![]() McTaggart was profoundly convinced by the notion of personal love, but just as convinced that there is no God. Throughout his career he retained a respect for McTaggart’s ideas, often by contradicting them. Geach now stands even higher in regard than he did when I was lucky enough to meet him 30 or 40 years ago. He is not much read now, and I don’t recommend the effort, but the English philosopher Peter Geach was set by his father the task before he was 13 of reading McTaggart’s Some Dogmas of Religion. He feels that we get a hint of the meaning of the divine persons by saying: “Holy, Holy, Holy.”Ī suggestion of what lies within the Trinity comes from the unlikely source of the atheist philosopher J M E McTaggart. St Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century, who wrote a great long treatise on the Trinity, at which he chews away in his determined manner, says that we use the word “person” only because we haven’t another word. This terminology of “person” came in as a useful label in the early centuries of Christianity. It is not addressed only to what we call one person in the Trinity. The prayer that Christians were given by Jesus as a pattern begins: “Our Father…” It is addressed to the one God (who is father to his creation and father to us, his children). The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire. They are baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit – not in their names, since there is only one God, the Father, his only Son and the Holy Spirit: the Holy Trinity. Indeed, Christians jump in at the deep end by conversing with God, unknown as he may be. Looking at the doctrine of the Trinity round the other way, just because no one can understand God does not mean that nothing true can be said about him. We’d never have known about it had not God revealed it.īut then, what does anyone make of that most of material things, matter? Difficult equations and ever more particular examination of matter seem a long way from cracking the question. A doctrine like the Trinity cannot be worked out like a mathematical theorem or a scientific theory. He must be beyond formulaic comprehension. Some people have called unknown elements in science “natural mysteries” to distinguish them from theological mysteries, which are unconquered elements in the effort to know about God.Ĭertainly if you think you comprehend God, you have misunderstood. I mean, what else do we really understand? The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is commonly expressed in Christian art, particularly in the Western tradition, as God the Father with a grey beard, Jesus the Son in his bosom and a dove hovering overhead.It is not surprising that we do not really understand the contents of the doctrine of God the Holy Trinity, which is celebrated on the last Sunday of this month. Besides this figurative personification there is a complex theology that renders the Trinity in a rare iconography seen superlatively in Andrei Rublev's icon Trinity.Įl Greco's mannerist version is among the finest examples. In addition to being one of the highest achievements of Russian art, Rublev's icon - also known as "Old Testament Trinity"- portrays a profound theological meaning of the unity of Persons in the Trinity along with the spiritual nature of God's Divine Essence by depicting the Triune God as simply three angels. Many outside the Russian Orthodox tradition wonder what it is about this image that represents the Trinity. Rather than depicting the classic Father, Son and Holy Spirit breakdown as old bearded man, Jesus and the dove, Rublev's subject matter is certainly uncharacteristic of Western Trinity representations. Rublev's Trinity displays a rare arrangement of three angels symbolizing a solemn visual Trinitarian theology that conforms to the Russian Orthodox tradition. The Russian Orthodox Church never fully resolved the iconoclastic controversy until 1667.
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