Why is the blessed trinity the central mystery of our catholic faith?

Answer 1

Roman Catholic Answer

The doctrine of the Blessed Trinity is a mystery because it is beyond our understanding. We can understand one person with two natures: we are persons with a spirit and a body. Our nature as spirit is the thing that animates our bodies. Our spirit learns through our body, but when the spirit leaves the body, it dies. The Blessed Trinity is Three Persons in One Nature. The One Nature is God, it is Divine, but it has Three Persons. So it is a mystery. We only know of it because it was revealed to us by God, Himself.

Answer 2

Personally I do not consider the Holy Trinity to be a mystery that is too big for my mind to grasp. It is a complicated myth. It has seemingly illogical aspects which are simply explained by the fact that the whole idea is imaginary.

Answer 3

A:I have no difficulty in understanding the concept of the Holy Trinity, so for me it is not a mystery. In fact, the syncretic religion of ancient Egypt is far harder to really understand and appreciate, as is the Hindu godhead.

The real mystery is that it took so long for Christianity even to decide that God is a trinity, but perhaps this is because there was no scriptural support for the Trinity. The earliest known proponent of the Holy Trinity was Tertullian, a Latin theologian who wrote in the early third century. The new concept gradually gained adherents throughout the third century but also faced opposition, particularly from Arius, a popular Libyan priest at the beginning of the fourth century. The Trinity was adopted as Christian doctrine at the Council of Nicaea in 325, but the Church remained divinded until Emperor Theodosius made belief in the Trinity a requirement for all Christians, around 380 CE.

The Blessed Trinity is supposedly supported by the 'Johannine Comma', 1 John 5:7-8 ("For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."), but that passage was never in the early Greek manuscripts. It appeared in the Latin translation of the fifth century, after the Trinity doctrine had been accepted by the Council of Nicaea.

Answer 4

The Trinity seems to have been a concept that came late to Christianity. The word 'Trinity' is not actually used in The Bible, but there are passages that some see as referring to the Trinity. One of the most famous of these is the "Johannine Comma" (1 John 5:7), which refers indirectly to the concept of the Trinity. But this was never in the early Greek manuscripts, only appearing in the Latin translation of the fifth century, after the Trinity doctrine had been accepted by the Council of Nicaea.

The early Church Father, Eusebius, writing at a time when the concept of the Trinity was yet to be agreed, changed his view on the meaning of the Trinity over time. Clearly this was a mystery he had difficulty coming to terms with.

Even after the Council of Nicaea adopted the concept that Christ was "of one being with God" in 325, it took some decades to establish an agreed concept of the Holy Trinity.

Part of the mystery of the Trinity come from the definition of the Holy Spirit. The Nicene Creed states that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father." It does not say explicitly that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father, and there is no statement that the Spirit's eternal origin is found anywhere but in the Father. The phrase "and the Son" (Latin: filioque) was used in a letter from Pope Leo I to the members of the Synod of Toledo in Spain in 447. In the ninth century, Pope Leo III (795-816) agreed with the filioque theologically but was opposed to adopting it in Rome. In 1014, the Bishop of Rome used the Nicene Creed at mass, with the filioque. The Great Schism was triggered by the insistence of the Pope that the filioque clause be inserted into the Nicene Creed, a definition the Orthodox Churches have never accepted.