Editing Trinity (section)

=== Love ===
Augustine "coupled the doctrine of the Trinity with [[Christian anthropology|anthropology]]. Proceeding from the idea that humans are created by God according to the divine image, he attempted to explain the mystery of the Trinity by uncovering traces of the Trinity in the human personality".<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Stefon |first=Matt |title=Christianity – The Holy Trinity |at=Attempts to define the Trinity |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christianity/The-Holy-Trinity#ref67486 |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |date=10 December 2015}}</ref> The first key of his exegesis is an interpersonal analogy of mutual love. In {{lang|la|[[De trinitate]]}} (399–419) he wrote:

{{blockquote|We are now eager to see whether that most excellent love is proper to the Holy Spirit, and if it is not so, whether the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Trinity itself is love, since we cannot contradict the most certain faith and the most weighty authority of Scripture which says: "God is love".{{efn|name=Augustine1}}{{sfn|Augustine of Hippo|2002|p=25}} }}

One must, therefore, ask if love itself is triune. Augustine found that it is, and consists of "three: the lover, the beloved, and the love".{{efn|name=Augustine2}}{{sfn|Augustine of Hippo|2002|p=26}}

Reaffirming the [[theopaschite formula]] {{lang|la|unus de trinitate passus est carne}} (meaning "One of the Trinity suffered in the flesh"),{{sfn|Pool|2011|p=398}} Thomas Aquinas wrote that Jesus suffered and died as to his human nature, as to his divine nature he could not suffer or die. "But the commandment to suffer clearly pertains to the Son only in His human nature. ... And the way in which Christ was raised up is like the way He suffered and died, that is, in the flesh. For it says in 1 Peter (4:1): 'Christ having suffered in the flesh' ... then, the fact that the Father glorifies, raises up, and exalts the Son does not show that the Son is less than the Father, except in His human nature. For, in the divine nature by which He is equal to the Father."{{sfn|Aquinas|1975|p=91}}

In the 1900s the recovery of a substantially different formula of [[theopaschism]] took place: at least {{lang|la|unus de Trinitate passus est}} (meaning "not only in the flesh").<ref>{{in lang|la}} ''DS'' [http://catho.org/9.php?d=bxo#bew 401] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250120023000/http://www.catho.org/9.php?d=bxo#bew |date=20 January 2025 }} ([[Pope John II]], letter ''Olim quidem'' addressed to the senators of Constantinople, March 534).</ref> More specifically, [[World War II]] had an impact not only on the [[theodicy]] of [[Judaism]] with the [[Holocaust theology]], but also on that of Christianity with a profound rethinking of its [[dogmatic theology]]. Deeply affected by the [[atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|atomic bomb event]],{{sfn|Yewangoe|1987|p=273}} as early as 1946 the [[Lutheran]] theologian [[Kazoh Kitamori]] published ''Theology of the Pain of God'',{{sfn|Kitamori|2005|p=v}} a [[theology of the Cross]] pushed up to the immanent Trinity. This concept was later taken by both [[Reformed churches|Reformed]] and [[Catholic theology]]: in 1971 by [[Jürgen Moltmann]]'s ''The Crucified God''; in the 1972 "Preface to the Second Edition" of his 1969 [[German language|German]] book {{lang|de|italic=yes|Theologie der drei Tage}} (English translation: {{lang|la|italic=yes|[[Mysterium Paschale|The Mystery of Easter]]}}) by [[Hans Urs von Balthasar]], who took a cue from [[Book of Revelation|Revelation]] 13:8 ([[Vulgate]]: {{lang|la|agni qui occisus est ab origine mundi}}, [[NIV]]: "the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world") to explore the "God is love" idea as an "[[eternal super-kenosis]]".{{sfn|von Balthasar|2000|p=vii}} In the words of von Balthasar: "At this point, where the subject undergoing the 'hour' is the Son speaking with the Father, the controversial 'Theopaschist formula' has its proper place: 'One of the Trinity has suffered.' The formula can already be found in [[Gregory Nazianzen]]: 'We needed a&nbsp;... crucified God'."{{sfn|von Balthasar|1992|p=55}} But if theopaschism indicates only a Christological kenosis (or kenotic Christology), instead von Balthasar supports a Trinitarian kenosis:{{sfn|Mobley|2021|p=202}} "The persons of the Trinity constitute themselves as who they are through the very act of pouring themselves out for each other".{{sfn|Dimech|2019|p=103}} This allows to clearly distinguish his idea from [[Subordinationism]].

Furthermore, following the concepts developed by [[Scholasticism]], the underlying question is whether the three Persons of the Trinity can experience [[self-love]] ({{lang|la|amor sui}}), as well as whether for them, with the conciliar dogmatic formulation in terms that today we would call [[ontotheological]], it is possible for [[aseity]] ({{lang|la|[[causa sui]]}}) to be valid. If the Father is not the Son or the Spirit since the generator/begetter is not the generated/begotten nor the generation/generative process and vice versa, and since the lover is neither the beloved nor the love dynamic between them and vice versa. As a response, Christianity has provided an [[oblation|oblative]], sacrificial, martyrizing, crucifying, and precisely kenotic concept of divine ontology.{{sfn|Carson |2000|loc=chpt. 9}}<ref>Also published in {{cite journal |title=On Distorting the Love of God |url=https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/documents/carson/1999_distorting_the_love_of_God.pdf |journal=[[Bibliotheca Sacra]] |volume=156 |issue=January–March 1999 |pages=3–12 |access-date=September 9, 2024 |archive-date=26 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240926062802/https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/documents/carson/1999_distorting_the_love_of_God.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref>