Explaining The Holy Trinity

[petras52]

The best possible explanation is this:
Think of your self. You have 3 natures. Body, Mind, Spirit. These 3 are equal. One is no more “you” then the other. Lets say your name is Bob. The body is truly and fully Bob. The mind is Bob too. And the spirit is just as much Bob as the others. There are not three “Bob’s” There is one Bob. Fully represented in his entirety in 3 persons.

The problem I have with that example is that in numerous passages in the Bible, Jesus is clearly subservient to his Father…this implies 2 minds and 2 wills…for example, during his agony in the garden before his crucifixion, scripture writes that Jesus prayed to God the Father that He be released from his upcomming burden, yet He also said he would submit to his Father’s will…passages like this just confuse me regarding the nature of the Trinity…I guess that’s why the Church calls it a mystery and as mortals we simply can’t fully understand God’s nature…maybe it all gets clearer after we die…

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Instead of using the word ‘person’, try ‘dynamic’ - One God, of Three equal and complimentary dynamics.

The Father loves the Son,
The Son is loved & returns the love to the Father,
the Holy Spirit is the Love - Of them both, given to each other.

Can the trinity possibly hang and depend on the greatest commandments? When Jesus spent his time on Earth he would have lived by the greatest commandments,

Jesus loves God the Father with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.
Jesus loves each and every one of us as he loves himself.

Does God the Father respond to this love?

God the Father loves God the Son, with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.
God the Father loves each and everyone of us as he loves himself.

Can God the Father or Son love us more than they love themselves?

Can the spirit be the power of God’s love working through the greatest commandments?

This passage links the spirit and the greatest commandments…
1 Samuel 18

1 Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself****

Just some thoughts, blessings

Eric

 

[Brightest_Star]

St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Trinity to the Irish. I always liked that way.

http://freebiefriday.guildcraftinc.com/wp-content/GuildcraftTrinityshamrock-300x273.jpg

I sometimes think of it using myself.
For example: I am mother. I am daughter. And I am soul. I am all these things at the same time. If I am in one situation where I am being a mother that does not mean that the other two ‘me’s’ don’t exist. I will always be a mother, always a daughter, and always be a soul. You can’t separate the three.
I also think of that as more proof that I was made in God’s image.

 

[tonydavies]

Noe of your analogies work very well. This is closest.

One being God comprised of Mind, Will/Word, and Heart. (without turning the description into anthropomorphism of God).

Father is Mind. Son is Will/Word. Holy Spirit is Heart.
In God his Mind is sentient and this is whom we refer to as Father, in God his Will/Word is sentient and this is whom we refer to as Son (Incarnated as Jesus - God made man at a specific place and time in history), and in God his Heart is sentient and whom we refer to as Holy Spirit.

There is relationship between Mind Will and Heart.
God is in relationship within himself which is perfect and equal and complete and when he images himself in his creation we find copies of his nature in it. That is in relationships. The whole of creation is replete with examples of relationships. Gravity. Atoms. Male-female and procreation. Family. Church. The body of Christ.

In humans only our mind has sentience. Our hearts aren’t sentient, though we do tend to seek counsel from our hearts on some matters. Only the human mind is fully sentient, alive ans self-aware.

Each of these; the Mind as Father, Word as Son, Heart as Holy Spirit has personal attributes; that is they think and decide, and will action. That is why when God is described as trinity he is described as being comprised as three persons in one, they each have personal attributes, self-awareness and will etc.

In God all three (Mind, Heart and Will) are self-aware, sentient, and of course equal in authority on all matters.

We were made in God’s image. We have a dim ability to think with our heart. We can will things and express thought in communication. Though we haven’t full cognizance. When we seek counsel from our hearts we try to listen to the response, though the response isn’t as clear as our self-aware minds are.

Anyway I think this best describes the triune nature of God.

