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| The Baptism of Jesus. J-J Tissot. |
Mum, Dad, Baby
Beginning, Middle, End
Length, Breadth, Height
Solid, Liquid, Gas
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
Past, Present, Future
Adjective, Comparative, Superlative
Persons (grammar): 1st, 2nd & 3rd
Masculine, Feminine, Neuter
Birth, Marriage, Death
There are perhaps some who would dismiss this as a trivial pursuit. They might be surprised to learn the origin of the very word "trivia". The Complete OED gives us its etymology:
Latin ( < tri- , tri- comb. form + via way), a place where three ways meet.
The "Trivium" was for a thousand years the foundational course for higher learning throughout Christendom. Comprising grammar, rhetoric and dialectics, it taught students how to think and prepared them for the "Quadrivium", on completion of which they would be awarded their title of Master. Although nowadays something of a formality, the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge still award their Master's Degrees in the seventh year after matriculation.
"Trivia" aside, I am convinced that the universal presence of the three-in-one pattern points ineluctably to the Creator of the universe. It is the finger-print of the Divine Creator of all things visible and invisible. The Spirit of God who moved over the waters at the Creation is also known as digitus paternae dexterae, finger of God's right hand.
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| Philos-Sophia website. |
By way of illustration of the pattern, I am including a series of diagrams below which are modelled on the "Cosmic Icon".
I discovered this icon in the extraordinary work of Wolfgang Smith, mathematician, physicist, classical philosopher and student of ancient sapiential writings of the East. I cannot rate too highly his unique intellectual achievements and his remarkable spiritual insights. For those who wish to discover his work, please visit the Philos-Sophia website.
The Macrocosm
The Corporeal Domain is the world of whole objects whose being is perceptible to me through their qualities and my senses. The objects really exist in space and time. Physicists operate in the Physical Domain and measure the quantities of the "particles" and/or "waves" whose actualisation from potential into whole entities produces corporeal objects. The Physical Domain is subject to time but not to space. Causation within this domain is said to be "horizontal".
The Spiritual Domain in this model is non-corporeal and non-physical, existing aeviternally, beyond space and time, producing effects outside its domain by "vertical causation".
The Microcosm
Man, according to this argument, is a microcosm manifesting a tripartite or trichotomous aspect to his being like the macrocosm. He is composed of body, soul and spirit. All seem to agree that man has a body and a soul. Now, plants and animals have souls too, in the sense of a life-principle. But man has certain faculties quite absent from plants and animals, such as his power of reason. Some argue that these faculties are super-added to a man who, accordingly, has a body, a soul (life-principle) and a spirit. Others argue the faculties are super-added to man's soul so that it becomes a rational soul. According to them, man's being is dichotomous rather than trichotomous. There is not space in this post to develop this issue further.
The Human Soul
I heard the priest this morning in his sermon on the Trinity refer to the three faculties of the human soul. This recalled the questions in the Catechism of my childhood:
29. Is there any likeness to the Blessed Trinity in your soul?
There is this likeness to the Blessed Trinity in my soul: that as in one God there are three Persons, so in my one soul there are three powers.
30. Which are the three powers of your soul?
The three powers of my soul are my memory, my understanding, and my will.
The Triune God
God the Father, despite the arguments between the East and the West over "Filioque", is recognised by both as the aeviternal point of origin; God the Son (Logos, Verbum, reason, understanding) is eternally begotten from the Father; God the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father as His point of origin but, from a different perspective, is breathed into aeviternal being by the mutual love between the Father and the Son. In this sense He "proceeds from the Father and the Son."
The Incarnation
In space and time, the Word was made flesh; descendit de coelis -He descended from Heaven. He entered the corporeal world (the circumference in the icon) and, as man, He was subject to space and time.
God the Father - Memory (the Ancient of Days)
Jesus Christ - Logos
The Holy Ghost - Will / Love
Omnípotens sempitérne Deus, qui dedísti fámulis tuis in confessióne veræ fídei, ætérnæ Trinitátis glóriam agnóscere, et in poténtia maiestátis adoráre Unitátem: quǽsumus; ut, eiúsdem fídei firmitáte, ab ómnibus semper muniámur advérsis.
Almighty, eternal God, You Who have given Your servants, in the confession of the true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of that majesty to adore its unity, grant, we beseech You, that in the firmness of this faith we may ever be protected from all harm. [From today's Collect]
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