CHAPTER IV: THE SPECULATIVE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOGMA OF THE TRINITY

That there are Three Persons in one God is and must ever remain a sacrosanct mystery which human reason cannot fathom. It is only through Divine Revelation that we know of the existence of that immanent process of Generation and Spiration which underlies the real distinction of three Persons in the Godhead.

Enlightened and guided by faith, however, reason is able, by means of syllogistic deductions, analogies, etc., and by skilfully synthesizing the various scattered data furnished by Revelation, to attain to a progressive theological understanding of the dogma, nay even to a degree of certainty concerning some of its more abstruse features. Speculative discussion, which for safety’s sake must always keep itself solidly planted on the teaching of Revelation, as defined by the infallible Church, is concerned chiefly with two classes of problems, viz.: (1) the precise character of the two Processions per intellectum et voluntatem; and (2) the corollaries which flow therefrom with regard to the divine Relations, Properties, and Notions. To these two categories must be added the theory of the divine Appropriations and Missions. As for the degree of certitude enjoyed by these doctrines, Glossner justly observes that they “represent merely the immediate consequences of the dogma” and “are, as it were, a hedge surrounding the law, which no theologian may with impunity ignore.”¹

SECTION 1: THE DOGMA IN ITS RELATION TO REASON

1. The Blessed Trinity a Mystery

That there are three Persons in one God is a mystery which human reason, left to its own resources, can neither discover nor demonstrate. Even after its actual revelation, theistic philosophy is unable stringently to prove the possibility, much less the existence and intrinsic necessity, of the Divine Trinity, which must therefore be counted among the mysteries called absolute or transcendental. St. Thomas Aquinas observes with perfect justice that whosoever ventures to demonstrate the Trinity by unaided reason, derogates from the faith.² This indemonstrability of the mystery of the Divine Trinity is due to the fact that, while here on earth, the human intellect, in spite of its being illumined by the light of Revelation, has no intuitive vision of the Divine Essence, but arrives at its knowledge of it by a contemplation of the physical universe,³ which is the work, not of the Blessed Trinity as such, but of the One God who summoned the world out of nothingness. From the consideration of created things the human mind ascends to a knowledge of the Divine Nature as the creative principle of the cosmos. But it cannot arrive at a knowledge of the Divine Persons, except in so far as it is able to infer that the infinite Creator of spiritual beings must needs possess the simple perfection of personality. How this personality is constituted we have no means of determining. “De mysterio Trinitatis,” says St. Jerome, “recta confessio est ignoratio scientiae.”⁴

This absolute inscrutability is plainly intimated in Matth. XI, 27: “Nemo novit Filium nisi Pater; neque Patrem quis novit nisi Filius et cui voluerit Filius revelare — No one knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither doth any one know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal him.” Cfr. 1 Cor. II, 11: “Quae Dei sunt, nemo cognovit nisi Spiritus Dei — The things that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God.” Though there exists no formal definition on the subject, the absolute incomprehensibility of this mystery is a certain theological conclusion, flowing from the declaration of the Vatican Council that there are absolute mysteries of the faith.⁵

Believing Christians have always looked upon the dogma of the Trinity as the most important and fundamental, as well as the highest and most profound of all revealed mysteries.

2. The Indemonstrability of the Blessed Trinity

The foregoing truths afford us a safe criterion for properly estimating the manifold philosophical considerations which Scholastic theology employs to clear up the mystery, and especially for judging at their true worth the extremely audacious attempts at demonstration which have from time to time been made by non-Scholastic theologians.

a) The Schoolmen employed various analogues from both nature and reason to show forth the vestiges (vestigia) and the likeness (imago) of the Holy Trinity in the created universe. In doing this they did not mean to construct a cogent argument, but merely to supply supernaturally enlightened reason with some auxiliary conceptions, whereby it might attain to a deeper understanding of the revealed mystery.⁶ It is in this sense that the Provincial Council of Cologne (A. D. 1860) teaches: “Argumentis etiam quibusdam, non quidem necessariis et evidentibus demonstrare, sed congruis tantum et quasi similitudinibus illustrare et aliquatenus manifestare mysteria ratio potest, quemadmodum Patres et S. Augustinum prae ceteris circa SS. Trinitatis mysterium versatos esse videmus — Reason cannot indeed demonstrate the mysteries [of faith] by necessary and evident arguments; but it can illustrate, and in a measure manifest them by congruous arguments and, as it were, by similitudes, after the manner in which the Fathers, and especially St. Augustine, treated of the mystery of the Blessed Trinity.”⁷ Following the lead of St. Augustine, Scholastic theology enlisted philosophy in the service of the dogma, not indeed with a view to demonstrating what is in itself incomprehensible, but in order to enable the human mind to perceive the precise nature of the mystery which it is asked to believe. St. Augustine’s comparison of the two divine Processions with human self-knowledge and self-love stands as a perpetual monument to the speculative genius of the great Bishop of Hippo. “Et est quaedam imago Trinitatis, ipsa mens et notitia eius, quod est proles eius ac de se ipsa verbum eius et amor tertius; et haec tria unum atque una substantia. Nec minor proles, dum tantam se novit mens, quanta est; nec minor amor, dum tantum se diligit, quantum novit et quantus est — And so there is a kind of image of the Trinity in the mind itself, and the knowledge of it, which is its offspring and its word concerning itself, and love as a third, and these three are one and one substance. Neither is the offspring less, since the mind knows itself according to the measure of its own being; nor is the love less, since it loves itself according to the measure both of its own knowledge and of its own being.”⁸ Like Augustine, the orthodox Scholastics always subordinated their Trinitarian speculations to the revealed teaching as defined by the Church, never once trenching on the mystery embodied in the dogma. From this statement we need not even except Richard of St. Victor, who plumed himself upon having found “rationes necessarias” for the Blessed Trinity. His “necessary reasons” are mere congruities, which can claim no value except on the assumption that the mystery is already revealed.⁹

