Holy Trinity or Holy "Quatrinity"?
Martines writes, with regard to the Holy Trinity:
These three persons are in God only relative to their divine operations and one cannot conceive of them in any other way without degrading the Divinity, which is indivisible and cannot in any way have in it different personalities separate from each other. […] If it was possible to admit three distinct persons in the Creator, we would have to admit four instead of three, relating to the quatriple divine essence which you already know of. […] This is why we conceive the impossibility of the Creator being divided in three personal natures.4
It is fairly obvious that Martines didn’t grasp the meaning of ‘persons’ (hypostases), nor of ‘nature’ (or substance) in the dogma of the Holy Trinity. In fact, he unknowingly raised a straw-man, since christian dogma specifically refutes the idea of three different personalities in the Divinity.
So, was Martines really in contradiction with christian dogma, and more specifically, with the Nicene Creed? One word in the previous citation is a key to unlocking what Martines was getting at: quatriple.
I have written about this concept before with regard to the material world, but let’s revisit this central concept. The word quatriple points to the joining of two words, quadruple and triple. Why - or rather how - can 4 and 3 be combined, since this is what Martines seems to be getting at?
In a traditional Martinesist approach, one may represent the Trinity as a triangle, since the Son is begotten by the Father, and the Holy Spirit procedes from the Father.
Yet, God is one, and the
persons (hypostases) of the Trinity are one substance.
One may represent the oneness of God by a point at the
centre of our triangle. Still following a typically
Martinesist approach, what we have here is a trinity
unified by a fourth point which is the source, as it
were, of the three others.
From there, one sees that, in Martines’ words, the
divine essence is quatriple,
i.e. 4-in-3. Moreover, quaternity,
and not trinity, respects God’s oneness. This is
validated through the arithmosophy of 4 since
1+2+3+4=10=1, whereas trinity leads to 6 through 1+2+3
(see Eleazar
Insitute, lesson 2
“Numbers” for the full
explanation). 6, as we have previously
seen, is a material
number.
As heterodox as all this may seem at face value, let us
not forget that throughout orthodox christian theology,
God has been spoken of both as ternary, and as
radically unknowable, infinite, and beyond any
description (e.g. the deus
absconditus of St Thomas Aquinas, no
less). In fact, at least in this regard, Martines was
entirely orthodox. What Martines does here with just
one word, is to combine the immanent trinitarian
understanding of God with the divinity’s radical
transcendance. To my knowledge, such a profound
theology has never been expressed in such a brilliant
way.
1 Le
Mariage de Martines de
Pasqually, Le
Voile d'Isis, 1930
2 Amadou, R.
in Les leçons
de Lyon aux élus coëns: Un cours de martinisme au
XVIIIe siècle, par Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin,
Jean-Jacques du Roy d'Hauterive, Jean-Baptiste.
Première édition complète d'après les manuscrits
originaux (eds Amadou, R. & Amadou, C.) 11
- 200 (Dervy, Paris, 1999)
3 Martines
himself repeatedly attributed his teachings to others
who came before him - his father being one obvious
candidate (see e.g. his Treatise §97)
4
Pasqually, M. d.
Traité sur la
réintégration des êtres dans leur première propriété,
vertu et puissance spirituelle divine
(Diffusion Rosicrucienne,
1995) §182.