The Holy Trinity &
The Sacred Triad:
The Sacred, The Profane and The Wholly Other
M. A. Rizzotti
The Holy Trinity is the most fascinating but also the most
misunderstood of all theological doctrines. It's an unfortunate situation,
because the Trinity may hold the key to understanding an important facet of the
dynamic dimension inherent in all religious experience.1
The first principle of the doctrine stipulates that the
Trinity is an absolute mystery. Its revelation is only possible with the help
of two spiritual activities: love and knowledge. With love, one is open to the
fullest to life's mystery. Through love, we may live the Trinity, although we
may not be able to express its mystery. With knowledge, life could be
experienced with the greatest of insight. Yet words and symbols may be
inadequate to describe the whole reality of the Trinity. Its mystery is only
accessible through God's self-communication, which is a process of everlasting
realization; herein lies the mystery.2
The Old Testament does not contain a doctrine of the Trinity
per se, even though, in retrospect, it may appear to confirm it. For instance,
the name Elohim implies a divine plurality.
Furthermore, the Lord appears to Abraham under the guise of "three
men" who tell the skeptical patriarch that his wife Sarah will bear a son
despite her advanced age.3
The Bible says that there is one God, yet God is not alone.
He created man in his image in order to communicate his creation to him. In the
same fashion, he created woman so that man would not be alone. Therefore, God
needs an interlocutor with whom to talk. As the narratives show, God chose to
speak to Moses and his prophets. Yahweh reveals himself to whomever he chooses
in order to establish a relationship with his people throughout history.
With the Gospels, the Trinity is inaugurated. The narratives
recount the story of Jesus who speaks of his Father, but also of the Holy
Spirit. This development introduced a new dimension to the reality of God.
Throughout the centuries, the Church developed the doctrine
apologetically. Most of it has been developed during the first fifteen
centuries of the Church's history. It has remained basically the same for the
last five hundred years.
Not until late in the fourth century did the Church's
teaching begin to take shape.4 The
fundamental tenets developed by the magisterium define the Trinity as an absolute mystery and
believe that one God exists in three persons: they are equal, coeternal and
omnipotent.5 God is one divine nature, one essence, and one substance.
In the Trinity, the three persons are distinct from one another. The Father has
no principle of origin. The Son is born from the substance of the Father. The
Spirit is not begotten, but proceeds from the Father and the Son, from one
principle, in one single spiration; e.g., action of
breathing.
As the definition above shows, the Trinity is a complex
doctrine, rendered even more difficult by the elaborate lexicon developed by
the magisterium
over the ages. Yet, in order to understand any of its basic tenets, one must
first comprehend a fundamental concept, that of "person".
In the Old Testament, the word "person" -nepes in Hebrew- has a broad range of meanings which
includes: living being, soul, breath. In several
instances, it is similar to "adam".6 The New Testament
uses the Greek translation of the word anthropos
which has basically the same meaning. In the course of history, the Church
developed the concept of "person" gradually to reflect the more
complex definitions of the Incarnation and the Trinity.
Foremost, the word person is not used in the psychological
sense of independent center of consciousness or personal center of action.7
The persons of the Trinity, in these terms, would
imply three states of consciousness with three free wills, which is not only
misleading but incorrect. The persons of the Trinity are not three different
centers of activity.
Person is not understood as a separate physical entity, but
more as Karl Rahner describes it, as a "distinct
manner of being". Therefore, each of the three persons is not separate, they are selfless and complementary, where God is
one essence and one absolute self-presence. There are not three consciousness either, but rather one spiritual and absolute
reality that subsists in a threefold manner of being.8
The concept of person, although somewhat confusing and
vague, is nevertheless necessary. It is useful because it allows us to fathom
the idea of relationship, from which communication stems. More precisely God's dynamic self-communication. In this
sense, the three persons are fully and totally open to each other as a unity,
as One God.
If we replace the word "person" by "modes of
being", as suggested by Karl Barth, or,
"distinct manners of being", as proposed by Karl Rahner,
we gain clarity in respect to the three-ness of God, but lose in terms of the
dynamic tri-unity inherent in one God. The image of person is retained because
it is easier to envision God in terms of a person rather than a "mode of
being" or a "distinct manner of being".9
Therefore, the person exists only in terms of relationships.
