What is Trinity?

The personal and triune God of Christianity and a look at other belief systems

According to Christianity, God reveals himself to be personal and triune. He exists as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, without beginning and without having his origin in a primordial impersonal essence.

Therefore the Holy Trinity should be understood neither as a sum of three Gods, nor as a mono-personal God that assumes successively three distinct forms. God’s being does not exist outside the three persons, but only as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and they are the only way for God's existence.

The triune God exists by himself.

In his revelation to Moses, God called himself "I am That I am" (Exodus 3, 14). This means that he is self-sufficient, that he does not depend on any exterior element. His existence is expressed through love, omnipotence and omniscience, among which there is perfect unity and harmony. None is manifesting itself by infringing on the other because the Holy Trinity is perfect in love, will and deed.

The Apostle John proclaims that "God is love."

(1 John 4, 8)

Gregory of Nyssa (Gregory of Nyssa, also known as Gregory Nyssen, was bishop of Nyssa from 372 to 376 and from 378 until his death. He is venerated as a saint in Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, and Anglicanism). ‘On not three Gods, we properly declare the Godhead to be one, and God to be one, and employ in the singular all other names which express Divine attributes’.

I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God

(Isaiah 44, 6)

Most churches teach that the triune nature of God has as having three personalities or even three personages, the Father, the Son (Jesus) and the 0Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal and co-eternal. Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being. The Trinity is considered to be a mystery of the Christian faith.

According to this doctrine, God exists as three persons but is one God, meaning that God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have exactly the same nature or being as God the Father in every way.

Sages and Mystics Upanishads and Vedanta

The Ultimate Reality according to the Upanishads and Vedanta philosophy. In the Brahmana writings (Shatapatha Brahmana is a prose Text Describing Vedic riduals, history and mythology) it is stated that the whole universe has its origin in non-existence (ASAT), meaning that existence must be the product of some unmanifested potentialities. This topic is made clear in the Upanishads, which claim that the origin of all existing things is Brahman, the One of the Vedic hymns:

As the spider moves along the thread, as small sparks come forth from the fire, even so from this Self (Brahman) come forth all breaths, all worlds, all divinities, all beings. (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2, 1, 20)

According to the Upanishads, the Ultimate Reality is Brahman. Brahman has two aspects: immanent and transcendent, unmanifested or manifested. However, in the manifestation, the One becomes the many, not only as matter, but also living beings, and humans. The cause of the manifestation process is Brahman's desire to be multiplied: "Let me become many.  At the end of a cycle, all its products tend to return back to the initial state of unmanifestation, evolving from one level of manifestation to another. Then another manifestation will occur:

As from a blazing fire, sparks of like form issue forth by thousands, even so, O beloved, many kinds of beings issue forth from the immutable and they return thither too. (Mundaka Up. 2, 1, 1)

The primary focus on the early Upanishads is the knowledge of Brahman and the knowledge of Atman (Self, soul), what it is and how it is understood. The texts do not present a single unified theory; rather they present a variety of themes with multiple possible interpretations, which flowered in post-Vedic era as premises for the diverse schools of Hinduism.

The concept of Brahman in the Upanishads expands to metaphysical, ontological such as it being the primordial reality that creates, maintains and withdraws within it the universe. Brahman as the principle of the world is the Absolute, the Universal, the cosmic principle, the Ultimate that is the cause of everything including all gods. He is the Divine being, Lord, distinct God, or God within oneself, the "knowledge, the "soul, sense of self of each human being that is fearless, luminous, exalted and blissful. Brahman is the essence of liberation, of spiritual freedom, the "universe within each living being and the universe outside, the "essence and everything innate in all that exists inside, outside and everywhere.

In summarizes the concept of Brahman (God) in the Upanishads is said to be the essence, the smallest particle of the cosmos and the infinite universe, the essence of all things which cannot be seen, though it can be experienced, the self, soul within each person, each being, the truth, the reality, the absolute, the bliss" (ananda).

In contrast, the Advaita Vedanta espouses nondualism. Brahman is the sole unchanging Reality. There is no duality, no limited individual souls nor are there separate unlimited cosmic souls, rather all souls, all of existence, across all space and time, is one and the same. The universe and the soul inside each being is Brahman, and the universe and the soul outside each being is Brahman, according to Advaita Vedanta. Brahman is the origin and end of all things, material and spiritual. Brahman is the root source of everything that exists. He states that Brahman can neither be taught nor perceived (as an object of knowledge), but it can be learned and realized by all human beings. The goal of Advaita Vedanta is to realize that one's Self (Atman) gets obscured by ignorance and false-identification ("Avidya"). When Avidya is removed, the Atman (Soul, Self inside a person) is realized as identical with Brahman. The Brahman is not outside, separate, dual entity; the Brahman is within each person, states Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism. Brahman is all that is eternal, unchanging and that it truly exists. This view is stated in this school in many different forms, such as "Ekam sat" ("Truth is one"), and all is Brahman.

