The Abstract Nature of the Trinity
A few years ago, I went through a program called R.C.I.A. (Right of Christian Initiation for Adults) because, while my immediate family is Catholic, we fell off religiously until my uncle died in a car crash in 2017. After the tragic passing of my uncle, my dad had a sort of spiritual reawakening which pushed him to convince me and my older brother to have our first communion and be confirmed with the Catholic Church. I was 14 at the time, but being just barely too old for the conventional pathways to these Catholic rites of passage, I ended up being the youngest individual in my R.C.I.A. class. Background aside, during one of our classes, the priest mentioned the Holy Spirit, and realizing that I still didn’t know what the Holy Spirit is despite having heard of the Holy Spirit hundreds of times throughout my life, I decided to ask the priest what exactly is the Holy Spirit. To my utter surprise, he laughed at me and said simply that such a question would require much more time to answer than we had available during the entirety of the program. Having read a lot of the Bible, I think I finally understand why my priest responded like that.
Last Tuesday, we briefly brought up during class how the Holy Spirit is somewhat of an oddity in the Trinity, being completely different from either the Father or the Son. I feel that it is easy to imagine the Father and the Son because in many ways, they appear human. The Son, especially, as He was human at one point, being born to the Virgin Mary as Jesus Christ. As a result, it is somewhat easy to imagine the Son as a human entity even in Heaven where He sits at the right hand of the other conceivable aspect of the Trinity, the Father (Acts 2:33-36). The Father is easy to imagine in human form as He is the same God that appears in the Old Testament. We have discussed several times throughout the semester how God has a very human-like nature in the Old Testament. After all, he seems to make mistakes, repenting several times his decision to create man, and He even seems to learn and mature as he interacts with mankind. Moreover, several of God’s interactions with mankind include very human conversations with characters such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses, further lending Himself to human comprehension as He engages in typical human conversation. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we are told that God creates “man in his own image, in the image of God created he him” (Genesis 1:27), so clearly, the resemblance between God and man is significant enough to emphasize twice.
However, the Holy Spirit is wildly different in Its/His/Their interactions with Biblical characters. For instance, in the Gospel of Matthew, we are immediately confronted with how Jesus, or Emmanuel, is “conceived in [Mary] of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 1:20), so in a seemingly paradoxical manner, we have that ‘God with us’ is fathered by another aspect of God. In my mind, this implies the disturbing image of a mysterious sexual interaction between God and Mary through which Mary gives birth to God Himself. On the other hand, in the Gospel of Luke, we have a less disturbing but somehow more confusing account of the conception of Jesus as the angel Gabriel tells Mary that despite not knowing a man, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon” her, and the “Son of God” will be born of her (Luke 1:35). In comparison to the one from Matthew, this passage from Luke is much more vague as the Holy Ghost simply comes upon her, with no clarification of what this means even in later mentions of this behavior. For example, not much later, the Holy Spirit descends in a “bodily shape like a dove” upon Jesus after He is baptized, though there is no explicit mention of why the Holy Spirit appears and appears in this way (Luke 3:21-22). However, this fact does seem important in that it allows for all three components of the Trinity to be present together in one place. Jesus is obviously on Earth having been newly baptized, we have already mentioned the Holy Ghost is present in the physical form of a dove, but additionally, we have the voice of the Father as indicated by Him addressing Jesus with “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). This seems to be an incredibly important moment in the Bible as there are very few times when all three aspects of the Trinity are explicitly present together. This moment becomes even more important upon the realization that Their union occurs in the mortal realm of Earth and that while Jesus and the Father are present in humanly forms, Jesus literally being a man and the Father speaking comprehensibly to mortals, the Holy Spirit, however, is a dove.