Personality exists only as inter-personality. In the Old Testament, the person
exists foremost in relations of the I-Thou-we kind.10 The case in point is the relationship between God, Moses,
and Israel as revealed in the Bible. However,
the relationship expounded by Martin Buber is
characteristic of the Old Testament's theological tradition of God's
condescending majesty, emphasizing the otherness of God, whereas the concept of
the Trinity, as expounded in the New Testament, is Christological. It presents
the relation as of the me-you-we type. Jesus, as the
God incarnate, reached out to the profane realm: the here and now. His
relationship with the world is transformed into a more mundane kind. As a
result, he breaks the master/servant relationship between God and his creation,
between the land-lord and his servant.11
*
Jn. 1:1 In the beginning was the
Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the
beginning with God;
all things were made through him,
and without him was not anything made that was made.
In him was life,
and the life was the light of men.
The light shines
in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.12
In the New Testament, communication of the Word is only
possible through a medium of which Jesus is the prototype. The unfathomable
presence of God's spoken Word in Genesis becomes incarnate in the Son through
the life given by the Spirit in Mary.
God literally spoke the world into existence. Without the
Word, God could not be heard or known. Man and woman are created in his
"image" and bear witness to his Word and creation, emphasizing the
possibility of a relationship between the Word and the hearer.13
Furthermore, God shares his knowledge and his love through
the Word in a twofold manner. God reveals himself through the
"economic" Trinity, which discloses itself in history, and through
the "immanent" Trinity, which inspires the Spirit of the Word to the
hearer.14
ONE GOD
The Trinity
economic immanent
the Trinity as the three persons
it
reveals itself in relation to
to the world and each
other
history
In essence, the "economic" and
"immanent" Trinity are one dynamic reality
breathing life into each other. The "immanent" Trinity could not
subsist without the "economic" Trinity, and vice versa. Similar in fashion to the Spirit, as the breath and the wind that
is breathed in and out, reflecting the inner and outer mystery of God.
Mt. 28:19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit..."15
The sacred triad: the
sacred
We have already outlined the three principles of the
religious experience in terms of the sacred, the profane, and the wholly other.
At this point, we will parallel their definitions in analogy to the Trinity.
It is practically impossible to talk about the sacred
without referring to the profane, since the identity of the first depends on
its opposition to the second.
sacred vs profane
God vs Satan
holy vs common
pure vs impure
clean vs unclean
This dynamic opposition is the realm of religion. At this
point, we must clarify that the "experience" of the religious must be
distinguished from the interpretation of the experience. While the experience
of the sacred is unique, the expression of that experience belongs to the field
of language. Language relates the experience with the use of words and symbols,
either spoken or written.16
Individuals experience the sacred everyday in varied forms:
through the ecstasy of love, a revelation, nirvana, or even a UFO sighting.
Although we may not understand or agree with a person's interpretation of his
or her sacred experience, we cannot deny that he or she lived an extra-ordinary
happening. His or her personal experience is unique, unfathomable, and even
ineffable; i.e., language may not be an adequate medium to communicate that
experience.
An example may be helpful. Everybody has experienced a dream
at one time or another in their sleep. And each person's dream is unique. When
the dreamer relates his or her dream, he or she does so with the help of
language. However, language cannot accurately translate the dream which
involves the total visual and participative experience of the dreamer.
Consequently, it would be better to say that a person lives a dream. In
relating his or her dream, the dreamer makes a linguistic account which is
different than the original experience itself. In linguistics, the language of
the dream is the object-language, whereas the account is a
metalanguage. If a psychoanalyst,
for instance, becomes involved with the interpretation of the dream, he or she
is left only with an account of the dream of which the dreamer is the mediator.
As such, the interpretation rendered through language is an obstacle to the
full experience and full content of the dream.
In the study of the sacred, we are faced with a similar
problem. We can only interpret the expression of the sacred, never its unique
experience since we deal only with words and symbols that relate to the sacred.
Language only reveals one aspect of religious experience, albeit an important
one. Nevertheless, by exploring the manifestations of the sacred, we gain
insight into the fundamental composition of the religion phenomenon as it
manifests itself in language.
*
The word sacred comes from the Latin sacer. The Romans used the word
to describe what was under their gods' jurisdiction. When they referred to the
sacrum, it implied the location where a ritual was performed; namely, the
temple. The sacred place was also intrinsically tied to the cult. Both, place
and cult, were closely circumscribed and distinct from
the outside space called the profanum. The profane literally means the space
outside the temple. Hence, profanare meant to bring the object of sacrifice
"out" of the temple, transgressing the boundary between the sacred
and the profane.
The Bible uses mostly the word holy -in Hebrew qadosh- instead of sacred which has a similar meaning.17
The temple, but especially the Holy of Holies, is
separate from the common space. Similarly, the ritual performed in the temple
distinguishes the sacred from the profane activity.
Priests are especially privileged persons who can be
designated as sacred. Jerusalem, but more specifically, the temple of Jerusalem, was the sacred place par
excellence and the center of the world, as the Holy of Holies was at the center
of the temple and the ark was at the center of the Holy of Holies.18
*
Ex. 3:1 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his
father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Mid'ian; and he led his flock to the west side of the
wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the lord appeared
to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and lo,
the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, "I will
turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt." When the
lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush , "Moses, Moses !" And he said, "Here am
I." Then he said, "Do not come near; put off your shoes from your
feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." And he
said. "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look
at God.
The passage above reveals a central aspect of the sacred.
The place where the hierophany occurs is described as the "mountain of God". As we have outlined, the
mountain is a privileged place where the sacred appears. It is a universal
symbol found in the most important mythologies of the world.
The "appearance" of the angel of the lord
announces the coming of a hierophany. Moses' sighting confirms a mysterious
event, although it is yet without meaning. God's words finally reveal the
purpose of the apparition. At the outset, God sets the boundaries between the
holy and the common ground. The holy imposes a distance that separates the
divine from the human, the extra-ordinary from the ordinary, the
sacred from the profane.
the holy vs the common
Israel
vs outsiders 19
priests vs ordinary men
The power of the holy, which is Yahweh's exclusivity, is
bestowed upon Moses, his spokesman. Moses is the only one to whom Yahweh
reveals his name. Yet, by the same token, the people of Israel are also
consecrated by Yahweh as a "holy people", a "holy nation",
a "holy race".20 Yahweh's identity and the identity of his
people are consecrated and set apart from other gods and other people.
Lev. 20:26 You shall
be holy to me; for I the lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples,
that you should be mine.
The origin of the sacred is described in the text as
stemming from the center flowing toward its periphery.21 The whole process emanates around the holy at the center of
which Yahweh's words are the source of everything. In order of importance, Yahweh
is the holy one, followed by Moses as the prophet, then the priests, and
finally the people, all into one single entity: Israel. The "holy people"
becomes a social and religious entity which is set apart by Yahweh. He is holy,
and so is Israel. God is separated from other gods
and Israel is set apart from other people to
become the matrix of their religious identity.
Hence, only Yahweh's words enable him to reveal the holy.
Without his words, his will could not be known. It goes without saying that the
spoken word cannot be separated from the written word, since the Bible is a
literary work. Without the written word the experience of the holy would not
have been preserved. The Bible is the medium that is used to propagate the
story of Israel. Without the priests and scribes
that have written and preserved the sacred heritage it would have been lost
forever.
*
Mt. 17:1 And after six days Jesus
took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high
mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like
the sun, and his garments became white as light. And behold, there appeared to
them Moses and Eli'jah, talking with him. And Peter
said to Jesus, "Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will
make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Eli'jah". He was still speaking, when lo, a bright
cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my
beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him." When the
disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, and were filled with awe. But
Jesus came and touched them saying, "Rise, and have no fear." And
when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.
In Matthew, Mark, and Luke the account of the transfiguration
is almost identical.22 The parallels with
the text in Exodus are striking. The similarities are abundant: the mountain as
a sacred place, the holy ground that sets boundaries "apart", Jesus'
face that shines like the sun, the voice of God which is heard from nowhere,
the awe, and the fear. Similar also is God's manifestations of power displayed
in the thundering, the lightning, and the fire shared with the hierophanies on Mount Sinai and on Mount Carmel.
23
Furthermore, Jesus is seen talking with Moses and Elijah.
His association with the two biblical heroes is presumably meant to associate
and connect Jesus with two of the most powerful and charismatic personalities
of the Old Testament.
As we go further, the similarities begin to fade. The most notable difference being the appellation of Jesus as the
Son of God. This affiliation shatters and redefines the biblical concept
of the holy.
Except where Moses is Yahweh's mouth, none of the Patriarchs
are identified with the Word of God. They are significantly his prophets, his
people, in other words, they are God's instruments. None of them were called
his sons. And although the idea of affiliation is prominent in the Old
Testament, as typified by the title "God of your fathers", the
relation is meant to confer the idea of the sovereignty and authority of the
patriarchal lineage rather than that of sonship.
Furthermore, the Gospels inaugurate the sonship of
Jesus Christ as the holy.
Ex. 3:14: (Yahweh) I am who I am
Jn. 8:58: (Jesus) Before Abraham was,
I am 24
Therefore, Jesus shares the exclusivity of God's sacred
identity. As a human being he becomes a visible and identifiable image of God.
As such, he transcends the first and second commandments given by Yahweh. And,
by performing miracles on the Sabbath, he transgresses yet another commandment.
