In hallways of antiquity, a gathering of men called the Council of Nicaea commenced at the call of Roman Emperor Constantine in 325 CE. Bishops from around the world came together to unravel the mess of conflicting schools of thought and confession: the logistics of the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the relation of Jesus to Father and Spirit. Up until this point, there were few formal means to sort through variant teachings and emerging groups, but church leaders recognized that they were at something of a theological crossroads.

Presenting the most formidable challenge to New Testament teaching was a theologian named Arius of Alexandria. Arius envisioned Christ as superior to creation yet neither fully God nor of one substance with the Father. The Council of Nicaea rejected such thinking. On grounds of Scripture, reason, and historical belief, they acknowledged Christ as the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.”(1) The Council recognized in the affirmations of the earliest Christians (including baptismal creeds that spoke in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) a distinct acknowledgement of Jesus’s divinity. If Jesus was not fully God, of one being with the Father and Spirit, he was not really God at all and to worship him was idolatry. But, if Jesus’s own words were to be weighed, if the extra-biblical writings and the overwhelming affirmations of antiquity were to be taken seriously, then Jesus is indeed Lord, the very Word of God sent from the Father, illumined by the Holy Spirit.

Scriptural distinctions of each of the three Persons were thus affirmed, boldly answering variant teachings of who God is with the trinitarian affirmations of what would become the Nicene Creed, which is still confessed in community in many churches today. Each Person of the Trinity was confessed to have a unique role and relationship to one another and creation—though not without cooperation. For the work of God is not divisible; it is the work of one God who interacts with the world. Jesus was quite clear in his description of the cooperation and interrelatedness of Father, Son, and Spirit in his own life and mission. “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished” (John 5:19-20). Similarly, Jesus spoke of the interrelation of his role with that of the Spirit. “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). In the words of one theologian, “[A]ll of God is involved in everything God does.”(2)

Yet what is it that Christians confess God does? Beyond ancient affirmations and long-uttered creeds, questions may still remain, and rightfully so. Who is this God? What are God’s attributes? And what does it mean for the world? Here, the divine community that exists between Father, Son, and Spirit remains, as it did for the Council of Nicaea, an illuminative source for answers. This community, bonded by love, having created humankind in God’s image, is a living illustration of God’s loving presence and action in the world, a relational reminder of God’s desire to bring all of creation into the life-giving fellowship of the Trinity. Looking into this image of unity in community, we discover more of who God is and what God does. We see qualities of God’s essential nature and action by considering the love and relationship God models in the Trinity.

The attributes of God are therefore clearest when seen as qualities arising from this divine community: grace and holiness, vulnerability and unconquerability, compassion and justness, omnipotent power and omnipotent love, omniscient wisdom and patience, omnipresence and free presence, eternality and glory. All rise from within a divine community with a unity of purpose and a diversity of actions to fulfill that purpose. For who God is is indelibly connected with what God does.

And in the same way, God’s action and identity are intimately bound up with God’s hope for the world. In the Christian view, when you experience certain virtues such as love, truth, beauty, and justice, you are experiencing a taste of God and God’s reign, the heaven for which we were intended and the one who called the heavens into existence. Attempts to explain such virtues and experiences apart from God remain unfounded. Yet for those drawn further into the restorative fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God’s action and attributes become something in which we come to participate, too.

To a creation groaning for glory, adoption, action, and redemption, the unique presence of each Person of the Trinity remains a gift of unfathomable proportions. Confessed centuries long before our own, the life-giving, redemptive relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit continues to take the groans of enslaved creatures and exchange them for the glorious freedom of the children of God.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Excerpt from the Nicene Creed.

(2) Shirley Guthrie quoted in Donald McKim, Introducing the Reformed Faith (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2001), 32.