The explicit mention of the Holy Spirit in a non-human form, especially when all three aspects of the Trinity are on Earth, seems to emphasize how the Holy Spirit appears in many different forms throughout the Bible and exercises the most freedom in how It/He/They manifest(s) Itself/Himself/Themselves. For instance, during the forty days when Jesus remained on Earth after His resurrection, He tells His apostles that the “Holy Ghost [will] come upon” them, and immediately after Jesus is taken up by a cloud into Heaven, “behold, two men stood by them in white apparel” (Acts 1:8-11). I believe that we can reasonably infer these two men to be a physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit as they have a divine insight unavailable to any of the mortal apostles, and they appear right after Jesus mentions that the Holy Spirit would come upon the apostles. While the Holy Spirits manifests as men here, later in Acts during Pentecost, the Holy Spirit takes on another far more ambiguous form of “cloven tongues like as of fire” that come upon each of the apostles present at the gathering of Pentecost (Acts 2:3).
Furthermore, this specific example with the apostles emphasizes another interesting behavior of the Holy Spirit in which it “fills” various individuals in the Bible. During this same gathering, the apostles are “filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” allowing a sort of reversal of the tower of Babel in which every apostle, despite being of different nations speaking different native languages, can suddenly understand each other (Acts 2:4). Clearly, the “tongue” form which the Holy Spirit takes on is important as this seemingly relates to the ability of the apostles to speak in “other tongues”, but the text is still unclear about the implications of being “filled with the Holy Ghost”. Later in Acts, the Holy Spirit interacts yet again with the apostles, but this time, the Holy Spirit speaks, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them” (Acts 13: 2). An interesting aspect of this particular encounter is the continual use of “they” in the next sentence which makes it unclear who sends Barnabas and Saul away. Indeed, “when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed unto Seleucia” (Acts 13:3-4). At first glance, it makes the most sense for the “they” that sent Barnabas and Saul away to be the other prophets and teachers present at the church, though the explicit mention that Barnabas and Saul were “sent forth by the Holy Ghost” implies that the “they” which sent them away could, in fact, be the Holy Ghost. Perhaps this is a nod to how we have, on multiple occasions, the Holy Spirit appearing as multiple entities at once, thereby making it appropriate to address the Holy Spirit with plural pronouns, but it is equally plausible that I am just misreading this specific part of the text.
This week’s JWST photo shows an hourglass shaped cloud of dust and gas surrounding a protostar, a hot, puffy clump of gas which will eventually compress enough to ignite nuclear fusion in its core and turn into a star. Until then, we have this amazing view of the dust and gas surrounding and lit up by the protostar. An interesting thing about this particular image is that the dust and gas depicted is only visible in the infrared spectrum of light, so our eyes would not be able to discern the hourglass figure by themselves. With this in mind, the image reminds me of the Holy Trinity, with the protostar at the very center representing the Father, the protoplanetary disk that we can see as a faint, dark line at the center of the hourglass the Son, and the cloud of dust and gas surrounding the whole thing the Holy Spirit. I say this because even without clearly seeing the protostar or protoplanetary disk, our experience with stars and planets makes it easy to imagine the form that this particular astronomical system would take. The protostar, like the Father, is the source of all activity in the system with its heat and light, and the protoplanetary disk, like the Son, mediates said activity to more common celestial objects like planets, moons, asteroids, comets, etc. On the other hand, we would likely never be able to discern the exact form of the hourglass shaped cloud of dust and gas surrounding this system if it were not for this particular picture in the infrared spectrum. In the same way, the form of the Holy Spirit is equally hard to grasp, and we often need the help of the Gospels and other Biblical texts to even get an idea of what the Holy Spirit actually is. However, at the same time, the cloud of dust and gas in this image is much more pervasive than either the protostar or protoplanetary disk at its center as it occupies a much larger region of space. Similarly, the Holy Spirit mediates much of the divine promises made by the Father and the Son in the New Testament, allowing for Jesus to be born, granting special powers to the apostles, and appearing various other times throughout the Bible. So while the Holy Spirit is harder to visualize than the Father or the Son without help, the Holy Spirit interacts with us more often and more directly, and overall, this image mirrors the relationship that God’s followers have with the Holy Trinity.
