Heathen Banding - Holy Trinity

Here we are, on the day of the Feast of the holy and undivided Trinity itself, so how to make sense of it all, how can God be three persons in one divine nature? 

Well, you couldn't make it up, especially if you wanted to start a religion and make some loot and that, for me, is a powerful proof of the revealed nature of the thing, its veracity.

Regardless, perhaps Frank Sheed lifts us up to the brink of mystery. From Theology For Beginners (do yourself a favor and get one, it's free): 

So God utters a word – not framed by the mouth, of course, for God has no mouth. He is pure spirit. So it is a word in the mind of God, not sounding outwardly as our words sound, akin rather to a thought or an idea. What idea produced in God’s mind could possibly be God? Christian thinking saw early that it could be only the idea God has of himself.

…the idea that God has of himself cannot be imperfect. Whatever is in the Father must be in his idea of himself, and must be exactly the same as it is in himself. Otherwise God would have an inadequate idea of himself, which would be nonsense. Thus, because God is infinite, eternal, all-powerful, his idea of himself is infinite, eternal, all-powerful. Because God is God, his idea is God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God.”

…Father and Son love each other, with infinite intensity. What we could not know, if it were not revealed to us, is that they unite to express their love and that the expression is a third divine person. In the Son, the Father utters his self-knowledge; in the Holy Spirit, Father and Son utter their mutual love.

Their love is infinite; its expression cannot be less, Infinite love does not produce itself finitely; it can no more produce inadequate expression than infinite knowledge can produce an inadequate idea. Each gives himself wholly to the outpouring of his love for the other, holding nothing back – indeed the very thought of holding back is ridiculous; if they give themselves at all, they can give themselves only totally – they possess nothing but their totality! The uttered love of Father and Son is infinite, lacks no perfection that they have, is God, a person, someone.

Make of this what you will but be very sure you don't go against it. That way leads to madness and destruction.  

In the meanwhile, heathen banding on the wall, if we could be bothered to build it. Chop, chop.

Your Friend,

LSP

Listen Up, Heathen, It's The Trinity

If, like Mohammad, you decided to make up a religion for profit, power and gain, you wouldn't come up with the Trinity. Three Persons, one God isn't the kind a thing a huckster would pitch to his mug punters, it's too difficult. And therein lies one of the arguments for the revealed truth of Christianity. That said, how can we make sense of it? Frank Sheed, in Theology and Sanity, explains Thomas Aquinas' reasoning with clarity.

Starting from the infinite knowledge of God, Sheed makes the point that such knowledge must have a commensurate object that is also infinite. God's knowledge must therefore be self-knowledge and this concept or idea is the Son or Word. He advises the "beginner" to study the following "minutely":

An idea is, so far as we can make it so, the mental double or image of the object we are contemplating; it expresses as much of that object as we can manage to get into it. Because of the limitation of our powers, the idea we form is never the perfect double or image, never totally expresses the object, in plain words is never totally adequate. But if God does, as we know from Himself that He does, generate an idea of Himself, this idea must be totally adequate, in no way less than the Being of which it is the Idea, lacking nothing that that Being has. 

The Idea must contain all the perfection of the Being of which it is the Idea. There can be nothing in the Thinker that is not in His Thought of Himself, otherwise the Thinker would be thinking of Himself inadequately, which is impossible for the Infinite.

Thus the Idea, the Word that God generates, is Infinite, Eternal, Living, a Person, equal in all things to Him Who generates It. Someone as He is, conscious of Himself as He is, God as He is.

So we see the Son, begotten from the infinite knowledge of the Father and as with knowledge, likewise with love. Father and Son combine in an infinite act of love which produces a perfect state of "Lovingness" which has all that they have.

To a point the two "processions" are parallel. The First Person knows Himself; His act of knowing Himself produces an Idea, a Word; and this Idea, this Word, the perfect Image of Himself, is the Second Person. The First Person and the Second combine in an act of love of one another, love of the glory of the Godhead which is their own; and just as the act of knowing produces an Idea within the Divine Nature, the act of loving produces a state of Lovingness within the Divine Nature.

Into this Lovingness, Father and Son pour all that They have and all that They are, with no diminution, nothing held back. Thus this Lovingness within the Godhead is utterly equal to the Father and the Son, for They have poured Their all into it. There is nothing They have which Their Lovingness does not have. Thus Their Lovingness too is Infinite, Eternal, Living, Someone, a Person, God. 

Observe that here again we are still within the Divine Nature. For love is wholly within the nature of the lover.

But this love wholly contains the divine Nature, because God puts the whole of Himself into love.

Complicated? No, it's not so much that as so simple it's not easy, but whoever said life would be? Thank you, Frank Sheed, for explaining the Angelic Doctor so clearly. 

You can read the whole thing here.

God bless,

LSP