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To: Cronos
Everyone go dust off your copy of "Theology and Sanity".

You do have a copy of "Theology and Sanity" don't you?

Well, no worries, it's all over the internet. The first few paragraphs from Chapter six:

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THE notion is unfortunately widespread that the mystery of the Blessed Trinity is a mystery of mathematics, that is to say, of how one can equal three. The plain Christian accepts the doctrine of the Trinity; the "advanced" Christian rejects it; but too often what is being accepted by the one and rejected by the other is that one equals three.

The believer argues that God has said it, therefore it must be true; the rejecter argues that it cannot be true, therefore God has not said it. A learned non-Catholic divine, being asked if he believed in the Trinity, answered: "I must confess that the arithmetical aspect of the Deity does not greatly interest me"; and if the learned can think that there is some question of arithmetic involved, the ordinary man can hardly be expected to know any better.

Consider what happens when a believer in the doctrine is suddenly called upon to explain it - and note that unless he is forced to, he will not talk about it at all: there is no likelihood of his being so much in love with the principal doctrine of his Faith that he will WANT to tell people about it. Anyhow, here he is: he has been challenged, and must say something. The dialogue runs something like this:
BELIEVER: "Well, you see, there are three persons in one nature."
QUESTIONER: "Tell me more."
BELIEVER: "Well, there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost."
QUESTIONER: "Ah, I see, three Gods."
BELIEVER (shocked): "Oh no. Only one God."
QUESTIONER: "But you said three:

you called the Father God. That makes 1;
and you called the Son God - 2;
and you called the Holy Ghost God - 3."
Here the dialogue form breaks down. From the believer's mouth there emerges what can only be called a soup of words, sentences that begin and do not end, words that change into something else halfway. This goes on for a longer or shorter time. But finally there comes something like: "Thus, you see, three is one and one is three." The questioner not unnaturally retorts that three is not one, nor one three. Then comes the believer's great moment. With his eyes fairly gleaming he cries: "Ah, that is the mystery. You have to have faith."

Now it is true that the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity is a mystery, and that we can know it only by faith. But what we have just been hearing is not the mystery of the Trinity, it is not the mystery of anything, it is wretched nonsense. It may be heroic faith to believe it, like the man who

Wished there were four of 'em
That he might believe more of 'em;
or it may be total intellectual unconcern? God has revealed certain things about Himself, we accept the fact that He has done so, but find in ourselves no particular inclination to follow it up. God has told us that He is three persons in one Divine nature, and we say "quite so," and proceed to think of other matters - last week's Retreat or next week's Confession or Lent or Lourdes or the Church's social teaching or foreign missions. All these are vital things, but compared with God Himself, they are as nothing: and the Trinity is God Himself. These other things must be thought about, but to think about them exclusively and about the Trinity not at all is plain folly. And not only folly, but a kind of insensitiveness, almost a callousness, to the love of God. For the doctrine of the Trinity is the inner, the innermost, life of God, His profoundest secret. He did not have to reveal it to us. We could have been saved without knowing that ultimate truth. In the strictest sense it is His business, not ours. He revealed it to us because He loves men and so wants not only to be served by them, but truly known by them. It is the surest mark of love to want to be known. The revelation of the Trinity was in one sense a more certain proof even than Calvary that God loves men. To accept it politely and think no more of it is an insensitiveness beyond comprehension in men who quite certainly love God: as many certainly do who could give no better statement of the doctrine than the believer in the model dialogue we have just been considering.

How did we reach this curious travesty of the supreme truth about God? The short statement of the doctrine is, as we have all heard all our lives, that there are three PERSONS in one NATURE. But if we attach no meaning to the word PERSON, and no meaning to the word NATURE, then both the nouns have dropped out of our definition, and we are left only with the numbers three and one, and get along as best we can with these. Let us agree that there may be more in the mind of the believer than he manages to get said: but the things that do get said give a pretty strong impression that his notion of the Trinity is simply a travesty. It does him no positive harm provided he does not look at it too closely; but it sheds no light in his own soul: and his statement of it, when he is driven to make a statement, might very well extinguish such flickering as there may be in others. The Catholic whose faith is wavering might well have it blown out altogether by such an explanation of the Trinity as some fellow Catholic of stronger faith might feel moved to give: and no one coming fresh to the study of God would be much encouraged.

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It may be a wall of text, but it's a great wall of text.

26 posted on 08/14/2010 10:11:00 AM PDT by Legatus
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To: Legatus

Everyone go dust off your copy of “Theology and Sanity”.
__________________________________________________

Ans why wouldnt “Everyone (just) go dust off your copy of (The Bible)” ???

Why would anyone lo0ok in a secular book for info on God ???

From the Word of God, the Bible...

For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 1 John 5:7


27 posted on 08/14/2010 10:24:52 AM PDT by Tennessee Nana
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