On Relating to the Persons of the Trinity

Abstract

I THEIR book Prayer and Temperament, Chester P. Michael and Marie C. Norrisey suggest for people of one sort of temperament that they endeavor to create a good, loving relationship with each person of the Trinity. Is this advice theologically valid for anyone of any temperament? Does not an understanding of the spiritual life as developing relationships with each person of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—imply tritheism, the existence of three gods, clearly a heresy? Or must the spiritual life be conceived as cultivating a single relationship to a God who is mysterious, essentially unknown to us, or if essentially known, ever dark to us in the abyss of the divine being, even after revelation? Since, moreover, a variety of Trinitarian theologies are proposed today, should we not envision the spiritual life simply as nurturing a relationship to a mysterious God? But is not relating to one mysterious God practically choosing an unchristian monotheism? Or, if not that, is it not relating to an abstraction? There is, after all, no Christian God who is not somehow Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In their distinctness they should be taken into account in a spiritual life engaging the Christian God. Is this account adequately taken, however, by one God who manifests self in three distinct ways but is, apart from creation, a solitary God absorbed in selfcontemplation and self-love? It may be said that this one God creates and so shares with others. But then is that creative act free or is it required in order to escape aloneness and self-absorption? If required, can this be the Christian God who creates, not compelled out of need,