Any Biblical scholar will tell you I left out much of the nuance of the Holy Spirit, and I completely skipped the whole bit about being baptized with the Holy Spirit instead of water, but for the sake of brevity, I will leave off with this last thought. Back in the Gospel of Luke, we witness an interesting interaction between Mary and Elisabeth during which the Holy Ghost fills Elisabeth and apparently compels her to respond to “the salutation of Mary” with “a loud voice”, saying, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb” (Luke 1:42). It is a rather awkward way to address a cousin, but then again, there does seem to be a mysterious state associated with being “filled with the Holy Ghost” which apparently has a profound and confusing impact on the individual being filled.
Last Tuesday, we briefly brought up during class how the Holy Spirit is somewhat of an oddity in the Trinity, being completely different from either the Father or the Son. I feel that it is easy to imagine the Father and the Son because in many ways, they appear human. The Son, especially, as He was human at one point, being born to the Virgin Mary as Jesus Christ. As a result, it is somewhat easy to imagine the Son as a human entity even in Heaven where He sits at the right hand of the other conceivable aspect of the Trinity, the Father (Acts 2:33-36). The Father is easy to imagine in human form as He is the same God that appears in the Old Testament. We have discussed several times throughout the semester how God has a very human-like nature in the Old Testament. After all, he seems to make mistakes, repenting several times his decision to create man, and He even seems to learn and mature as he interacts with mankind. Moreover, several of God’s interactions with mankind include very human conversations with characters such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses, further lending Himself to human comprehension as He engages in typical human conversation. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we are told that God creates “man in his own image, in the image of God created he him” (Genesis 1:27), so clearly, the resemblance between God and man is significant enough to emphasize twice.
However, the Holy Spirit is wildly different in Its/His/Their interactions with Biblical characters. For instance, in the Gospel of Matthew, we are immediately confronted with how Jesus, or Emmanuel, is “conceived in [Mary] of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 1:20), so in a seemingly paradoxical manner, we have that ‘God with us’ is fathered by another aspect of God. In my mind, this implies the disturbing image of a mysterious sexual interaction between God and Mary through which Mary gives birth to God Himself. On the other hand, in the Gospel of Luke, we have a less disturbing but somehow more confusing account of the conception of Jesus as the angel Gabriel tells Mary that despite not knowing a man, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon” her, and the “Son of God” will be born of her (Luke 1:35). In comparison to the one from Matthew, this passage from Luke is much more vague as the Holy Ghost simply comes upon her, with no clarification of what this means even in later mentions of this behavior. For example, not much later, the Holy Spirit descends in a “bodily shape like a dove” upon Jesus after He is baptized, though there is no explicit mention of why the Holy Spirit appears and appears in this way (Luke 3:21-22). However, this fact does seem important in that it allows for all three components of the Trinity to be present together in one place. Jesus is obviously on Earth having been newly baptized, we have already mentioned the Holy Ghost is present in the physical form of a dove, but additionally, we have the voice of the Father as indicated by Him addressing Jesus with “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). This seems to be an incredibly important moment in the Bible as there are very few times when all three aspects of the Trinity are explicitly present together. This moment becomes even more important upon the realization that Their union occurs in the mortal realm of Earth and that while Jesus and the Father are present in humanly forms, Jesus literally being a man and the Father speaking comprehensibly to mortals, the Holy Spirit, however, is a dove.
The explicit mention of the Holy Spirit in a non-human form, especially when all three aspects of the Trinity are on Earth, seems to emphasize how the Holy Spirit appears in many different forms throughout the Bible and exercises the most freedom in how It/He/They manifest(s) Itself/Himself/Themselves. For instance, during the forty days when Jesus remained on Earth after His resurrection, He tells His apostles that the “Holy Ghost [will] come upon” them, and immediately after Jesus is taken up by a cloud into Heaven, “behold, two men stood by them in white apparel” (Acts 1:8-11). I believe that we can reasonably infer these two men to be a physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit as they have a divine insight unavailable to any of the mortal apostles, and they appear right after Jesus mentions that the Holy Spirit would come upon the apostles. While the Holy Spirits manifests as men here, later in Acts during Pentecost, the Holy Spirit takes on another far more ambiguous form of “cloven tongues like as of fire” that come upon each of the apostles present at the gathering of Pentecost (Acts 2:3).
