Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (Latin: Trinitas, lit. 'triad', from Latin: trinus 'threefold')[1] is the central doctrine concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons:[2][3] God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons (hypostases) sharing one essence/substance/nature (homoousion).[4] As the Fourth Lateran Council declared, it is the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds.[5][6][7] In this context, one essence/nature defines what God is, while the three persons define who God is.[8][9] This expresses at once their distinction and their indissoluble unity. Thus, the entire process of creation and grace is viewed as a single shared action of the three divine persons, in which each person manifests the attributes unique to them in the Trinity, thereby proving that everything comes "from the Father," "through the Son," and "in the Holy Spirit."[10]
Several terms redirect here. For other uses, see Holy Trinity (disambiguation), Trinity (disambiguation), and God in Three Persons (album).
This doctrine is called Trinitarianism and its adherents are called Trinitarians, while its opponents are called antitrinitarians or nontrinitarians. Christian nontrinitarian positions include Unitarianism, Binitarianism and Modalism.
While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, the New Testament possesses a triadic understanding of God[11] and contains a number of Trinitarian formulas.[12][13] The doctrine of the Trinity was first formulated among the early Christians and fathers of the Church as they attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions.[14] There have been some different understandings of the Trinity among Christian theologians and denominations, including questions on issues such as: filioque, eternal functional subordination, subordinationism, eternal generation of the Son and social trinitarianism.[15][16][17][18]
God the Father (top), and the Holy Spirit (represented by a dove) depicted above Jesus Painting by Francesco Albani (d. 1660)
God the Father (top), the Holy Spirit (a dove), and the child Jesus, painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (d. 1682)
Pope Clement I prays to the Trinity, in a typical post-Renaissance depiction by Gianbattista Tiepolo (d. 1770)
Atypical depiction The Son is identified by a lamb, the Father an Eye of Providence, and the Spirit a dove; the painting is by Fridolin Leiber (d. 1912).
Renaissance painting by Jerónimo Cosida depicting Jesus as a triple deity Inner text: The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God
Trinity in architecture[edit]
The concept of the Trinity was made visible in the Heiligen-Geist-Kapelle in Bruck an der Mur, Austria, with a ground plan of an equilateral triangle with beveled corners.[164]
Trinity in literature[edit]
The Trinity has traditionally been a subject matter of strictly theological works focused on proving the doctrine of the Trinity and defending it against its critics. In recent years, however, the Trinity has made an entrance into the world of (Christian) literature through books such as The Shack, published in 2007 and The Trinity Story, published in 2021.