Q&A 99
Q. But even if it was a faith, atheism does not have these unexplainable, unknowable, convenient "mysteries" like the Trinity.
A. Allow me to quote a certain Australian on this one: "…a Mystery is not something that we can know nothing about: it is only something that the mind cannot WHOLLY know. It is not to be thought of as a high wall that we can neither see over nor get around: it is to be thought of rather as a gallery into which we can progress deeper and deeper, though we can never reach the end. Yet every step of our progress is immeasurably satisfying...
As we examine the Mysteries of religion, we discover that the practical result of this effort of the finite to know the Infinite - which is also a determination of the Infinite to be known by the finite - is that any given Mystery resolves itself (for our minds, of course, not in its own reality) into two truths which we cannot see how to reconcile.
Sometimes by the revelation of God, sometimes by the hard effort of man's own mind, we see that each of two things must be so, yet we cannot see why one does not exclude the other.
Thus in the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity, we cannot see how God can be Three if He is infinitely One; in the Doctrine of the Incarnation, we cannot see how Christ can be wholly God and at the same time wholly man; in the mystery of our own will, we do not see how its freedom can be reconciled with God's omniscience; and so with all the other Mysteries of religion.
Left to ourselves, we should almost certainly say that there is a conflict, and therefore that both cannot be true; and even if under pressure we reluctantly admit that we cannot absolutely prove that there is contradiction, or exclude the possibility that there might be reconciliation at some point beyond our gaze, yet the point of reconciliation is beyond our gaze; and what lies within our gaze seems for ever irreconcilable."
Q. Let's say for example that mystery of the Trinity: how do you guys explain it?
(Cont'd in Q&A 100)
Happy feastday of the Blessed Trinity!
22nd May 2016