Why Do We Believe in the Trinity?

We believe in the Blessed Trinity because we believe in Jesus, Who revealed the Trinity. God had prepared the Jews not only to welcome the Messiah, but to recognize through revelation what philosophers like Aristotle achieved through reason: that there is a God and there can only be one God.

Moses said to the Jews, “Acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other but to believe in God Who is the only God.” When the Messiah finally came, He revealed a huge mystery that went far beyond what the Jews were expecting: that the one God in Whom they believe is not solitary, but a unity, a communion of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that the Messiah is the Son.

He told them explicitly that the Father and He are one (Jn 10:30). He told them that He and the Father would send the Holy Spirit (Jn 14:26, Jn 15:26). And when He sent them out to baptize in the name of God, He didn’t give them instructions to baptize in the “names” of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit — as if they were three different gods — but in the “name,” for they are fundamentally a union of three persons. This is what the term Trinity means. It was devised by the early Church apologist Tertullian around the year 200 from the Latin words “unitas” and “trinus,” literally “unity” and “three.” It signifies that there is a unity of three persons in one God.

Since the beginning of the Church, theologians have spent their lives trying to penetrate this mystery and explain it to others. St. Patrick used the image of a three-leaf clover. St. Augustine used the image of the mind, with memory, reason and will. More recent minds have used the image of H20, which can exist as ice, water, or steam. But none of these analogies — though interesting and somewhat helpful — do justice to the reality of the mystery of how three persons can exist in the one God.

When St. Augustine was in the middle of his voluminous and classic study of the Blessed Trinity, he took a walk along the beach in northern Africa to try to clear his head and pray. He saw a young girl repeatedly filling a scallop shell with sea water and emptying it into a hole she had dug in the sand. “What are you doing?” Augustine tenderly asked. “I'm trying to empty the sea into this hole,” the child replied. “How do you think that with a little shell,” Augustine retorted, “you can possibly empty this immense ocean into a tiny hole?” The little girl countered, “And how do you, with your small head, think you can comprehend the immensity of God?” As soon as the girl said this, she disappeared, convincing Augustine that she had been an angel sent to teach him an important lesson: No matter how gifted God had made him, he would never be able to comprehend fully the mystery of the Trinity.

This, of course, does not mean we cannot understand anything. If we want to get to the heart of the mystery of the Trinity, we can turn to the most theological of the Apostles, who meditated deeply on all that Jesus had revealed and, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said simply and synthetically, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:16). For God to be love, He has to love someone. None of us can love in a vacuum; there must always be an object of our love. Who is the object of God’s love? It cannot be man, or the created world, or the universe, because all of these existed in time and God is eternal and therefore existed before time.

It’s also impossible to say that God merely loved Himself in a solitary way, because this would not really be love but a form of egotism and narcissism. For God to be love, there needed to be an eternal relationship of love, with one who loves, one who is loved, and the love that unites them. This is what exists in the Blessed Trinity: The Father loved His image, the Son, so much that their mutual and eternal love “spirated” or “generated” the Holy Spirit. They exist in a communion of love. The three persons of the Blessed Trinity are united in absolutely everything except, as the early Church councils said, their “relations of origin,” what it means to be Father, what it means to be Son of the Father, and what it means to proceed from the Father and the Son.

These theological insights about the blessed Trinity may seem theoretical, but they become highly practical when we reflect on the fact that we have been made in the image and likeness of God and called to communion with God. To be in the image and likeness of God means to be created in the image and likeness of a communion of persons in love. Our belief in the Trinity — the central teaching of the Catholic faith — has given the Church the deepest understanding available to human beings of the nature of man, the meaning of human life, and what it means to love.

I was just reading this recently

DIVINUM ILLUD MUNUS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON
THE HOLY SPIRIT
The Catholic Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity

3. Before We enter upon this subject, it will be both desirable and useful to say a few words about the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity. This dogma is called by the doctors of the Church "the substance of the New Testament," that is to say, the greatest of all mysteries, since it is the fountain and origin of them all. In order to know and contemplate this mystery, the angels were created in Heaven and men upon earth. In order to teach more fully this mystery, which was but foreshadowed in the Old Testament, God Himself came down from the angels unto men: "No man bath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He bath declared Him" (John i., 18). Whosoever then writes or speaks of the Trinity must keep before His eyes the prudent warning of the Angelic Doctor: "When we speak of the Trinity, we must do so with caution and modesty, for, as St. Augustine saith, nowhere else are more dangerous errors made, or is research more difficult, or discovery more fruitful" (Summ. Th. la., q. xxxi. De Trin. 1 L, c. 3). The danger that arises is lest the Divine Persons be confounded one with the other in faith or worship, or lest the one Nature in them be separated: for "This is the Catholic Faith, that we should adore one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity."

Therefore Our predecessor Innocent XII, absolutely refused the petition of those who desired a special festival in honour of God the Father. For, although the separate mysteries connected with the Incarnate Word are celebrated on certain fixed days, yet there is no special feast on which the Word is honoured according to His Divine Nature alone. And even the Feast of Pentecost was instituted in the earliest times, not simply to honour the Holy Ghost in Himself, but to commemorate His coming, or His external mission. And all this has been wisely ordained, lest from distinguishing the Persons men should be led to distinguish the Divine Essence. Moreover the Church, in order to preserve in her children the purity of faith, instituted the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, which John XXII. afterwards extended to the Universal Church. He also permitted altars and churches to be dedicated to the Blessed Trinity, and, with the divine approval, sanctioned the Order for the Ransom of Captives, which is specially devoted to the Blessed Trinity and bears Its name. Many facts confirm its truths. The reverence paid to the saints and angels, to the Mother of God, and to Christ Himself, finally redounds to the honour of the Blessed Trinity. In prayers addressed to one Person, there is also mention of the others; in the litanies after the individual Persons have been separately invoked, a common invocation of all is added: all psalms and hymns conclude with the doxology to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; blessings, sacred rites, and sacraments are either accompanied or concluded by the invocation of the Blessed Trinity. This was already foreshadowed by the Apostle in those words: "For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things: to Him be glory for ever" (Rom. xi., 36), thereby signifying both the Trinity of Persons and the Unity of Nature: for as this is one and the same in each of the Persons, so to each is equally owing supreme glory, as to one and the same God. St. Augustine commenting upon this testimony writes: "The words of the Apostle, of Him, and by Him, and in Him are not to be taken indiscriminately; of Him refers to the Father, by Him to the Son, in Him to the Holy Ghost" (De Trin. 1. vi., c. 10; 1. i., c. 6).

The Church is accustomed most fittingly to attribute to the Father those works of the Divinity in which power excels, to the Son those in which wisdom excels, and those in which love excels to the Holy Ghost. Not that all perfections and external operations are not common to the Divine Persons; for "the operations of the Trinity are indivisible, even as the essence of the Trinity is indivisible" (St. Aug., De Trin., I. 1, cc. 4-5); because as the three Divine Persons "are inseparable, so do they act inseparably" (St. Aug., i6.). But by a certain comparison, and a kind of affinity between the operations and the properties of the Persons, these operations are attributed or, as it is said, "appropriated" to One Person rather than to the others. "Just as we make use of the traces of similarity or likeness which we find in creatures for the manifestation of the Divine Persons, so do we use Their essential attributes; and this manifestation of the Persons by Their essential attributes is called appropriation" (St. Th. la., q. 39, xxxix., a. 7). In this manner the Father, who is "the principle of the whole God-head" (St. Aug. De Trin. 1 iv., c. 20) is also the efficient cause of all things, of the Incarnation of the Word, and the sanctification of souls; "of Him are all things": of Him, referring to the Father. But the Son, the Word, the Image of God is also the exemplar cause, whence all creatures borrow their form and beauty, their order and harmony. He is for us the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Reconciles of man with God. "By Him are all things": by Him, referring to the Son. The Holy Ghost is the ultimate cause of all things, since, as the will and all other things finally rest in their end, so He, who is the Divine Goodness and the Mutual Love of the Father and Son, completes and perfects, by His strong yet gentle power, the secret work of man's eternal salvation. "In Him are all things": in Him, referring to the Holy Ghost.

http://www.love2learn.net/educreader/encyclicals/leoxiii/holyspir.htm

OK, now we're getting somewhere. So you believe it is possible for a human being to exist without original sin and without personal sin and yet these people are not gods?

So why get so bent out of shape when we claim Mary is conceived without original sin? Why accuse us of making her into a diety?

Do you get the point yet? "Sinless human" does not equal "diety." It didn't for Adam and Eve and it doesn't for Mary

Flesh begot flesh...Adam and Eve did become sinful and we all bear the consequences and shame of sin in our lives. Mary's mother and father were sinners as well. It is reasonable to conclude that Mary was conceived and born with the same sinful nature as she is the daughter of a man and a woman who were full of sin just like you and me. Did God purify her for Jesus to be carried within her womb? Very possible as all thing are possible with God! That being said scripture does not show us any further comments on Mary's sinless or sinful ways after her the miraculous birth of her son and our Lord. Full of grace? You bet she was, she was full of the Holy Spirit for He was with her to bring the Messiah for the world...Talk about being blessed!!

One thing I don't understand from your posts is how you view humans not as sinful from birth as the psalmist says and Paul tells us time and again that we are natural enemies of God becuase of our "sinful nature". It's nothing we crazy "prottys" are making up. Paul lays it out pretty simply and clearly in the epistles. Paul demonstrates in many different verses how we could never be saved without God finding us thru the Spirit. Show me the man who, without being brought to God by the Holy Spirit, will reject the sinful flesh and choose the way of th Spirit...Only Christ did this...man will always choose the ways of the flesh unless he is brought to God by the Spirit and even then we all far too often choose the way of our sinful flesh. That's original sin, that's our nature due to the fall of our orignal parents. We are born slaves to sin, but become slaves to Christ...

I know you have the utmost love for Christ and I respect that immensely...please know my posting is sent with respect for your conviction...Blessing in Christ to you and yours!

Would you not agree that saying Mary had other children is "pure speculation" as well, since scripture does not say Mary had other children? I was reading this recently from an Orthodox priest, Fr. John Whiteford. It might interest you:

In response to appeals to Matthew 1:25:

First of all we must remember that the Bible was not written in English. The word translated "TILL" in this verse is the same word translated "UNTIL" (or "unto" in the KJV) in Matthew 28:20: "...And behold I am with you always, even UNTIL the end of the age."

Following your logic, we would have to assume that this teaches that after the end of the age Christ will no longer be with us. Also even in English, when we say "Joe did not repent TILL the day he died"—obviously he did not repent afterwards either.

The point of the verse you have cited is plain. It leaves no room for doubting that Christ was not the result of relations between the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph—it says nothing about what happened thereafter, one way or the other.

St. Jerome wrote a very detailed treatise on this subject that one can find in several readily available translations—it is titled "The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary".

Not only was this view held universally in the Early Church, but the Early Reformers all believed it as well. John Wesley did too.

By the way, where in the NT does it say that the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph ever moved beyond betrothal? The Bible speaks of St. Joseph's "espoused" wife—but never mentions anything beyond it.

Baptists are likely not familiar with the rite of betrothal, but the Traditional understanding thereof is that a betrothal gives a couple all the responsibilities of marriage, but none of the privileges. Once betrothed, one can only break the betrothal with a divorce. Nevertheless, the couple were not permitted to have marital relations until after the marriage ceremony.

In response to the question of whether or not this doctrine only brings glory to the Virgin Mary, and not to God:

This doctrine is not taught for the sake of upholding the sanctity of the Virgin Mary, but because of the uniqueness and holiness of her Son. Consider the following verse:

"Then said the LORD unto me; This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the LORD, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut." (Ezekiel 44:2).

This has always been interpreted by the Fathers of the Church to be a typological reference to the Virgin Mary and the Incarnation. When we consider that God took flesh from the Virgin's womb, it is not difficult to imagine that this womb would remain virgin.

The bottom line is this has been the consistent and universal view of the Church from the time of the Apostles until today.

This does not mean that sex is dirty, though the Apostles taught that it was better to remain in virginity—though only those who can accept such a life are called to do so. Certainly some are called to this life, and it is blessed by God.

Why then did the Virgin need St. Joseph? That question is valid even if one believes she had other children later—why did she need St. Joseph to give birth to Christ. The answer is obvious: virgins do not as a rule give birth, and Christ would likely have grown up an orphan had he been born to a single mother.

You ask: "So then was Jesus born out of wedlock? Why then did they travel together to be taxed? Why does Luke write Luke 2:48 ‘And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.’?"

I could ask you the same questions: Why does she refer to Joseph as Christ's Father? Obviously not because he really was his father. Why did they travel together to be taxed when they were clearly only at that time "espoused" or betrothed: "To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child (Luke 2:5). Do you think they were married on the way to Bethlehem, because they clearly were not when they set off in that direction? Furthermore there is no mention of such a marriage ever having taken place—and certainly it would be odd for them to have had such a ceremony with a women "great with child" or even thereafter with a women who had a nursing baby. As I stated, a betrothal gives one all the responsibilities of a marriage without the marital privileges thereof. It can only be broken by a divorce—so in a sense they were married when they were betrothed.

In the Orthodox Church we still have the rite of betrothal, but because it is so serious—and is considered a marriage even if never consummated—it is almost always done these days immediately prior to the wedding ceremony.

You said: "Mary had other children. James is called The Lord's brother. The brothers and sisters who came for Jesus while he was teaching are not cousins as catholic footnotes try to make out, like there is no Greek word for brother."