 

[tonydavies]

addition

So in summary, God is a being with full sentience in all three essential aspects of being - mind, will and heart.
God is in relationship within himself - that is his mind is in relationship with his heart and his will, his heart in in relationship with his mind and will, and his will is in relationship with his heart and his mind. The relationship is between co-equal aspects of God, each self-aware, co-existing in equal authority, and inter-relating in perfect unity.
That is the full power of God’s creative act is able to generate life to each essential aspect of himself and within himself. God’s mind gives life and sentience to his heart, and his will. God gives himself life. God gives his heart life and his will life. God is alive to himself.

I hope I haven’t lost the simplicity of the description by adding too much detail.

 

[tonydavies]

2nd addition

God’s triune nature comes from God’s eternal generative creative powers. Except God is generating himself. God creates life, he is life. His mind creates thought and this creation is an eternal process, eternally generating forth, and what God generates forth from his mind as thought is equal to himself and is his self and his nature, and God having this creative generative power, this life creative power gives life to his own thoughts, his very thoughts are alive, and having the same essence as the creator is necessarily equal and alive and is sentient.
The same generative process occurs for the heart of God, but why does God have heart or love as an essential aspect of his being? Because in relationship their is an attractive quality, a heart quality, and when Gods mind generates thought and thought is alive and shares the same nature of God, that is divinity then thought as a sentient self-aware entity communicates in return, and this generates heart. So the three essential aspects of being are mind word and heart.
God’s heart shares with the same process that generates self-awareness sentience. God’s nature and creative generative powers give life to the three essential aspects of Being.
In humans the three highest aspects of our being is mind word and heart. In this we are made in God’s image. However we are unable to image God in the perfection of his triune nature. God dissipates his image in creation by splitting creation into recreations of his aspects. When we procreate as male-female and generate life we are reimaging the triune nature of the one God.

 

[tonydavies]

Addition and summary simplification

God is one being.
God is triune in nature.
Father = Mind = creator who is sentient and generates forth eternally
Son = Word = Will = Incarnated Jesus who is sentient
Holy Spirit = Heart = love who is sentient

Mind / Word / Heart = individually sentient, self-aware, thinking, acting in relationship within the one being God.

God’s power gives life to himself - God’s heart, mind and word each individually think, are self-aware, alive, self-determine, make decisions etc.

God is one being with a sentient mind, a sentient heart, and a sentient will.
Because God’s heart, mind and will are sentient, they communicate with each other, they relate to each other as a part of the one being God, they know who they are, they know which ‘part’ they are, yet they also know they are self-aware and distinct and yet a part of the same being God.

 

[East02West]

Well, there’s everybody’s favorite comparison to water, ice and steam, three forms, one substance, but I heard an even better one recently: comparing the Trinity to an apple. An apple has a skin, the “meat” and the core of the apple, three parts that are at the same time one whole, individual thing.

The analogy of the three states of water is a condemned heresy known as modalism…

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Brightest_Star;
For example: I am mother. I am daughter. And I am soul. I am all these things at the same time.

But Jesus is only the Son, he is not the Father, the Father and Son are two. There has to be another way that the Father and Son are ‘one’

Blessings

Eric

 

[hawkeye125646]

A great way to find out about the Trinity is in the old testament… For instance, when the Levitical Priest opened up the Tabernacle, he saw, on his left the Menorah, which was 7 candles lit up… In the middle was the Ark of the covenant. and the Right was the altar with the Bread of the Presence… So, everyday, when the Levitical priest, went into the tabernacle, he was seeing God The Father ( THe Ark of the covenant!) The Son ( The altar, with the Bread of the Presence!) And the Menorah ( The Holy Spirit!)
God loved each and everyone of us, to be a part of the wedding banquet in heaven… He chose the Jewish nation for a very specific reason… I recently finished listening to a great cd called Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, by Dr Brant Pitre… In it, he explains this and so much more… You should really check it out… Very beautiful and well thought out! May God bless you!

 

[jschutzm]

Here are my analogies… as I think an analogy is the best we can hope for.