b) There is, however, a class of divines who left the safe path blazed out by the Fathers and the Schoolmen, and presumed to demonstrate the mystery of the Trinity by arguments, more or less bold, drawn from unaided human reason. Beginning with Raymond Lully, down to Anton Günther, these audacious innovators invariably ended by counterfeiting the concept of the Blessed Trinity instead of clearing it up. Of Lully, Ruiz says that his demonstrations are the dreams of a feeble and delirious brain.¹⁰ Marcus Mastrofini elaborated a “mathematical demonstration,” which, based as it was upon a wrong conception of the infinite,¹¹ proved as derogatory to the dogma as the Tritheistic teaching of Günther, which Joseph Kleutgen, S. J., so effectively refuted in his immortal work Die Theologie der Vorzeit.¹² Lost in the mazes of Hegelian Pantheism Günther evolved the Trinity as “thesis, antithesis, and synthesis,” or as “subject, object, and identity,” from the “elements of self-consciousness,” — a theory which is plainly tritheistic, because it supposes “a triplicated existence of one and the same Divine Substance.” Rosmini pantheistically identified the Three Divine Persons with “the highest modes of being, viz.: subjectivity, objectivity, and sanctity,” or “reality, ideality, and morality.” Both systems have been condemned as un-Catholic, Günther’s by Pius IX, Rosmini’s by Leo XIII.¹³

c) Certain Rationalists have attempted to explain the Christian dogma of the Trinity as the product of purely natural reflection on the part of pre-Christian philosophers and religionists. Having emptied it of its supernatural content, they profess to find its germs and prototypes in the philosophy of Plato and the Neo-Platonists, in Philo’s doctrine of the Logos, in the writings of the legendary Mercury Trismegistus, and, lastly, in the day-dreams of Kabbalistic theosophy. But all this is rank sophistry. As a matter of fact the Christian Trinity is diametrically opposed alike to the Platonic triad (God, ideas, and world), to the Hindoo triad (Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva), and to the Chinese Tao trinity of heaven, earth, and man. Indeed, none of the so-called ethnic trinities can be shown to possess more than a purely external resemblance to the revealed Trinity of the Christian dispensation.¹⁴

3. How Human Reason Can Defend the Dogma of the Blessed Trinity Against Infidel Objections

Though it cannot explain the mystery, human reason is able to refute the objections of those who aver that it is impossible or absurd. To do this effectively it is not necessary to demonstrate that the Trinity is positively conceivable and therefore real. It will suffice to show the hollowness of the various objections that are urged against the dogma.

All the objections which heresy and infidelity have excogitated against the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, from the days of Celsus down to those of David Friedrich Strauss, Christian philosophy has triumphantly refuted as fallacious. We will mention only a few. Schopenhauer says that “Strictly speaking, a mystery is a dogma that is manifestly absurd.”¹⁵ This “dictum ex cathedra” is meaningless. Faith is not related to reason as absurdity is related to sound sense, but as truth is related to truth, and we know that all truths are derived from the same original source, viz.: God Himself. Strauss declares that “He who has sworn to uphold the ‘Quicunque,’ has renounced the laws of human thought.”¹⁶ But where is the law of right thinking that contradicts the possibility of the Trinity? It would not, we fancy, be a difficult undertaking to show how those who deny the Trinity twist the rules of logic and rely on syllogisms that are one and all affected by the deadly malady of “quaternio terminorum.” It is equally wrong and absurd to allege that the dogma of the Blessed Trinity is based on an impossible mathematical formula, namely 3 = 1. This would indeed be the case if the dogma spelled, “Three Gods are one God.” But the concept of “Three Divine Persons in one Divine Nature” involves no such intrinsic contradiction. It leaves the fundamental metaphysical principles of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle in full possession of the field, nay, it postulates them as a necessary logical condition of “Trinitas in unitate,” because without these fundamental laws the dogma could not stand. These considerations show how utterly groundless is the charge brought by Adolph Harnack when he says: “Arianism, too, seems to us moderns to bristle with contradictions; but it was reserved to Athanasius to achieve a complete contradictio in adjecto.”¹⁷

Readings

Bañez, Comment. in S. Theol., Ia, qu. 32, art. 1; Suarez, De Trinit., I, c. 11–12; Ruiz, De Trinit., disp. 41–43; Franzelin, De Deo Trino, thes. 18–20, Romae 1881; Chr. Pesch, S. J., Praelect. Dogmat., Vol. II, 2nd ed., pp. 262 sqq., Friburgi 1906; Heinrich, Dogmatische Theologie, Vol. IV, §§ 211–212, Mainz 1885; Rüttimann, Das Geheimnis der hl. Dreieinigkeit, Lindau 1887; Scheeben, Die Mysterien des Christentums, 2nd ed. (by Küpper), pp. 17 sqq., Freiburg 1898; Bayle, Dictionnaire, s. v. “Pyrrhonisme”; Faust. Socinus, Christ. Religionis Brevissima Institutio, in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, tom. I, pp. 652 sqq., Irenopoli 1656; Anton Günther, Janusköpfe, Euristheus und Herakles, Lydia, Vorschule; against him Kleutgen, Theologie der Vorzeit, Vol. I, 2nd ed., pp. 399 sqq., Münster 1867; J. Döderlein, Philosophia Divina: Gottes Dreieinigkeit bewiesen an Kraft, Raum und Zeit, Erlangen 1889; J. Lebreton, Les Origines du Dogme de la Trinité, Paris 1910; F. J. Hall, The Trinity, pp. 31 sqq., 156 sqq., New York 1910.