Do you really believe that the Virgin Mary had another sister from the same parents who was also named Mary (John 19:25)? Also, if these brothers were the children of St. Joseph's brother Cleopas (as the second century Palestinian Christian history Hegessipus records), and if as St. Jerome contends Cleopas had reposed and St. Joseph had taken his brothers widow and children under his care (as was Jewish custom) then these children would of course be called brothers and sisters of our Lord.

Also, I will again point out that the Bible only refers to the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph as being "betrothed" or "espoused". Unless they were subsequently married, they had all the responsibilities of marriage, but would have sinned to have had marital relations with one another. It is clear from the Gospels that they were still only betrothed when they left Nazareth and when the Virgin was "Great with child". Do you suppose they could have gotten married at some point after that without being stoned to death first?

You said: "There's no need to be that specific. Can't it be understood from several Scripture passages (John 2:12; Matthew 12:46; Mark 3:31; Luke 8:19; especially Matthew 13:55,56 and Mark 6:3,4; etc.) that what's referred to are Mary and Joseph's offsprings?"

How do you deal with the Mary who is not Christ's mother but who also just happens to be the Virgin Mary's sister and who happens to have kids with the same names as Christ's brothers? How do you deal with the very early testimony of Hegesippus who states plainly that the brethren of the Lord were the Children of St. Joseph's brother Cleopas and his wife Mary?"

See: Matt 27:56, Mark 15:40, 16:1; Luke 24:10; John 19:25 The Matthew account has Mary the mother of James and Joseph. Mark has Mary the mother of James the Less and Joses. John has "his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas". All accounts mention Mary Magdalene separately and Matthew mentions the mother of the sons of Zebedee (who could not also be married to Clopas). This suggests that Mary the wife of Clopas, who is Mary's sister, is the mother of James and Joses, etc.

[Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History 3:11] "After the martyrdom of James and the conquest of Jerusalem which immediately followed, it is said that those of the apostles and the disciples of the Lord that were still living came together from all directions, with those that were related to the Lord according to the flesh (for the majority of them also were still alive), to take counsel as to who was worthy to succeed James. They all with once consent pronounced Symeon, the Son of Cleopas, of whom the Gospel also makes mention [note the Gospels only list Symeon as one of the Brother's of the Lord], to be worthy of the episcopal throne of that parish. He was a cousin, as they say, of the Savior. For Hegesippus records that Cleopas was a brother of Joseph." [note: Hegesippus was a 2nd Century Palestinian Jew. Eusebius preserves one of the few fragments left of his works, since he had access to the great library of Ceasarea and of Alexandria—the contents of which were mostly lost later.]

A few additional points on this subject:

1) The Apostle James, the Son of Alpheaus is not necessarily the same as James the less. They are not connected in the Gospels, though this connection is possible. James the less was the son of Cleopas, but as I have read up on this, it is possible that "Cleopas" is a variant helenized transliteration of the Aramaic name "Chalphi".

2) Yesterday I quoted from Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History in which a fragment from St. Hegesippus was preserved. As I dug about last night, I found some more:

"Some of these heretics, forsooth, laid an information against Symeon the son of Clopas, as being of the family of David, and a Christian. And on these charges he suffered martrydom when he was 120 years old, in the reign of Trajan Caesar, when Atticus was Consular legate in Syria. And it so happened, says the same writer, that, while inquiry was then being made for those belonging to the royal tribe of the Jews, the accusers themselves were convicted of belonging to it. With show of reason it could be said that Symeon was one of those who actually saw and heard the Lord, on the ground of his great age, and also because the Scripture of the Gospels makes mention of Mary the [wife] of Clopas, who, as our narrative has shown already, was his father. The same historian mentions others also, of the family of one of the reputed brothers of the Savior, named Judas, as having survived until this same reign, after the testimony they bore for the faith of Christ in the time of Domitian, as already recorded. He writes as follows: They came, then, and took the presidency of every church, as witnesses for Christ, and as being of the kindred of the Lord. And after profound peace had been established in every church they remained down to the reign of Trajan Caesar: that is, until the time then he who was sprung from an uncle of the Lord, the aforementioned Symeon son of Clopas, was informed against by various heresies, and subjected to an accusation like the rest, and for the same cause, before the legate Atticus; and while suffering outrage during many days, he bore testimony for Christ: so that all, including the legate himself were astonished above measure that a man 120 years old should have been able to endure such torments. He was finally condemned to be crucified...." [St. Hegesippus [who reposed 170 ad], Fragments from his five books of commentaries on the acts of the Church, Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. 8, p 762]

http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/evervirgin.aspx

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