The Trinity

Orthodoxy has Proper Trinitarian Theology

"Jesus, our Lord says that he came in order to reveal, or to make known, or to exegete, God the Father to us. We find it throughout the Gospels, but especially in the Gospel of John. Upon becoming a Christian, when I first became Protestant, I discovered that in non-Orthodox Churches there is great confusion about to whom one directs ones prayers. This is because fundamentally the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity are confused, That, we know, comes from the original change of the Creed by the Roman Catholics, that was inherited by the Protestants; the Filioque clause was inserted, changing the understanding of the relationship of the Trinity. Additionally there is such an emphasis upon experiencing Jesus as a "super friend" or even as a "cosmic buddy" that leads to a loss of reverence and awe in worship. I found in contrast the Orthodox Christian Church has a very clearly defined Trinitarian theology, in which essentially worship is directed to God the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. We do pray at times to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, but preeminently the prayers are directed to God the Father. In Orthodox Christianity, the person of God the Father is a source of unity in the Godhead, not the common divine nature shared by the three persons of the Trinity. That's why, in our Nicene Creed, we say, 'I believe in one God, the Father, maker of heaven and earth,' and we do not say, 'I believe in one God the divine nature.' -- Fr. James Bernstein, The Illumined Heart Podcast, Ancient Faith Radio, May 22nd, 2008.

Athenagoras on the Trinity

"So we are not atheists, in that we acknowledge one God, who is uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassible, incomprehensible, and without limit. He is apprehended only by the intellect and the mind, and is surrounded by light, beauty, spirit, and indescribable power. The universe was created and ordered, and is presently sustained, through his Logos... For we acknowledge also a 'Son of God.' Nobody should think it ridiculous that God should have a son. Although the pagan poets, in their fictions, represent the gods as being no better than human beings, we do not think in the same way as they do concerning either God the Father or God the Son. For the Son of God is the Logos of the Father, both in thought and in reality. It was through his action, and after his pattern, that all things were made, in that the Father and Son are one... [The Son] is the first creation of the Father - not meaning that he was brought into existence, in that, from the beginning, God, who is the eternal mind (nous), had the Logos within himself, being eternally of the character of the Logos (logikos). Rather, it is meant that he came forth to be the pattern and motivating power of all physical things... We affirm that the Holy Spirit, who was active in the prophets, is an effluence of God, who flows from him and returns to him, like a beam of the sun." -- Athenagoras the Apologist(c. 133-190), Apologia, X, 1-4

In his defense of the Christian faith against pagan criticism, commonly called Apologia and written circa 177 and addressed to the Roman emperors Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus, Athenagoras sets out the main features of the gospel in a clear and reasonable manner. The early Christians were accused of atheism on account of their refusal to worship the emperor (and Roman gods). In this excerpt, in which Athenagoras explains what Christians believe about God, important anticipations of later thinking on the Trinity can be detected.