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The early operas told the tales of the gods and heroes: Jove, Juno, Apollo, Aeneas, and the whole pantheon of Greeks and Romans who made the world what it was then and, in so many ways, still is today. Then opera emerged from the Church music of Italy and we hear references to God, and all his glory.
Hitherto I had not come across an opera that refers to the Holy Trinity: God the Father; God the Son; and God the Holy Ghost. In Sunday school in a dusty hall in a desolate part of Springs, we were taught the credo: I believe in the Holy Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Nobody tried to explain this to us–it was the credo and that is what we were taught to say without thought, analysis, or understanding.
My father once questioned the concept of three gods in one. He asked the priest, who later refused to allow our black servants to my father’s funeral, what it all meant. The priest, no great intellect, answered: “That is what it is. It is a matter of faith. You take it as part of our religion.”
My father was not satisfied with this answer–it always worried him, as did the concept of centripetal force. He did not have the access I have had to education and books to find the answers. Now we know the Holy Trinity was an act of political consensus at the Council of Niceae and the First Council of Constantinople in 382. Or as is stated in Wikipedia:
The Trinity is considered to be a mystery of Christian faith.[6] According to this doctrine, there is only one God in three persons. Each person is God, whole and entire. They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: as the Fourth Lateran Council declared, “it is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds”. While distinct in their relations with one another, they are one in all else. The whole work of creation and grace is a single operation common to all three divine persons, who at the same time operate according to their unique properties, so that all things are from the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.[6] The three persons are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial.
Now you should be persuaded. It is easy: three gods of different origins and responsibilities who are actually one and a magnificent cooperating triumvirate. My father would be impressed.
Of course opera prefers God: one old jewish-like fellow in charge of it all and to be invoked in great music to help in times of distress. Some operas refer to Jesus as saviour; but in a relatively half-hearted fashion.
In America, we prefer Jesus. He is a tangible hero. A good man, of wise philosophy and many great acts. A sort of super politician of the left against the money lenders and the corporate structure–unless you happen to be therein, in which case he is a family man and good for the ruling class. Kind of like Chinese communism: nobody believes it, but it keeps the masses in line, keeps the party powerful, and keep the system profitable.
So it was with great interest that last night I watched a DVD of Tchaikovsky’s final opera Iolanta. Frequently we heard great praise of the Holy Trinity. Not a reference to God or Jesus; only the Trinity. Oh except for the wise physician who invokes Allah to cure the blind Iolanta. Allah is the only one in the opera who actually achieves anything.
During the Soviet era, Iolanta was a favorite opera, but as we are told in a documentary on the DVD, the Soviets cut all reference to Allah and the Holy Trinity. Not sure how they kept the story moving or the emotion high. Probably by referring to Stalin and the Party as the saviours and granters of sight to blind Iolanta.
For Iolanta is a symbol of all societies that deny. She is blind at birth. Her father, the king, decrees that none shall tell her of this or speak of things of sight, including color. Which causes immediate confusion when the courting knight asks her for a red rose, and she confesses she knows not what that is. Thus are societies that deny their citizens full access to knowledge just like our church denied us knowledge of the origins of the trinity, as China denies this blog, and as Stalin censored good Russian opera in the interests of the Party.
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The Trinity is a pagan construct – from Plato I think predating Christianity by 100 years. See Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
I read somewhere that the holy ghost was brought in to placate the guys upset with scrapping the Plato concept of the perfect good or perfect example of reality.
Who knows what rally happened back then?! I think Gibbon is still recognised as one of the main historians of the early church and Rome. He attributes the rise of christianity as one of the main causes for the decine of the Empire so spends some time on it. Of course the “incarnation” was just as divisive as “the trinity”!. Anyway, no one can say it quite like Gibbon, so a few extracts which cover the origins of the trinity:
“The Trinitarian controversy
………..From the age of Constantine to that of Clovis and Theodoric, the temporal interests both of the Romans and barbarians were deeply involved in the theological disputes of Arianism. The historian may therefore be permitted respectfully to withdraw the veil of the sanctuary, and to deduce the progress of reason and faith, of error and passion, from the school of Plato to the decline and fall of the empire.”
“The system of Plato. Before Christ 360.
The genius of Plato, informed by his own meditation or by the traditional knowledge of the priests of Egypt,(11) had ventured to explore the mysterious nature of the Deity.
………Plato to consider the divine nature under the threefold modification – of the first cause, the reason, or The LogosLogos, and the soul or spirit of the universe. His poetical imagination sometimes fixed and animated these metaphysical abstractions; the three archical or original principles were represented in the Platonic system as three Gods, united with each other by a mysterious and ineffable generation; and the Logos was particularly considered under the more accessible character of the Son of an Eternal Father, and the Creator and Governor of he world. Such appear to have been the secret doctrines which were cautiously whispered in the gardens of the Academy; and which, according to the more recent disciples of Plato, could not be perfectly understood till after an assiduous study of thirty years.
Revealed by the Apostle St John, A.D. 97.
The eloquence of Plato, the name of Solomon, the authority of the school of Alexandria, and the consent of the Jews and Greeks, were insufficient to establish the truth of a mysterious doctrine, which might please, but could not satisfy, a rational mind. A prophet, or apostle, inspired by the Deity, can alone exercise a lawful dominion over the faith of mankind: and the theology of Plato might have been for ever confounded with the philosophical visions of the Academy, the Porch, and the Lyccum, if the name and divine attributes of the Logos had not been confirmed by the celestial pen of the last and most sublime of the Evangelists. (20) The Christian Revelation, which was consummated under the reign of Nerva, disclosed to the world the amazing secret, that the LOGOS, who was with God from the beginning, and was God, who had made all things, and for whom all things had been made, was incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth; who had been born of a virgin, and suffered death on the cross. Besides the general design of fixing on a perpetual basis the divine honours of Christ, the most ancient and respectable of the ecclesiastical writers have ascribed to the evangelic theologian a particular intention to confute two opposite heresies, which disturbed the peace of the primitive church