As a result, Jesus becomes a law onto himself. He breaks the boundaries of the sacred's exclusivity.25
Jn. 17:19 And for
their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth.
The profane
As we have mentioned earlier, the profane is closely related
to the sacred. The very existence of the sacred thrives on it.
The Latin word profane literally means pro,
"outside", and fanum, "temple".
The sacred and the profane are separated into two distinct arenas. Foremost,
the sacred protects its own exclusive area of control
from which the profane is excluded. This exclusion is the essential
characteristic of the profane. Hence the profane is described as the other
reality. It is a vague and common reality outside the realm of the sacred in
sharp contrast to its compelling and powerful identity.
In the Old Testament narratives the word profane shares some similarities with
the Latin etymology. Its most frequent use is in the verbs "to
defile" and "to pollute". It is also used to imply the opposite
of holy, as "ritually unclean" or "impure". However, the
profane is generally translated into common, especially in connection to being
"apart" from the holy. To profane something holy is to make it
common, ordinary, in stark opposition to the uniqueness of the holy. As the
following examples show:
Ez. 42:20 It had a wall around it, five hundred
cubits long and five hundred cubits broad, to make a separation between the
holy and the common.
Ez. 44:23...and show them how to
distinguish between the unclean and the clean.
The Gospels depict Jesus as abiding by the law, but
sometimes he is also portrayed as challenging the law. Although he may appear
at times to transgress the commandments, he does not condemn them. He does,
however, castigate the hypocrisy of the priests that regulate the law.
Foremost, Jesus is depicted as the prototype who inaugurates a new law.
His new rule supplants all other commandments: he says to
love your God above anything else, but also to love your neighbor as yourself.
The emphasis of the message is not the opposition between one God and other
gods, but love. Jesus transcends the dichotomy between the holy and the common,
yet he does not dull the distinction between the two. In fact, he inaugurates a
new kingdom; ie, Christianity.
Mt. 22:21 "Render therefore to Caesar
the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."
Jesus reverses the order of worldly things. What was profane
is now sacred. He consecrates the common and makes it sacred, while he
denounces the sacred hierarchies of the worldly powers.
the sacred vs the profane
the
kingdom of God
vs
this world
the impure vs the priests
the unclean vs the zealous
Jesus' realm is outside the reach of the worldly powers. His
kingdom, however, is not inaugurated to overthrow the worldly system, since it
is based on the power of love. His kingdom is not of this world either, but
from a world yet to be created by faith and solidarity between the believers.
It is a place for those who forsake their share of this world for a part in the
other.
As he explains to his disciples, only those who understand
the language of the parables have access to his kingdom. And Jesus is the door
to another realm of meaning: from the physical to the spiritual, and from the
literal to the metaphorical. In essence, the parable is nothing else than an
allegorical story, which is nothing more than an extended metaphor.26
In the quote below, Jesus explains the meaning of such parables to his
disciples, who themselves cannot yet understand:
MT. 13:10 Then the disciples came and said to
him, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" And he answered them,
"To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven,
but to them it has not been given. For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has
not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why
I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they
do not hear, nor do they understand."27
Jesus takes great care to point out that the key to his
message will be lost by those caught up in the material aspect of the worldly existence. In the same manner as the true meaning of
the message from the miracles is lost to the marvel and spectacle of the sign.
The world would soon rather forget that Jesus cures the unclean, the outcasts
and the excluded which society abhors and segregates. His miracles transgress
the boundaries of the sacred and transcend them. By doing so, he shatters the
structure of the sacred and the hierarchy on which society is built.
There is more to the profane than one might expect, even
though the sacred consolidates all the attention on itself and dismisses the
profane as a non-entity, as something remote and insignificant. We have seen
that the profane is repudiated as the common, the ordinary, the hidden; it is
decried as the other. And as such it is kept apart from the sacred hierarchy.
The sacred tries to keep this other reality overshadowed and hidden so as to
highlight its own power and play down the reality of the profane. As we have
seen in Genesis, the serpent is a symbol of the Goddess and the tree is a
metaphor of Asherah. These religious truths have been deliberately excluded
from the divine reality of the Old Testament. These examples represent the
profane and excluded reality in the religious experience.
Even though the sacred deliberately tries to deprecate the
profane, it is nonetheless a reality, a dynamic entity essential to the
existence and the survival of the sacred experience.
