The Trinity Quotes

“Altho' I rarely waste time in reading on theological subjects, as mangled by our Pseudo-Christians, yet I can readily suppose Basanistos may be amusing. Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. If it could be understood it would not answer their purpose. Their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like the scuttlefish, thro' the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy, and there they will skulk.

[Letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp on 30 July 1810 denouncing the Christian doctrine of the Trinity]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs... In fact, the Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.

[Letter to James Smith discussing Jefferson's hate of the doctrine of the Christian trinity, December 8 1822]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“God for us, God alongside us, God within us.”
― Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation

“God's high freedom in Jesus Christ is His freedom for LOVE. The divine capacity which operates and exhibits itself in that superiority and subordination is manifestly also God's capacity to bend downwards, to attach Himself to another and this other to Himself, to be together with him. This takes place in that irreversible sequence, but in it is completely real. In that sequence there arises and continues in Jesus Christ the highest communion of God with man. God's deity is thus no prison in which He can exist only in and for Himself. It is rather His freedom to be in and for Himself but also with and for us, to assert but also to sacrifice Himself, to be wholly exalted but also completely humble, not only almighty but also almighty mercy, not only Lord but also servant, not only judge but also Himself the judged, not only man's eternal king but also his brother in time. And all that without in the slightest forfeiting His deity! All that, rather, in the highest proof and proclamation of His deity! He who DOES and manifestly CAN do all that, He and no other is the living God.”
― Karl Barth, The Humanity of God

“If the moderns really want a simple religion of love, they must look for it in the Athanasian Creed. The truth is that the trumpet of true Christianity, the challenge of the charities and simplicities of Bethlehem or Christmas Day never rang out more arrestingly and unmistakably than in the defiance of Athanasius to the cold compromise of the Arians. It was emphatically he who really was fighting for a God of Love against a God of colourless and remote cosmic control; the God of the stoics and the agnostics. It was emphatically he who was fighting for the Holy Child against the grey deity of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He was fighting for that very balance of beautiful interdependence and intimacy, in the very Trinity of the Divine Nature, that draws our hearts to the Trinity of the Holy Family. His dogma, if the phrase be not misunderstood, turns even God into a Holy Family.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

“The divine persons do not assert themselves, but one bears witness to another. It is for this reason that St. John of Damascus said that 'the Son is the image of the Father, and the Spirit the image of the Son.' It follows that the third person of the Trinity is the only one not having his image in another person. The Holy Spirit, as person, remains unmanifested, hidden, concealing himself in his very appearing...

The Holy Spirit is the sovereign unction upon the Christ and upon all the Christians called to reign with him in the Age to come. It is then that this divine person, now unknown, not having his image in another member of the Trinity, will manifest himself in deified persons: for the multitude of the saints will be his image.”
― Vladimir Lossky

“God draws near to us in such a way as to draw us near to himself within the circle of his knowing of himself.”
― Thomas F. Torrance, Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal Agreement

“First, Freud must be – as it were – turned on his head. It is not that physical ‘sex’ is basic and ‘God’ ephemeral; rather, it is God who is basic, and ‘desire’ the precious clue that ever tugs at the heart, reminding the human soul – however dimly – of its created source. Hence...DESIRE IS MORE FUNDAMENTAL THAN 'SEX'. It is more fundamental, ultimately, because desire is an ontological category belonging primarily to God, and only secondarily to humans as a token of their createdness ‘in the image’. But in God, ‘desire’ of course signifies no LACK – as it manifestly does in humans. Rather, it connotes that plenitude of longing love that God has for God’s own creation and for its full and ecstatic participation in the divine, trinitarian, life.”
― Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay 'On the Trinity'

“Christians do not believe that there is one God and three Gods. Nor do we believe that God is one person and three persons. That would clearly be contradictory and therefore logically impossible. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity is that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct persons. We believe that The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit are each individual persons in their own right, but they all share the same divine essence. Saying that "God is one being who consists of three persons" is no more contradictory than saying that "There's one triangle that consists of three corners”
― Evan Minton

“[T]he mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of Holiness: the Glory and the Power of the Trinity is the Glory and Power of God who makes us holy. There is God dwelling in light inaccessibly, a consuming fire of Holy Love, destroying all that resists, glorifying into its own purity all that yields. There is the Son, casting Himself into that consuming fire, whether in its eternal blessedness in heaven, or its angry wrath on earth, a willing sacrifice, to be its food and its satisfaction, as well as the revelation of its power to destroy and to save. And there is the Spirit of Holiness, the flames of that mighty fire spreading on every side, convicting and judging as the Spirit of Burning, and then transforming into its own brightness and holiness all that it can reach. All the relations of the Three Persons to each other and to us have their root and their meaning in the revelation of God as the Holy One. As we know and partake of Him, we shall know and partake of Holiness.”
― Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ: A devotional look at your life

“O my soul, is not this enough? Dost thou need more strength than the omnipotence of the United Trinity? Dost thou want more wisdom than exists in the Father, more love than displays itself in the Son, or more power than is manifest in the influences of the Spirit?”
― Charles Spurgeon

“The Ontological Argument shows us that in order for God to be maximally great, He must be morally perfect. Being all loving is a part of good morality, but before the creation of humans, God had no one to love, so how could He be loving? He couldn’t be. If He isn’t loving, He isn’t morally perfect, and if He isn’t morally perfect, He isn’t maximally great. How do we resolve this? The doctrine of The Trinity provides the answer. God needs to be a Trinity in order to be love. For love requires three things: 1; a lover 2; a beloved 3; a relationship between them.”
― Evan Minton, Inference To The One True God: Why I Believe In Jesus Instead Of Other Gods

“THE BIBLE. A book full of hope.”
― Mac Canoza