How to explain the Holy Trinity

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katy_kt

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My question is how to explain the Holy Trinity and who the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is to someone who is not Christian.

About the Holy Spirit, could only a Catholic answer because I heard that other Christian denominations have different views.

God Bless!
Katy
 
This depends on their intellectual ability and their openess to the faith and to learning.
 
  • There is one and only one God: the One who revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
  • A man named Jesus described this one and only one God in the most intimate terms: Jesus called God Abba– “Daddy”.
  • Yet, Jesus said things only God would say and did things only God could do.
  • After laying his life down, Jesus rose from the dead, confirming that God really is his father and he really is God’s son.
  • So we encounter the wonder of wonders: God, whom Jesus called “Father”, reveals that Jesus, his son – the Son of God – *is *God.
  • Father and Son communicate the gift of the Spirit to us, and so we come to believe in another, who with the Father and the Son bear the same name of God.
  • Therefore in God there is the relationship of fatherhood, sonship and the spirit of communion between father and son.
  • But since God is one and only one, God does not merely have this relationship; rather, God *is *relation-- a “One” and an “Other”.
  • This “One” and “Other” are one *in *one another: the Father is *in *the Son, and the Son is *in *the Father and the Spirit is *in *the Father and the Son.
  • Father, Son and Spirit thus “inter-penetrate” one another in giving one to one another and receiving one from one another.
  • The “oneness *in *one another” of Father, Son and Spirit is without limit-- the three are more One than we can ever imagine.
  • The one and only one God is therefore the eternal exchange of the giving of one and the receiving of the other – in communion *with, *by being in communion in.
  • In other words, “God is love” (1 John 4:16).
  • For more information*
    1. Three Persons in One Nature
    2. The dogma of the Holy Trinity
    3. How does the Church express her trinitarian faith?
 
Hi Katy,

My question is how to explain the Holy Trinity and who the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is to someone who is not Christian.

We do not claim to be able to explain the Trinity to ourselves, much less to others. God is infinite. He cannot be explained fully to the human mind.

We know from scripture that God is one. We also know from scripture that there are three distinct persons who are God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We say that there is one nature in God but three distinct persons. This is unfathomable to us.

What makes it unfathomable is that, in the world we know, there is indeed one human nature and millions of persons, but these persons are both distinct and different. In God the three persons are both distinct and identical. There is nothing in one missing from the other.

The way to the Father is through Jesus Christ. It is by presenting Jesus Christ, God, Man, who died and resurrected that we can attract non-Christians.

We can however, ILLUSTRATE the Trinity. St Patrick used the shamrock. One shamrock, three distinct lobes.

The Trinity cannot be compared to an addition (1+1+1) but to a multiplication (1 X 1 X 1).

Another illustration, often used, is the triangle, whose sides are distinct but inseparable one from the other.

Our human thought process can be used as an illustration of the Trinity : mind, ideas, words. Different, but simultaneous.

Finally, we have St.Augustine’s analogy of a lover and a beloved. God is love. There has to be a lover, a beloved and a relationship of love ; these represent the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Verbum
 
Father Horvak: What’s confusing you this week?
Frankie Dunn: Oh, it’s the same old “one God-three God” thing.
Father Horvak: Frankie, most people figure out by kindergarten it’s about faith.
Frankie Dunn: Is it sort of like Snap Crackle and Pop, all rolled into one big box?
Father Horvak: You’re standing outside my church, comparing God to Rice Krispies?

i think this might help
 
As noted above, there are many ways to explain and talk about the Trinity. At the same time, we need to always make it clear to the listener that, ultimately we don’t know the **how **if it. In talking about many such issues that touch on the mysteries of the Personhood of God and of salvation, **how **is a question that sometimes just **cannot **be answered. Indeed, in matters of faith, it is even arguable that we **need **to know how these things work. This is tough for us moderns who mistakenly think that everything can be reduced to tangible scientific proofs to the point if it can’t be proven empirically, it isn’t true.

In the meantime, I’ve found that the *Athanasian Creed *is a good starting point for those who are seeking greater insight into the Trinity and the Incarnation:

ccel.org/creeds/athanasian.creed.html
 
katy_kt said:
About the Holy Spirit, could only a Catholic answer because I heard that other Christian denominations have different views.
Click to expand...
All orthodox Christians believe what Catholics believe about the Holy Spirit: that he is the Second Person of the Trinity, fully God in the same way that God the Father and God the Son (Jesus Christ) are fully God. The Trinity and the Incarnation, in fact, are what seperates Christians from non-Christians, and even those groups that are similar to Christians (Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, “Oneness” Pentecostals), but are not.

Here is an article that may be helpful to you:

The Divine Trinity
rosary-center.org/ll47n3.htm
 
How about us humans? We all have:
  1. A body.
  2. A soul.
  3. A spirit.
Three in one. I hope I am not saying the wrong thing here but it’s my 2 cents worth if it helps at all. 👍
 
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