Best Book's on The Trinity

[TRH1292]

In your opinion, what is the best Catholic book on the doctrine of the Trinity? I prefer something written in the last one hundred years. I am looking for a great Catholic book on the Trinity, and all I currently know of is Karl Rahner’s “Trinity” and I am unsure how entirely orthodox it is.

Thank you.

 

[InternetWoman]

One book I can recommend is:

Understanding the Trinity
By J.P. Arendzen
Sophia Institute Press, 2004

Another is

Theology for Beginners, by Frank Sheed, 1958, Servant Books (latest printing is 1981). There are several chapters about the Trinity that are excellent.

 

[TimothyH]

Theology for Beginners is excellent. It has a very good explanation of the Trinity.

bks6.books.google.com/books?id=WD3ZAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&imgtk=AFLRE71QseHwiwn4Unxn3DwqanYpjayRcED-S7EQ49TpyxhZP-ThloeRKEcewVYlnTEzquN_Za_YGm7jjGKmQ30SEoOa5SZfGhI-MS-mzthiUQON-v_fdr_mF6mr0JflaiiJEuErr-O1

-Tim-

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

THE BIBLE

I’m SO Sorry!
I had to!

​

I have no clue about ‘books’.
I prefer watching debates on
Youtube between Trinitarians
and Unitarians to learn about
the Trinity.

 

[mab23]

I have heard good things about 1 thing is 3, I own it, but have yet to read it, just so many books and not enough time!!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61CfuGVV4iL.SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200.jpg

 

[po18guy]

Handbook of Christian Apologetics, by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli.

 

[thistle]

Theology for Beginners is excellent. It has a very good explanation of the Trinity.

bks6.books.google.com/books?id=WD3ZAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&imgtk=AFLRE71QseHwiwn4Unxn3DwqanYpjayRcED-S7EQ49TpyxhZP-ThloeRKEcewVYlnTEzquN_Za_YGm7jjGKmQ30SEoOa5SZfGhI-MS-mzthiUQON-v_fdr_mF6mr0JflaiiJEuErr-O1

-Tim-

 

[Goya]

I know the OP said he prefers one written in the last 100 years, but I had to mention this classic for the benefit of anyone else tuning in to this thread:

St. Augustine’s treatise: On the Trinity, circa 400-415 AD.

Some reviews:

Jacob Nov 15, 2012 Jacob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fascinating how*** Augustine considers all the previous ways of theorizing the Trinity and then develops an interpretation that harmonizes and includes a little of all of them***. The introduction is just as valuable, because it gives a historical development of the doctrine, beginning with the ways the Hebrews thought of God in the Hebrew Bible, and how this becomes Father, Son, Holy Ghost in the NT. A bit technical and repetitive, as Augustine often is, but his interpretation basically created Trinitarian theology and is still the basis of all subsequent interpretations to the present

…

Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars
How do I review a book like this? It has taken me some time to work through this book, but I have found it essential to understanding later writers, particularly St. Thomas Aquinas. In its own right, it is a wonderful read and an intellectual journey for those seeking to live in the mystery of the triune God. Also essnetial for those seeking to understand the development of Trinitarian thought.

…

Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: historical-theology
The essential work of Christian theology on the Doctrine of the Trinity. Augustine argues that because we are created in God’s image, our selves, our minds, are essentially trinitarian.

…

Jacob Aitken rated it 3 of 5 stars

Augustine’s work on the Trinity truly illustrates the definition of the work “classic”: a book much discussed but never read, either by his adherents or critics. To be fair, even Augustine’s adherents admit his style could be improved–shortening passages and limiting some of the more fanciful exegesis (City of God is notorious in this regard). And as some of his critics point out, if you want a good introduction into Trinitarian thinking, Gregory of Nazianzus (or Basil) is clearer and is writin…more
flag 1 like · like · see review

From: goodreads.com/book/show/785972.The_Trinity

Here is a portal with links to all of the books that comprise the treatise its entirety:

newadvent.org/fathers/1301.htm

 

[Goya]

…and here is a nice little summary of the treatise, from ‘wikiversity’:

Augustine - On the Trinity

His Trinitarian Formulation

***Over against the Greek formulation from Nicea of one essence (ousia), three substances (hypostases), Augustine preferred the expression in Latin which was one essence (essentia), three persons (personae).***

    Gk. hypostasis = Lat. substantia

    A***ugustine said substance cannot properly be predicated of God as if God were something in which accidental properties could subsist.*** From Ex. 3:14, “I AM what I AM,” ***God is more properly called essence than substance.***

N.B. Augustine’s respect for tradition meant that he did not deny the validity of the Nicene formulation, merely that the Latin was more precise.

