Who is the Other? The Trinity

Who is the Other?

           Originally I taught this section of the course with the questions: “Who are You?” Of course, this would mean I would spend a day and a half explaining that when I ask “who are you?” we are not asking who are you, the students in my classroom, as if the entire unit focuses on people not myself, Patrick Smith. I changed the language about a week or so into the unit. The previous unit focused on who the self is; this unit discusses who the other is. That is, who is everyone other than the self?

Made in the Image and Likeness of a Triune God, Again?

            It is important to recall concepts from the chapter on Christian Anthropology regarding the nature of God and the nature of self. If God is community in the Trinity and if we are made in the image and likeness of God, then we are also made to be in relationship, at least, with God. This chapter explore how it is not enough to be in a personal relationship with God; we must also be in a personal relationship with “the Other”, that is, with other human persons, and we discuss how that relationship, if it is to reflect the relationship God has within the Trinity, it must be characteristically self-giving and humble.

Trinitarian Abbey in Adare, Co. Limerick, Ireland. The Trinity remains the central mystery of Catholic Christianity. The image and likeness of God, we believe, is a relationship so perfect in Love that it is one God. If we are made in this same image and likeness, then we certainly need relationship with self, other, nature, and God. (photo P. Smith).

            God is Love, according to St. John, and that means that God Loves perfectly and is Loved perfectly. The “perfectly” stems from the transcendent nature of God. The capacity with which God Loves and is Loved is not limited; it is a telos at which His rational creation, humanity, should aim. But if God’s Agape is what we say it is, God must have an object of His perfect Love and God must have one who Loves Him perfectly. Since only God can be perfect and Love perfectly, this suggests a community within what we call God, the Trinity.