WATER - 3 forms, but all considered ‘water’ or made of H2O

Ice
water
steam

All 3 are of the same substance and though in different forms are all essentially ‘water’

EGG - 3 parts, but all essentially ‘egg’

Egg Yoke
Egg White
Egg Shell

1 Person - many ‘roles’

I am a Father
I am a Son
I am an Uncle
I am a Coworker
I am a Boss

I am all these things, yet I am just 1 person. They are different aspects of my being, different roles that I fullfill.

Nature - I have but 1 nature, so do my offspring

I have a human nature.
I pass on this nature to my offspring, so they are fully human as well. I can not pass on an animal nature or a plant nature. My child is not ‘son of human’ or only partly human… no, my offspring are FULLY human.

Likewise, God has but 1 nature - Divine, that is… he is the 1 true God. His son is not “son of God” NO. His son shares in his nature and so is fully God as well.

 

[mackbrislawn]

I have to say I don’t fully understand The holy Trinity. I understand that it’s dogma. What I know is that it’s three entities in one being. Hopefully I am saying the truth.

Can someone explain the church’s teaching on the Holy Trinity with a good explanation please?

My background is engineering so I think of the Trinity as in Newton’s laws of motion.

In physics it is said that for every action there is a reaction, that every force has a counterforce. That is, force always exists as a pair–there is no such thing as a force all by itself. That would be like the sound of one hand clapping. For example, when we sit at our desk, our weight pushes on the chair, and, we can feel the chair pushing on us! That is force and counter-force. They are images of one another, and the counter-force of the chair can only do what the force does. They are equal and simultaneous, but, we can also say the force is father to the counter-force, which is the son.

That is the relation between the Father and the Son–neither can be without the other. All force or essence comes from the Father, but the Father must have a Son in order to be a Father. Since He has been the Father from all eternity, the Son has likewise been the Son from all eternity. It is so because of necessity.

But, God is dynamic, He is active, not static as in the above chair example. So the better example is the action/reaction of an accelerating rocket. The action (the Father) cannot exist without the reaction (the Son), but the Son cannot be the reaction unless a corresponding acceleration is produced (the Holy Spirit).

You can see that action/reaction/acceleration—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—all depend on one another. The Father generates the Son, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from that generation. Hence we can say, with the filioque, that the HS proceeds from the Father and the Son.

I think this analogy is orthodox and biblical. It also shows why a solitary figure such as the Watchtower’s Jehovah, or the Muslim’s Allah, cannot be. It is physically impossible.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

jschutzm;
1 Person - many ‘roles’

I am a Father
I am a Son
I am an Uncle
I am a Coworker
I am a Boss

I am all these things, yet I am just 1 person. They are different aspects of my being, different roles that I fullfill.

But you are still one person, Jesus and the Father are two separate beings, just like you and your father are two separate beings, how can you be one with your father?

Likewise, God has but 1 nature - Divine, that is… he is the 1 true God. His son is not “son of God” NO. His son shares in his nature and so is fully God as well.

But Jesus was fully man and fully God, this seems to be two natures.

Blessings

Eric

 

[Eric_Hyom]

mackbrislawn;
But, God is dynamic, He is active, not static as in the above chair example. So the better example is the action/reaction of an accelerating rocket. The action (the Father) cannot exist without the reaction (the Son), but the Son cannot be the reaction unless a corresponding acceleration is produced (the Holy Spirit).

I can drive my car on my own, I don’t need my wife and son with me as passengers

The 'oneness of the Father, Son and Spirit must have a greater meaning than just motion.

Blessings

Eric

 

[jschutzm]

But you are still one person, Jesus and the Father are two separate beings, just like you and your father are two separate beings, how can you be one with your father?

But Jesus was fully man and fully God, this seems to be two natures.

Blessings

Eric

No you are right… All these analogies limp to SOME degree.
I did claim that they were PERFECT analogies… in fact… I tried to indicate the opposite. Only that these analogies helped me understand the trinity better. Not perfectly.

For us human beings, we experience life much differently, therefore we always fail to perfectly understand a triune existence. Simply put – we CAN NOT.

