A Map of Life by Sheed Frank

Author:Sheed, Frank [Sheed, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898704747
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2011-05-12T04:00:00+00:00

The Doctrine of the Trinity

Thus the doctrine of the Trinity, at first seen only as a sheer challenge to faith, grows steadily more luminous to the mind that accepts it and comes humbly to the study of what the Church has seen in it. This truth that the Godhead is absolutely one essence, one single concrete Something, yet that there are three Persons owning the one nature—the one self-same identical nature, this truth not only grows more luminous as the ideas of person and nature are studied, as the relation of Father and Son and the Spirit proceeding from both is meditated on, but throws a flood of light on the whole of our understanding of life, The doctrine that in the unity of the Godhead there are three Persons truly distinct is the supreme mystery revealed by Christ. Beyond it is no further mystery, for it deals with the innermost life of God. In a sense, man need never have been taught it apart from the Incarnation: for it is God in his unity who acts in relation to created beings, the threefold personality being a fact of his own inner life, of his own internal activity, of that activity that remains within his own nature and does not directly affect the beings he has created. But it is a property of love that it wants not only to know but also to be known by the person loved. God, loving us, wants us to know him in his deepest and most secret life, and so gives us here upon earth a glimpse of that truth that it is man’s proper destiny to spend eternity in contemplating. And, apart from that desire of God’s to be known by man, the distinction of Persons has in fact a direct bearing on man’s life since it was the Second Person, and not God in his threefold personality, who became man for our salvation.

It is the supreme mystery in a double sense: it deals with the highest truth, and it is most inaccessible to the created mind. Yet certain elements of it can be grasped by us.

In the first place, it states that in the one divine nature there are three Persons. The distinction between nature and person has already been discussed in Chapter 5, and the reader might very well return to it before proceeding here. Summarizing what is there said: nature and person are both principles of action but in different senses—the person being that which acts, the nature being that by which he acts. In man, nature and person coalesce in one concrete living being: but the attempt to analyse these two principles that in us are fused into one has two results: (1) it makes clear that we arc far from reaching down into the depths of either principle: their deepest depths escape us and it would be a bold man who would dogmatise as to their uttermost possibilities; (2) it at least suggests to us that the total expression of one nature in one person, which is in us, is not the only possibility.

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