The Trinity (12)

While there is much more to be understood about “spirit,” we will move on to explore “person.” All persons are beings, but not all beings are persons. For example, you are one being and one person. But a dog is one being and zero persons. If there can be beings composed of zero persons, and beings composed of one person, why can’t there be a being composed of three persons?

It was Christ Our Lord who revealed that there is companionship within the one divine Nature—not a number of Gods, but three Persons within the one God. As we read the Gospels, we find Our Lord saying something new about God—there are hints and foreshadowing of it in the Old Testament, but certainly no decisive statement. For example, in Deuteronomy 6:4, one finds the Shema, the Jewish expression of monotheism:  "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD." 

It is of note that there are two words in Hebrew for “one.” Yachid means only one while echod means a compound unity or a united one—as in Genesis: "evening and morning… one day" or "husband and wife… one flesh." It is this second word, echod – meaning a unity of beings – that is the word used to speak of God.  So here we see the Old Testament hinting at what Jesus would later reveal as Trinity.

In Christ, Ken.

The Trinity (11)

To have no hold of one’s own upon existence is the most limiting limitation of all and points to the greatest difference between the finite spirit which is our soul and the infinite spirit which is God. Our existence is dependent.  God is existence, is being. We learn this about God when he appeared to Moses in the burning bush. When Moses asked Him His name, God said “I am who am.” This is God’s name for Himself, I AM. That is the primary truth about God. He is, He exists, He is being.

Bishop Robert Barron writes, “You and I are contingent (dependent) in our being in the measure that we eat and drink, breathe, and had parents; a tree is contingent inasmuch as its being is derived from seed, soil, water, etc.; the solar system is contingent because it depends upon gravity and events in the galaxy.  To account for a contingent reality, by definition we have to appeal to an extrinsic cause. But if that cause is itself contingent, we have to proceed further. This process of appealing to contingent causes in order to explain a contingent effect cannot go on indefinitely, for then the effect is never adequately explained. Hence, we must finally come to some reality that is not contingent on anything else, some ground of being whose very nature is to-be. This is precisely what Catholic theology means by “God.””

In Christ, Ken.

The Trinity (10)

God is a spirit. As a first step towards forming a modestly better idea of Him, imagine your body away and think of your soul existing and functioning bodiless; without parts, not occupying space, immortal, knowing, loving, deciding, acting. All these things are true of God. But our soul is not God’s equal, it is only His image. For God is infinite: we are not. God is without limit or boundary or end. Whatever perfection there is, God has it totally.

“Can God make a weight so heavy that He cannot lift it?” asks the unbeliever; thinking he has us cornered. If we say “yes,” then God cannot lift it; if we say “no” then God cannot make it. Our reply is that God can indeed do all things, but a self-contradiction is not a thing. God cannot make a four-sided triangle, because the terms contradict each other: a four-sided triangle is meaningless; it is not a thing at all, it is nothing. A weight that an almighty Being cannot lift is as much a contradiction in terms as a four-sided triangle. It too is nothing. And (to give an old text a new emphasis) nothing is impossible to God.

In Christ, Ken.

The Trinity (9)

The most I – or anyone - can do is to offer a few observations. (From last time)

Think of anything that occupies space, and it must have parts, there must be components which are not the whole of it—the top is not the bottom, the inside is not the outside. If it occupies space at all, be it ever so microscopic, or so infinitesimally submicroscopic, there must be some “spread.” Space is what matter spreads its parts in. But a being with no parts has no spread; space and it have nothing whatever in common; it is space-less; it is superior to the need for space. The trouble is that we find it hard to think of a thing existing if it is not in space.

 

We all know that God is not an old man with a beard (looking rather like Karl Marx, especially when the artist wanted to show God angry). We likely realize, too, that even the somewhat more complex picture of an old man with a long beard, a young man with a short beard, and a dove, bears no resemblance to the Blessed Trinity: it is merely an artist doing his or her best. But getting rid of the pictures is of value only if, in their place, we acquire a more accurate – though still imperfect – idea of God: otherwise we have merely an empty space where the pictures used to hang. 

In Christ, Ken.