hence insofar as

he is the begetter of the Son. In other words, the divine essence is

light only insofar as it subsists really as three hypostases. The fact

that it is light appears in that it subsists in three hypostases who

together know one another. Saint Athanasios says: “Is God wise and

not word-less, or on the contrary, is he wisdom-less and word-less? If

the latter, there is an absurdity at once; if the former, we must ask,

how is he wise and not word-less? Does he possess the Word and the

Wisdom from without, or from himself? If from without, there must

be one who first gave to him, and before he received he was wisdom-

less and word-less.”12 And Saint Gregory of Nyssa observes that if

the Son, as Scripture says, is the power, and the wisdom, and the

truth, and the light, and the holiness, and the peace, and all the like,

before the Son was, as the heretics think, these would not have

been either. And without these, they of course would understand the

Father’s bosom as devoid of all these things.13

The self of the Father knows itself by the fact that it knows itself

from its image, from the Son, just as the Son knows himself by observ-

ing himself in the Father as his model. The subject of the Father

begets an image of his own, so that through it he may know himself.

The condition of this real knowledge he has, however, is given him

not by a simple image he himself conceives, but by a real image which

shows the Father, through its existence, not only what he can con-

ceive, but also what he can do and how he can love. That is to say,

it is an image which itself also receives thereby the being of the Father.

The Father knows himself in the Son and through the Son only insofar

as the Son–his real image–projects toward the Father his existence

as Son of the Father; but it is in this way that the Son also knows

himself. The Father knows himself in the Son not as in a passive

image of his own, but as in an active image which also turns back

toward the Father its own knowledge of him, knowledge which has

become possible insofar as it took birth as a real and perfect image

of the Father.

Knowledge generally unites in itself two things: the common

character of knowledge and the birth of one of the two partners in

knowledge from the other. I know myself from what I have produc-

ed, because it resembles me. But I know myself best in the one who

reproduces the perfect image of me through generation, and so con-

fronts me with my image not only in a passive way but by communi-

cating it to me in an active way.

The begetting of the Son by the Father is the premise for the

knowledge which the Father has of himself, a knowledge brought about

in common with the Son.

Page 257

Holy Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love

Each one of us knows himself not only from the one whom he

has begotten, but also in conjunction with any of his fellow creatures

who possesses the same hypostatized nature as his own. In God,

however, the second hypostasis can come forth from the first alone,

because the unity in God is perfect and has its ultimate source in

God himself; there is no reference to a higher source. The divine nature

is hypostatized in the second hypostasis through his generation from

the first, and in the third hypostasis through his procession from the

first. No single hypostasis of the Holy Trinity comes forth from two

hypostases. Inasmuch, however, as human nature subsists in many

hypostases–and in each with certain insufficiencies–and inasmuch

as human nature does not arise in its subsistent entities from a single

hypostasis directly, and indeed manifests certain intervening distances,

each human hypostasis knows himself in the measure in which he

knows various other hypostases and overcomes the distance between

himself and them. In God, however, the Father possesses the entire

hypostatized nature only in the Son and in the Holy Spirit; and be-

tween these and himself there is no distance of any kind.

Page 258

The Experience of God

The Divine Intersubjectivity

The spiritual character of the transparency or interpenetration of

the divine persons, which is also a compenetration of the consciousness

of each, can be still more fully expressed by the term “intersubjectivity.”

God is pure subject or Trinity of pure subjects. The entire divine es-

sence, a spiritual essence subsistent in threefold fashion, possesses the

quality of being subject or threefold subject. The subsistence of the di-

vine being is nothing other than the concrete existence of divine subjec-

tivity in three modes which compenetrate each other, hence in a three-

fold subjectivity. Not one of the three subjects sees anything as object in

the persons of the others nor in himself; he experiences them as pure

subjects and experiences himself too as pure subject. If there were any-

thing in them which had the character of object, this would diminish

their full openness to the other two subjects, and so they would not

possess themselves as the consciousness of three subjects perfectly in-

terior to one another. Moreover, this would cause them to treat one

another as objects to a certain extent, and hence no complete commu-

nion would exist among them. This would in turn cause each subject not

to be fully open or transparent or in perfect communion with the others.

Full communion comes about only between persons who are and

make themselves transparent as pure subjects. The more they are

subjects and appear as subjects, the more the relations between them

are characterized by a greater and freer degree of communication

and communion and by a more evident interiority and conscious-

ness. In God, each hypostasis is infinite subject, and the three sub-

jects are wholly interior to one another. There is no externalization

of the subject which might result in the other subjects being regarded

in any sense as objects. The love that unites them is thereby utterly

free of constraint or appropriation, being the love of perfect and

infinite subjects who see themselves reflected as subjects in one an-

other’s interiority. They are three “I”s, but their “I”s are not closed

in on themselves. Each “I” sees the other two as “I”s of his own being,

and yet precisely as distinct persons, so that the relation among them

is in the highest sense a relation of perfect personal communion.

Page 259

Holy Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love

The self of the Father knows itself by the fact that it knows itself

from its image, from the Son, just as the Son knows himself by observ-

ing himself in the Father as his model. The subject of the Father

begets an image of his own, so that through it he may know himself.

The condition of this real knowledge he has, however, is given him

not by a simple image he himself conceives, but by a real image which

shows the Father, through its existence, not only what he can conceive,

but also what he can do and how he can love. That is to say, it is an

image which itself also receives thereby the being of the Father.

The Father knows himself in the Son and through the Son only insofar

as the Son–his real image–projects toward the Father his existence

as Son of the Father; but it is in this way that the Son also knows

himself. The Father knows himself in the Son not as in a passive

image of his own, but as in an active image which also turns back

toward the Father its own knowledge of him, knowledge which has

become possible insofar as it took birth as a real and perfect image

of the Father.

Knowledge generally unites in itself two things: the common char-

acter of knowledge and the birth of one of the two partners in knowl-

edge from the other. I know myself from what I have produced, be-

cause it resembles me. But I know myself best in the one who repro-

duces the perfect image of me through generation, and so confronts

me with my image not only in a passive way but by communicating

it to me in an active way.

The begetting of the Son by the Father is the premise for the

knowledge which the Father has of himself, a knowledge brought about

in common with the Son.

Each one of us knows himself not only from the one whom he has

begotten, but also in conjunction with any of his fellow creatures who

possesses the same hypostatized nature as his own. In God, however,

the second hypostasis can come forth from the first alone…

Page 260

The Experience of God

…because the unity in God is perfect and has its ultimate source in

God himself, there is no reference to a higher source. The divine nature