Analogies of the Trinity
outpouring under visible form, their mission is completed in their invisible coming into the hearts of all believers, in the church of the Son, in the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Son and the Spirit have eternally proceeded from the Father, so that He Himself would come through and in Them to His people, and ultimately God would be all in all.
Analogies of the Trinity The doctrine of the Trinity surpasses human understanding to such an extent that from the beginning, efforts were made to elucidate it through images or prove it through reasoning. Firstly, it was remarkable that the number three had such a rich and deep meaning in Scripture. There is mention of three parts of creation: heaven, earth, and what is under the earth; three groups of people according to the three sons of Noah; three dispensations of the covenant of grace, before, during, and after the law; three patriarchs; three parts of the Tabernacle; three main feasts; three divisions of the Old
Testament; three years of Jesus' public ministry; three offices; three days from Jesus' burial to resurrection; three crosses on Golgotha; three languages in the inscription above Jesus' cross; three beloved disciples; three witnesses; 1 John 5:8; three Christian virtues; three types of lust; 1 John 2:16; three woes, Rev. 8:13, and so forth, a triple blessing; a triple action in bending down, blessing; a three-day fast, three prayer times a day, etc. But not only in Scripture does the number three occupy such a prominent place, but also outside of it, this number holds great significance. For Christian trinitarian doctrine, analogies were sought not only in intermediary beings that gradually emerged in Jewish theology, and the three Sefiroth, rtk,
hmnx, and hnyb, spoken of in the Kabbalah. But traces and indications of the Trinity were also found in the Hindu Trimurti,
Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva; in the three forms of Chinese Tao; in the three main Germanic gods, Odin, Thor, and Loki; and in other
Chaldean, Egyptian, and Greek representations of the gods. In particular, certain emphasis was placed on a statement by Hermes
Trismegistus and on the three principles that Plato accepted to explain the world, the highest nous (being, the good), the world of ideas, and the matter. But all these analogies are polytheistic and therefore difficult to compare with Christian trinitarian doctrine.
Of greater value are the physical analogies that have been sought in nature. Justin Martyr, following Philo, used the image of fire, which, when igniting another, remains the same. Tertullian said that God produced the Logos, sicut radix fruticem et fons fluvium et sol radium, and spoke of source, stream, and river, of root, stem, and crown, etc. These images recurred in later church fathers and theologians and were expanded and elaborated upon. The more one reflected on everything, the more it became apparent that everything existed in threes. Space with its three dimensions; time with its three moments; nature with its three kingdoms; the world of matter, spirit, and their combination in man; bodies in their solid, liquid, and gaseous states; the forces of attraction, repulsion, and their equilibrium; the three functions of the human soul, the rational, the emotional, and the volitional, or the three faculties, head, heart, and hand; the three factors of the household, husband, wife, and child; the three classes in society, the learning, the fighting, and the nourishing classes; the three ideal goods of the true, the good, and the beautiful; the triad in music, consisting of the tonic with its third and fifth; the rainbow and its many colors; the sun with its vigor, splendor, warmth, its life-giving, illuminating, and heating power; the three primary colors, yellow, red, and blue, and so forth, have
been used in earlier and later times as analogies of the Christian Trinity. Higher still are the logical analogies that have been discovered. Augustine repeatedly points out that everything must, in the first place, have unity, one essence, unity, a measure, esse, unitas, mensura, modus; secondly, it must have a certain form, species, to be something specific and distinct from other things; and finally, there must be a certain relationship and harmony between the general and the particular. Substance, form or beauty, and harmony between them or love are the basic forms and elements of all existence. Omne quod est, aliud est quo constat, aliud quo discernitur, aliud quo congruit.
Medieval theology elaborated on this in various ways and sought to identify a triad everywhere. It found an analogy to the Trinity in the trivium of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric; in the three philosophical disciplines, logic, physics, and ethics; in the three persons of grammar; in the active, passive, and middle voice; in the singular, dual, and plural; in the three primary vowels and in the triliteral roots of the Hebrew language; in the dispositio, elocutio, and actio of rhetoric; in the definition, division, and argumentation of dialectic; in the three forms of poetry, epic, lyric, and drama; in the three stages of mysticism, cogitatio, meditatio, contemplatio or faith, reason, contemplation, or via purgativa, illuminativa, unitiva, etc. Dionysius the Areopagite structured his celestial hierarchy, and Dante his Divine Comedy, according to this triad. In modern philosophy, the triad has come to formal dominance. According to Hegel, Kant, as if by instinct, rediscovered triplicity and schematized accordingly the organs of knowledge, the faculties of the soul, the categories, the ideas of reason, etc. But it was only in the idealistic philosophy derived from Kant by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel that this triplicity became a dialectical method. Idealism seeks to understand things as a product of consciousness, as an unfolding of
the idea. Therefore, the idea must be conceived as living, moving, and producing. This can only happen if it is always in contradiction between what it is and what it does, and then resolves and reconciles this contradiction in a third. The law of contradiction is the essence of spirit. Thus, the idea progresses through its unfoldings and developments through the moments of position, negation, limitation, thesis, antithesis, synthesis, being-in-itself, for-itself, being-for-itself.
The whole world develops in the "Schema of Triunities." Logic, with its doctrine of being, essence, and concept, considers Spirit in itself; natural philosophy, in the three forms of mechanics, physics, and organics, deals with Spirit for itself, the spirit in its otherness, in its self-alienation; philosophy of mind, with its subjective, objective, and absolute spirit, deals with Spirit in and for itself, the spirit in its return to itself, in its self-awareness. Through the influence of this philosophy, triplicity became the basis of many philosophical and theological systems.
