THE doctrine of the Blessed Trinity means that the Divine Nature is wholly expressed as Thinker, wholly expressed as the Thinker's Thought of Himself, wholly expressed as Love: remaining the one identical nature which because it is infinite cannot be repeated, or shared, or possessed in part but only totally, it is owned by Three Persons. It is an infinite, rational nature in which - to repeat our definition of person - there are three centres of attribution: an infinite principle of operation in which there are three operators. This, we have seen, is what the doctrine means. But does this mean anything?
In a finite nature, which is the only kind of nature that we have any experience of possessing, we should assume instantly that the same identical nature could not be possessed by even two distinct persons; that one single source of operations must be possessed, "wielded", by one single operator only. Yet even examining the concepts of person and nature in their finiteness in us, we have seen a certain glimmer of distinction which should prepare us for at least the possibility of that plurality of persons which we find in an infinite nature: person and nature are not so indistinguishably one that we can dismiss as unthinkable the idea that, if the nature were infinite, there might be more than one person in it. You could not be a person unless you had a nature, yet it is not your nature that makes you a person, that makes you who you are. The philosophers say that a person is essentially
We can put this for our present purposes a shade more simply. You are a distinct person not because you have a distinct nature, but because you are you, you are wholly you, you are the whole of you, you are not someone else. Your nature is bound up in all this, but it is not the whole explanation of it. Now the concept of person thus stated applies in its fullness to each of the three Persons in the Divine Nature.
So far what we have said of the Blessed Trinity should have had the effect of widening the area of light. We have known that the ring of darkness is still there, but the light has been growing and we in it. We have realized that we cannot see the Blessed Trinity as It is in Itself, yet in a sense we have been seeing It. We have clarified the ideas represented by the words of our formula; we have done something to strip away from the concepts involved certain limitations which we have seen as belonging not to them, but to our finiteness. If the unfolding has meant anything to us at all, the whole thing has been a kind of joy. We feel that if we cannot see the concrete reality of the Three Persons in One God, at least we can see why we cannot see, we can see that the difficulty of seeing lies in us but not in God.
But the darkness that belongs to Mystery presents itself to us not simply as something we cannot see because our eyes are not strong enough for so much light; it presents itself also in a very much more irksome fashion as the appearance of contradiction in so much of it as we can see. So far we have not been much bothered by this more troubling kind of darkness; but it is there, and as we advance we shall become increasingly aware of it.
Consider one problem: if each of the three Divine Persons is not either of the others, what has each got that the other two have not got? And if each has something that the others have not, then obviously it is only another way of putting the same truth to say that each must lack something that the others have: and does this not contradict at once their equality and their infinity? Or at least the infinity of all but the first? It does not diminish the Father that He is not generated as the Son is, but does it not diminish the Son that He does not generate as the Father does? Likewise one may feel that it is surely some kind of diminution in the Holy Spirit that He does not produce a Person by spiration as Father and Son do.
To say that one sees the answer clearly would be to say that the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity is no mystery at all. We know that the Three Persons are not each other: we know that each is infinite and wholly God. If we knew no more than that, we still know that. Even if we come to see further, by that very fact we come upon some new problem even more apparently insoluble - because we are limited and God infinite. It is of the very nature of partial seeing that we cannot see all the reconciliation of the parts we see, because it is only in the whole that they are one, and we do not see the whole. The word we form cannot wholly express God: only the Word He generates can do that. To be irked at this necessary darkness is as though we were irked at not being God.
But none of this is any reason for not asking the questions. We may not see the answer: but if we do not ask the questions we certainly will not see even a glimmer of the answer. We have already seen that we must not ask the questions as though we were challenging God, calling upon Him to defend His statements about Himself before the bar of our reason. We must ask the questions simply as requests for light. And upon this particular question, we shall find that we can push back the surrounding darkness a little. The theologians, with their discussion of the Three Persons as Subsistent Relations can get more light than we, but even at the level of our present knowledge we can get some light.
Thus we can see that the Son and the Holy Ghost have the same infinite knowledge as the Father because they possess the same infinite nature of which infinite knowledge is one operation; the Father's possession of that knowledge generates an Idea, the Son's does not, nor does the Holy Ghost's: not because the Son and the Holy Ghost have any less knowledge, any less knowing power, than the Father, but because the Divine Knowledge has already produced the Idea, so that the Divine Nature is wholly expressed as knowledge. The same can be said of the Divine Love. The Holy Ghost has the same infinite love as the Father and Son. Their possession of that love produces a state of lovingness which is a Person, His does not: but again not because He has less love, less loving-power, than the Father and the Son, but because the Divine Nature is already utterly expressed as Love.
Thus no one of the Three has anything that the others have not; each possesses the whole Godhead, but each possesses it in His own Way - contained in that, if we could see deep enough into it, lies the secret of the distinction of Persons.
What we must realize is that success in finding answers to this and such like questions has a bearing upon our understanding of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, but none at all upon our acceptance of it. If we were trying to arrive at the doctrine by the effort of our own minds working upon the concept of the Infinite, then a problem en route, to which we could not see the answer, would effectually bar our progress; till it was solved, we should never arrive at the Trinity. But we have received the doctrine from God Himself. Therefore we make this examination not to discover the doctrine (for God has revealed it); still less to verify it (for no effort of our mind could make it more certain than God's word); but to understand it better, to get more light on it and from it, to know more of God as a result of it.
This further examination can be very profitable - provided we do not underrate its difficulty. From the sure ground of revealed truth we are adventuring outward into the Infinite. The trouble is that we cannot get the Infinite itself under our microscope. Even if we have formed as good a concept of the Infinite as finite mind can form, yet our Infinite, that is the Infinite as we conceive it, is a synthetic affair compared with its own incredible reality. Therefore we move slowly: a glimmer of light pleases us, a mass of darkness does not surprise us. There is a type of foolish philosopher who reasons from his human concept of the Infinite as though it actually were the Infinite, and gets into hot quarrels about his deductions with other philosophers as foolish as himself. Against that folly of confidence we must be on our guard. Logic misused can mislead us: not that logic is less valid here than elsewhere, but that we have not sufficient knowledge to apply the methods of logic with certainty. To argue too confidently about the inner being of the Infinite is to overlook the myriad things that we do not know about it: our premises are a shadow and an approximation of the Infinite Reality: how can our conclusions be sure?
What is sure is what God has revealed. With that we can start our exploration. In our exploring what is sure is that what the Church has defined is true, what the Church has condemned is false: Christ established a Church that could do us this essential service. For most of us, exploration will be only the effort to understand as much as is thus certain. And it is immensely rewarding. For the great theologians, exploration means the effort to enlarge the boundaries of the certain: in this effort they use logic with superb power: but they too know that nothing can be known as infallibly certain till the Church has spoken: the mind of man is not sufficient.
But the light is the light, however darkness may hem it in. The difficulties in extending the area of our understanding do not in the least affect the certainty of what we do know of the Blessed Trinity. And what we know is a knowledge from which the mind can draw light and upon which the whole soul can feed.