God

I've spoken briefly about this with my pastor and it's the question of who we worship. As Trinitarians we believe that God is one being who shares 3 persons. And these 3 persons are as fully God as each other and we say that this doesn't go against monotheism because although they are 3 separate persons who are all fully and equally God they still share a single divine nature/essence. If this is the case then when we say God does that mean, unlike the Muslims or Zoroastrians, we are not talking about a single person but some abstract nature or essence that they all share? When we say God we aren't referring to a person but some unifying characteristics that all 3 persons share and so when we use this term it's somewhat misleading. Also, how does one defend monotheism? Even if they share a essence or nature so do humans. All humans share a single human nature, essence or ousia so how come we also aren't considered one? Also, before anyone @'ts me the early church fathers used this analogy to demonstrate what ousia means. But although I believe it I find it hard to call myself a monotheist since even if they are unified by some abstract concept they are still 3 independent individuals who have a hierarchy and under the subjugation of one and other as well as there being the possibility of one person actually exalting another and crowning him with some high title such as we see in Philippians 2:9-11

How dost one reconcile this?

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Human nature is not one.

"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." - 1 Thess 5:23

Spirit..Soul..Body.

As for the Trinity, it's going to be a mystery while we are here. As the scripture says, we see through a glass darkly.

But those who deny the Trinity deny that they need Christ to know God. It always come down to denying Christ somehow. That was the original controversy sparked by Arius - the dispute on the nature of Christ - the more developed awareness of the Trinity came after this. But the original impetus that alarmed the Church was the diminishing of Christ. And it's still the same today - anyone who denies the Trinity will eventually let it slip out how little they think of Christ.

So instead of trying to wrap your head around the Trinity per se, just think about Christ. Where do you place him? As he asked: "Who do men say that I am?" Answer Christ's question and then you'll know where you stand on the Trinity, whether you understand the details or not.

Spirit Soul and body are what humans are comprised of but more abstractly all humans share a human nature like the 3 person of the trinity share a divine nature. This is how the early church described it and nicea was not concieved to defend monotheism but just to prove that the Son was a part of the same nature as the Father.

John 4:22 says

No, this is not right. You're thinking of "God" as being the name of the shared essence and as being synonymous with "Trinity". You're thinking of God the Trinity as a monad, "God in general", and then God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as a triad, "God in particular". But that is simply some kind of semi-Modalism.
As Trinitarians, we believe that there are 3 types of qualities in God:

- The "essence" is the nature of God, shared by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; it is the set of attributes that defines the nature of "God". The three persons of the Trinity are all "God" like how every person posting in this thread is "human". We share the same nature, the same "set of attributes" that defines "human". But when God is concerned, His essence is absolutely beyond reach, because His essence is not simply an essence among others to be studied or theorized about, but it is super-essential, it is beyond itself, it is the absolute greatest thing imaginable (or rather not imaginable). In that sense, God is infinitely distant from us.

- The "energies" are the attributes of God, and His acts upon the creation, so to speak. The essence is supremely far, but God manifests Himself in His energies (or even "energy" as He is simple). God's energies are the "potential" of His essence, acting upon the world; but because He is God, His energies truly and fully convey His nature, so that it can truly be said about God that He pervades the world and sustains it with His own being, without falling into pantheism (the doctrine that the universe is God). When we say that God's essence and energies are distinct, we do not mean that God does not convey His true nature and divinity to us; or that there is "God in the world" and "God in Heaven". What we mean is that God's grace sustaining the world is truly God Himself, not just God acting through a created intermediary. In that sense, God is supremely near to us.

- The "hypostases" (or persons) is how the essence and energy are "actualized". If "essence" refers to the common attributes, "person" refers to the unique attributes. "Essence" is the nature itself, and "energy" is the potential realization of this nature, but "hypostasis" is how the essence and energy are actually made manifest and existent. Note also that hypostasis is ontologically before essence - for instance, there is no such thing as "humanity" if there isn't a "human" first to actualize it. Likewise, it is incorrect to speak first of God's essence then of God's persons - first of all, there is one God because there is one Father, not because there is one essence.

Orthodox (together with most Eastern Christians) and Catholics (together with most Western Christians) disagree on two things: energy (Catholics would disagree that there is a real distinction between essence and energy in God) and hypostasis (Orthodox would disagree that the hypostatic property of the Holy Spirit is to proceed from the Father and the Son, and would rather say the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone). But either way, I belive that what I said here is agreeable to both, without getting into those details.

So, "God" isn't the essence. "God" is the Father, and the Son is the "Word of God", and the Holy Spirit is the "Spirit of God". But by virtue of coming forth from God the Father, the Son is co-eternal and co-equal with Him, and so He is also fully and really "God", and likewise, the Holy Spirit is fully and really "God". Indeed, if the Son really has to give us the Father's divinity, He must also be God, and if the Spirit is really to lead us to the Son, He must also be God.

So, "God" is not an essence, but a person. And "Trinity" isn't a monad, and certainly not the name of an essence, but the description of the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
There is a reason that the Orthodox consider the New Testament icon of the Trinity to simply be Jesus Christ. In Him we see the Father and from Him we receive the Holy Spirit.

