The Three Faces of God - The Foundation of Integral Prayer

If prayer is communicating and communing with God, we must know who this God is that we are spending time with. Am I praying to a distant cosmic force? A white dove? Do I still talk to Jesus? Do I simply dwell in my own divine being, silently and individually?

Most Christians have been taught a Trinitarian view of God, and the biblical, theological foundation of Integral Prayer is based on the Trinity, but an evolved form. Can the classical Trinity evolve while keeping its foundational truth for Christianity?

Where did we get the idea that God is “Father, Son, and Spirit?”

Let’s begin with the origin of the Christian Trinity. Soon after the resurrection, the first friends of Jesus began giving Jesus the same devotion they gave God. They came to believe Jesus so identified with God that he was God in the flesh. This eventually raised questions such as: Are their two Gods? Are Jesus and God the same? Is Jesus less than God? Such perplexing issues may seem trivial to some today, but among the early Christians, they were of vital importance and the cause of many arguments and divisions.

Therefore, the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated among the early church leaders to clarify the relationship between Jesus and God. Spirit seemed to be a secondary topic with much less controversy. A highly educated man named Tertullian, a leader of the African church, made explaining Christianity to new converts his cause. In the early third century, he gave the first defense of the doctrine of the Trinity explicitly defined as “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

He noted that the majority of the believers in his day did not agree with his doctrine. Indeed, there was a wild variety of theories and beliefs in the early church. Some historians think it was necessary for there to be a common base of beliefs in order to have the explosive growth of early Christianity. Christianity went from some 20 people in the year of Jesus’ death to 3 million people 300 years later, half the Roman Empire. It became the official religion of Rome in 380 CE. Today, Trinitarian Christianity is the largest religious group in the world.

Expanding the Trinity

I believe the Trinity must evolve to make sense of the new realities in today’s more advanced and expansive worldview.

While an early breakthrough in understanding God, the traditional Trinity today has serious limitations. It is patriarchal, making God into a male being. It’s language limits God to the personal. It limits divinity to a closed circle that leaves us out. It makes God seem exceedingly small compared to an infinite cosmos.

Integral Christianity advocates a broader and more inclusive understanding of God than is communicated by the traditional framing the Trinity. This evolved Trinity includes the classical Trinity and, at the same time, transcends its limitations.

Jesus talked about, to, and as God

I reread the Gospels one day with the integral framework in mind that Ken Wilber calls the “Big Three.” These are the three fundamental perspectives about any situation that we all learned back in elementary school: third-person (about), second-person (to), and first-person (as).

After pouring over the Gospels once again, I realized that Jesus related to God in these same three ways. First, he often talked about God. Then, sometimes, he talked to God. And finally, at times, he seemed to talk as God. These are the three perspectives we can have about anything. For instance, I can talk about my partner, to my partner, and if given permission, speak for (or as) my partner.

It was then I had a eureka moment. Jesus not only talked about God, to God, and as God, he said that we can, too! That put together some things for me that were so life changing, that I wrote my next two books about it! Here are these three dynamics, or faces of God.

The Infinite Face of God-Beyond-Us

Behind the God that Jesus talked about was always the awesome Creator of heaven and earth. Moses was told this face of God-Beyond-Us is the I AM of Infinite Being. Paul taught the Infinite Face of God is “one in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Something of this Infinite Face of God-Beyond-Us was always there in the Jewish culture of Jesus’ day, even though the world was seen in a much smaller and more limited way. When Jesus focused on the closeness of a personal, intimate, and loving God, he was bringing this vast, transcendent face of God into a face that could be experienced personally.

However, our understanding of the world today is much bigger. In today’s world, we have the “overview effect.” Astronauts report a cognitive shift in awareness during spaceflight while viewing Earth from outer space.

Astronaut Bob Behnken said, “It is the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, ‘hanging in the void,’ shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere. From space, national boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide people become less important, and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this ‘pale blue dot’ becomes both obvious and imperative.”

At an even larger scale, I am fascinated by the glorious images of the vast cosmos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. When I put myself into them, I experience a little something of the overview effect while contemplating how immense, likely infinite, our universe is.

If the universe is infinite, how can God be greater than infinity? If God is not a being but being itself, then God as Infinite Being and Consciousness holds all things, even infinity itself.

The Intimate Face of God-Beside-Us

Jesus magnificently modeled what the Intimate Face of God looks and feels like. This divine personal presence is pure love. However, not just love in the abstract, but love in the most intimate, dynamic way we first experience it — from a loving mother and father.

Incredibly, he talked to God, calling this personal divine presence by the same name he called his father, Abba (“Daddy” or “Papa” in today’s language). We should note that father was the corporate personality that included mother in Jesus’ day in a way that is not true today. God is beside us as a loving father and mother.

This presence of God, ever since the resurrection, is now also found in the presence of the Living Jesus as Christianity’s originating and defining figure. This is the personal, spiritual presence of Jesus available to anyone at any time. The first Christians began talking with Jesus in his non-physical spirit body immediately after the resurrection, along with countless others have down through the centuries. We can too!

Jesus also found divine guidance and help in two of his spiritual friends, Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. Talking and praying to saintly figures such as Mary began around the third century and was later affirmed by church leaders such as Augustine and Aquinas. Just as they were for Jesus at the Transfiguration, these evolved spiritual beings are available and present for us, and can find a meaningful place in our circle of spiritual helpers. We can engage in conversation, emotional interaction, touch, sensation, vision, and olfactory experience with these spiritual presences.

Jesus not only modeled relating intimately to God, but he taught us to connect with God-Beside-Us.

The Inner Face of God-Being-Us

Jesus so identified with God inwardly, that he acted as God’s hands, feet, and voice to the world around him. He was so united to God that he said he was one with God.

Jesus invites us to that same identification. This is the inner realization that we are all already made in the image and likeness of God, the very first thing the Bible says about us in Genesis.

Early in the book of Matthew, Jesus makes a stunning declaration: “Jesus said to them, ‘You are the light of the world’” (Matt. 5:14). How could others be the light of the world when Jesus was to later say that he was light of the world? This could only be possible if we, along with Jesus, are all the light of the world because we all hold the divine image of God within us.

The writer of 2 Peter 1:4 says that “we are participants in the divine nature.”

Later, the fourth-century bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius and others, declared that “God became Humanity so that Humanity could become God.”

This is God-Being-Us.

The Three Faces of God

God-Beyond-Us is the transpersonal, nontheistic, cosmic face of God that is big enough for our minds, the mystery always inviting us further beyond our understanding.

God-Beside-Us is the intersubjective, personal, and theistic face of God that comes in a myriad of forms (God, Jesus, the saints, nature, a friend, etc.) that is close enough for our hearts.

God-Being-Us is the subjective, mystical, inner face of God, which is called by such names as True Self, Christ Consciousness, Buddha Nature, Enlightened Self, or Divine Self. This is the God us enough for our own deepest identity in our womb.

This expanded, evolved Trinity integrates the traditional Trinity, the masculine and feminine, Jesus’ divinity and our divinity, and the infinite Cosmic Divine, as well as the personal presence of God with us. That is extremely exciting for me!

This evolved Trinity, the Three Faces of God, is an evolved way of understanding God that provides the foundation for the practice and experience of Integral Prayer. Luke will further unfold this as we continue in our series next week.

For further reading, see: Teilhard de Chardin and the Three Faces of God by Paul Smith see https://omegacenter.info/teilhard-three-faces-of-god/

Can the Trinity Evolve?