A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity – The Symbola
- THE SYMBOLA
The trinitarian drama of redemption (as distinct from the intellectual conception of it) burst upon the world scene at the beginning of a new era, amid complete unconsciousness of its resuscitation from the past.
Leaving aside the so-called prefigurations in the Old Testament, there is not a single passage in the New Testament where the Trinity is formulated in an intellectually comprehensible manner.
Generally speaking, it is more a question of formulae for triple benediction, such as the end of the second epistle to the Corinthians:
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all,” or the beginning of the first epistle of Peter: “. . . chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood,” 3 or Jude 20—21.
Another passage cited in favour of the Trinity is I Corinthians 12:4-6, but this only gives the emphatic assurance that the Spirit is one (repeated
in Ephesians 4:4-6), and may be taken more as an incantation against polytheism and polydemonism than an assertion of the Trinity.
Triadic formulae were also current in the post-apostolic epoch.
Thus Clement says in his first letter (46:6): “. . . Have we not one God, and one Christ, and one Spirit . . .” 4 Epiphanius even reports that Christ taught his disciples that “the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are the same.” 5
Epiphanius took this passage from the apocryphal “Gospel according to the Egyptians,” of which unfortunately only fragments are preserved. The formula is significant insofar as it provides a definite starting-point for a “modalistic” concept of the Trinity.
209 Now the important point is not that the New Testament contains
no trinitarian formulae, but that we find in i t three figures
who are reciprocally related to one another: the Father, the
Son, begotten through the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost.
Since olden times, formulae for benediction, all solemn agreements,
occasions, attributes, etc. have had a magical, threefold
character (e.g., the Trishagion).7 Although they are no evidence
for the T r i n i t y in the New Testament, they nevertheless occur
and, like the three divine Persons, are clear indications of an
active archetype operating beneath the surface and throwing u p
triadic formations.
This proves that the trinitarian archetype is already at work in the New Testament, for what comes after is largely the result of what has gone before, a proposition which is especially apposite when, as in the case of the Trinity, we are confronted with the effects of an unconscious content or archetype.
From the creeds to be discussed later, we shall see that at the synods of the Fathers the New Testament allusions to the divine trio were developed in a thoroughly consistent manner until the homoousia was restored, which again happened unconsciously, since the Fathers knew nothing of the ancient
Egyptian model that had already reached the homoousian level.
The after-effects on posterity were inevitable consequences of the trinitarian anticipations that were abroad in the early days of Christianity, and are nothing but amplifications of the constellated archetype.
These amplifications, so far as they were naive and unprejudiced, are direct proof that what the New Testament is alluding to is in fact the Trinity, as the Church also believes.
Since people did not actually know what it was that had so suddenly revealed itself in the “Son of Man,” but only believed the current interpretations, the effects it had over the centuries signify nothing less than the gradual unfolding of the archetype in man’s consciousness, or rather, its absorption into the pattern of ideas transmitted by the cultures of antiquity.
From this historical echo it is possible to recognize what had revealed itself
in a sudden flash of illumination and seized upon men’s minds, even though the event, when it happened, was so far beyond their comprehension that they were unable to put it into a clear formula. Before “revealed” contents can be sorted out and properly formulated, time and distance are needed.
The results of this intellectual activity were deposited in a series of tenets, the dogmata, which were then summed up in the “symbolum” or creed.
This breviary of belief well deserves the name “symbolum,” for, from a psychological point of view, it gives symbolical expression to, and paints an anthropomorphic picture of, a transcendent fact that cannot be demonstrated or explained rationally, the word “transcendent” being used here in a strictly psychological sense.9
The first of these summaries was attempted fairly early, if
tradition may be relied on. St. Ambrose, for instance, reports that the confession used at baptism in the church of Milan originated with the twelve apostles.10 This creed of the old Church is therefore known as the Apostles’ Creed. As established in the fourth century, it ran:
I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ his only
begotten Son our Lord, who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, buried, and on the third day rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
And [I believe] in the Holy Ghost, the holy Church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the flesh.
This creed is still entirely on the level of the gospels and epistles: there are three divine figures, and they do not in any way contradict the one God. Here the Trinity is not explicit, but exists latently, just as Clement’s second letter says of the pre-existent Church: “It was spiritually there.” Even in the very
early days of Christianity it was accepted that Christ as Logos was God himself (John 1:1).
For Paul he is pre-existent in God’s form, as is clear from the famous “kenosis” passage in Philippians 2 :6 (AV): “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (TO elvai iaa deep — esse se
aequalem Deo).
There are also passages in the letters where the author confuses Christ with the Holy Ghost, or where the three are seen as one, as in II Corinthians 3:17 (DV): “Now the Lord is the spirit” (6 8e nvpios TO irvevna kvTiv = Dominus autem spiritus est).
When the next verse speaks of the “glory of the Lord” (56£a mpiov = gloria Domini), “Lord” seems to refer to Christ But if you read the whole passage, from verses 7 to 18, it is evident that the “glory” refers equally to God, thus proving the promiscuity of the three figures and their latent Trinity. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 207-212
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