The doctrine of the Trinity that Christians profess today has not always been as fully explained as it is now. Instead, it took centuries and many theological disputes, to clarify the beliefs about the Trinity. Ultimately, the council of Nicaea deliberated until they came to fully express teaching on the Trinity, one that has continued to be taught to later generations. Much of the argument about the Trinity took place between two foes: Arius and Alexander, and then Alexander’s successor Athanasius. Athanasius spent much of his life defending Alexander’s notions of the Trinity against Arius. The primary arguments of Arius did not center on wrong ideas about God, though he was trying to uphold Christian monotheism. Arius was the most famous …show more content…
Alexander and later Athanasius would speak on behalf of the Catholic truth. Alexander’s beliefs about the Trinity would be proclaimed true at the council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. The council agreed that God was eternal, without beginning or end, and immutable. Unlike Arius’s position however, the Son was also proclaimed to be uncreated and begotten. The Son proceeds from the Father eternally, whereas the Holy Spirit is spirited from the Father and the Son. The Son has always existed with the Father, but it was only in Jesus’s Incarnation within time that we came to know of his origin. The Trinity knows no bounds of time, it simply is and, therefore, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit must be homoousios in the divine …show more content…
Augustine gives an analogy of the Trinity: mind, knowledge, and love, which has found no equal. Augustine states, “ a trinity remains in these three – mind, love, and knowledge – and it is not confused with a mixture, although each is in itself and mutually the whole in the whole or each one in two or two in each, and thus all in all.” Therefore, the Trinity is one whole made of three persons whom are of the same substance, without flaw. In Augustine’s case, the Father would be considered the mind, the Son is knowledge, and the Holy Spirit is love. The mind knows and loves itself, thus it is composed of three which all can stand by themselves and in one another; three persons that are but one ousia. McDonnell describes the Holy Spirit as a start of movement back to God. In many cases the Holy Spirit was viewed as a secondary to Christ, all-together denying its individual divinity within the Trinity. Origen found it difficult to distinguish the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son without leveling to the faults of subordinationism. In fact, McDonnell states that the Spirit is linked with Christ because it is in line with the spirit of Christ and to find Christ would mean finding the Holy Spirit as well. It is as if Christ and the Holy Spirit reciprocate one another. It may then seem, however, that the Holy Spirit is not of the Trinity, but rather a subdivision of Christ himself. This is in all cases is untrue. “The Spirit who begets and the Spirit who is