The Significance of the Trinity

The Significance of the Trinity

As the title indicates, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate on the Trinitarian nature of our God and its significance to our faith journey. While preparing for my RCIA project on 'The Sign of the Cross'; I realized that I vocalize the Trinity probably a minimum of at least six times a day without giving any thought to the meaning of the words. My mind takes for granted the words: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I think that this may true of most Christians. The words are, in reality, a prayer and the core foundation of our faith as we know and believe it. I will attempt to show how this is true using the Holy Scripture, Christian tradition, and works of some Christian Fathers such as Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Augustine.

First off, we say we believe in God. We, in our hearts and minds, are searching for a god in whom we can place reasonable belief. We look to the heavens and say only God could create such a complexity of stars and galaxies. We say this is a reason to believe and to have faith. There is nothing wrong with this searching, but we have to realize that God's ways are far beyond the ability of the human mind to ever begin to understand. As in Job 36:26 "Behold, God is great, and we know Him not." It is therefore impossible to find God through reason alone. As we continue our search for God, God may reward our search and allow us to find him. It, however is not our search that found him but his gift of faith at the end of our search that opens our hearts and minds to embrace Him. We are to, as the old Baltimore catechism use to say and is still true in the new catechism, "know, love, and serve God." To do this requires the gift of faith!

What happens to those who continue searching for God; but do not receive the gift of faith? I think that God is aware of their search and uses them to witness to Him by their daily actions. They are doing His special work in their lives, though they may never know it. As long as they continue to search for God they are close to Him.

The gift of faith is essentially tried when we meet the central mystery of Christian faith and life which is the Most Holy Trinity. To quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

234 " It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other

mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and

essential teaching in the "hierarchy of the truths of faith." The whole history of

salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one

true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men "and reconciles

and unites with himself those who turn away from sin."

In the Old Testament, the predominant idea of God was his Oneness to the Israelites, His chosen race. There is no mention of the Triune nature of God directly in the Old Testament but there seems to be hints or notions. There seems to be hint of the unique nature of that Oneness however in the Genesis 18:1-15. This is the story of Abraham's three visitors who were the Lord by the terebinth of Mamre as he sat outside his tent. Abraham, evidently saw Yahweh in these three persons as he talks to them as if they were only one. The story only says there were three men. No description, no details, nada. Did Abraham see the Divinity of the Trinity? He definitely saw something as he begs them to stay and spend time with him.

In the Book of Wisdom 2:16-18, does the author reveal a notion of Father and Son in the One God. The just man boasts that God is his Father and if the just man be the son of God, he will defend and deliver him from the hands of his foes. These verses are often thought to refer to the Passion of Jesus and to be a direct prophecy.

Aah, but the New Testament gives us a better insight into the mystery of the Holy Trinity. From the archangel Gabriel's appearance to Mary at the Immaculate Conception to the commissioning of the Eleven Apostles; the four Gospels mention many times the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Trinitarian Mystery is especially evident at the commissioning of the Apostles in Matthew 28, 19-20:

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I

have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.

This baptizing in the name of the Trinity is mentioned again in Didache 7:1 (A.D. 70):

After the foregoing instructions, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son,

and of the Holy Spirit, in living (running) water

After this there were many early church writers and saints who espoused and elucidated upon the unity of the Trinity. I especially like Tertullian (Against Praxeas 2 (A.D. 216):

And at the same time the mystery of the oikonomia* is safeguarded, for the unity is

distributed in a Trinity. Placed in order, the three are the Father, Son, and Spirit.

They are three, however, not in condition, but in degree; not in being, but in form;

not in power, but in kind; of one being, however, and one condition and one power,

because he is one God of whom degrees and forms and kinds are taken into account

in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

*oikonomia or "economy" refers to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life. (CCC: 236)

St. Augustine in Book 13 of his Confessions talks best of the mystery of the Trinity this way:

Who can understand the omnipotent Trinity? And who does not speak of the Trinity,

if indeed it is the Trinity that he speaks of? Rare is the soul, whatever it says of the