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The Doctrine and
Concept of the Most Holy Trinity
Some doctrines
perplex us more than others. Offhand, we could enumerate the
following:
- The Incarnation (the infinite
God is born of a woman, the Virgin Mary, and takes upon Himself
our finite humanity)
- The Virgin Birth (Mary remained
a virgin before, during, and after the conception and birth of
her Son, Jesus)
- The Immaculate Conception
(Mary's being conceived in her own mother's womb without the
stain of Original Sin)
- Creation ex nihilo (the
creation by God of something out of nothing)
We assent to these dogmas (dogma,
just by the way, is not a four letter word but rather, a
formally revealed truth) although they remain mysteries, that is to
say, they exceed the capacity of reason, while not conflicting with
it. No logical contradiction can be adduced to discredit
them; they simply lie beyond the province of our natural experience
and the limitations inherent in reason (and reason has
limitations: we need only ponder the concepts of infinity, infinite
divisibility, and eternity to name a few).
Among these dogmas, or revealed truths, however, none quite so
perplexes us as the notion of the Most Holy Trinity. That in and of
itself it remains a profound mystery is profoundly true. However,
because it pertains to the most central aspect of our faith as
Catholics and Christians, inasmuch as it pertains to the Person and
nature of God, we attempt to apprehend it in some measure, for only
in knowing something, in knowing of its nature, can we begin to love
it. We do not love what we do not know, and our knowing
defectively or insufficiently results in our loving defectively or
deficiently.
We wish to know God
We wish to know Him well. In fact, we are
convinced and rightly so that the more we know about God,
the more we will find to love in Him, and the more we love, the
greater our own felicity ... especially when that love is requited.
Too often, in the minds of Christians, God is reduced to the Father
only: conceived as an elderly, avuncular figure with a great white
beard Who is rather stern and quite distant; one Who is really very
little involved in the trivial affairs of men, and so sent His Son
instead, and the Son, of course, is less than the Father. What is
more, the Son is more compassionate than this remote and rather
irascible figure that more resembles Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, than
a Father. We like Jesus although we fear His Father. In
fact, for so many, Christian and pagan alike, Jesus was merely a
man, perhaps a wise man, maybe even a prophet of sorts but not
more. Well ... maybe ... but we are not quite sure how. The
Holy Spirit? This faceless Spirit, whatever its nature, clearly
cannot be that of a person, although He nevertheless
figures largely in this mysterious narrative. Quite a conundrum.
Ask quite nearly every adult Catholic who has, over the past 40
years, suffered from the inexcusable negligence in Catechism, or CCD
(Confraternity of Christian Doctrine), as we call it here in America
a negligence that lays at the feet of the Bishops who, opting
for a more visible correctitude in matters social and political,
have defaulted on their primary responsibility as
Teachers of the Faith in their respective dioceses and
the answer is the same, although the inflections vary: "I really
don't know", or, "it is terribly unclear to me."
Many perhaps most will reply that there are three gods, or
that one is superior to the other, or existed prior to the other, or
in fact, that only one is God and the others are something of the
nature of demiurges or lesser gods, possessed of remarkable
abilities, to be sure, but rather like us in every other way.
St. Augustine literally wrote volumes on the subject (De
Trinitate), as did St. Thomas Aquinas and many, many, other
great and learned Saints. Even the the most modest compendium using
the utmost concision will, very likely, avail you little in the way
of understanding the most fundamental features of this doctrine,
this profound mystery* and in failing to yield
understanding in whatever measure, consequently failing to motivate
love for that which is not understood.
The Mystery of God
A "Mystery" many fail to understand
is not something contradictory to logic and reason, but
rather exceeds the limitations of human reasoning and formal
logic, much in the way that "seeing" incommensurably exceeds any
possible description of "what is seen". What I mean is this: being
"color-blind" (actually color-deficient), I have never seen the
color "Purple". I see "Purple" as indistinguishable from "Blue"
but it is not Blue. It is this mysterious visual experience
called (by others) Purple. No matter how many carefully crafted and
descriptive words you may use, no matter how many analogies you may
invoke, none of them will not yield to me the experience of
the color Purple. It is beyond my ken because it beyond my
experience, and all human discourse presumes shared experiences
to their intelligibility. Does purple then not exist because I
cannot understand it, still less perceive it, even while others can?
In a word, no.
Perhaps, then, as it is said, "a picture
(in this case a diagram) is worth a thousand words". So, for the
sake of those who should be teaching and do not, or are
teaching and know little of what they teach but most of all for
the children, we present you a picture in the shameful absence
of words.
Our motivation is simple: if you do not know God, how can you
love Him?
Oh ... yes, ...God does not "look like" the conceptual
drawing ... and we truly fear that we are compelled to say that ...
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