As Jesus focuses on the profane reality of the poor, the
sick, the prostitutes, the possessed, the foreigners, the Gentiles and the
slaves, he points to a reality that is excluded from the Jewish religious world
dominated by the priestly order. In spite of the religious authority of the
priests, he elected the outcasts as the beneficiaries of his kingdom. He
reveals that the other reality is the essence of his message of love which
exposes the true purpose of religion. As a result, he broke the foundation of
the old precepts of the religious structure and activated a new reality that transcends
the old religious order.28
Yet the profane has a specific function in the realm of the
religious: it is an adumbrated and hidden quality that symbolizes the
unacknowledged side of reality.
Lk. 1:35 "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 called holy, the Son of God."
Here, Mary's identity is overshadowed from the holy. Her
role has been kept in the background so that Jesus can accomplish his mission.
We have also seen how the segregation is characteristic of the profane; as the
hidden, the other and the excluded reality. Mary, first as a mother and then as
a woman, is excluded from the symbolic triad of procreation; e.g., the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Even though the Holy Spirit is the only "person"
that does not have a gender connotation, it does have numerous feminine
attributes; ie, "life-giving Love",
"the giver of life", and "breath".29 In contrast
to the affiliation of the Father and the Son, the identity of the Holy Spirit
is, to say the least, overshadowed. Nevertheless, behind it lies the mystery of
an-other hidden spiritual vitality.
The Holy Spirit is a profane reality of the Mother.
Among the numerous metaphors used to describe the Holy
Spirit, many have several things in common; i.e., "genesis",
"breath", "dove", and "the giver of life". All
point to a feminine origin of the principle of life.
the physical
the
metaphysical
procreation creation in Genesis
father v
mother God v
man
child woman
in the New Testament
Father
v Son
Holy Spirit
Most of all, the profane reality of the Goddess has been
excluded from the creation -and procreation- myths of Genesis. She has been
vilified as an idol and opposed by Yahweh. It turns out that Asherah was a
scapegoat, denounced and discredited as idolatry.30
The wholly other
Emile Durkheim first introduced
the dichotomy between sacred and profane in his book on "primitive"
religion. Several years later, a landmark work on the "holy" was
published. It was written by Rudolf Otto. Unlike the sociological method of Durkheim, Otto was more preoccupied with the
"feeling" aspect rather than the "rational" expression of
the holy which he labeled the "numinous". It is in this work that he
first introduced the expression "wholly other".33
Otto developed the concept because he perceived a need to
expand the inventory of "expressions" to better describe the mysterium aspect
of the holy. As he would explain: "...something of whose character we can
feel, without being able to give it clear conceptual expression."34
Concepts like "supernatural" and "transcendent" were
usually used to define such a unique quality of the "numinous".
As we will see, this concept is not only useful but
indispensable. It helps to fully understand the whole religious experience. It
becomes essential to show the whole interrelation and the transcendental link
between the sacred and the profane into the wholly other.
Otto did not develop his idea of the wholly other as a
logical result of the dynamics between the sacred and the profane. He defined
the wholly other as what stands beyond the realm of the intelligible. The sphere where the divine manifests itself, namely, the
unfathomable and the ineffable. First, the unfathomable suggests that
one is unable to understand and express his feelings of awe in the face of the
holy. Second, the ineffable implies that words are inadequate to explain such
an experience. Better still, no known language is able
to fully disclose the mysterium.
Unlike Otto, we are not so much concerned with the feeling
as with the expressions of the holy as related by the narratives. We are less
concerned with what Moses felt at the sight of the burning bush, than how the
writers/editor have related the experience. The Holy
Bible is full of accounts of such mysterious experiences. Consequently, it is
possible to explore the symbolic nature of that experience through the account.
In other words, the text is the data that allows us to analyze the holy
systematically.35
*
Etymologically, the adverb wholly has two meanings. The
first, an older sense derived from "whole", means in its entirety, in
full, the sum total, all of it: hence, inclusively. The second sense is implied
by the word entirely, as to suggest the exclusion of others, solely: hence,
exclusively. The terminology may appear ambiguous at the outset, but it will
become clearer as we go along. And, as we will see, it is rather insightful. The equivocalness of wholly fits exactly into the essence of the
two-ness or twofold-ness of the sacred and the profane. Adding the word
other to wholly we further expand the scope of its
meaning.
>wholly other; the dynamic center that is exclusively
other because words cannot express that otherness: the sacred, the mysterium, the ineffable. The mystery of the holy is always other than
the expressions that try to describe it. The exclusively other can be seen as
the center represented by Yahweh -the holy- who set his prophets, his priests
and his people apart from the other people.
