Recommended reading on the Trinity?

[Kateri89]

I’m trying to explain God’s trinitarian nature to someone and they basically asked why He is limited to three persons.  I know that His trinitarian nature is a sort of prefigurement of the human nature that we’re created in (mom, dad, child) and that Holy Scripture doesn’t mention anyone besides the Father, Son, and Spirit but is there anything more thorough? I swear I’ve seen a reference to saint writings on this, possibly Saint Augustine. I’d greatly appreciate any help!

[Anastasia]

It is hard to advice without knowing the person who asks. Precisely because I do not know the person their question strikes me as similar to those questions about God like "if He is omnipotent, why He cannot this or that" etc because it is hard enough even begin to comprehend the idea of the Holy Trinity as such. Probably it is because the word "limited". Why limited? From this point of view, God still would be limited if he was 10000000 persons but one God.

An Eastern Orthodox would say that all we can know about God must be revealed by Him. He revealed Himself to us as the Holy Trinity, one God but three very distinct Persons whose relationships can be grasped via our experience of human relationships. Only Incarnation of Christ made it possible for humans to begin "understanding" that misery, via what He said and did and also via own private experience of God as three Persons.

I do not know why three Persons but I know it is true; to me to ask why would be like thinking why we are limited to two arms. We do. The only difference is that probably it is possible to explain why we have two arms via evolution i.e. in our limited world but it could not explain why God designed the evolution to work this way. it is a mystery. Analogically, we can say "the relationship of Three Persons are akin to of a human family" but we cannot say "three Persons because humans have father, mother, and child".  I mean we cannot "prove" anything about the Holy Trinity via reference to humans.

God can not be "limited" to three Person because He is outside of our limited world. The notion of "limit" cannot be applicable to Him. Perhaps this is an answer? He only becomes limited when He incarnates.

 

I recalled this episode:

"According to the witness of Church historians, Saint Spyridon participated in the sessions of the First Ecumenical Council in the year 325. At the Council, the saint entered into a dispute with a Greek philosopher who was defending the Arian heresy. The power of Saint Spyridon’s plain, direct speech showed everyone the importance of human wisdom before God’s Wisdom: “Listen, philosopher, to what I tell you. There is one God Who created man from dust. He has ordered all things, both visible and invisible, by His Word and His Spirit. The Word is the Son of God, Who came down upon the earth on account of our sins. He was born of a Virgin, He lived among men, and suffered and died for our salvation, and then He arose from the dead, and He has resurrected the human race with Him. We believe that He is one in essence (consubstantial) with the Father, and equal to Him in authority and honor. We believe this without any sly rationalizations, for it is impossible to grasp this mystery by human reason.”

As a result of their discussion, the opponent of Christianity became the saint’s zealous defender and later received holy Baptism. After his conversation with Saint Spyridon, the philosopher turned to his companions and said, “Listen! Until now my rivals have presented their arguments, and I was able to refute their proofs with other proofs. But instead of proofs from reason, the words of this Elder are filled with some sort of special power, and no one can refute them, since it is impossible for man to oppose God. If any of you thinks as I do now, let him believe in Christ and join me in following this man, for God Himself speaks through his lips.”

At this Council, Saint Spyridon displayed the unity of the Holy Trinity in a remarkable way. He took a brick in his hand and squeezed it. At that instant fire shot up from it, water dripped on the ground, and only dust remained in the hands of the wonderworker. “There was only one brick,” Saint Spyridon said, “but it was composed of three elements. In the Holy Trinity there are three Persons, but only one God.”

Saint Spyridon the Wonderworker, Bishop of Tremithus

[Anastasia]

Sorry, when I write I often get carried away by thoughts and do not always check how clear my words are. Hence, what I was saying in the first paragraph was this: if the mystery of the Holy Trinity is hard enough to grasp and would take years to begin to “understand” why then to ask why three and not four or sixteen or hundred? Did the person already “understand” what the Holy Trinity is?

[Kateri89]

23 hours ago, Anastasia said:

Sorry, when I write I often get carried away by thoughts and do not always check how clear my words are. Hence, what I was saying in the first paragraph was this: if the mystery of the Holy Trinity is hard enough to grasp and would take years to begin to “understand” why then to ask why three and not four or sixteen or hundred? Did the person already “understand” what the Holy Trinity is?

I believe the person is Muslim and I can’t be sure if they’re asking sincerely or trying to trap me in my own words.  One thing I had already mentioned to them, after essentially summarizing the Catechism about the nature of God the Father, is that God has to remain a mystery to human minds because if we were able to comprehend Him completely, He would cease to be God.  He is eternal, infinite.  We are finite beings with limited capacity for understanding and couldn’t possibly contain all knowledge of Him.

