Understanding the Trinity

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chaunceygardner said:
Thank you for that. You are so right; One God, known in different ways, appearing in different forms, and who knows if there are four, five or ten? Maybe we have been privileged to see only three aspects (or persons) of God. And perhaps not. It is a mystery.

I ask you all: Are we to be a people of laws and doctrines or a people of God?

Paul tells the Galatians this (Ch2:19-20):

Living for God, not according to the “law”, but according to the teachings of Christ now living within us, as Paul goes on to say.

Are we to find God through following a set of rules and voicing adherence to doctrines, or do we find Him by seeking a transformation in our understanding of and relationship with God? In *Romans 12 *Paul says this:

We do not find God in the laws or doctrines of ANY religious body; we find God through transforming ourselves from a person bound by earthly burdens, faults and limitations into a spiritual seeker of God.

You are correct that many of the Saints were wonderful examples of those who broke from the chains of human precepts and lived in the spirit of God. They are a sign to us of where we shall find God’s presence, and a key to truly knowing His will. As Jesus said to those who showed an understanding of this, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”
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*Dear Chauncey,

I could be wrong but I do believe you make some very good points here.

I can speak for myself that growing up I had all the doctrine in the world thrown at me with no real explanation as to how or why they came to be doctrine and then to add to my confusion I had several different rules, spiritualities and theologies thrown in. I tried hard to understand them but what helped me the most in understanding any of it was, in a sense, a complete abandonment of them. I literally fled to the one thing I new in my heart to be true. God’s Unconditional Love and I completely put all my trust into It. Understanding His Love in the limited capacity that I do, instilled a desire and will to share and emulate this same love to the best of my ability. I am not saying doctrines or rules or theologies are wrong I actually believe they can be a tool to help some of us in understanding and sharing in His Mysteries more deeply. But I do believe they are empty words and rules with no meaning and they do us no good if we do not learn to understand God’s Unconditional Love and learn to return and emulate His love first.
I personally found that understanding God’s Unconditional Love and learning to emulate it has helped me to understand Him more than any doctrine or rule ever did.

I still to this day thank God for the few years spent at a church with a very special Priest who was the first person in my life that ever really taught me, through his words and actions, that God is a God of Unconditional Love and I still find myself clinging to It. I believe it is my Salvation.

I do pray some of this makes some sense*.
 
chaunceygardner said:
If God the father and the Second Person of the Trinity always existed (and, I am assuming, the Third Person, the Holy Spirit) aren’t Christians saying there are three Gods? This has always puzzled me. If Jesus was the “Son of God” or the “Second Person” that implies two distinct beings. Wouldn’t it be better to say that the First, Second and Third Persons of the Trinity are different manifestations of the One God?
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Hi chaunceygardner,

I guess you can call them manifastations of the one God, but this manifestations have personhood.
After searchig a lot for information on the Holy Trinity this is how I see it:
First of all, to speak about the life of God you first have to find out who God is. You can fine a lot of information in the Bible that indicates that God doesn’t change for He is not a man, that he loves, has mercy, has always been or existed, in a nutshel, He is eternal and perfect.
Eternal because He doesn’t live in time, time being the speed at which physical, chemical and biological processes happen. So time is just a characteristic of our material universe which He created. There’s no before and after in God, He posesses His life simultaneously, in an instant that never changes, He’s pure act, what He is he has always been, what He does He has always done. Also God is spirit and spirit has no parts, it can’t be divided, so His operations and His essence are the same thing. Since God is a sentient being He must reflect on Himself, know that He exists, have an idea of himself just like us but since we are imperfect, live in time and are made of parts we can’t have a perfect idea of ourselves. I can’t see my whole self, every atom in my body, every thought I have ever had. But God can, He in one look sees Himself, has a perfect idea that reproduces him down to the last detail, all His infinite perfections, and the idea wouldn’t be complete and perfect if it didn’t reproduce His personhood, That image of Himself is the Son. Now the Father can’t help but love infinitely what He sees in that image, here we might have a problem understanding this because we usually don’t think very highly of ourselves but He is perfect, infinitelly good, He is Goodness, Beauty, Love and Perfection Itself. So He reaches out to His Son and His Son reaches out to the Father, what reaches out is Himself, including His personhood, goes through the Son and returns to the Father, that which reaches out is the Holy Spirit.
Thinking of God as one person also raises many metaphysical and phylosophical difficulties:

If God loves, has mercy, and requires glory and He has always been the same, who did He love, had mercy* on and glorified before He created us(a community)?
If He is His own yardstick, there’s nothing but Him. Where then did He get the idea of community in order to create one, if He is not a community Himself? How can God know something or experience something He is not? How can He glorify or be glorified if he can’t do that to Himself? How could He go from being nonrelational to being relational?
The Holy Trinity can do all that, a unipersonal God I don’t know how.

