The Attempt to Understand Trinity

It always has been a tough issue to deal with the understanding of trinity. What we always bear in mind is that Father, Son, Spirit are different from each other, and there is only a God. It’s almost a contradictory truth, though Hegel claimed that he knew the full mystery of the dogma. However, we must put Hegel aside for now.

Today, I read Systematic Theology written by Robert Letham, who draws a clear picture of the historic understanding of the dogma. Robert pays much attention to Aquinas’ words, and examines the views of Barth, Bavinck, Augustine carefully also. Now, I’ll list the main point of Robert.

1. Augustine tried to describe the Trinity in analogy to the relation between memory, understanding, and will in man’s mind. However, this attempt is criticized for its modalist tendencies.
2. Later, Aquinas claimed that natural reason cannot get to the understanding of the Trinity, since “by natural reason we can know what belongs to the unity of the essence, but not what belongs to the distinction of the persons.”
3. Barth holds the view, similar to Calvin, that we can only understand the Trinity through God’s words. This reflects Barth’s contempt towards natural theology.
4. Bavinck’s view can be summed that, “the Trinity is wholly unlike anything else, but everything else is like the Trinity.”