Catholic Faith

The Dogma of the Holy Trinity

‘Trinity’ is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion — the truth that in the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another. Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed: "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three gods but one God." In this Trinity of Persons, the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Yet, notwithstanding this difference as to origin, the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal, all alike are uncreated and omnipotent. This, the Church teaches, is the revelation regarding God's nature which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth to deliver to the world; and which she proposes to man as the foundation of her whole dogmatic system.

It is a mystery.  The relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is such that each is fully and equally God, yet there are not three gods but one God.

The story is told of St. Augustine of Hippo, a great philosopher and theologian who wanted very much to understand the doctrine of the Trinity and to be able to explain it logically. One day, as he was walking along the seashore and reflecting on this, he saw a little child alone at the seashore. The child made a hole in the sand, ran to the sea with a cup, filled it, and returned, pouring the water from it into the hole she had made in the sand. Back and forth she went to the sea, filling her cup and pouring the water from it into the hole. Augustine approached her and said, "Little child, what are doing?" and the little child replied, "I am trying to empty the sea into this hole." "How do you think," Augustine asked her, "that you can empty this immense sea into this small hole and with this small cup?" To which the little child replied, "And you, how do you suppose that you can comprehend the immensity of God with your limited intellect?" With that the child disappeared.

Like Augustine, we may not be able to understand the essence of the Trinity, but it is very important to understand its significance.  Why did God reveal to us this mystery regarding the very nature of the Godhead? The importance of this doctrine lies in this — we are made in the image of God, therefore, the more we understand God the more we can understand ourselves. What does the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity tell us about the kind of God we worship and what does this say about the kind of people we should be?

Firstly, God does not exist in solitude, but in a community of persons. In other words, God is not alone. This means that we must purge every tendency to isolationism and individualism. The ideal Christian spirituality is realized not in flight from the world where the quest for holiness entails our withdrawal, but in our loving embrace of each other.