Quotes on the Trinity
5/28/2026
In preparing for an upcoming discussion of the Trinity, I pulled my seminary copy of Alister McGrath's The Christian Theology Reader (4th ed., I know it's been updated since) and looked for my underlined passages. I offer some of them to you as you contemplate the mystery of the Trinity this coming Trinity Sunday.
Gregory of Nyssa:
Our argument has been that the word “Godhead” does not signify a specific nature but an operation… [I]n the case of the divine nature, we do not believe that the Father does anything by himself in which the Son is not also involved. Again, we do not believe that the son acts on his own apart from the Holy Spirit. Rather, every operation of God upon his creation is named according to our conceptions of it, and takes its origin from the Father, proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit.
Augustine of Hippo uses love as experienced by humans (the one who loves, the beloved, and love itself) to describe the Trinity:
As regards this question, then, let us believe that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one God, the Creator and Ruler of the whole creature; and that the Father is not the Son, nor the Holy Spirit either the Father or the Son, but a trinity of persons mutually interrelated, and a unity of an equal essence… And this being so, let us direct our attention to those three things which we fancy we have found. We are not yet speaking of heavenly things, nor yet of God the Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, but of that inadequate image, which yet is an image, that is, man; for our feeble mind perhaps can gaze upon this more familiarly and more easily. Well then, when I, who make this inquiry, love anything, there are three things concerned — myself, and that which I love, and love itself… In a wonderful way, the three are inseparable from one another, and yet each one of them is a distinct substance, and all together are one substance or essence, even though they are said to be mutually related to each other.
Where Augustine saw in the human mind (or heart) an image of Triune love, Richard of St Victor emphasizes the relationships between the persons in a "social Trinity:"
…a sharing of love cannot exist except among less than three persons [a lover, the beloved, and a third loved one to share the delights of love]… [A]s the happiness of the supremely powerful One cannot be lacking in what pleases him, so in the divinity it is impossible for two persons not to be united to a third.
Thomas a Kempis warned against too much theological speculation:
It is not lofty words that make you righteous or holy or dear to God, but a virtuous life.
Jurgen Moltmann warns us against, perhaps, too little theological reflection. Trinity is not a Christian doctrine; it is the Christian doctrine:
The most concise expression of the Trinity is God’s action on the cross, in which God allowed the Son to sacrifice himself through the Spirit… If we are to speak as Christians about God, then, we have to tell the story of Jesus as the story of God and to proclaim it as the historical event which took place between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and which revealed who and what God is, not only for man, but in his very existence.
What difference does it make to declare God as Trinity? If God is some kind of monolithic other, then the order of things natural, social, economic, and political is immutable. But if God is in God's own self the very community to which we're called, that's pretty good news:
To say that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is revelation; to say that God is “one substance and three persons” is theology, a human endeavor to fit the revelation of God within the limitations of reason… we are called to live together and to enter into the communion of the Trinity. Society is not ultimately set in its unjust and unequal relationships, but summoned to transform itself in light of the open and egalitarian relationships that obtain in the communion of the Trinity, the goal of social and historical progress. If the Trinity is good news, then it is particularly for the oppressed and those condemned to solitude.
