The Trinity:..Help a convert understand

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MaryandJoseph

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Let me start by saying that I believe in Everything Holy Mother Church teaches, although I fully admit I may not completely understand everything:o

Now to my issue concerning the Trinity. I am a convert from Atheism(thank you Mother Mary for introducing me to your Son:)) and canNot wrap my mind around how God can be ONE but also be Father-Son-Holy Spirit.

Just when I think I sorta understand, I hear a reading in Mass which says that “God raised Jesus” or that Jesus now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven. To my ears, and please forgive me as I am from an atheist background, it sounds like Two. Now when you “throw” the Holy Spirit into the mix,my head starts to spin.

This side of heaven I know that we cannot fully understand, but this issue kinda shakes my faith a bit. The more I think about the Trinity, the more confused I get, to the point that I no longer reference God in the Trinity. That is NOT acceptable as a faith filled Catholic, but this is where I am at this time.

The analogy of, “I am a wife to my husband, a daughter to my mother and a mom to my sons” does not really help, because even though I am all three of those things, I am still in only one place at a time and the mom part of me does not have a conversation with the wife part of me and so on.

Can anyone help me better understand the Trinity?
 
First off, I highly recommend a book called “Theology for Beginners” by Frank Sheed which discusses this and many others.

God is three persons in one nature.

Person answers the question “Who are you?” Either Father, Son, or Holy Spirit
Nature answers the question “What are you?” All three persons would answer God

The difficulty with this is that there is only one God. That is the mystery to us because it goes beyond anything we know and we can’t seem to wrap our head around that. All three persons Know, Love, and Will with the same “mind” (I use mind for lack of a better word). We can easily see three distinct human persons, but no three human persons have the same mind to Know, Love, and Will.

Some of the confusion in the Bible is that Jesus is both human and God. He has both a human will and a divine will, human knowledge and divine knowledge. Sometimes he speaks from his humanity and sometimes he speaks as God. The Bible states that the Father raised him from the dead, and Jesus says that he will raise himself from the dead. The Father will judge, Jesus will judge. The Father will send the Holy Spirit, and that Jesus will. There is separation in persons, but not in nature.

Consider Jesus final command to the apostles “…baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19) Three persons but one singular name.
 
Some Christians, including well meaning Catholics, mistakenly fall into the heresy of modalism. The analogy you used of having three different roles yet being one person is a heretical (false) understanding of the Blessed Trinity…as I think you rightly realized yourself. The Trinity is not one divine person with three faces or roles. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons. They are three centres of consciousness if you will. The Son prayed to the Father while on earth. The Son died but the Father and the Spirit did not. Jesus told His disciples that He had to ascend back to the Father so that “another” (the Holy Spirit) could come to earth in His place. The three persons are truly distinct.

Yet they are one. You are one being, but you are finite. If three “persons” shared your one being (your body and soul), you would each take a third of that being and thus you would be split into three. It is not so with God. God is infinite, thus the three persons equally and completely share the entire divine substance or being. There are three distinct persons, but they share one being, one substance, completely and perfect. I hope that helps a little.

The liturgy, especially the holy mass, is the prayer of Jesus Christ the Son offered, through His Church, to the Father. You’ll notice that most of our liturgical prayers are directed to God the Father, though we do also sometimes address Our Lord Jesus or the Lord Holy Spirit. The prayer of the Church is first and foremost offered TO the Father THROUGH the Son and IN the Holy Spirit. All prayer and praise and worship is ultimatley directed to the Father, but our offering is only made meaningful through Jesus our eternal high priest…and Christ is present with us, uniting our offering to His, when we, the Church, are in the Holy Spirit.
 
MaryandJoseph said:
Let me start by saying that I believe in Everything Holy Mother Church teaches, although I fully admit I may not completely understand everything:o

Now to my issue concerning the Trinity. I am a convert from Atheism(thank you Mother Mary for introducing me to your Son:)) and canNot wrap my mind around how God can be ONE but also be Father-Son-Holy Spirit.

Just when I think I sorta understand, I hear a reading in Mass which says that “God raised Jesus” or that Jesus now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven. To my ears, and please forgive me as I am from an atheist background, it sounds like Two. Now when you “throw” the Holy Spirit into the mix,my head starts to spin.

This side of heaven I know that we cannot fully understand, but this issue kinda shakes my faith a bit. The more I think about the Trinity, the more confused I get, to the point that I no longer reference God in the Trinity. That is NOT acceptable as a faith filled Catholic, but this is where I am at this time.

The analogy of, “I am a wife to my husband, a daughter to my mother and a mom to my sons” does not really help, because even though I am all three of those things, I am still in only one place at a time and the mom part of me does not have a conversation with the wife part of me and so on.

Can anyone help me better understand the Trinity?
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The Church teaches that it was the Holy Spirit who spoke through the prophets and who guides the Church today. But in the New Testament there are several mentions of the Holy Spirit. At the Baptism of Jesus the Holy Spirit rested on Jesus in the form of a dove. Before Jesus ascended into heaven he told the Apostles that he would send them the Advocate who would lead them to all truth and who would be with the Church until the end of time. When Jesus had ascended into heaven the two angels told the Apostles to return to Jeusalem and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Then the Holy Spirit came upon them in the upper room after forty days and rested upon them in the form of tongues of fire and they were filled with the spirit, and 2,000 were converted that day.

I didn’t look up the Scripture references but you can look in the New Testament for yourself. And of course the mysterys of the Faith cannot really be understood. Can one understand how God created the world out of nothing, can we understand the Incarnation, Transubstantiation, the Resurrection ? Not really. But if Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity can have two natures, why can’t there be three Persons in One God?

