In one of the passages of True Life in God it was Christ speaking:
Be blessed My child, I,
Your Holy Father love you. I am the Holy Trinity
, then He added, You have discerned well. I
discerned while Jesus was saying
I am your Holy Father
, a “triple” Jesus, like those fancy
pictures of one person but made as though they are three, one coming out of the other, all
similar and all three the same.
“I am the Holy Trinity all in one” (11.04.1988)
(Unique,
undivided, one essence, one substance.) If one looks just at the initial statement attributed to
Jesus, one might wonder if He is not identifying Himself with the Father and then with the
entire Trinity. But when one reads on, it is clear He is not.
Christ was trying to teach me the oneness of the Holy Trinity, how the Three Persons are
undivided and so completely one. The oneness of the Trinity comes out not primarily from
the fact that the three persons are undivided (like inseparable friends!) but from the fact that
each one of them possesses the same unique divine nature and are distinguished only by
their mutual relations.
In another passage of the True Life in God, Christ teaches me how the Trinity is recognized in
each of them as One and the same substance:
“…am I not Bountiful? Am I not the highest?
So have confidence for you are in your Father's Arms. I, the Holy Trinity am One and the
Same (substance)…” (25.07.1989).
In order to express this in the way of thinking of the tradition of the Orthodox Church, it may
be useful again to turn to Basil Krivoscheine's book on St Symeon. Here, the words are
expressed in a better way than were I to express them. “God is beyond names. He is Trinity,
yet the One and its Unity cannot be expressed” (p. 284). And from St. Symeon himself:
Whatever multifarious names we call You, You are one being… This one being is a
nature in three hypostases, one Godhead, one God is a single Trinity, not three beings.
And yet the One is three according to hypostases. They are connatural, the one to the
other according to nature, entirely of the same power, the same essence, united
without confusion in a manner that surpasses our understanding. In turn, they are
distinct, separated without separation, three in one and one in three. (Hymn 45. 7-21)
And in another passage of TLIG, Christ insists on Their Divine Oneness:
“I-Am-He-Who-
Saves, I am your Redeemer, I Am the Holy Trinity all in One, I Am the Spirit of Grace…”
(28.07.1989)
Here Jesus was telling me that He is in the Father with the Spirit, likewise the Father and He
are in the Spirit. He, the Son, is and remains co-eternal in the Father, with the Holy Spirit.
We may remember Christ's words: God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship
him in spirit and in truth (John 4, 24). Of vital importance are also St. Paul's words: “…Now
the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2. Cor. 3:17).
One will never find the Father separated from the Son or the Spirit, nor the Son separated
from the Father and the Spirit, nor the Spirit excluded from the union with the one from
whom He proceeds. Thus, the expression of:
“I Am the Holy Trinity all in One,”
and other
expressions in the writing that are similar to this one. Likewise in another passage of TLIG, I
specify:
“The Son is in the Father. They are only one. The Holy Trinity is one and the same:
three Person but a single God: one and three”
(23.11.1987).
I would like to explain especially these two expressions that came often in the writings of
True Life in God. Christ speaks:
“…be one as the Holy Trinity is One and the same”
(10.10.1989)
. Or the other expression:
“Pray that My Fold be one, as I and the Father are
One and the same” (29.03.1989)
.