What’s in a Name? Part 3

                                                            What's in a Name     Part 3
I was asked this week to take a bit more time explaining the relationship of Father and Son.  I have revised and extended the “at a glance” section from last week to include the Father. I will also include the Holy Spirit in this section next week after a deeper explanation in this post.

Elohim (Hebrew) = Theos (Greek) = God (English)
Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (Hebrew) = I Am Who I Am
Ehyeh, meaning "I am" represented by the derivation YHWH
YHWH, given vowels = YaHWeH = Yahweh (pronounced YaaWay)

The name of God is Yahweh, I am who I am.

Yahweh is Trinity–that is, Yahweh–God, is made up of three distinct persons. We refer to one of these persons as… 

Ktistes (Koine Greek) = Creator (English)
Creator = the first Person of the Trinity

Yahweh is Trinity. Yahweh is made up of three distinct persons. We refer to one of these persons as…

Davar (Hebrew) = Logos (Greek) = Word (English)
Word = The second Person of the Trinity

Incarnation is the assumption of flesh and blood (being human) by Yahweh the Word. 
The Word became flesh and in the flesh the Word was named Jesus.

When the second Person of the Trinity, the Word, became flesh, the first Person of the Trinity became Father.

Creator = Father

Creator and Word = Father and Son

It is important to remember that while we are talking about God, we are unable to fully comprehend the Godhead. Still, it is very important to have a working knowledge of the Trinity (the Christian proclamation of God) in order to live and share our faith.

Too often Christians reduce our faith to a form of, “Jesus is God and he died for our sins.” I have been in conversations where the sharing of the Trinitarian God was omitted or even rejected as too complicated and unimportant. This could not be further from the truth!
 
Our understanding of the Trinity comes from God’s revelation of self to us. We know that since God revealed God’s self to us in this way, even as God revealed God’s self to us by name (Yahweh), then it is very important. Though we don't fully understand the Trinity, we are already living the witness of the Trinity in our prayers.

When we pray to God, we are praying to all three Persons of the Trinity. We have been taught by God to pray this way and to also pray to specific Persons of the Trinity individually. We proclaim this truth each Sunday as we worship. Knowing that we would find all of this difficult, God provides for us a manner of life that emulates, in the flesh, what we cannot grasp in the mind. 

In the 1st Letter of John, John affirms that “anyone who does not know love does not know God, because God is Love” (4:8). This agapic love (the selfless love of God) is more than a feeling, it is an attribute of God. Love is the core aspect of God’s character, God’s Person. This is why agape is central to our proclamation of who God (Creator, Word, Spirit; Father, Son, Holy Spirit) is every Sunday. 

Before the heavens and the earth were created, before human beings or angels existed, God is love. The three divine Persons of the Trinity relate to one another in love, from eternity to eternity, before God the Word ever spoke anything else into being. Before there was anyone else to love, from age to age, the three divine Persons love one another. In other words, as important as the fact that God is, is the fact that God loves.

We are called into this love both by Jesus' example and God’s very being. In his 1st Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul implores us to "Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ." In his Letter to the Ephesians he clarifies this by saying, “Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children.” (5:1) St. John Chrysostom, applying the nature of God’s relationship within the Trinity to marriage wrote, “The husband and wife should be like the hand and the eye. When the hand hurts, the eyes should weep. And when the eyes cry, the hand should wipe away the tears.” The intimacy that God has shared with us as name and Trinity is consummated in our flesh as we imitate God’s self.

When this truth is truly embraced, new life is given to all things in us. The understanding of Trinity as the basis of a life of faith illuminates as it self-explains. When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31, Matthew 22:39) and we hear through the Love of God, we can only interpret it as: “Love your neighbor as BEING yourself.” The other person is not other than you in essence.

When Jesus prayed that we would…“all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.” (John 17:21), he was expressing God’s plan that we live our lives as the Trinity exists. 

Our ability to understand the complexity of the Trinity may be lacking, but we are able to live by the example of the Trinity to the fullest. As imitators of Jesus, we are embraced by the Trinity. Our ability to love as God loves us is the expression of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Next week we will delve a bit deeper.

Love,
Fr. Bill+