On this Trinity Sunday, I quote Phillip Schaff:
Dr. Isaac Barrow, one of the intellectual giants of the Anglican Church (died 1677), in his Defense of the Blessed Trinity (a sermon preached on Trinity Sunday, 1663), humbly acknowledges the transcendent incomprehensibility, while clearly stating the facts, of this great mystery: ’The sacred Trinity may be considered either as it is in itself wrapt up in inexplicable folds of mystery, or as it hath discovered itself operating in wonderful methods of grace towards us. As it is in itself, ’tis an object too bright and dazzling for our weak eye to fasten upon, an abyss too deep for our short reason to fathom; I can only say that we are so bound to mind it as to exercise our faith, and express our humility, in willingly believing, in submissively adoring those high mysteries which are revealed in the holy oracles concerning it by that Spirit itself which searcheth the depths of God. . . . That there is one Divine Nature or Essence, common unto three Persons, incomprehensibly united, and ineffably distinguished—united in essential attributes, distinguished by peculiar idioms and relations; all equally infinite in every divine perfection, each different from the other in order and manner of subsistence; that there is a mutual inexistence of one in all, and all in one, a communication without any deprivation or diminution in the communicant; an eternal generation, and an eternal procession, without precedence or succession, without proper causality or dependence; a Father imparting his own, and the Son receiving his Father’s life, and a Spirit issuing from both, without any division or multiplication of essence—these are notions which may well puzzle our reason in conceiving how they agree, but should not stagger our faith in assenting that they are true; upon which we should meditate, not with hope to comprehend, but with dispositions to admire, veiling our faces in the presence, and prostrating our reason at the feet, of Wisdom so far transcending us.’
Phillip Schaff - Creeds of Christendom Vol.1, Athanasian Creed
Dr. Isaac Barrow, one of the intellectual giants of the Anglican Church (died 1677), in his Defense of the Blessed Trinity (a sermon preached on Trinity Sunday, 1663), humbly acknowledges the transcendent incomprehensibility, while clearly stating the facts, of this great mystery: ’The sacred Trinity may be considered either as it is in itself wrapt up in inexplicable folds of mystery, or as it hath discovered itself operating in wonderful methods of grace towards us. As it is in itself, ’tis an object too bright and dazzling for our weak eye to fasten upon, an abyss too deep for our short reason to fathom; I can only say that we are so bound to mind it as to exercise our faith, and express our humility, in willingly believing, in submissively adoring those high mysteries which are revealed in the holy oracles concerning it by that Spirit itself which searcheth the depths of God. . . . That there is one Divine Nature or Essence, common unto three Persons, incomprehensibly united, and ineffably distinguished—united in essential attributes, distinguished by peculiar idioms and relations; all equally infinite in every divine perfection, each different from the other in order and manner of subsistence; that there is a mutual inexistence of one in all, and all in one, a communication without any deprivation or diminution in the communicant; an eternal generation, and an eternal procession, without precedence or succession, without proper causality or dependence; a Father imparting his own, and the Son receiving his Father’s life, and a Spirit issuing from both, without any division or multiplication of essence—these are notions which may well puzzle our reason in conceiving how they agree, but should not stagger our faith in assenting that they are true; upon which we should meditate, not with hope to comprehend, but with dispositions to admire, veiling our faces in the presence, and prostrating our reason at the feet, of Wisdom so far transcending us.’
Phillip Schaff - Creeds of Christendom Vol.1, Athanasian Creed
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