Questions from a notebook on the Trinity

[Kronk]

So, not sure if this is the correct category but i saw most Trinity questions here so: I had a lot of questions running through my head at mass today, so I wrote a few down that were more pressing to my faith than the others.

• Was Jesus alive at the start of creation? (all 3 parts of the Trinity present or just the Father?)
• What form is the Father and Holy Spirit? (Jesus is human, is the Father just spirit, what is the holy spirit in the physical sense)
• Is God the Father in control of the other two?
• Is Jesus his own person or is his mind and God’s the same and if not how are they connected?
• How are all 3 persons of the Trinity connected?
• and the obligatory “How is God self-made” question

 

[Wesrock]

• Was Jesus alive at the start of creation? (all 3 parts of the Trinity present or just the Father?)

God is eternally the Trinity. The Trinity is eternal, not temporal. All three persons existed at the start of creation. None of them were created.

• What form is the Father and Holy Spirit? (Jesus is human, is the Father just spirit, what is the holy spirit in the physical sense)

There is no “physical sense” to the Divinity. God is Spirit, and the person of the Son is also united to a human nature.

• Is God the Father in control of the other two?

No. They are one in what they do.

• Is Jesus his own person or is his mind and God’s the same and if not how are they connected?

There is only one Divine mind which belongs to Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The person of Jesus, who is the Divine person of the Son and a man, also has a human mind.

• How are all 3 persons of the Trinity connected?

There is one eternal God who is eternally three persons. He is one being, not three beings. In loose terminology, it may due to think of all three persons being the same “what” but different “whos”. There is no difference between the divine persons besides the distinct relationships that exist between them and that through the Son God assumed a human nature.

Traditional western theology has understood the Son, who is the Word or Logos, to be associated with God’s Intellect. Speculatively, God knows himself and is known by himself. To be the knower and to be known and generated in the Intellect are two opposing relationships, even if the knower and what is known are the same thing. The Holy Spirit, maybe also the Pneuma or Breath, is associated with the procession of God’s willed love for Himself, which is also identical to God and not something different.

Humans can know and love themselves, of course, but speculatively this differs in God in the procession of persons due to God’s Divine Simplicity and his Intellect and Will being identical to his essence. There’s a lot more I could write her, but it’d take up multiple posts to explain these topics deeper.

As a primer and to sum up, God is one being who is three persons, and the procession of the Word is associated with God’s Intellect and the procession of the Holy Spirit with God’s Will.

 

[Wesrock]

• and the obligatory “How is God self-made” question

God is not made. He neither comes into being nor goes out of being. He is the First Principle and unconditioned reality that is the origin of everything else.

Catholic theologians do not profess that “everything has a cause.” We traditionally argue when philosophically demonstrating the need for God that anything that begins to exist, that changes (that needs to be moved from potency to act), that is composite, that is contingent, that is not perfect in degree of possessing the transcendental qualities, that has teleology but isn’t eternal, that doesn’t have an intrinsic sufficient reason for existence, etc… must have a cause. So therefore there must be something which is immutable, which is just pure unactualized actuality, that is Simple, that is necessary, that is perfect in degree of the transcendental qualities, that has its teleology intrinsically, that exists by intrinsic principle. And we demonstrate that there can only be one such thing.

Note: I haven’t presented each of the philosophical arguments mentioned above. I’ve only alluded to the different, common lines of argument you see in philosophy. We have reasons for these premises.

But basically there must be a first principle, an unconditioned reality for there to be anything else. A reality which is both transcendent from creation and immanent in it. You ask a question which may take further study and reflection to grasp.