However, it was not enough merely to discover analogies for the Trinity in various ways; attempts were also made to positively prove it, either deducing it from the essence of thought or from that of love as necessary. The doctrine of the Logos, both in Scripture and in Greek philosophy, unintentionally and naturally presented an image in human thought and speech of the Trinitarian process in the Divine
Being. Justin Martyr, Tatian, Tertullian, Lactantius, and others make use of this comparison. Athanasius and the Cappadocians repeatedly presented generation as God's self-knowledge in His Image, as an eternal speaking of a word; Father and Son are joined as nous and logos. But especially Augustine found clear traces of the Trinity in the internal, rational human being. And he found them in various ways and directions.
First, he found them in the triad of esse, nosse, and velle; essentia, scientia, amor; mens, notitia, amor. Then he discovered traces of it in the faculties of the soul, particularly in sensory perception, which comes about through an object, the thing itself, through an image of it in the eye, vision, and the intention of the mind, which directs the sense organ to the object; and this trinity remains even when the object disappears, for then an image of it is preserved in memory, external observation gives way to internal vision, and the will remains, which unites both. However, Augustine finds the greatest resemblance to the Trinity in the self-knowledge of the human spirit.
He usually calls the trinity he finds here by the names mens, notitia, amor (dilectio), or memoria, intelligentia, voluntas. First, the spirit is memoria, i.e., consciousness both of other things and of itself; there is consciousness, a scientia that is not yet actual knowledge; in the spirit as memoria lie many notitia, also of itself; someone can know something, even if they are not currently thinking about it. But from this spirit as memoria, from the scientia preserved in memoria, is produced by cogitatio, by thinking, knowing, intelligentia. In this intelligentia, the spirit forms an adequate image of itself, understands, knows, and contemplates itself. So when the mind observes itself in thought, it understands and recognizes itself. And this self-knowledge and self-contemplation is a production: therefore, it generates this understanding and its knowledge. And these two are united by the will or love. But generating these two and the generated by love, they are united by a third, which is nothing other than the will desiring or holding something to enjoy. Thus,
Augustine is deeply convinced that all creatures, as works of the Triune God, also show traces or indications of the Trinity to a greater or lesser degree. Above all, he seeks an image of the Trinity in man, created in the image of the triune God. The entire creation was a mirror of God for Augustine. In various ways, he tries to demonstrate the similarity between the trinitas he discovers in creatures,
especially in man, and the trinitas in the Divine Being. The triad exists in both in that all three are one and equal, that each of the three is in the other two, and these again in the one, and thus all things are in all. However, he does not conceal that all these comparisons are only analogies and images, and that there is a very great difference in the resemblance. Thus, the trinitas in man is not man himself but something in or to man, while in God the Trinity He
Himself is, and the three Persons are the one God. Memory, intelligence, and love are in man only powers, but in the Divine
Being, there are three subjects. In man, those three powers are often unequal and serve to complement each other, but in the Divine
Being, there is perfect Unity and equality of Persons. Augustine did not intend, with these analogies and images, to prove the Trinity a priori; he started from faith, he accepted them on the basis of God's
Word; he only tried to point them out in the whole of nature and clarify them by thinking. The first seven books of his work On the Trinity are mainly devoted to proofs from Scripture; and only in the last eight books does he seek to confirm them from nature and man.
And finally, he added that this trinity in the human mind could indeed be observed by everyone, but could only be recognized by the believer as an image of the triune God. It is indeed essentially inherent in the human spirit and is not eradicated by sin, but it is obscured and renewed by faith as man learns to remember, understand, and love God again. And we will only become His Image completely when we will see Him face to face. There our being will have no death, our knowing no error, our loving no offense. This proof of the Trinity from thought has been adopted by many. But in connection with this proof of the Trinity from thought, Augustine also employs another, namely, from love. He starts from the Scripture's statement: God is love, and shows that there is always a trinity in love, lover and what is loved and love itself. Indeed, you see the Trinity if you see love.
This speculation has also been followed by many, especially by Richard of St. Victor. The fullness of the divine love, as well as that of divine goodness, blessedness, and glory, demands a plurality of persons in the Divine Being because love desires an object, one that is like the loving one. But this love is complete only when both the lover and the beloved include a third in their mutual love and are reciprocally loved by him. We find the same reasoning in Bonaventure and in many others in modern times.
The church and theology generally maintained a very reserved attitude toward these philosophical constructions of the doctrine of the Trinity. At most, they were willing to consider posteriori proofs for the Trinity in order to elucidate the dogma, but even then, many warned against attempting to find support for this doctrine in reason. More than any other, the dogma of the Trinity was a mystery that far exceeded both nature and reason and could only be known through special revelation. Like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas acknowledged vestiges of the Trinity in creation and attempted to elucidate them through reasoning. However, he explicitly stated that the Trinity was not knowable through reason because creation is a work of the entire Trinity and thus demonstrates the Unity of Being but not the distinction of Persons. "But whoever attempts to prove the Trinity of persons by natural reason, detracts from faith in two ways: first, by diminishing the dignity of faith, which has only invisible things as its object, and secondly, by leading others away from the faith, when they begin to think that our faith rests on such weak grounds." Calvin saw little benefit in the analogies and proofs brought from nature and humanity for the Trinity. And many
Reformed and Lutheran theologians judged similarly.