The Inner Life of The Christian Trinity

Christ’s personality both shows how human beings are called to live and provides insight into all three persons of the Trinity, who are One in creating and redeeming humanity, inviting people to develop whole personalities and loving relationships, where loneliness and hostility are diminished, and where individuals learn to express their uniqueness in as original a manner as the Lord’s.

While God may be said in a certain sense to remain inscrutable and beyond human knowing, nevertheless, in another sense, because of the Trinity’s direct appearance and involvement in human history, it is possible to house the Self Compasses of each Trinity member within the unity of one Godhead. This arrangement, for diagrammatic purposes, illustrates the unity of the Triune God, while at the same time differentiating between the personal identities of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

                                                                     

The individual Self Compasses show that Trinity members relate through rhythms of communication and communion, the same way that they call human beings to relate to one another and to the Trinity. If one only looks for it, the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation pulse with examples of God as a supremely innovative agent, brimming with creative motivation and action. Conceptualizing God’s personality as three Self Compasses within a larger circle of the divine self does not imply that God is containable, but rather implies an interpersonal selfhood that allows for infinite variations of self-expression and interpersonal exchanges among Trinity members who are nevertheless one God.

God’s inscrutability lies primarily in the fact that no one can predict what the Lord will say, think, or do next, other than in the compass sense that whatever God does will not contradict the health and wholeness of his being.

The larger circle encompassing the Trinity portrays the mystery of God’s diversity-in-unity, a circle that is not a physical barrier, but rather symbolizes the one God who is all in all. The back-and-forth arrows connecting each Trinitarian member to the others indicate how each Person exists in everlasting rhythmic presence to the other two, empowering the exchange of ideas, conversations, and emotions within an overarching essence of love, expressed through caring self-transcendence that respects, delights in, knows, and wills the highest good of one another.

Some such encounters between Trinity members are recorded for our benefit in Scripture. At Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, the Father says, communicating his own point of view and self-identity, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” He is not talking to himself the way a person might self-reflect, but actually addressing the Son with sincere words that convey the depth of his love for Jesus. At the same moment, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus, anointing him with power for ministry, and then drives him into the wilderness where Christ must stand alone for a season, firming up his identity as the Son while learning to rely completely upon the Father and Spirit in preparation for his public ministry.

 

Compass psychotheology asserts that this dynamic interplay of the three Persons who are one God has always distinguished God’s essence, and will always characterize God’s relationality (theologians call this the immanent Trinity, meaning what God is outside of human history). Most importantly from the human perspective, this interplay creates a trustworthy basis for the Trinity presence as infinitely caring and intentionally creative dialogue partners across the temporal span of human history (the economic Trinity, which means God’s self-revelation in space, time, history, and personality).

Now note how the Trinity diagram focuses on the phrase “I AM.” Of all the names attributed to God in the Bible—the Lord of Hosts, the Lord God Almighty, the Holy One of Israel—there is none more revealing than “I AM,” for when God reveals this name to Moses (Ex 3:14), and Christ applies this name to himself (Jn 8:58), God means that his existence as the “I AM” transcendent Subject is the ultimate ground of being that renders all else contingent and temporal.

Finally, notice how the “I AM” of each Trinitarian Person fully indwells the others, showing the interpenetration of freely willed devotion, each Trinity member’s identity so secure, so engaged in self-transcendent love, that there is no existence apart from being one God.

In other words, each Person of the Godhead does not consider self-identity and autonomy something to be grasped at or competitively sought, but rather as foundational to adoring, cherishing, and actualizing the uttermost fulfillment of one another.

The Trinity indwells one another non-invasively and non-competitively, generating the perpetual glory of being one God, as Jesus explains: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17: 21-23).

For more, read:

TRUSTING IN THE TRINITY: COMPASS PSYCHOTHEOLOGY APPLIED

How Does The Trinity Relate to One Another?

The New Testament in particular offers insight into the inner life of God: a life that can be understood in terms of the rhythms of the Self Compass.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit act in perfect concert, orchestrating the rhythms of humble strength and caring assertion in their interaction with one another (cf. Jn 1:33-34; 14:16, 26; 16:13-15; 20:21-22). “For there are three who bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one” (1 Jn 5:7 NKJV).

Consider how in the incarnation the Son humbly submits to the Father’s will, while the Spirit caringly asserts himself to impregnate Mary. “The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God’” (Lk 1:35 NKJV). And the baptism in the Jordan River. As Jesus was “coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (Mk 1:10-12). 

Jesus surrendering. The Father gratified. The Spirit compelling.

Trust and courage. Humility and esteem. Three in one.

With an economy that could leave one breathless, Jesus says, “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf” (Jn 15:26).

Surely the Trinity is a life of identity, intimacy, and community. Each person expressing the compass polarities of love/assertion and weakness/strength in rhythmic dialogue with the others.

Intradivine Love/Assertion

“Father,” Jesus prays, “I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (Jn 17:24). A heartfelt request. An assured response.

After the mission of the seventy was realized by the assertive power of the Spirit, “in that hour, Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit” (Lk 10:21 NKJV). Love-filled jubilation, conjoined with all the might there is. Expressed too, in the Father’s joy as he pays tribute to his Son: “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9-11 NKJV).

Intradivine Weakness/Strength

“The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing,” Jesus says, “for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise” (Jn 5:19). Yet there is no doubt of Christ’s self-confidence in relationship to his Father: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower” (Jn 15:1). Strength, perfectly balanced with weakness, in non-competitive surrender.

Jesus explains that he has the authority to decide about his own life: “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father” (Jn 10:18). The Son is decisive and obedient. The Father, deferent and in charge. 

In his Jordan River baptism, Jesus surrenders in weakness to the Spirit’s strength. In his healing ministry, Christ is aware that his power comes from the Holy Spirit (Lk 4:18-19). Indeed, Jesus’ consciousness of the Spirit of God empowering him to speak and act is basic to his mission. In turn, when the Son is resurrected to the Father, the Holy Spirit acts on behalf of the Son, spreading the Word throughout the world.

For more, see:

COMPASS PSYCHOTHEOLOGY:

Where Psychology & Theology Really Meet