{87}

CHAPTER II

TRINITY¹

On another occasion I have shown that Christianity enters this world as a religion, i.e., as a molding of religation in the surrender of man to a divinity, to a God². I pointed out that, in this molding Christianity offers a peculiarity, namely, that the molding and the molder are an intrinsic and formal moment of the very divinity that religion will give access to man. In such a fashion that here man not only finds in Christianity an access to God, but that God himself is the access to God. It is the divinization of the way of transcendence. That was precisely the work of Christ, the Son of God. Obviously the three great monotheisms in history (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are not identical as religions. It is always the question for an option, and in this option of faith the Christian has chosen for the way of Christianity, and from it we are going to ask what constitutes Christianity.


{88} A) The first thing that must be said as we begin the discussion is something so simple it may appear banal, but upon which we must insist a little: Christianity is the work of Christ. It may seem something quite obvious: Where is Christianity going to come from if not from Christ? However, facing the question of what His work might mean, many positions have been taken (here I am only interested in underlining two) that have been favored in our century.

1) At the beginning of the century there was a position consisting in saying that actually Christ organized a small community of disciples and apostles with the idea that the world was coming to an end. The world did not end it kept going. Christ died crucified, the small community adapted itself as best it could, and that was the history of Christianity. Clearly, it is said, that history is in continuity with the work of Christ, who would have given that type of great impulse, that great élan of history, which lengthened throughout the centuries, and the different eras would constitute Christianity.

In the first place, due to a reason that affects history itself, we have to recognize that history never, in this or any other case is a movement, a kind of vital élan. And I say élan not because the designers and promoters of this idea, above all in France, admitted the idea of a vital élan. Not at all. The great representative of this interpretation of Christianity was precisely A. Loisy, who always reacted noisily when anyone asked him about the vital élan. At any rate, history is never the elongation of a wave someone releases and continues to expand with an élan throughout time, but is simply a discernment and an opening of possibilities. And the system of possibilities is not precisely the movement of a physical élan.

In the second place, it cannot be admitted, regardless of how much literature is brought in, that the thesis of Loisy consists in affirming that Christianity {89} is the work of Christ. It has sometimes been indicated, quite correctly, that his position was equivalent to saying that Christianity has been formed about Christ, but not by Christ. It is not simply a thing that has resulted from what Christ did, but that Christ made Christianity.

2) In the second place, nowadays there is a completely different position, which consists in reducing to a minimum, without the name of Christ disappearing. Christianity is presented as a system of values, of moral attitudes, religious attitudes, interior life, etc., which in the end have nothing to do with the absolutely historical and concrete reality of Christ. This is, for example, the position (somewhat caricaturized) of Bultmann. Therefore, we must affirm against Loisy that Christianity is the work of Christ. Also, against Bultmann that it is a work performed by Christ, not simply an ideology and a spiritual movement proposed by Him.


B) Consequently, Christianity is the work of Christ. Then we ask ourselves: how is it the work of Christ? In order to enter the subject of this chapter I shall recall two or three fundamental concepts, which have already appeared in the previous one.

1) In the first place, the work of Christ is an historical work. We may discuss not only the literary genre, but in addition the basic intellectual genre with which all the New Testament texts are written, and then subjected to a severe criticism. This presents no impediment for saying that Christianity is the historical work of Christ, really and truly performed by Christ. Anything else would be chimerical from the point of view of Christianity.

2) Christ not only performs things, I repeat, {90} but also teaches by word of mouth. In this sense, it is not only the question of a historical work, but in addition of a doctrinal work of Christ. With the peculiarity that these two dimensions are never dissociated. Even the most pedestrian moments of the history of Christ are in the end teachings. Conversely, the teachings of Christ are, in one form or another, based on truly real events of His life. Therefore, we have a historical operation and a doctrinal operation united, but not for the perfunctory constitution of a community in order to handle the problem of the idea that the world is going to end soon. United as a living religion in a community that not only has congregated around Christ, but has also lived intimately and profoundly from Him. This life, this living tradition with a historical and a doctrinal characteristic at the same time is what precisely constitutes the revelation. Christ reveals here with a revelation that does not have the characteristics of a type of truth inaccessible to our intelligence. This is a different dimension of the problem, which shall be dealt with later. So far, revelation means what He does, like the rest of the universe. In one form or another it announces what God is, that “the heavens sing the glory of God” (Ps 19:2). This is revelation, and not just a poetic movement of the spirit.

And it is revelation, I repeat once more, because of what He says and what He does. However, I will now add, because of where He says it and where He does it. Actually, Christ could have done things outside the historical and local time. This was the sense of some of the Messianic temptations: “I will give you all these things if you prostrate before me and adore me” (Mt 4:9), in other words, the temptation of a theophany. But Christ faithfully accepted the condition of being a worker in Palestine. Where He said it and how he did it, namely, within an Israelite tradition, in a concrete life in Bethlehem, in Nazareth of Galilee, and afterwards {91} with a public life in Capernaum, Jerusalem, etc. This is where He says it and where He does it. Of course, the “where” has presented a problem, as we shall immediately see.

3) The work of Christ is not only historical and doctrinal in the sense of a living and revealing tradition, but it also has a third sense, disclosed and explicitly mentioned by Him. That what He had done, the sense of what He had done, and what was left to be done is placed under the charge of the Spirit of truth He was going to send, the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 16:12-15).

It would be chimerical to pretend to write the history of the origins of Christianity only with what Christ did and said. At any rate, formaliter, Christianity is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is a Spirit sent by Christ, sent also by the Father (we shall immediately see what this is), who is the one that unveils the profound sense of what has to occur and above all, of what has happened. It will be enough to remember that even after the resurrection the apostles still asked Christ if “at this time are you going to restore the Kingdom of Israel” (Acts 1:6). The apostles had not understood the sense of what had happened, and much less the sense of what was going to happen.

By its history, doctrine and espiration³ the work of Christ is definitely Christianity.


C) With all this some primary characteristics of Christianity are firmly established, which we have previously noted in some other occasion⁴.

1) In the first place, the position of Christ and Christianity facing paganism can be reduced to one word: universality. With St. Paul and based on the Holy Spirit, the {92} Jerusalem council takes a position with respect to circumcision, and the presumed necessity of becoming an Israelite before being a Christian. I mention “based on the Holy Spirit” because the decision of the apostles says: “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities...” (Acts 15:28). This paganism covers all the religions of the Empire, particularly the mystery religions.

2) In the second place, in Greece and in the whole Empire they encounter something different, the sophía. I understand by sophía not only epistéme. A Greek never confused epistéme (science) with wisdom. Especially at that time, because it was understood that wisdom was a wisdom for salvation, a wisdom to penetrate into the superior knowledge of this world concerning the divinity. That was precisely what forced Christianity to take a most definite attitude. Christianity was the work of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit illumines. The most natural thing would be to become an illuminist, to believe that the Holy Spirit constantly assists the intelligence of all of the faithful, and therefore, humanity is always susceptible of receiving new revelations. And not only this, because if the Holy Spirit had been sent at that time it means it had not been sent before, and consequently there existed the temptation of amputating from revelation the whole content of the Old Testament. Marcion held this last position. Facing this, naturally, the Church vindicated the whole canon of the Bible, which was not fixed definitely until Trent. Confronting illuminism it declared that revelation was closed. However, it was closed, but not exhausted. They are two different things, as I will indicate further on.

In such a fashion, the work of Christ, by what He did, and by the living tradition in which His apostles and disciples continued His work became a community. As they embodied what they had received from Christ under {93} the direction and internal inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it constituted itself precisely into a religion of universality. Let us understand correctly that it is the case of a historical universality, not a universality directed to the human species, but to concrete men. Starting from the places they were at Palestine and Antioch they were going to teach the rest of mankind what Christ is and what His work is. In the second place, of course, that revelation is something complete and closed.

This religion, which of necessity we must analyze, like any other religion has two great chapters. One refers to the kind of God Christianity preaches and reveals. And the second, what is the position, which from this God, Christianity is going to have before the world. This means a theology and a mundology⁵. We shall not enter into the divisions of mundology now, which we shall take up in due time. Let us begin by trying to find out what is God for Christianity.

At this starting point we must make a few observations. Everything that ultimately concerns God, particularly everything we are going to mention in this chapter, is an absolute mystery. Here mystery does not mean there is no understanding or that it may be impenetrable. It is not a question of jumping into a dark vacuum. Mystery means, in the first place, that if men know it, it is precisely because it belongs to the arcanum of the decisions of the divine will to reveal it to men, and to having made all those things the divinity has made concerning men. Naturally, in this sense everything, even the existence of this glass of water is a mystery, in the sense that it obviously responds in one form or another to a purpose, to an arcane of God.

Yes, but there is or there can be in the mystery a second dimension, which is not only a mystery because it belongs to the arcanum of the will of God, but sometimes it can be {94} a mystery because it cannot not belong to the arcane of the will of God. In this case, obviously, the mystery is absolute, not only by reason of the decision of the divine will, but because of the type of its own object.

That is what concerns the question: what is God? A mystery, and also an absolute one in a double sense. In the first place, because it is a mystery due to its own object. In the second place, because that object cannot be (we shall immediately see why not) absolutely and completely perforated by the intelligence. Let us understand, in the third place, that this does not mean the mystery is obscurity. The mystery often shares that paradoxical condition of a light bulb, which spreads light around, but itself is quite dark and only the light it spreads can return and make clearer that which initially can be presented as dark in the presumed light bulb. What God may be as mystery is, obviously, the darkest that can be given. But that mystery spreads light all around and allows that in one form or another man may be able to return with more clarity towards that very luminous bulb. This reversion is precisely what conceptiveness (Sp. conceptuación) is.

Man, of course, cannot see what God is face to face (that is reserved for the next life), and neither in this world nor in the other can he have an adequate, exhaustive, and formal comprehension of what God is. Not even the human intelligence of Christ can have it because in order to do that one must be God himself. However, between a vision and an exhaustive comprehension there is something different, namely, a conceptiveness. It is the intellective way through which man, of course, does not represent God to himself, but estimates that by extending it towards God it will lead precisely to what He is. And once God is seen that vision of God will ratify in one form or another the road conceptually undertaken towards Him.

{95} We then ask ourselves what is the idea that Christianity has of this God, enveloped that way in his mystery. In order not to ambulate through vagaries let us divide the question into two points:

§ 1. The mystery of God himself, the reality of God in revelation.
§ 2. The human conceptiveness of this mystery.

________________
¹ From this point on we follow the text of the third part of the seminar from 1971.
² Cf. X. Zubiri, The Philosophical problem of the History of Religions (El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones, op. cit., pp. 233ff).
³ [Tr. note: from Sp. espiración, Zubiri neologism, the breath of truth we receive from the Holy Spirit, from Latin spirare]
⁴ Cf. X. Zubiri, The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions (El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones, op. cit., pp. 260ff).
⁵ [Tr. note: From the Spanish mundo, world, mundo-logía, literally, “world-logy”]