How to explain the Trinity simply

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Look at the sun

The sun is the Father.
The rays of light are the Son.
The warmth on your face is the Holy Spirit.
 
Salamandrina said:
Me
  • I am a human being
  • I am a daughter
  • I am a soul
    Each are separate, yet each are together as one, me.
(I am many other things(not all nice, but who is)…widow, retired teacher, artist, knitter, various hobbies and occupations which are not part of me, but are things which interest my personality)

(But the core, below, for the sake of trying to explain my comparison)
-I am a human being …but:
  • that person was/is a wife(I still feel like a wife, even though he is gone)
  • That person is also a daughter
  • That person has a soul
  • I am all of these, and yet still one person.
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That’s Modalism/Sabellianism, condemned by Church councils and Popes. The Trinity is not three “modes” of a single person.
dscath said:
The classic explanation is a three circle ven diagram…all three circles intersect as God…0ne is the father one the son, one the Holy Spirit, showing the father is god, but is not the son, nor the Holy Spirit…the son is god, but is not the father nor the Holy Spirit…the Holy Spirit is god, but is not the father nor the son…three persons in one god.
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That’s partialism.

God is absolutely simple.

Understanding the heresies is essential when talking about the Trinity. Because God is incomprehensible, it is often more valuable to teach what God is not together with what he is.
 
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EloyCraft said:
Look at the sun

The sun is the Father.
The rays of light are the Son.
The warmth on your face is the Holy Spirit.
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That’s Arianism, condemned at the first Council of Nicea.
Mac said:
The best analogy I ve heard,

the flame of a candle ,
1)you have the flame its self ,
2) the light that preseeds from it
3) the heat that proceeds from the flame and light.

Each distinct in one flame.

Nor perfect explanation, but helps
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That’s Arianism too.
 
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Salamandrina said:
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A human person is a body and a soul. About the Holy Trinity St. Thomas Aquinas wrote:
Whence as God is absolute primal being, there can be in Him nothing accidental. Neither can He have any essential accidents (as the capability of laughing is an essential accident of man), because such accidents are caused by the constituent principles of the subject. Now there can be nothing caused in God, since He is the first cause. Hence it follows that there is no accident in God (I, q. 3, a. 6, responsum ).
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Definition: accident
That which is not of the essence of something.
(Etym. Latin accidens , a happening; something that is added; chance; nonessential quality; from accidere , to come to pass, happen, befall.)
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Source: Modern Catholic Dictionary
 
Another incomplete, yet human model to consider the Holy Trinity would be identical mono zygotic triplets.

The first zygote generates the second and third identical zygotes. All three are different persons, yet they are identically the same initial being.
 
Mac said:
How so? I always thought it was a good analogy
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The light that emanates from the flame/sun is not the same substance as the flame/sun itself. The same is true of the heat, insofar as the heat is something perceived differently (in truth, the light and heat are part of the same energy spectrum, so they are both the same “substance” so to speak). The flame/sun “creates” the light and heat. This is what the Arian heresy confesses: the Son is of “like” substance as the Father (homoiousios) but the orthodox teaching is that the Son is of the same substance as the Father (homoousios).

Analogies help, but they help to illustrate the heresies, which is an important method in understanding the Trinity (because it’s important to understand what God is not).
 
jochoa said:
Another incomplete, yet human model to consider the Holy Trinity would be identical mono zygotic triplets.

The first zygote generates the second and third identical zygotes. All three are different persons, yet they are identically the same initial being.
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Tritheism. The orthodox teaching is that there is only one God.

The triplets divided from a single zygote, so this is division. There is no division in God.

Then after division, each triplet is its own substance. So we’re now talking about three gods. This is a variant of Arianism: each triplet is of “like” substance to each other (homoiousios), but the orthodox belief is that all three divine Persons are the same substance (homoousios).
 
I used to work on a university campus, where we had Islamic students.

I used to gently proselytize them toward the Christian faith.

Once, one of them said “You Christians have three Gods, but we Islamics have only one God, Allah.”

“No,” I corrected him. "You say “Allah”, like you say “water”.…but we Christians have the chemical formula for “water” which is "H2O."

"A water molecule is made up of three indivisible atoms…that is how the Holy Trinity is…three unified in one."

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

The TRIQUETRA (where three overlapping circles intersect) is a planar representation of the Holy Trinity.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
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porthos11 said:
That’s Arianism, condemned at the first Council of Nicea.
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The light and sun analogy is actually endorsed as an orthodox model of the Son’s relationship with the Father in the Nicene Creed: φῶς ἐκ φωτός phos ek photos (‘light from light’). It was a very common thought experiment (of sorts) in Neo-Platonic thought, and many Church Fhaters utilised the ‘solar emanation’ model to explain Trinitarian relationships.

The problem is that you can’t superimpose our anachronistic scientific understandings of light and the sun (i.e. fusion in the stellar core emits photons) onto this 3rd century analogy. Within their particular worldview, the early Church understood emanated light as having the same substance as that of the source light.
 
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Why do Catholics, who hold that the Trinity is a mystery, and cannot be explained in ‘human terms’ keep trying to explain it?
 
How about this way of wording the Holy Trinity:
God, the Creator of everything, exists as three distinct persons, that are each fully the Creator of everything.
The Father is the Creator of everything.
The Son is the Creator of everything by eternal generation.
The Holy Spirit is the Creator of everything by eternal spiration.

Sure, the identical triplet concept lacks fullness of definition, in particular it does not account for spiration, yet in a truly identical sibling formation concept at the zygote stage, the different persons are the exact same substance. There is no division of substance, even though there is generation of substance.
 
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Though the Trinitarian Mystery cannot be fully explained in ‘human terms’, it can be somewhat understood in ‘divine terms’. Therefore, the goal is greater intimacy with God for the self and others.
 
jochoa said:
Though the Trinitarian Mystery cannot be fully explained in ‘human terms’, it can be somewhat understood in ‘divine terms’. Therefore, the goal is greater intimacy with God for the self and others
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Except if I say the Trinity is like a shamrock, and you say it is a triangle and someone else says it is like a water molecule we are no closer to any understanding. We are just riffing on the concept of ‘three’, which is what ‘trinity’ means. How can repeating the same thing lead to ‘greater intimacy’?
 
Because we’re not gnostics. Mystery means infinitely knowable, not something that can’t be known.
 
With qualification, yes… A Mystery like the Trinity “can’t be known” - unless it is revealed. But the nature of the Triune God can only be comprehended by an infinite intellect, thus it is “infinitely knowable.”

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10662a.htm
 
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I like this diagram. I went to a retreat with Passionist priests and they told us they explained to us that the Trinity goes like this …God is Spirit. Jesus reveals the Mind of God to us. The Holy Spirit reveals the Will of God to us… …
 
I have thought it’s the Father and Son’s constant giving of love to each other that love being the Spirit … so it’s more a relationship of love to which we are all invited into. But I recognise it as unexplainable. That’s the way I picture it… the two persons gazing at each other in love and the Spirit (3rd person) passing between them gathering us up. I also need pictures to understand.
 
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