Another thing: if God is the only lovable thing there is, then He can’t love anything but Himself. So how else could He love us if he doesn’t make us in his own image and likeness, what else is there to love but God Himself? That’s why He can’t stop loving us, it would be as if the Father could stop loving the Son.
Anyway, all this sounds nice but I became an atheist even after finding this, I guess I gave too much tought to things instead of trying to experience them myself through love.😊

*Mercy understood not as pity, but as the consideration,respect and proper treatment others deserve.

Continue below…
 
chaunceygardner said:
If God the father and the Second Person of the Trinity always existed (and, I am assuming, the Third Person, the Holy Spirit) aren’t Christians saying there are three Gods? This has always puzzled me. If Jesus was the “Son of God” or the “Second Person” that implies two distinct beings. Wouldn’t it be better to say that the First, Second and Third Persons of the Trinity are different manifestations of the One God?
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Here’s St. John of the Cross speaking about it, not as something he rationalized but as something he experienced:

"the breathing of the air,
  1. This breathing of the air is an ability that the soul states God will give her there in the communication of the Holy Spirit. By his divine breath-like spiration, the Holy Spirit elevates the soul sublimely and informs her and makes her capable of breathing in God the same spiration of love that the Father breathes in the Son and the Son in the Father. This spiration of love is the Holy Spirit himself, who in the Father and the Son breathes out to her in this transformation in order to unite her to himself. There would not be a true and total transformation if the soul were not transformed in the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity in an open and manifest degree.
And this kind of spiration of the Holy Spirit in the soul, by which God transforms her into himself, is so sublime, delicate, and deep a delight that a mortal tongue finds it indescribable, nor can the human intellect, as such, in any way grasp it. Even what comes to pass in the communication given in this temporal transformation is unspeakable, for the soul united and transformed in God breathes out in God to God the very divine spiration that God - she being transformed in him - breathes out in himself to her.
  1. In the transformation that the soul possesses in this life, the same spiration passes from God to the soul and from the soul to God with notable frequency and blissful love, although not in the open and manifest degree proper to the next life. Such I believe was St. Paul’s meaning when he said: Since you are children of God, God sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, calling to the Father [Gal. 4:6]. This is true of the Blessed in the next life and of the perfect in this life according to the ways described.
One should not think it impossible that the soul be capable of so sublime an activity as this breathing in God through participation as God breathes in her. For, granted that God favors her by union with the Most Blessed Trinity, in which she becomes deiform and God through participation :eek:, how could it be incredible that she also understand, know, and love - or better that this be done in her - in the Trinity, together with it, as does the Trinity itself! Yet God accomplishes this in the soul through communication and participation. This is transformation in the three Persons in power and wisdom and love, and thus the soul is like God through this transformation. He created her in his image and likeness that she might attain such resemblance."

“7. O souls, created for these grandeurs and called to them! What are you doing? How are you spending your time? Your aims are base and your possessions miseries! O wretched blindness of your eyes! You are blind to so brilliant a light and deaf to such loud voices because you fail to discern that insofar as you seek eminence and glory you remain miserable, base, ignorant, and unworthy of so many blessings!”

Hope this helps. BTW please forgive my English, it’s not my native language.
 
AmbroseSJ said:
No, WE have not made this a mystery; it IS a sublime mystery that transcends our human understanding. What the Church has done is to codify this mystery in such a way, as to properly understand the mystery (as far as was revealed to us by Jesus in His Gospel) by using certain terminology and phrases, which should be understood in a certain way.

Why did the Church do this? Because without the proper understanding of the terminology and phrases, serious errors, and even heresies will result.