I take all of those analogies, plus the various theological explanations, plus my own understanding and put them together.

For example: the 1 person but many roles analogy helps us to understand that while I am one person… I can be called multiple things. Father, Son, Boss, Citizen, Soldier, Uncle, Husband, etc.
So in that one way we can see that although we call God - Father, Son, Spirit, etc. He is but 1 God.

That’s all - that’s the limit of that particular analogy. The whole point of it. To address why Christians call God by many names, but they are not separate gods like Polytheism. In Polytheism, there is a tendency to treat each role or aspect of God as a separate entity or being.

The “nature” analogy is to also protect against certain heresies that claim that Jesus was a lesser god… only the 'son of " and not TRULY God. OR was an angel or demigod.
It is helpful in illustrating the CONCEPT of a ‘nature’ separate from a being. It is helpful for those who don’t understand what a ‘nature’ is.
That’s as far as that analogy goes.

 

[mackbrislawn]

I can drive my car on my own, I don’t need my wife and son with me as passengers

The 'oneness of the Father, Son and Spirit must have a greater meaning than just motion.

Blessings

Eric

Well, at least you read it!

Okay, you have to have a car in order to drive your car! And you can’t drive your car unless the tires put force on the road, and the road pushes back on the tires and the car accelerates. All conceptually separate, but all equally contributing to one end.

What is greater than motion? “The Spirit of God swept across the face of the deep.” God is motion, dynamism. Without motion the universe would not exist.

 

[Nita]

Two explanations I found very helpful and informative came from previous Trinity threads here on CAF. The first one is brief. The second is quite a bit longer, but very good.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=627359&highlight=Trinity
(** Post #3** by Jim G )
and also
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=598722&highlight=Trinity&page=2
(**Posts 16, 17 and 18 **by Marybeloved)

 

[jochoa]

Can the trinity possibly hang and depend on the greatest commandments? When Jesus spent his time on Earth he would have lived by the greatest commandments,

Jesus loves God the Father with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.
Jesus loves each and every one of us as he loves himself.

Does God the Father respond to this love?

God the Father loves God the Son, with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.
God the Father loves each and everyone of us as he loves himself.

Can God the Father or Son love us more than they love themselves?

Can the spirit be the power of God’s love working through the greatest commandments?

This passage links the spirit and the greatest commandments…
1 Samuel 18

1 Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself****

Just some thoughts, blessings

Eric

My great friend, I encourage you to continue to develop your theology on the Greatest Commandments, as well as your practice of living! Your understandings are excellent and continually basing life on the Greatest Commandments will lead you to understand all the Mysteries of Faith, as well as gain Tremendous amounts of peace and happiness!

I encourage you to ponder one extension: The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Holy Trinity, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit must also be perfect at Loving God with all His/Her heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Recognize that the Holy Spirit is in you, just as it is every person. Recognize that you have the ability to act in oneness with the Holy Spirit (Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love others as yourself). If you could achieve perfection in always doing this, you could be one with the Holy Spirit. Since you would be one with the Holy Spirit, then one could say you were the Holy Spirit for you and the Holy Spirit are one! Since you would have learned to do this by learning from the Son and the Father, then one could say you proceeded from the Father and the Son!

Thank you very much for sharing your understandings! You have added so much joy to my day!

 

[asd72]

The following two books give an in depth explanation, and both can be read online (and downloaded).

“Theology and Sanity” by Frank Sheed, 1947 edition:
www.katapi.org.uk/TandS/ShortContents.html

The pictures certainly weren`t in the original!

Ignatius Press publishes a 1978 edition, but the two are almost the same.
From the Ignatius Press edition back cover:

The second book is “Reality” by Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. Its subtitle is “A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought”. Saint Thomas Aquinas is the Church`s Number 1 Doctor.

www.thesumma.info/reality/index.php

The book can be purchased through Amazon.

Both books are a bit hard-going, but they`re more than worth it, and they cover more than “just” the Blessed Trinity.