<wholly other; the whole and the
dynamic reality that is beyond the center and beyond the hierarchy of the
sacred. It is the
yet unknown, the yet undiscovered, the unfathomable; i.e., the other religions,
the other cultures, the mystery of the universe and eternity: the inclusively
other. Beyond its center is the hidden reality of the goddess Asherah -the
tree. And beyond the periphery of the chosen people stands the whole reality of
the other gods and other cultures.
Only when the sacred opens up to and includes the profane
does it ascend to the wholly other. Only when the profane becomes part of the
sacred does it ascend to the wholly other.
In Exodus, the words of Yahweh preempt the sign of the
burning bush as the source of the holy. It is Yahweh's words that are at the
center and from which he reveals his will. Yet Yahweh's identity -image-
remains obscure and exclusively other.
Whereas the profane reality and space are excluded from the
holy, God separates the Holy ground from the profane, from the common. This
realm of the other is the reality of the profane, comprised of such examples as
the other gods/goddesses, the other religions that make up the whole religious
reality of the world.
In the Gospels, the transfiguration reveals Jesus Christ at
the center with God: "his face shone like the sun". Again, God
reveals his "beloved Son" to the world through his spoken Word.36
Here too, the voice of God comes from nowhere. The
Word of God reveals that God is with us and that Jesus Christ, as his Son, is
himself God and as such he shares a place at the center.37 This time, Jesus Christ's identity is fully disclosed by his
own physical "body".
Jesus Christ as the Son of God is himself holy, but as the
son of Mary he partakes in the profane reality of the human condition. Jesus'
twofold origin -that of God and "man"- embodies the whole spectrum of
the religious reality and the two poles of a true spirituality: the sacred and
the profane. This twofold unity transcends the exclusive holiness of God and
reaches beyond the boundaries of his divine essence through his human nature
and into the wholly other. Jesus Christ, as the wholly other, transcends the
exclusivity of the holy into the inclusively whole divine reality. The wholly
other is both center and totality, one single reality.
Jesus/man-Christ/God
Hence, the profane reality becomes as important as the
sacred in the religious experience. Only then can the dynamic interrelation
between the sacred and the profane become alive in the wholly other and
transcend the two spiritual entities into one whole dynamic reality of being.
*
Christ, as God, is the mysterious holy center from which
everything originates and everything flows. As God he is the center of power,
as "man" Jesus is the door to that power, the hope of the powerless.
The Gospels dispel the notion that the profane reality of the impure and
unclean should be excluded. It recounts that it should be embraced instead.
Jesus dissipates the barriers and highlights what is at the heart of faith: the
wholly other. He denounces the segregation of the powerful and their
institutions. He reaches out to the forgotten and the segregated by society:
the sick, the poor, the possessed, the foreigners, the women, the Gentiles, the
sinners, the slaves.
Jesus inaugurates a law, that of love. Love as the total
openness that blurs the boundaries between the sacred and the profane into the
realm of the wholly other. His new command undoes the boundaries imposed by the
sacred institutions. It exceeds the borders of the sacred and overflows into
the profane world. The holy is no longer an exclusive arena accessible only to
a limited few of the higher hierarchy. What was out of reach becomes accessible
to all who believe. With love one can bypass the sacred institutions and have
access to God. The power of Jesus' being opens the door to the wholly other
realm.
Jesus Christ talked of two worlds. One
that he identified with Caesar and the other with God. The two kingdoms,
however, do not oppose each other in a political fashion.38 The kingdom of God that Jesus speaks about is not of
this world. It is a place where the faith in the Word creates a
"world" onto itself, outside the boundaries of time and space. Faith
in the message of the Word is the key to the creation of the kingdom of
heaven.
wholly other
the whole
.
. .
. .
. wholly other.
.
the center
.
. .
sacred. .
. . .
. . profane
To conclude, the sacred triad and the Holy Trinity share
some fundamental principles which can be illustrated as follows:
God the
Father.........the holy/the center
Jesus Christ.........the wholly other/the
whole
the Holy Spirit.........the profane/the overshadowed
As outlined earlier, the Holy Spirit has no gender status,
yet it is called "the giver of life". Furthermore, the third person
overshadows Mary's identity. As such, the Holy Spirit conceals an-other
reality, that of the profane reality of the Mother of God.
Lk. 1:35 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 called holy, the Son of God.
The narrative describes that the power of the "Most
High" overshadows Mary as the Mother of Jesus, and as a woman. As we have
said, it is in the nature of the sacred to "overshadow" and exclude
the profane. Similar in fashion to the exclusion of the
Goddess in Genesis. We have also seen how the metaphors and attributes
associated with Mary are closely associated with the Holy Spirit. The most
prominent of which are related to life and procreation in terms of
"breath" and "the giver of life". Furthermore, the epithets
of the Holy spirit as "the giver of life",
and of Mary, as the Mother of God, are closely akin.39 The Gospels
describe how the unique collusion between the Holy Spirit and Mary results in
the conception of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of "man".