Our problem is that we are human, so we understand persons to have one human nature. But with God it is different, with God there are three Persons and one Divine Nature. Each of the Divine Persons possesses the Divine Nature fully. As far as we are concerned the only difference between the Divine Persons is the relationship each has with the other. But they have the same Divine Nature. This is improtant, they do not share this nature, each is fully possessed of the one Divine Nature. Of course there is an inner communication of love between the Three Persons - but that is as far as we can go. And of course, we cannot understand how this is possible. Only God knows his inner nature.

Pax
Linus2nd
 
MaryandJoseph said:
Let me start by saying that I believe in Everything Holy Mother Church teaches, although I fully admit I may not completely understand everything:o

Now to my issue concerning the Trinity. I am a convert from Atheism(thank you Mother Mary for introducing me to your Son:)) and canNot wrap my mind around how God can be ONE but also be Father-Son-Holy Spirit.

Just when I think I sorta understand, I hear a reading in Mass which says that “God raised Jesus” or that Jesus now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven. To my ears, and please forgive me as I am from an atheist background, it sounds like Two. Now when you “throw” the Holy Spirit into the mix,my head starts to spin.

This side of heaven I know that we cannot fully understand, but this issue kinda shakes my faith a bit. The more I think about the Trinity, the more confused I get, to the point that I no longer reference God in the Trinity. That is NOT acceptable as a faith filled Catholic, but this is where I am at this time.

The analogy of, “I am a wife to my husband, a daughter to my mother and a mom to my sons” does not really help, because even though I am all three of those things, I am still in only one place at a time and the mom part of me does not have a conversation with the wife part of me and so on.

Can anyone help me better understand the Trinity?
Click to expand...
Augustine and the Seashell

He was walking by the seashore one day contemplating and trying to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity when he saw a small boy running back and forth from the water to a spot on the seashore. The boy was using a sea shell to carry the water from the ocean and place it into a small hole in the sand.

The Bishop of Hippo approached him and asked, “My boy, what are doing?”

“I am trying to bring all the sea into this hole,” the boy replied with a sweet smile.

“But that is impossible, my dear child, the hole cannot contain all that water” said Augustine.

The boy paused in his work, stood up, looked into the eyes of the Saint, and replied, “It is no more impossible than what you are trying to do – comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your small intelligence.”

The Saint was absorbed by such a keen response from that child, and turned his eyes from him for a short while. When he glanced down to ask him something else, the boy had vanished.

traditioninaction.org/religious/h065rp.Shell.html
 
The Trinity is not something readily explainable. We are taught it is a mystery. A very simplistic analogy might be something like water in its various forms. Frozen water is ice, steam is like a gas/vapor form and then there’s the liquid form - so three different forms but it’s all still the same thing - water.
 
Thank you all for responding to my question(problem).

As a lover of books, I will get Frank Sheed’s book Theology for Beginners, the title alone describes me…a Beginner:p

TWF,I truly did not realize that the analogy I presented was a heresy, that was the analogy given to us in RCIA by the director. Thank you for pointing this out to me.

With so many questions, I often turn to our Lady via the Rosary to help me understand, but this One question just seems to allude me in understanding.

The Holy Eucharist?..Believed from almost day one:thumbsup:
Immaculate Conception? Believed from almost day one:thumbsup:
All Mary dogma?..again, Believed from almost day one:thumbsup:

Its just the Trinity that has caused such unrest with me.

I will watch the video (when my dial-up always that is:mad:) and will head to my local book store to purchase the recommended book.

Could my doubts concerning the Trinity be “planted” there from the evil one?

I will just keep praying for better understanding, or at least the ability to just accept by faith what is impossible to understand this side of heaven.
 
MaryandJoseph said:
Let me start by saying that I believe in Everything Holy Mother Church teaches, although I fully admit I may not completely understand everything:o

Now to my issue concerning the Trinity. I am a convert from Atheism(thank you Mother Mary for introducing me to your Son:)) and canNot wrap my mind around how God can be ONE but also be Father-Son-Holy Spirit.

Just when I think I sorta understand, I hear a reading in Mass which says that “God raised Jesus” or that Jesus now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven. To my ears, and please forgive me as I am from an atheist background, it sounds like Two. Now when you “throw” the Holy Spirit into the mix,my head starts to spin.

This side of heaven I know that we cannot fully understand, but this issue kinda shakes my faith a bit. The more I think about the Trinity, the more confused I get, to the point that I no longer reference God in the Trinity. That is NOT acceptable as a faith filled Catholic, but this is where I am at this time.

The analogy of, “I am a wife to my husband, a daughter to my mother and a mom to my sons” does not really help, because even though I am all three of those things, I am still in only one place at a time and the mom part of me does not have a conversation with the wife part of me and so on.

Can anyone help me better understand the Trinity?
Click to expand...
You’re a trinity in yourself - mind, body, spirit. When your body dies, your mind and spirit will continue on, and provided you get to heaven, you’ll be given a new body.

However despite this Trinitarian aspect to your nature, there’s no division between them - they act as “one” so that you’re only aware of being “I” or you. But when the time comes for the separation of your mind and spirit from your body, you’ll be aware then of the division.

I think in a similar way, the Trinity is so closely bound together that to all intents and purposes they act as “One”.

John 5:19 NIV
Jesus gave them this answer: "Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
Click to expand...
 
You might look at a happy married couple, their love and closeness might be described as ‘one’. You could look at another married couple who are always arguing and fighting, and they would not appear as ‘one’.
 
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