Trinity

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Francisco de Goya: The Name of God, detail from the ceiling fresco of the Basílica del Pilar (1772)
Symbol of the different aspects of the Trinity (blue: Threefoldness, turquoise: Triunity, green: monotheism)
With a three-leaf clover, Wikipedia:Saint Patrick is said to have explained the Trinity to the Irish
A basic equilateral triangular version of the Shield of the Trinity or Scutum Fidei (Latin for "shield of faith"). It is a traditional Christian visual symbol which expresses many aspects of the doctrine of the Trinity, summarizing the first part of the Athanasian Creed in a compact diagram.

From the divine Trinity (also Triunity or Threefoldness), which in theosophical literature is also called the Three Logoi - Father, Son or Word (Christ) and Holy Spirit - which form a unity of being, i.e. three persons or hypostases, but not three underlying different substances[1], spring the plans for each new world system, which are then handed over to the spiritual beings of the first hierarchy for further elaboration.

The Christian Trinity is often erroneously referred to as the Triad or Triad of Gods. According to the understanding of the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches, however, the Trinity is a higher view than the Triad, which does not emphasise the consubstantiality or unity of the three divine persons already established in the 325 Nicene Creed.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit

According to Origen, knowledge of the Father is only communicated through the revelation of the Son in the Holy Spirit:

„For all knowledge of the Father is communicated only through the revelation of the Son in the Holy Spirit, so that these two, whom the prophet calls living beings, are the ground of knowledge of God the Father.“

– Origen: De principiis I,4:3

In pre-Christian times, the Father-God worked unconsciously in the body shells of man. Only the initiated were able to raise this work to consciousness and could then say: The Father lives in me. And they felt his being as the divine I, as "I am the I Am" (Exodus 3:1–22):

„Before the Mystery of Golgotha, therefore, the full I-consciousness did not yet live on earth in human beings themselves. But there were people who had already developed this full I-consciousness, who developed it through the mystery act. These were the initiates. We have already spoken in various ways about what happened within the old mystery places to those who underwent initiation and ascended to this fully conscious I, while it was the general nature of man not yet to have a fully conscious I. But the old initiate was able to develop the full consciousness of the I through the initiation. But the old initiate could only ascend to this fully conscious I through the sacred action of the Mysteries, when something entered into him which, within all ancient cultures and civilisations, was felt to be the eternal Father of the Cosmos. And the myste of the ancient Mysteries, the initiate, had this experience, when he had reached a certain point of his initiation, that he said to himself: The Father lives in me.

If we were to imagine such an initiate within the ancient Hebrew culture, we would have to say: This initiate characterised what had happened to himself through initiation in the following way. He said: "The common humanity has this as its peculiarity, that the Father sustains and carries it, but that the Father does not enter into the consciousness and does not kindle the consciousness to the I. The Father merely gives the ordinary human being the spirit of breath; he breathes into him the breath, and that is the living soul. But the initiate felt that in addition to what was breathed into him as the living soul, a special spiritual, the living Father principle of the cosmos, entered into the human being. And then, when this divine Father-principle had moved into this old initiate of the Hebrew world and the human being had become conscious of it, then this human being uttered with full right what "I" meant with him: I am who I am.“ (Lit.:GA 214, p. 61f)

„This divine father principle had poured itself into the initiates. Through this, the I was kindled in the initiates in addition to the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. Those alone, as I have already said, were allowed to express the I, which was actually the ineffable name of God Himself, into whom the Divine Father had moved.

But now there were people in the middle of the time of earthly development who began to say I to themselves, who raised the I up into consciousness. In such a human being, who was Jesus of Nazareth, the principle which is the Son principle, the Christ principle, entered. This Christ-principle therefore entered into the I. Whereas before we had the Father principle moving into the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, now we have the Christ principle moving into the human being who had developed further.“ (S. 63)

„And these initiates knew that the Christ had entered humanity as the Healer, as the Great Healer, as the One who prevents the human body from suffering damage by becoming brittle through the drawing in of the I. For what would have happened if the Christ had not appeared as the Healer? If the Christ had not appeared as the Healer, then, when men die, when they lay down their decaying bodies, through the laying down of the decaying bodies the symptoms of decay would radiate back into their souls, which they unfold after death. The dead would be disturbed and tormented by what the decaying physical body represented in their earthly existence. They would have to see, these souls who had passed through death, how the earth itself suffers damage by having to receive a decaying body. And the old initiates, like those who call themselves Christians in the right sense of the word, who penetrate to the inner fulfilment with the Christ-principle, knew how they could now look down on their body, which had been taken from them in death, in such a way that they could say: Through our indwelling of the Christ, while we were children of the earth, we have healed this physical body so far that it can be sunk into the earth without being a principle of decay for the earth itself.“ (S. 66)