***The distinction between persons*** according to scripture and tradition (the usual starting place for Augustine) ***lies in causation***. ***The Father is the principle of the Godhead and alone is unoriginate. The Son is both begotten from eternity and sent into the world in time by the Father. The Spirit both proceeds eternally from God and is given temporally to the Church.***

…

    Aristotle had categorized every predicable as either substance or accident. God is immutable, and so it is impossible to predicate any accident of God. Further, God is one, and so it is impossible to predicate any difference of substance in God. In what, then, could the distinction of persons consist?

    Augustine modified Aristotle’s categories by distinguishing the accidental category of relation as temporal from the substantial category of eternal relation.

With this modification, ***Augustine moved beyond the generic analogy favored by the Cappadocians in which the essence of Godhead (ousia) is likened to a secondary substance, i.e., a genus, and the persons of the Trinity (hypostases) are likened to primary substances***, e.g., Peter, James and John are one humanity but three individual subsisting things.

***Augustine gave classic expression to the psychological analogy of the Trinity in which the unity of essence is likened to the rational part of the human soul, composed as it is of “the mind, and the knowledge by which it knows itself, and the love by which it loves itself.”*** (464) to which he compares the persons of the Trinity.

…

    ***This ability requires memory - the metaphysical warehouse in which we not only store sense impressions, but in which we discover things we never knew we knew ***(present illumination vs. Plato’s reminiscence).

    ***It requires intellect (understanding) - the mind’s eye, as it were***, which takes on the form of what it beholds in memory and conceives thought thereby.

    ***It requires will - that which directs the mind’s eye***, as it does the bodily senses, to what it loves and attaches it thereto.

Augustine’s typical dialectic is ***to move from the exterior realities of creation to the interior reality of the human soul where he hoped to encounter God in the image of God, damaged as it is by the fall.*** Further, his dialectic is guided by the particular consideration of what true love is: a trinity of lover, beloved and the love that binds them together into one. (cf. book 8, chapt. 7, p. 260) The dialectic consists of a series of trinities that increasingly approximate the Trinity without ever completely delineating it.

…

    Absolutely no dependence on sensory (name removed by moderator)ut: In reflective thought, the mind is present to itself, knows itself and loves itself. Even when there is no actively self-reflective thought, the mind is present to itself, “hidden in a kind of secret knowledge which is called memory.” (421) ***Self-knowledge is a sort of self-seeing. Though the eye cannot see itself in its entirety, the mind somehow can. “It remains, therefore, that its sight is something belonging to its nature, and the mind is recalled to it when it thinks of itself, not as it were by a movement in space, but by an incorporeal conversion.”*** (421) This thinking-itself reproduces an exact image of the mind, an off-spring so to speak, that is identical to the parent. ***Why does the mind engage in self-reflection? “Behold! the mind seeks to know itself and is inflamed with this desire.”*** (297) The mind always loves itself which means that both mind and thought are bound together by the constant will to reflective knowing.

“But in these three, when the mind knows itself and loves itself, a trinity remains: the mind, love, and knowledge.” (277) “These three, therefore, are in a marvelous manner inseparable from another; and yet each of them is a substance, and all together are one substance or essence, while the terms themselves express a mutual relationship.” (278)

General considerations

…

***As the Father is the principle of the Godhead, the Son receives the Godhead entirely from the Father and so whatever may be said of his substance belongs to him “of God,” e.g., God of God, true light of true light, wisdom of wisdom, and even Word of Word.*** Nevertheless, the terms Word and Wisdom are especially proper to the Son. Also, as the Spirit proceeds from God the Father and as the Son receives everything of the Father, including this procession, the Spirit also proceeds from the Son. No temporal distinction is possible in this eternal procession from Father and Son.

…

***Every action of God ad extra is the action of the Trinity and of each person within it, e.g., creation and redemption***.

en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo/On_The_Trinity