SHJIHM :: The Blessed Trinity :: Conceptions of the Trinity ~ Runboard
"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church, which is, of course, quite a different thing." -Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Placating terrorists, meeting with dictators, compassion for murderers... but no humanity for the unborn... incredible.
OOT
I'd like to work through this idea and formulate it in an acceptable way- could we work through this sentence by sentence?
I'd start by saying
There is God, unfathomable spiritual essence (substance?), simple and unlimited
Could we not as well see God's essence as the Holy Spirit? God is the Trinity and as such is unfathomable as God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I believe that when we try to formulate or equate the Trinity with fathomable thinkings, we unwittingly separate God from the Son and Holy Spirit. If God is anything, (spiritual essence), then so is the Son, and Holy Spirit.
--- "My Sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.
Could we not as well see God's essence as the Holy Spirit? God is the Trinity and as such is unfathomable as God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I believe that when we try to formulate or equate the Trinity with fathomable thinkings, we unwittingly separate God from the Son and Holy Spirit. If God is anything, (spiritual essence), then so is the Son, and Holy Spirit.
I see, yes, this is a tough nut and beyond human thought. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one substance, one God, simple and unlimited.
How about if I go to here:
The Father, contemplating Himself after a fashion, brings forth the Son, not by procession, not made, but begotten by the Father as the intellectual soul brings forth thought; the Son of the same spiritual substance as the Father, immaterial, coeternal, united, in all and through all...
Am I near St. Augustine's formulation, or am I getting too neo-Platonic?
Re: Conceptions of the Trinity Just today I've found this concept explained very well in St Bonaventure's Itinerarium:
"1... Hence you can observe, not with the bodily eye, but with the eye of the mind, that your soul has three powers. Consider, therefore, the activities of these three powers and their relationships, and you will be able to see God through yourself as through an image; and this indeed is to see through a mirror in an obscure manner.
"4... See, therefore, how close the soul is to God, and how, through their activity, the memory leads us to eternity, the intelligence to Truth, and the elective faculty to the highest Good.
"5. Moreover, if one considers the order, the origin, and the relationship of these faculties to one another, he is led up to the most blessed Trinity Itself. For from the memory comes forth the intelligence as its offspring, because we understand only when the likeness which is in the memory emerges at the crest of our understanding and this is the mental word. From the memory and the intelligence is breathed forth love, as the bond of both. These three - the generating mind, the word, and love - exist in the soul as memory, intelligence, and will, which are consubstantial, co-equal and contemporary, and interpenetrating. If God, therefore, is a perfect spirit, then He has memory, intelligence, and will; He has both a Word begotten and a Love breathed forth, which are necessarily distinct, since one is produced by the other - a production, not of an essence, nor of an accident, but of a Person.
"The soul, then, when it considers itself through itself as through a mirror, rises to the speculation of the Blessed Trinity, the Father, the Word, and Love, Three Persons co-eternal, co-equal and consubstantial, so that whatever is in any one is in the others, but one is not the other, but all three are one God."
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one substance, one God, simple and unlimited.