The relationship between Christ and His Bride, the Church, and marriage and family life are reflections of the inner Life of God. The Blessed Trinity is the Divine Family.

I would also recommend theology and sanity. It’s very good!

 

[jochoa]

Can someone explain the church’s teaching on the Holy Trinity with a good explanation please?

Excellent question, my friend! Please consider the following concepts:
Catholicism knows God is the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity is 3 co-existing and co-eternal persons in 1 God.
Catholicism also knows Jesus is Fully God. Jesus is 1 person.

Therefore, there must exist perspectives which validate the following: 3 persons in 1 person & 1 person in 3 persons.

To discover it on your own: master, study, live, and breathe the Greatest Commandments, please know there is only extreme amounts of peace and happiness to be gained from doing so.

One method is to consider definitions of a term:
Person, as defined by Merriam-Webster, can validly be defined as ether:
4b. The body of a human being
5. The personality of a human being. Since personality can be synonymous with nature, it can be defined as: the sum of inner forces of an individual.

Therefore, the initial perspectives to validate can become:

1. 3 sums of inner forces (persons) in 1 body of a being (person).
2. 1 sum of inner forces (person) in 3 bodies of a being (persons).

From this post, I have seen plenty of examples which validate both:
3 sums of inner forces in 1 body of a being: Fire, Water, Roles of Living (father, son, brother).
1 sum of inner forces in 3 bodies of a being: Family (Father, Son, and Brother all acting towards same goal in the same manner).

One last concept to consider is the Reasoning for the Holy Trinity: Why is it necessary for the concept to be so complicated? Please consider the following:
Before anything was created, God came to exist as a single living cell that could think, feel, and will, the same exact image and likeness we, both male and female, are created, as well as the same exact image of the Host of the Eucharist. Before God existed as a single living cell, there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
During this time, God had an unbreakable peace and perfect happiness, however, He wanted to experience and share the means to experience a limitless happiness. In order to experience a limitless happiness, He needed three things: 1. free-willed beings who would Love like He Loves to ensure there would eternally be an unbreakable peace with the opportunities to experience limitless happiness. 2a. He had to remain the all-knowing God, who would be capable of delivering perfect judgments on the determination as to who enters the Kingdom of Heaven. 2b. He had to give up knowing everything, in order to experience a limitless happiness in the Kingdom of Heaven. 3. A plan that would reveal to the world the incredible depths of patience and kindness True Love is.
Therefore, at the fullness of time in the planning of creation, the single cell duplicated. The second cell is of the exact same body, but the mind of the initial cell did not carry over. Since the will proceeds from the mind and body, as a full human, the second cell’s will can be both divine and human. And since God needed a plan to reveal to the world the incredible depths of patience and kindness True Love is without sacrificing the free-will of His creations, He had to demonstrate perfect patience and kindness through an unjustly impatient, mean, and cruel Crucifixion. During this act, He revealed His Holy Spirit, but in order to fulfill the fullness of His purpose for creation, He needs a free-willed creation to become eternally one with His Spirit while living on earth.
Then the initial cell ensured His plan to bring free-willed creations to Love as He Loves would work, therefore He thought of all that would happen until one free-willed being would perfectly align his/her spirit with His Spirit. Since the free-willed creation becomes at one with the Spirit of God, it can be stated that s/he is One with the Spirit of God and therefore, is the Spirit of God. Please note, currently I am unable to reason if the third cell was created then or if the third cell is created near the end of time during creation. If the third cell was created at the end of the planning of creation, then the Holy Spirit, as a distinct person, could have literally spoken through the prophets, but since we do not profess to believe the Holy Spirit comes down from Heaven, I cannot declare that.
Therefore, before creation there is the Father (the initial cell, which remains eternally unchanging and is the law-maker and judge), the Son (the second cell, which is the only begotten Son, who is one in body with the Father, through whom all things were made, who comes down from Heaven in creation to become man), and the Holy Spirit, whether already created or not, (the third cell, which has aligned his/her will perfectly with the will of the Father, by becoming at one with the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ).

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.