Trinitas Creator Mundi

Abstract

Qince men mould their views about the origin of the world according to their religious hope for salvation, the Christian Church has always interpreted the account of Creation given in Genesis in the light of New Testament doctrine. After the Council of Nicaea had formulated the dogma of the Holy Trinity in the Creed of 325, the threefold God who governs the world in eternity was looked for and found in the stories of the Old Testament. Early Christian commentaries on Genesis are exceedingly numerous, and most of them repeat the same arguments about the part played by the Trinity in the Creation. Chapter I, verse 2 : "Spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas" is taken to be a reference to the Holy Ghost; and verse 26: "Et ait: Faciamus hominem ad imaginem, et similitudinem nostram .," is made to refer to the union of God the Father with God the Son; for the Creator is spoken of in the plural form (which occurs nowhere else). In support of this interpretation the first words of St. John's Gospel were quoted: "In principio erat verbum, et verbum erat apud Deum . . . Omnia per ipsum facta sunt, et sine ipso factum est nihil, quod factum est;" and this completed the argument. It was the threefold God who created man in His likeness and who redeemed him from his Fall through the sacrifice of the Son. Thus the Creation became closely associated with the plan of Salvation, a connection which Pope Gregory the Great summed up in the verse :