IS CHRIST THE SECOND PERSON OF THE TRINITY?

In God, there is no person, as the idea of a person is a shell covering the human being as a creature, that is, an individuality.

In the early 4th century, with the help and support of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, the persecuted Christians were allowed out of the catacombs, where they lived as adherents of a forbidden religion. Christians began to organize themselves and intellectually analyze their intuitive experience with the dawn of freedom.

The Christian philosophy of the time was Neoplatonism, based in Alexandria; however, the Neoplatonic schools were closed by order of the emperor, for this philosophy, essentially intuitive-mystical, did not favour the constitution of a powerful ecclesiastical hierarchy that would unify the dozens of Christian churches, who clashed within themselves.

Intuitive Platonism was succeeded by analytical Aristotelianism, which since then governed the formation of the hierarchy and gave character to ecclesiastical theology until reaching its culmination in the 13th century, by the prestige of Thomas Aquinas.

In these Aristotelian centuries, the idea of a God, one in nature and three in personalities, was developed. As a result of a mystical vision or experience, Aquinas revoked his entire analytic theology at the end of his life, declaring that it was all "straw."

However, the Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrines continue to this day as the official theology of the church.

Divinity being Reality or Essence itself, no personality distinction makes sense. Clerical theology, however, does not admit this monism that does not exist as a person but has organized a personal monotheism, giving personality to God and distinguishing in it three persons.

Personalistic monotheism is incompatible with the message of Christ – “The Father and I are one, the Father is in me, and I am in the Father... The Father is also in you, and you are in the Father.”

Jesus' view is entirely monistic, not monotheistic; for him, there is only one Essence, which he calls Father, which manifests in many existences, or creatures. After affirming, “The Father and I are one”, he adds, “but the Father is greater than I” as if to say: I, the Christ, am in the Divinity, but I am not the Divinity, for It is infinitely greater than me. Or in philosophical terminology: I, the individual existence, am a manifestation of the Universal Essence, which is greater than any existence; you too are individual existences, embodiments of the unique Essence of Divinity.

The individual manifestation of the Universal Divinity is called by him God. When he was accused of claiming to be God, he did not deny it and added that men were also God, that is, individual manifestations of the Universal Divinity: “You are also gods.”

When Christ Jesus calls himself God, he affirms that he is an individual manifestation of the Divinity. Still, he does not make himself a part or person of the Divinity, just as he does not make men parts or persons of the Divinity. As poets think, no creature is part or spark of Divinity; if Divinity were to split, it would cease unity.

Creatures are just manifestations of Divinity or multiple existences of Essence.

The Universe is the best symbol of the Unique Essence manifested in several existences. For example, one can symbolize Divinity by a thinker and creatures as its thoughts or idea. Thought is a partial manifestation of the thinker, but it cannot be considered a component and detached part of the thinker.

When the infinite Universal Divinity manifests itself in finite quantities, it does not divide but, remaining integral and unchanging, externally manifesting its internal reality.

Christ is not the second person of the Trinity – just as the Holy Spirit is not the third person – as constitutive of the Divinity itself, which is not composed but simple.

The doctrine of a Triune God, born at the beginning of ecclesiastical theology, is convincing proof that the Divinity cannot be analyzed, for all analysis presupposes decomposition since the etymology of the Greek word “analysis” means dissolution. Whoever analyzes God is an atheist.

The supreme Universal Divinity, the Absolute Thesis, can only be known by intuition, experience or intimate conviviality. Everything that can be analyzed thought, spoken is finite. The Infinite cannot be analyzed, thought or expressed in words.

The certainty of God does not come from analysis, from thinking – which certainly happens to man when he becomes inwardly open and receptive to receiving this revelation. “When the disciple is ready, the Master appears.”

From the beginning of the 4th century until the 20th one, the church was dominated by analytical Aristotelianism, especially by Thomas Aquinas; lately, there is a growing prevalence of intuitive Neoplatonism, which was the philosophy of the luminaries of Christianity in the early centuries.

Eastern philosophy also admits three entities in the supreme Deity of Brahman, viz.: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. However, these three entities are not individuals but functions of the Divinity, who reveals itself as Brahma, the Creator; Vishnu the Continuer, and Shiva the Finisher.

In this same monistic sense, three entities can be accepted as functions of the Divinity: The Unique Essence ceaselessly manifests itself as initiating, continuing and consummating existence.

The theological monotheism of the churches is moving closer and closer to philosophical monism, admitting, in addition to the transcendent Divinity, the immanent God. Monism is not pantheism (everything is God), but it can be called panentheism (all in God), which is the belief that God is in all things and that its presence is permanent, although it may change and be dynamic). As Teilhard de Chardin also admits: the unity of the Essence in the diversity of existences. The transcendent Divinity is inaccessible to human intelligence; revealed as the immanent God, it is accessible.

According to the Gospel, Christ is the first and highest emanation of the Divinity, the “only begotten of the Father”, according to John and the “firstborn of all creatures”, according to Paul of Tarsus.

Christ is God, but it is not the Divinity.