By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 10
The first thing to clarify in studying the Most Holy Trinity is that we are dealing with a mystery, not a contradiction. The doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery, because it contains two truths which our reason cannot reconcile. The first truth is that there is one God, and the second truth is that there are Three Divine Persons in the one and the same God. These truths, taken separately, we can understand, but not when taken together. We can understand that there is one God, and that each Divine Person is God, but not that each is one and the self-same God.
So, the Trinity is a mystery, not a contradiction. What is the difference? It would be a contradiction if it said that God is One in exactly the same way in which He is Three. Because One is One and Three is Three. But it does not say this. It says that God is One in nature, Three in persons.
Let us investigate it further. First of all, we can explain the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, but not the mystery. The doctrine is contained in the statement that “in one Divine Nature there are three distinct Persons.” The first thing to understand is the meaning of the words we use, so as to avoid confusion. We speak of one nature and ask ourselves, what is a nature? Then we speak of three Persons, and ask ourselves what is a person?
To explain the meaning of nature, or essence, of a man, for instance, we define what a man is, what is there that defines a man, what makes him what he is and what marks him off from all other things. So, the nature or essence of a man consists in the union of a material body with a spiritual soul. A material, animal body, united to a spiritual soul, is a man. This union of soul and body enables him to move, to feel, hear and see, to think and reason; in brief, it enables him to act as a man.
His essence, considered as the source of action, is his nature. The nature of man therefore is that which enables him to act as a man. Likewise, the nature of an angel is that which enables him to act as an angel; the nature of God is that which enables Him to act as God. But it is not easy to define the nature of everything. We may know intuitively what a lion is, as different from a tiger, for instance, but how to define the nature of a lion or of a tiger is not easy.
In short, the nature is what the being is. It is the answer to the question, “What is it?”
If natures answers to the question, “What is it?,” then person answers to the question, “Who is it”? Person is therefore distinct from nature. It is a man’s nature that enables him to act, but the acts which he performs do not belong to his nature or to any part of his nature; they belong to him as a person. Thus, when you move your arm or when you utter a word or when you solve a problem, you do not say: “My arm has moved” or “My tongue has spoken” or “My mind has solved a problem,” nor do you say: “My nature — my soul united to my body — has done these things,” but you say: “I have moved my arm, I have spoken, I have solved a problem,” that is, “I, as a person, have done these things.” Person is therefore distinct from nature.
It is because you are a person that you are responsible for your acts, and can be praised or blamed for them. Every creature, therefore, who possesses an intelligent nature is a person. That is why animals and plants, although they are alive, are not persons. They do not possess an intellect to think or a free will to make choices: Instead, they are enslaved by their natures always to do the same things.
Every creature, therefore, that possesses an intelligent nature is a person. Every angel is a person; every human being — even the unborn child, or one who is insane — is a person. Once the intelligent nature exists, the person exists, although through some defect or obstacle the person may be incapable of acting intelligently.
Let us delve a little further into the mystery of the Blessed Trinity. You and I are human persons, endowed with an intellect and a will. We were created in the image and likeness of God. By our intellect, we generate in our minds an idea of ourselves, often exaggerated, and we love the idea we generated of ourselves in our minds. Now God also from eternity generates an idea of Himself, and He loves that idea. The difference is that the idea He generates of Himself is not only an idea, it is another self, whom we call God the Son, generated from God the Father. And God the Father loves God the Son, and God the Son loves God the Father, and this mutual love is another self, the Holy Spirit.
Now, every work we do through our human nature is work of a single person, you or me; but every work which God does through His divine nature is the work of Three Persons. If you plant a tree, you can say: “I have planted this tree.” On the other hand, God, when He created the world, could have said: “We Three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, have created the world.” None of the Divine Persons uses the Divine Nature to act alone. They are not three gods.
This requires from us a special effort to understand the relationships between the Three Divine Persons. Briefly we can say that everything which God does as God is done by the Blessed Trinity: the Trinity in relation to the divine understanding and will.
St. Thomas, developing a thought suggested by St. Augustine, has been followed by all theologians in his exposition of the relation of the Holy Trinity to the Divine Understanding and Will: God is a Spirit, and the first act of a spirit is to know, to understand. Now, God knowing Himself from all eternity, brought forth the full knowledge of Himself. This knowledge of Himself was not a mere passing idea, such as we have of ourselves, but it is His own perfect Image, His own very Substance, a Living Person.
God knowing Himself is God the Father; God known to Himself is God the Son. God the Father and God the Son loved one another from all eternity, for each beheld in the other the Supreme Goodness of the Divinity. Their mutual Love is their own very Substance, a Living Person, the Holy Spirit.
Thus, with the utmost imperfection, we conceive the Blessed Trinity to be the eternal outcome of the Divine Understanding and the Divine Will.
But the mystery remains unsolved: We cannot answer the questions, “How can the Image of God be a living divine Person?”; “How can the mutual love of God and His Image be a living divine Person?”
More on that in the next article.
(Editor’s Note: Raymond de Souza’s column in the January 7, 2016 column mistakenly cited God’s words to Moses as “I am who I am,” instead of the correct “I am who am.” We apologize for the error.)
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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www.RaymonddeSouza.com.)
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