I plan on going further to explain that God is relational within His own nature.  That is to say, if He is the uncreated Creator and never changes, then He must have been exactly the same God before He ever created the world we live in.  So His love would’ve preexisted humanity and all of creation, but if He were singular in the sense that Muslims view Allah (Tawhid), who would He have loved if He existed in total isolation prior to creation?  Love is naturally fruitful and God is love, therefore His love generated first His only begotten Son, and then the Holy Spirit proceeded from the love of Father and Son.

I like your explanation of the fact that we can only know about God what He chooses to reveal to us.  So if Jesus revealed to us His divine Sonship and revealed also the Father and the Holy Spirit as a single, trinitarian God, then that’s simply how God willed it.  I just thought that I had heard somewhere that one of the saints had written about this very topic and I wanted to read their thoughts before responding to the person who asked me.

[Aloysius]

at the risk of relying on sly rationalizations, I've have my own answer to this kind of question, take it or leave it... it is certainly a post-hoc rationalization reverse-engineered as an explanation based upon the revealed nature of the Trinity, of course, so it should be taken with a grain of salt as to whether it fits as any kind of convincing argument.  can't think of particularly what reading to direct you to, but in my thinking the Trinity is necessitated if one accepts the premises of the following truths: the truth that God is one, the truth that God is not dependent on anything or anyone but is the primary thing upon which all else is dependent, the truth that God is infinite and eternal (outside of time), the truth that follows from that that He is unchanging, and the truth that God is love.

As God is eternal, He exists outside of time.  And yet He is the very definition of love.  So outside of time and all creation, how can He be love?  Love must be selfless to be truly love.  Hence, He must have an eternally begotten other person to infinitely and perfectly love.  It must truly be other, or else it'd selfish and therefore not true love, but it also must truly be one and the same with Him, or else He would no longer be one, eternal, and unchanging.  Hence the Father eternally loves the Son, and the Son eternally loves the Father.  For it to be perfect love, it cannot then be split into any other parts--so we are left with two persons.

Of course, there is a third person.  Because God is love, then the love that is shared between the Father and the Son must also be God--fully coequal to the other persons because that's the only way that love between the Father and the Son can be perfect love--it must perfectly be God.  as we have an orthodox person in the thread, I'll leave off for now whether that love proceeds from the Father to the Son only, or ex Patre Filioque hahaha, though I hope you can appreciate that my logic does begin with the mon-archia of God the Father.

This is why it must be three.  But then why can't we imagine an infinite regress to infinite other persons?  I think the truth that God is one and that He is the perfect definition of love and completely not dependent but self-sufficient in His own existence would limit it to just this level, splitting off into others would imply that the Father's love for the Son and the Son's love for the Father are not sufficient and complete but require something more. 

Of course, the true answer must rely on revelation.  But to me, I think this level of logic gives us some tiny sliver of understanding something about why God is a Trinity.

[Anastasia]

3 hours ago, Kateri89 said:

I believe the person is Muslim and I can’t be sure if they’re asking sincerely or trying to trap me in my own words.

One of the favorite arguments of Muslims against our faith is that "we added other (two) deities to Allah" via corrupting the Bible thus we are idol worshipers. Their arguments are typically revolving around the Book, they call us and Jews "people of the Book" but our Bible is "corrupted" of course. If the person is a practicing Muslim I think "the revelation explanation" may be the most understandable  and compelling for them because they cannot conceive Allah as "anthropomorphic" (as they think we do) i.e. having same relational needs as we do because they do not believe in Incarnation. 

Aloysius

Your discourse is very elegant and good but becomes weaker (in my opinion) when you try to explain "why only three". I am not saying it is wrong but I have a sense of something missing there.

2 hours ago, Aloysius said:

as we have an orthodox person in the thread, I'll leave off for now whether that love proceeds from the Father to the Son only, or ex Patre Filioque hahaha, though I hope you can appreciate that my logic does begin with the mon-archia of God the Father.

I am with St Maximus the Confessor:

“For the Holy Spirit, just as he belongs to the nature of God the Father according to the nature of God the Father according to His essence so he also belongs to the nature of the Son according to His essence, since he proceeds inexpressibly from the Father through His begotten Son.”
(Quaestiones ad Thalassium 63)

hence in the Catholic church I say Latin Creed as it is.

Edited May 17, 2020 by Anastasia

[Anastasia]

Kateri89

I put in Google "the Holy Trinity, why only three persons" and got this:

"Question:

Why is the Trinity three persons instead of one, two, four, or more persons?

Answer:

One can respond simply that God has revealed himself as three persons—and that is that. We must remember that God is not merely a bigger version of us and that unless he explains himself, any attempt to fully understand him is like trying to contain an ocean in a thimble.

We know from Church teaching that the Trinity is at the heart of Christianity. St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that while it is possible to reason to the existence of God, we can know the Trinity only because of what Jesus has revealed to us about it.