Imagine three persons chopping down a piece of wood.
If these three persons are just swinging the axe at the same time, in co-operation with each other, then this is tritheism - three "persons" (in the English sense of the word, not in the sense of "hypostasis") co-operating in the same movement. Something closer to the confines of orthodoxy exists, called "social trinitarianism", which recognizes that the Father is the arche, that there are 3 consubstantial and co-equal persons, etc. but considers that there are 3 wills in the Trinity.

If these 3 people are doing one single movement, and not three collaborating and equal movements, but turn out to really just have the same body but three heads, this is modalism. It means that you have the one God Who manifests Himself as Father, Son, or Holy Spirit. Something closer to the confines of orthodoxy exists, which is what I criticized in my first post - this idea of "God in general" as "the Trinity" or "the essence" and then "God in particular" as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

A more proper analogy would be that there are 3 distinct persons (and not one person with 3 faces) but 1 single movement common to them (and not 3 movements that coincide). That is what distinguishes the consubstantiality between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to the consubstantiality between Peter, John, and James: unlike the men, the three divine persons have one energy, one will, one act, one "movement" so to speak.
Everything done by God is done by the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. It's not possible to isolate any one of Them. You cannot speak of the Father without also implying the Son and the Holy Spirit, because the Son is begotten of the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and St Irenaeus calls them the two "hands of God" even. You cannot speak of the Son without also implying the Father and the Holy Spirit, because He is the image of the Father and the sender of the Holy Spirit. You cannot speak of the Holy Spirit without also implying the Father and the Son, because He is the Spirit of the Father and the Son, proceeding from the Father and resting on the Son (or proceding from the Son if that's what you like), being the image of the Son.
And this, precisely, is the definition of "Trinity", the tri-unity between the three divine persons which are one God. "Trinity" is to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, what "marriage" is to the husband and wife. It's a description.

There is no subjugation in the Trinity. Jesus was exalted in the same sense that He was lowered - He took upon human nature, and therefore He was lowered; He was glorified in His human nature and returned to the right hand of the Father, and therefore was exalted.
And because Jesus has took on flesh, He has become our High Priest, the "ladder of Jacob" linking heaven and earth, the sole mediator between God and man, because He is both God and man. That is why, in the economy of salvation, there is a "hierarchy" of Father>Son>Holy Spirit: the Father remains unseen and far out of reach, yet the Son becomes incarnate as a man, and He sends us the Holy Spirit, Who remains hidden and hard to grasp yet infinitely close to us, "reeling us" back to the Son and through the Son to the Father, if you will.

On a related note, when Jesus says "not My will but Yours be done", the Fathers undestand this to show the subjugation of Jesus's human will to the one divine will of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rather than the subjugation of the divine will of the Son to the divine will of the Father.
Likewise, the sacrifice of the cross was not to the Father alone, but to the whole Trinity. We say that Jesus was the one being sacrified (as the Lamb), and the one doing the sacrifice (as the High Priest), and the one receiving the sacrifice together with the Father and the Holy Spirit (as the Son).
Or, as it is said in the Liturgy of John Chrysostom:

Oops, didn't see that I supported the essence-energy distinction there.
Look, I know Catholics condemn it as a polytheist heresy. Just disregard that part. That's not my point. My point is that the three divine persons are perfectly one in will and action.

Not OP but thanks a lot for these amazing answer. I'm sure it is a culmination of a lot of things (catechism, reading, participation in liturgical life, talking to your priest, etc) but is there any source you could recommend to gain this kind of understanding? A book or 2 maybe? Thanks man I really appreciate the time and effort put into those answers

My catechism actually says very little about the Trinity… I would say half of it is from prayer and meditating on the scriptures, and half of it is from reading articles written by clergymen.
I do not think that what I said is sufficient and satisfactory, because, again, there is the issue of the procession of the Holy Spirit, and the issue of the essence-energy distinction. I haven't read Aquinas or other post-schism Catholic doctors (I'm Orthodox in case that wasn't obvious) so I can't really take their trinitarian theology into account or approve or condemn it. And I've been called a heretic on here several times before for saying what I said here, too.
But that aside, some ressources:
- Chapters 1 and 2 of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware's "The Orthodox Way" gives a short but satisfactory description of Orthodox Trinitarian theology.
- Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew gave an address where he shows the relationship between essence, energy, and hypostasis: patriarchate.org/environmental-addresses/-/asset_publisher/47ISmr00STje/content/address-of-ecumenical-patriarch-bartholomew-to-the-summit-on-religions-and-conservation-religion-and-nature-the-abrahamic-faiths-concepts-of-creation-
- Although his terminology is extremely basic (and could therefore be read in an Arian way), Father John Behr's article on the Trinity is a good introduction: afkimel.wordpress.com/2013/12/31/john-behr-on-the-trinity/

This is what I mean. When we say God we are not referring to a person but a abstract nature that they all share.

But thanks for everything else it's very enlightening and although I'm a protestant Presbyterian I greatly appreciate what you have said.