If it had only remained so, man would not have been able to attain freedom:

„But if it would only remain so, then those who know their bodies saved, they would now have to carry the Christ, as the entity working in them, the entity also working in them bodily, in them. And with that, people could not become free beings again. If this had remained the case - at the time when freedom emerged in the 14th century - people would have developed in such a way that they could have taken the Christ into themselves to calm their souls after death, so that these souls could have looked down upon the earth in the way I have now described to you; but people would not have been able to become free. If they had wanted to become good, they would have had to let the Christ work in them as the Father had worked in ancient times in people who were not initiates. At that time, people became free by developing the I in them. The initiated became free people in ancient times, the others were unfree because the Father lived unconsciously in them. If the Christians had been conscious beings of the Christ in themselves, they would have had to extinguish their I-consciousness at any time if they had wanted to become good, in order to awaken the Christ by extinguishing this I-consciousness in themselves. Not they themselves could have been good, but only the Christ in them could have been good.“ (S. 67f)

Only through the Holy Spirit could people become free:

„For this it was necessary that the Christ as such disappeared from the direct sight of men, that he remained united with earthly existence, but disappeared from the direct sight of men. To him was applied the expression which was also customary in the old places of initiation for such a thing: When a being which is physically visible, which can be followed by men who have their view in the physical world, ceases to be visible, then it is said that it has held its ascension. It has just entered those regions in which physical visibility no longer takes place. This is how the Christ held his ascension, this is how he became invisible. For in a certain way he would have retained his full visibility if he had indwelt men and extinguished the I, so that they could only have become good by the Christ actually acting in them.

The way in which the Christ was still visible to the apostles, to the disciples even after his resurrection, this way disappeared: the Christ held his ascension. But he sent to men that divine entity which does not extinguish the consciousness of the I, to which one rises not in sight but precisely in the unseen spirit. He sent the Holy Spirit to man.

Thus the Holy Spirit is actually that which should be sent by the Christ, so that man may retain his I-consciousness and the Christ may unconsciously indwell man. So that when man, in the full sense of the word, brings before his soul what kind of being he really is, he must say: When I look back to what the old initiates knew, I see that in me lives the Father principle which fills the cosmos, which appeared in these old initiates and unfolded the I in them. This is the principle that lived with us before we descended into the physical world. - Through the indwelling of this Father Principle, the old initiates remembered with complete clarity the way they lived before they descended into the physical world. There they sought the divine in the pre-natal, in the pre-existent: Ex deo nascimur.

After the Mystery of Golgotha, it was not possible for man to say: "I see the Christ", for then he could not have become good through himself, only the Christ in him could have been good. Only this could come over man: In Christo morimur. He could die in the Christ; he could unite the Christ with that which is the principle of death in him. But his new consciousness could be awakened by the entity which the Christ sent him, by the entity of the Holy Spirit: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.“ (S. 68ff)

„By sending the Holy Spirit to humanity, the Christ enabled it to rise from the intellectual to the understanding of the spiritual. In the Gospel, too, it is clearly indicated to those who only want to see, who only want to read, that it is a revelation itself, that man, through his indwelling spirit, if he only leans towards the Christ, can comprehend the supersensible. That is why we are told that at the baptism of Christ the Holy Spirit appeared. And in the appearance of the Holy Spirit the words resound through the cosmos: "This is my much beloved Son, today I have begotten him." Therefore, it was an ancient dogma that the Father is the begetting Unbegotten, that the Son is the begotten of the Father, that the Holy Spirit is the one communicated to humanity by the Father and the Son. This is not merely an arbitrarily established dogma, but the initiatory wisdom of the first Christian centuries, and it was only later buried, just as the trichotomy and the Trinity were buried in general.“ (S. 70f)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

  1. ↑ Just as comparatively the one substance water can appear in three forms, namely as vapour, as liquid and as ice.
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