However, Aquinas reflected on how we might gain some insight into the mystery of the Godhead. Even though we refer to the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit as persons, the reality of such terminology far outstrips anything we understand by the word person. So the divine persons are not separate individuals as in a father, a son, and a dove but are essentially distinct by their relationships with each other. Relationship is the key.

For St. Thomas, the Trinity is the relationship of self-knowledge and love that exist in God. We can identify with this in that we know that we exist as the persons that we are. But we can also reflect on who we are. We have knowledge about ourselves. Now, this self-knowledge proceeds from ourselves as a separate and yet definite part of who we are. There is a relationship between us and our awareness of who we are.

The Trinity shows us a somewhat similar sort of relationship existing in God. So God the Father is God. Proceeding from God is God’s self-knowledge of himself—and this is actually the Son. The Holy Spirit is the relationship of love between God’s self-knowledge (the Son) and God (the Father). In loving the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit completes the Trinity, rendering any further divine persons impossible."

https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-the-trinity-is-three-persons

You can always simply show the person this icon )) because it is the perfection

[Aloysius]

Thanks Anastasia.  I suppose it may get weak at the point of why it does not extend beyond 3.  As I began, it's very clear I am reverse engineering based on a revealed truth, so definitely the logic might be weak at some points.  I think there is at least a seed of an idea there if we think a bit about it.  If God is Love, then the Love at the core of God's being would be the most perfect love there is, so the love of the Father and the Son for each other is perfect.  The logic of God being eternal and being Love necessitates that there be a Father and a Son (and the love between them necessitates there being a Holy Spirit as I argue in the last post), but does not necessitate that there be more persons, so the fact that the Father's love for the Son is the perfect definition of love is why it would not extend to more persons.

It'd be an interesting thought experiment to think about what it would be like if there were more persons or less persons.  The logic here seems to suggest there should be a minimum of 3 if you accept the premises I mentioned in the last post.  But then imagine what if there were, for instance, infinite persons?  I'd say this would minimize the significance of the love between the Father and the Son, it would no longer be significant, special, and the perfect ideal of what love is, but just one example of love among many. 

Anyway, probably that idea needs a bit of development but I think there's some kernel of insight there as to why there wouldn't be more than 3 persons.  One person would contradict God's self-sufficient essence as the definition of Love, two persons would leave open the question of what is the love between those two persons, that love must also be God based on the definition of God as love.  More than 3 has no logical necessity and would detract from the idea that the love between those three persons is THE unique and perfect definition and source of all love.

[Kateri89]

5 hours ago, Aloysius said:

Anyway, probably that idea needs a bit of development but I think there's some kernel of insight there as to why there wouldn't be more than 3 persons.  One person would contradict God's self-sufficient essence as the definition of Love, two persons would leave open the question of what is the love between those two persons, that love must also be God based on the definition of God as love.  More than 3 has no logical necessity and would detract from the idea that the love between those three persons is THE unique and perfect definition and source of all love.

 

The way I've been thinking about it is more akin to a family.  The love between a mother and father produces multiple children, so why can't the love between the Father and the Son produce multiple Holy Spirits so to speak?  I think that this goes back to what Anastasia was saying about revelation.  In theory, it would seem to me that God could be a singular God with infinite persons but if in fact we accept Jesus as divine, and if He only revealed the Father and one Holy Spirit, then that's the answer.  

In a similar line of thinking, Muslims would be forced to admit that any person without any particular religious affiliation or knowledge could naturally come to a basic understanding of God simply from observing nature and reflecting on it philosophically.  I think that this is what is referred to as natural theology.  The specifics of Islam only exist because of the alleged revelations of Allah via the angel Jibreel (Gabriel).  So if Muslims accept things such as Jesus being born of a virgin, then why is it any more impossible to accept a revelation about God being singular and yet still a trinity? Revealed theology exists in basically every religion so the question of 'why this and not that?' ultimately comes down to whether you trust the source.  In this case, I would say Christians have FAR more reason to trust Jesus as being God Incarnate based on His fulfillment of ancient prophecies and Jewish law as well as the miracles that He performed.  Muslims have very little, if any, reason to trust that Muhammad was truly receiving revelations because he produced no supernatural signs to accompany them to give weight to his claim to be the seal of the prophets.

[Anastasia]

11 hours ago, Aloysius said:

But then imagine what if there were, for instance, infinite persons?  I'd say this would minimize the significance of the love between the Father and the Son, it would no longer be significant, special, and the perfect ideal of what love is, but just one example of love among many. 

An instant thought I had "it would be impossible for us to relate to infinite persons". Plus, how to paint icons then? I am deliberately writing "silly" thoughts but I think when we look at the icons of the Holy Trinity we instantly feel "it is true".
More than three Persons would "reduce" Christ I feel. He could not then say "if you saw Me you saw the Father too".
I have have  thought on this topic but now, after this exchange, I can see that there could be only three Persons.

6 hours ago, Kateri89 said:

The love between a mother and father produces multiple children, so why can't the love between the Father and the Son produce multiple Holy Spirits so to speak?

Because they had a plan to adopt us ).

[Anastasia]

6 hours ago, Kateri89 said:

So if Muslims accept things such as Jesus being born of a virgin, then why is it any more impossible to accept a revelation about God being singular and yet still a trinity?

Quite simply, because in it not in Quran. As for the Bible, it was corrupted. (This is the essence of my discussions with Muslims).
A hypothetical Muslim would say that Allah is all-powerful hence a virgin birth is possible but "no one can attribute to Allah so-called "others" or "associate" etc. In fact, it is the gravest sin in Islam, of idolatry. 

"And most of them believe not in Allah except while they associate others with Him." (Surah An-Nisa)

"Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whom He wills. And he who associates others with Allah has certainly fabricated a tremendous sin." (Surah Az-Zumar)

God, as Islam understands him does not relate to people like God of the Old Testament (I am not even speaking about the New). There is no sense of two ways a relationship there and this is why I think Muslims are so resistant to the Christian understanding of God. 

[Kateri89]

15 minutes ago, Anastasia said:

Quite simply, because in it not in Quran. As for the Bible, it was corrupted. (This is the essence of my discussions with Muslims).
A hypothetical Muslim would say that Allah is all-powerful hence a virgin birth is possible but "no one can attribute to Allah so-called "others" or "associate" etc. In fact, it is the gravest sin in Islam, of idolatry. 

"And most of them believe not in Allah except while they associate others with Him." (Surah An-Nisa)

"Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whom He wills. And he who associates others with Allah has certainly fabricated a tremendous sin." (Surah Az-Zumar)

God, as Islam understands him does not relate to people like God of the Old Testament (I am not even speaking about the New). There is no sense of two ways a relationship there and this is why I think Muslims are so resistant to the Christian understanding of God. 

I agree with you, but that’s precisely my point.  They take their beliefs from revealed theology just as Christians do.  The crux of the matter is the reliability of the source of the revelation.  Muhammad said that he was receiving revelations from Allah through Gabriel.  If someone were to question how they can know he was receiving true revelations, or whether he was being influenced by Satan, or even whether he was just outright lying, how would Muhammad prove that they were genuine?

But even so, Muslims accept revealed theology just like Christians do.  I think what I’m trying to say is that it should be enough for a Muslim if a Christian says that God is a Trinity because He said so (even if the Muslim still disagrees).  It’s no different than a Muslim saying that Allah has no partners because Muhammad said so.  Do you see what I’m getting at? I’m not suggesting that this would convince a Muslim of the Trinity, only that the Christian line of reasoning for ‘why only three’ is the same line of reasoning Muslims would use to defend their beliefs.

[Anastasia]

3 hours ago, Kateri89 said:

It’s no different than a Muslim saying that Allah has no partners because Muhammad said so.  Do you see what I’m getting at? I’m not suggesting that this would convince a Muslim of the Trinity, only that the Christian line of reasoning for ‘why only three’ is the same line of reasoning Muslims would use to defend their beliefs.

Yes, I definitely see and this is why I always thought that a simple answer "Gog revealed it" would be the best. 

10 hours ago, Kateri89 said:

Revealed theology exists in basically every religion so the question of 'why this and not that?' ultimately comes down to whether you trust the source. 

In a case of Christianity it is not all. Many people experience some murky sense of Resurrected Christ being present, in the church where they dropped in or while reading the Gospels. There is a sudden experiential knowledge or truth. Like the experience of atheist Edith Stein who found "The Interior Castle" by St Teresa of Avila in her friends’ house, began reading it, finished, said "this must be true" and then proceeded with preparation for baptism. I wrote this and realized that our faith/conversion is based on the fire of the Holy Spirit but this fire must be passed via a person who has this fire. St Teresa passed that fire to Edith. It is the fire of a personal experience of being with God and it animates everything. 

[Theoketos]

Reading and Youtube Videos 
 

This OP is the current world wide expert in Aquinas Theology on the Trinity. His book is mandatory reading in my serious curriculum. (It is in French with good subtitles.)

 

The book in English 

https://www.amazon.com/Trinity-Aquinas-Gilles-Emery/dp/0970610629/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1344522276&sr=8-2&keywords=Emery%2C+Trinity+in+Aquinas

 

Another book that is the best description of the Trinity as love that I have ever read. 

https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Trinity-Beginning-There-Love/dp/1935317318

 

Here is Staniloae in Greek with Subtitles