Furthermore, this specific example with the apostles emphasizes another interesting behavior of the Holy Spirit in which it “fills” various individuals in the Bible. During this same gathering, the apostles are “filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” allowing a sort of reversal of the tower of Babel in which every apostle, despite being of different nations speaking different native languages, can suddenly understand each other (Acts 2:4). Clearly, the “tongue” form which the Holy Spirit takes on is important as this seemingly relates to the ability of the apostles to speak in “other tongues”, but the text is still unclear about the implications of being “filled with the Holy Ghost”. Later in Acts, the Holy Spirit interacts yet again with the apostles, but this time, the Holy Spirit speaks, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them” (Acts 13: 2). An interesting aspect of this particular encounter is the continual use of “they” in the next sentence which makes it unclear who sends Barnabas and Saul away. Indeed, “when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed unto Seleucia” (Acts 13:3-4). At first glance, it makes the most sense for the “they” that sent Barnabas and Saul away to be the other prophets and teachers present at the church, though the explicit mention that Barnabas and Saul were “sent forth by the Holy Ghost” implies that the “they” which sent them away could, in fact, be the Holy Ghost. Perhaps this is a nod to how we have, on multiple occasions, the Holy Spirit appearing as multiple entities at once, thereby making it appropriate to address the Holy Spirit with plural pronouns, but it is equally plausible that I am just misreading this specific part of the text.
This week’s JWST photo shows an hourglass shaped cloud of dust and gas surrounding a protostar, a hot, puffy clump of gas which will eventually compress enough to ignite nuclear fusion in its core and turn into a star. Until then, we have this amazing view of the dust and gas surrounding and lit up by the protostar. An interesting thing about this particular image is that the dust and gas depicted is only visible in the infrared spectrum of light, so our eyes would not be able to discern the hourglass figure by themselves. With this in mind, the image reminds me of the Holy Trinity, with the protostar at the very center representing the Father, the protoplanetary disk that we can see as a faint, dark line at the center of the hourglass the Son, and the cloud of dust and gas surrounding the whole thing the Holy Spirit. I say this because even without clearly seeing the protostar or protoplanetary disk, our experience with stars and planets makes it easy to imagine the form that this particular astronomical system would take. The protostar, like the Father, is the source of all activity in the system with its heat and light, and the protoplanetary disk, like the Son, mediates said activity to more common celestial objects like planets, moons, asteroids, comets, etc. On the other hand, we would likely never be able to discern the exact form of the hourglass shaped cloud of dust and gas surrounding this system if it were not for this particular picture in the infrared spectrum. In the same way, the form of the Holy Spirit is equally hard to grasp, and we often need the help of the Gospels and other Biblical texts to even get an idea of what the Holy Spirit actually is. However, at the same time, the cloud of dust and gas in this image is much more pervasive than either the protostar or protoplanetary disk at its center as it occupies a much larger region of space. Similarly, the Holy Spirit mediates much of the divine promises made by the Father and the Son in the New Testament, allowing for Jesus to be born, granting special powers to the apostles, and appearing various other times throughout the Bible. So while the Holy Spirit is harder to visualize than the Father or the Son without help, the Holy Spirit interacts with us more often and more directly, and overall, this image mirrors the relationship that God’s followers have with the Holy Trinity.
Any Biblical scholar will tell you I left out much of the nuance of the Holy Spirit, and I completely skipped the whole bit about being baptized with the Holy Spirit instead of water, but for the sake of brevity, I will leave off with this last thought. Back in the Gospel of Luke, we witness an interesting interaction between Mary and Elisabeth during which the Holy Ghost fills Elisabeth and apparently compels her to respond to “the salutation of Mary” with “a loud voice”, saying, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb” (Luke 1:42). It is a rather awkward way to address a cousin, but then again, there does seem to be a mysterious state associated with being “filled with the Holy Ghost” which apparently has a profound and confusing impact on the individual being filled.
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