Overview of Trinity

Overview of Trinity

The Trinity, as taught by the Fathers, is the confession that God is three Persons who exist with one and the same essence. To understand this, we must clarify what “essence” and “person” mean in Orthodox theology.

Essence refers to the essential properties that make something what it is. These are the necessary and common characteristics shared by all who possess that essence. For example, humanity is our essence or nature. To be human, one must have certain defining properties such as animality (having a body and a created soul) and rationality (the capacity to think and reason). Without these, one would not be considered human.

For God, essential properties would include omnipotence (being all-powerful) and omniscience (being all-knowing). These properties are necessary and inseparable from what it means to be God. Anyone who is truly God possesses the divine essence with all of its essential attributes.

A person, by contrast, is the underlying reality of a rational nature that makes someone who they are. Within the Trinity, the Persons are distinct not by essence but by their eternal relations to one another. The Father begets, the Son is begotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeds (is spirated). These relational properties differentiate “who” they are without dividing “what” they are.

Because Father, Son, and Holy Spirit eternally exist in these relations, none can be understood apart from the others. The Father cannot be Father without the Son; the Son cannot be Son without the Father; and the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father. Their unity of essence and distinction of persons is therefore both eternal and necessary, revealing God as a communion of three Persons in perfect unity.