The universe does not simply come from Brahman, it is Brahman. According to Adi Shankara, a proponent of Advaita Vedanta, the knowledge of Brahman that shruti (hearing) provides cannot be obtained in any other means besides self inquiry.
In Advaita Vedanta, nirguna Brahman, that is the Brahman without attributes, is held to be the ultimate and sole Reality. Consciousness is not a property of Brahman but its very nature. In this respect, Advaita Vedanta differs from other Vedanta schools.

The philosophical system (darshana) that follows the pantheistic teachings of the Upanishads is called Vedanta. The most important organizers are Badarayana (4th century AD) and Shankara (9th century AD); the one who conferred to it a pure monistic character as Advaita Vedanta - "the Vedanta of pure monism".

Shankara's vision of the relation of the Absolute with the phenomenal world is reflected in an old Hindu parable that of the rope mistakenly perceived in the dark as a snake. As the coiled rope in the dark is thought to be a snake, in the same way the empirical world is mistakenly considered to have a distinct existence, independent of the Absolute, through the illusion (maya) produced by ignorance (avidya). As only the rope exists, not the snake, only Brahman has a real existence (sat) and is the true reality. The phenomenal world is real only if perceived as Brahman, as the "reality" of the snake's existence lays in the substratum that produced the confusion, namely the rope.

The plurality of the phenomenal world is an illusion (maya), a veil that has to be put aside in order to perceive Brahman. The universe is not unreal, but has the same value as the snake in the parable - it produces confusion and causes humans to pursue a wrong spiritual direction. All that goes beyond this vision of the world is illusion, produced by ignorance.

Shankara tried to settle the relation of the Absolute Brahman (Nirguna Brahman - the One without any definable characteristics) with the origin of the world by proclaiming two distinct points of view: the absolute and the relative. In an absolute sense, Brahman is above any duality and external relation; nothing real exists outside him. But from our empirical and relative point of view, Brahman is the cause of the universe we know. In fact there is no real causality; the world is only an illusory sight of Brahman, as with the rope seen as a snake. Brahman's activity in the world and among human beings is nothing but lila, divine play. In conclusion, the Vedanta of Shankara is somehow different from Upanishadic philosophy; the universe is only a phenomenal appearance of Brahman and not his transformation. From a substantial manifestation, the universe becomes only a dream (or self-forgetting) of Brahman.

We can see that the world's religions hold very different views on Ultimate Reality. More than merely different, they are irreconcilable one with another. Indeed, the impersonal Brahman of the Upanishads, who balances between His manifested state and un-manifestation. Even the three great monotheistic religions of the world state irreconcilable positions concerning the nature of the personal God. He must be either tri-personal (the triune God of Christianity), or mono-personal (as in Judaism and Islam).
More on Immanent and Transcendent as often seen as inconsistent by preachers of Christianity

Thomas Aquinas offers a very compelling account of how to reconcile the transcendence of God with His immanence. This reconciliation is most compelling because Aquinas claims that God is most transcendent from, and most immanent in creation for the very same reason, i.e. because God is Ipsum esse subsistens, meaning: ‘in Him there is no real distinction between essence and existence.

According to Thomas Aquinas, all creatures are fundamentally composed of essence and existence. He argues that because one can know the essence of a created thing, i.e. what a thing is, without thereby knowing anything about whether it exists in reality, essence differs from existence. Thus, every created thing is a composition of what it is and an act of existing whereby it is a real, actual thing.

However, since no creature exists through itself of itself, every creature is continually kept in existence through continual active causality of God. God is the cause of the being of all things precisely because He is Subsistent Being Itself.

May this message shed some light and understanding on the subject of Spirituality and the nature of God. May it lead one to the realization, that being spiritual means living every day consciously and with love and seeing God everywhere and in everything.

May peace be with us all.

Terms explained

Om – Tat – Sat

Om - as Word

Tat - means that, it refers to God only

Sat - means Truth, Existence, Being

Father, Son, Holy Ghost

Father – Sat – beyond vibratory creation

Son – Tat or Christ Consciousness – aspect of God in vibratory creation, everywhere present

Holy Ghost – Om

Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva –Creation, Sustenance - Dissolution

Sat, Chit, Ananda – subjective experience of the Ultimate- Brahman - God