The Athanasian Creed is still the best exposition of the Trinity and of the Incarnation.
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I have read a large number of these answers and notice most state that we are not capable to understand the “mind” of god. However, you state that there are people that understand god. This confuses me.
 
dragon said:
I have read a large number of these answers and notice most state that we are not capable to understand the “mind” of god. However, you state that there are people that understand god. This confuses me.
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I didn’t state that people understand God. I said the Church codified i.e. put in human words, what our understanding of the Trinity should be based on the Revelation of Jesus Christ, and handed down to us by His apostles.

For example, in human words we say God is infinite. But that hardly means we can comprehend infinity. It is just a word attached to a mystery that has a certain meaning, viz; without beginning and without end. That is how I mean the Church has codified the Trinity. We are to understand the Trinity in certain lights, as given to us by Jesus Christ through his teaching of the Apostles, and through Sacred Scripture.
 
I think the confusion is that there is no official church definition of the trinity, this means we each have to come up with our own definition. We can only pray that eventually the church produces an official document that has the correct definition of the trinity. When this happens all confusion will cease.

Cashue
 
Cashue said:
I think the confusion is that there is no official church definition of the trinity, this means we each have to come up with our own definition. We can only pray that eventually the church produces an official document that has the correct definition of the trinity. When this happens all confusion will cease.

Cashue
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You must have missed my post #14 in which I linked to the Athanasian Creed. The Athanasian Creed, is not just Catholic, but for all true Christians. It defines the Trinity and the proper understanding of the Incarnation. It should be well known to all Christians. 😉
 
I have always thought of it using the ancient symbol of Ireland, the Clove. Three leaves are on the plant, but one plant. It is like a Greek dance. The Father and Son and the Holy Spirit. Picture the Dance, three men in a circle. The Father loves the Son, The Son loves the Father, The Love Between them is the Holy Spirit. The dance is danced eternally. The Son took on human form to grant men entry, or communion, into the dance.
 
AmbroseSJ said:
You must have missed my post #14 in which I linked to the Athanasian Creed. The Athanasian Creed, is not just Catholic, but for all true Christians. It defines the Trinity and the proper understanding of the Incarnation. It should be well known to all Christians. 😉
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**Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. **Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all One, the Glory Equal, the Majesty Co-Eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father Uncreate, the Son Uncreate, and the Holy Ghost Uncreate. The Father Incomprehensible, the Son Incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost Incomprehensible. The Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost Eternal and yet they are not Three Eternals but One Eternal. As also there are not Three Uncreated, nor Three Incomprehensibles, but One Uncreated, and One Uncomprehensible. So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not Three Almighties but One Almighty.

So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not Three Gods, but One God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not Three Lords but One Lord. For, like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say, there be Three Gods or Three Lords. The Father is made of none, neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father, and of the Son neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

So there is One Father, not Three Fathers; one Son, not Three Sons; One Holy Ghost, not Three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is afore or after Other, None is greater or less than Another, but the whole Three Persons are Co-eternal together, and Co-equal. So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity.

Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting Salvation, that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man.

God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the substance of His mother, born into the world. Perfect God and Perfect Man, of a reasonable Soul and human Flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His Manhood. Who, although He be God and Man, yet He is not two, but One Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into Flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by Unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one Man, so God and Man is one Christ. Who suffered for our salvation, descended into Hell, rose again the third day from the dead. He ascended into Heaven, He sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty, from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire. This is the Catholic Faith, which except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.

newadvent.org/cathen/02033b.htm

THANK YOU!! I think this wil help people
 
dronald said:
But not each leaf is the plant; that’s why analogies are bad.
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All analogies are flawed, but they can be helpful. For instance, i like the one about water being liquid, gas and solid, yet they are all water. Its flawed, and it looks like the heresy of modalism, but it at least shows that three distinct different encounters with water can appear completely different yet be one and the same. Or the fact that Sun can be like the Father, with the light that proceeds from it being like unto Christ and the warmth from both being like unto the Holy Spirit. It falls far short, but at the same time it can be helpful.
 
The mystery of the Blessed Trinity speaks to our hearts as well as our minds.
I remember one theologian said " Jesus is God’s perfect idea of Himself "
Theres another saying which I like, i.e.
God, the Father breathed ( Holy Spirit ) one Word . That Word was "Jesus "

We are told that " God is love " So before God created everything what or who
was the object of God’s love if God was not a Trinity of Persons ?
 
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