The marriage of Joseph and Mary

Super Flumina
Babylonis

under the patronage of St Joseph and St Dominic

By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, remembering Zion;
on the poplars that grew there we hung up our harps. . . Ps 136

St Dominic

Home

Philosophy behind this website

Professor Solomon's Introduction to Philosophy

11th September 2001

Atheism

Australia's Catholic Bishops

Australian Catholic Bishops should say

Australia's Support for Legislation Worthy of Adolf Hitler

Belloc

Bill of Rights

Catholicism

Chesterton

Christmas

Church's Fathers & Doctors

Church's Teaching on Divorce, Contraception and Human Sexuality

Compatible sites

Creation

David Attenborough

Defamation of Catholicism

Discipline & the Child

Dismissal of the Whitlam Government

Economic Problems

Evangelium Vitae 73

Evolution

Feminism

Freemasonry & the Church

God is not Material

Harry Potter

Hell

History

Letter of St Paul to the Hebrews

Mary MacKillop

Miscellaneous Papers

Modernism

Mohammedanism

Moral Issues

Non-directional Counselling

Papers written by others

Poetry

Politicians & the Catholic Church

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Leo XIII

Pope Pius XII

Popes on St Thomas

Prayers

Protestantism

Religious Freedom

Questions for Catholic Parents in Parramatta

Research Involving Embryos Bill - Letter to the Prime Minister

Sts John Fisher & Thomas More

Science and Philosophy

Subjectivism

Subversion of Catholic Education

Theology

Thomas Merton

Vatican II


For young readers:

Myall Lakes Adventure


© 2006 Website by Netvantage

 

THE TRINITY REFLECTED IN MAN

Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam: ad imaginem Dei creavit illum, masculum et feminam creavit eos…

Genesis I, 27                                 

Download this document as a Link to PDF PDF

The secret of God’s inner life was not revealed until the coming of Jesus Christ.


In many and various ways in times past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets

but now, in our own day, He has spoken to us through His Son.  (Hebrews I, 1)


Only with Christ’s appearance on Earth did God reveal His own nature as entailing a Trinity of Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Holy Ghost).

 

  God must be one, as St Thomas shows, but nothing in philosophy precludes an opposition of relation of Persons in that One.  Relation is real, an accident whose whole being is ‘be-towards’ another person or thing.[1]  Relation is, St Thomas teaches, the least of all reality.

 

  English retreat master, Fr Bernard Basset S.J. (1909-1988) used remark in his sermons how experimental psychology confirms the truth that each man, though one, gives every indication of being two.  I think, ‘I’ll go into town’; then I think again, ‘No.  I’ll leave it until tomorrow’.  With whom am I conducting this conversation if not with myself?  Every moment of the day a man manifests this division when he communes with his soul and reaches decisions.  He may do it a thousand times.  Shakespeare’s plays are replete with monologues illustrating this remarkable characteristic of the human soul, as when Hamlet weighs the question of suicide with his ‘to be or not to be’.

 

  And there is a third aspect.

 

  What standard do I use as I conduct this internal discussion with myself; as I make, and act on, the judgements that result—whether to act or not, whether to do this thing or that?  What motivates me is, universally, my own good (whether actual or perceived), in other words, the love I bear myself.  Every being loves itself, reflecting in this characteristic the love manifested by its Author in giving it essence and existence.  Every being acts to preserve these gifts of God.  So does man.  We are made in love and love, not hatred, ought to colour the conduct of our lives in perpetual thanksgiving.

 

  Thus man enjoys in his being a trinity of aspects which reflects the Triune nature of his Author.  God made us in His own image and likeness

 

 

Michael Baker

June 7, 2020—Trinity Sunday

 



[1]  So ‘owner’ and ‘owned, and ‘teacher’ and pupil, designate relations no less than ‘father’ and ‘son’.