What the overshadowed reality of the Trinity unveils is that
the metaphysical reality of the mother -and the woman- plays a dynamic, if not
primordial, role in the creation of the world.40
____________________
1 In that respect I share Raimundo
Panikkar's view. See Raimundo
Panikkar's, The Trinity and
the Religious of Man, New York, Orbis
Books, 1973, 42.
2 Although I have studied Theology, I am not a theologian. I
am not trying to develop a theory on the Trinity, I
leave that to the theologians. I merely used the Trinity, which I believe to be
the most important theological doctrine of Christianity, as an analogy to the
sacred, the profane, and the wholly other.
3 Gen. 18:2f.
4 Doctrines on the Trinity have been developed during the
Council of Nicaea (325 ad), the first Council of Constantinople
(381 ad), the Eleventh Council of Toledo (675 ad), the Fourth Lateran Council
(1215 ad), the Second Council of Lyons (1274 ad) and the Council of Florence
(1439-45 ad). Other important documents that relate to the doctrine are the
Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, and
Paul VI's Confession of Faith.
5 The magisterium
dictates that God exists in three persons, subsistences,
hypostases. These terms were used to distinguish the dual nature of Christ as
divine and human. Karl Rahner, SJ, Divine Trinity, in
Sacramentum Mundi v.6,
Montreal, Palm Publishers, 1970, 295-303.
6 Gen. 46:18f; Ex. 1:5 etc.
7 In theological terms, person implies individuum
vagum or vague being. Karl Rahner
describes "person" as a "rational subsistent"; ie, a rational being existing substancially or really of or by itself. In trying to
clarify the concept he alternatively uses "way of subsistence" or
"distinct manner of subsisting". Equivalent expressions have been
proposed by Karl Barth who has suggested the words
"modes of being". They are mostly used to clarify the distinctness of
each person while maintaining their unity in one God so to avoid the trap of tritheism. See Karl Rahner, SJ,
The Trinity, New York, Herder & Herder, 1970, 111, and, Divine Trinity, in Sacramentum Mundi, Montreal, Palm
Publishers, 1970, 295-308. Also, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics vol.1, The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part One,
Edingburgh, T & T Clark, 1975, 348 f.
8 A further analogy might be in order, although it might be
viewed as too "modernistic". At the time when conception actually
occurs, there are three distinct genetic entities that coexist: the egg from
the mother, the spermatozoid from the father, and the embryo, which become the
child's new genetic entity. We might say that the three genetic
"persons" are distinct, yet they are one human being.
9 The magisterium
further states that there are three distinct relations and properties in God.
There is also a distinction between the essence of God and the relations that
constitute the persons. The "relative" persons in God are not really
distinct from the essence of God and, therefore, do not form a quaternity. In God, all is one, except where an opposition
of relationship exists. Each of the divine persons is fully in each other, and
each of them is one true God. The divine persons cannot be divided from one
another, in being or in operation. They form only a single principle of action.
Their activity is one and the same even though only the Logos became
"man".
10 See, Martin Buber, I and Thou, New York, Scribners,
1970.
11 In the English language the capital "I" implies
a sense of majesty of the subject, characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon mentality,
which is not present, say, in French or Italian.
12 Taken from The Jerusalem Bible. The word
"overcome" is better rendered into understand
or grasp.
13 See Karl Rahner's, Hearers of
the Word, Montreal, Palm Publishers, 1969, and, Luis Alonso Schokel's ,
S.J., The Inspired Word, Montreal, Palm Publishers, 1965.
14 Additional clarification about
the meaning of "economy" may be necessary. Originally, the word meant
the divine government of the world, until Voltaire and his contemporaries began
using the word with its modern sense. A devout anticleric,
he, in all probability, used the word as an act of defiance toward the Catholic
Church. Since we are on this subject, something else comes to my mind. I have
noticed the frequent use of the word "theology" by the economist John
Kenneth Galbraith. Although I fail to understand the exact meaning he confers
to the word, he may also be inaugurating a new use for it.
15 The scriptures tell us that the Son is sent by the
Father, and the Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son. Ergo, the Father is
the sender, the Son is the mediator, and the Holy Spirit is the receiver. Jn.
3:17; 6:57.
16 Of course the meaning of "language" encompasses
much more. All forms of communication, linguistic or semiotic, could be
categorized as such.
