June 11, 2006

Trinity Sunday

The scholastic theologians, teachers that they were, came up with a numbered mnemonic for keeping the doctrines on the Trinity in mind:

1 nature: deity

2 processions: the Word and the Spirit. The Word proceeding from the Father, and the Spirit proceeding from them both. Thus we are led to...

3 persons: Father, Son and Spirit. And the two processions lead to relationships imagined from both directions, leading to...

4 relations: paternity, filiation, and active and passive spiration. And we add to these 4 relations the unbegottenness proper to the Father, we get

5 notions: paternity, filiation, active and passive spiration, and unbegottenness.

Thus we come to the famous frustrated formulation of theology students everywhere:

5 notions
4 relations
3 persons
2 processions
1 nature
and ZERO understanding!
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1 comment:

  1. Jeff12:34 PM

    ..and Zero understanding!

    LOL. Good post, I hear you. I fall back on good old St. Patrick and that three-leafed clover of his. I stick with that, and I'm good to go.

    Peace

    ReplyDelete

Faithful, or even just thoughtful criticisms are always welcome. Uninformed rudeness to other posters or to the Lord and His Church is not.

I also reserve the right to reject comments promoting things like private revelations and fringe points of view, if it seems to me like they are being presented in a misleading way.

If you raise a disagreement with something I say but I do not respond, please do not feel slighted or insulted, or imagine that this automatically means I disagree or agree with you. It's just that I don't find the comment box to be a constructive medium for certain forms of debate.