One God, three persons. When translators attempted to bring the Greek idea of One God, three hypostases into Latin, the image they came up with was One God, three Personnae. These personnae were the masks from ancient theater that let the audience know that the same actor was appearing as more than one character. The same actor stood behind each personnae, giving life and energy to the character. Yet, each personnae was distinct, a person in their own right. I made these fun masks for the Sunday School devotions for the Feast of the Holy Trinity. No matter how we try to wrap language around the Trinity, it is always a mystery. However, this is certainly one of the more fun ways I've tried to offer some understanding on this doctrine.
For a fun geeky note, I snapped the photo with an LG VX9900 and then mailed myself the image in order to blog it.
3 comments:
Is this related to that Gnostic(?) view you told me about once, where there was both a living God and a divine one? (I hope I remembered that correctly.)
Sort of, though for the Gnostics there was a second actor on the stage who plays the part of the maker (living demigod) and a second actor who is the ultimate mystery (divine). The problem with this idea is that it scorns matter as something defective. That means that the universe is not a good thing but a mistake. The Trinity includes in an inexplicable way the real material life of Jesus. The Orthodox Churches speak of theosis, the drawing of human life into divine life, very different from trying to separate matter and the divine.
In other words (or to quote C. S. Lewis), "God likes matter. He made it."
Why else would God institute sacraments, which combine both matter and spirit, if he scorned matter as something lesser?
This is the Gnostics' blatant way of disregarding Genesis and God pronouncing all that he made--including the material world--as good.
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