17 Assuming that the root qd means
"to set apart". There is also the possibility that the root qdsh, related to the Akkadian qadashu, means "to become pure", and in that
sense it has more of a ritualistic connotation. From the same root as the
Hebrew word for holy -qdsh- the word qedesha is used to describe the prostitute consecrated to Astarte.
18The Sabbath also typifies the special time consecrated to
Yahweh. Objects like the ark, the priests' adornments, and certain animals,
especially the sacrificial ones, are also prescribed as sacred.
19 Ex. 30:32,33.
20 Ex. 19:6; Isa. 62:12; Ezra 9:2.
21 Edward Shils, Center and
Periphery, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1975, 17f.
22 Mk. 9:2-8; Lk. 9: 28-36.
23 Ex. 20:18; 1 Kings 18.
24 Jn. 8:24; 13:19.
25 The holy is at all times in danger of being
misrepresented. The origin of the holy, as we have said, is Yahweh, not the
persons, the places or the objects upon which is conferred a sacred quality.
The nuance is important since it is Yahweh's promise that is eternal while his
prophets are mortal.
26 As the
Dictionary of the French Academy explains, the allegory is
nothing else than an extended metaphor: "La parabole est en quelque sorte une autre
forme de l'allégorie et l'allégorie est une figure qui n'est autre chose qu'une
métaphore prolongée" Dictionnaire de l'Académie, Paris, Hachette, 1932.
27 Also, Mk. 4:1-20; Lk. 8:10-15.
28 Segregation is an integral part of the system on which
society is built. It appears to be a vital part of it. Society lives by the
dynamic interaction between the integrated structure and the outcasts. Apparently,
the survival of society is based on the outcasts as scapegoats. In other words,
the sacred opposes the threat from the outer reality -the profane- which it
does not understand and fears. See Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization,
New York, Pantheon Books, 1965.
29 The appellation of "life-giving Love" is taken
from the Encyclical, Divinum Illud
Munus, by Pope Leo XIII on the Holy Spirit, May
9th, 1897.
While "the giver of life" is taken from the Encyclical Letter, Dominum et Vivificantem,
by Pope John Paul II, on the Holy Spirit as well, given the day of the Pentacost May 18th, 1986.
30 This is true for most religions, since belief is
amplified by the dynamic opposition to other cults. For more insight about the
opposition of the sacred and the profane see Roger Caillois,
L'Homme et le Sacre, Paris,
Gallimard, 1939, and, Mircea
Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, New York, Harper
& Row, 1959, and, Cosmos and History, New York, Harper & Row, 1959.
31 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, New York, Free Press, 1965.
32 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the
Holy, London, Oxford University Press, 1923.
33 Idid. 25-30.
34 Ibid. 30.
35 I first began to develop the idea about the wholly other
in my Masters thesis entitled: l'Interprétation Religieuse de l'Origine Mythique de la Nationalité: l'Inauguration de Monuments Nationaux
(1840-1940), Montréal, Bibliothèque de l' UQAM, 1978.
36 Mt. 17:1-8, Mk. 9:1-8; Lk.
9:28-36.
37 At Jesus' baptism, God speaks through the heavens while
the Holy Spirit is revealed by the dove descending on Christ, testifying to the
reality of the three persons of the Trinity. Mt. 3:13-17; Mk. 1:9-11; Lk. 3:21-22; Jn. 1:32-34.
38 One might think of the "quasi-religion"
typified by Marxism where the sterile antagonism of working class and ruling
class just replaces one dictatorship by another.
39 The reference to "the giver of life", in
connection with Mary, is taken from the definition of the Dogma of the
Assumption of Mary, by Pius XII, 11-12. See also Yves Congar,
I Believe In The Holy Spirit, v. 1, New York, The Seabury
Press, 1983, 163.
40 Catholics have always been loyal devotees of Mary. In
many instances she usually plays a role occupied by the Paraclete.
They attribute to her the titles and functions of comforter, advocate, the
defender of the believers. But mostly she is worshipped as the Mother of God;
the kind and gentle intercessor, the giver of life. Yves Congar
states that "There is a deep relationship between Mary, the mother of God,
and the Holy Spirit". He further continues: "The part played in our
upbringing by the Holy Spirit is that of mother -a mother who enables us to
know our Father, God, and our brother, Jesus...the Holy Spirit has often been
replaced in recent Catholic devotion by the Virgin Mary.".
He also points out the close link between the motherhood in God and the
femininity of the Holy Spirit. See Yves Congar, I
Believe in the Holy Spirit, New York, Seabury Press,
1983, vol.1, 164, and vol.3, 154-155.
