Why the Trinity Matters

Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP

Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas

Christians claim that the deepest mystery of life is found in God, and that the identity of God is Trinitarian. God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. How can we understand this mystery, and what difference does it make for our lives? Following Aquinas, we can say that the mystery of the Trinity helps us understand something of ourselves and our world, since we are made in the image of God, and that image is Trinitarian. The deepest foundation of the world is personal, and indeed, it pertains to personal communion. This way of thinking about reality offers us a helpful contemporary alternative to visions of reality that ignore or deny personhood (beings endowed with intelligence, love, freedom) as something central to the meaning of life.

Fr. Thomas Joseph White is the Rector Magnificus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (Angelicum) in Rome. He is the author of various books and articles including Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Sapientia Press, 2011), The Incarnate Lord, A Thomistic Study in Christology (The Catholic University of America Press, 2015) Exodus (Brazos Press, 2016), The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (Catholic University Press, 2017), and The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God (Catholic University Press, 2022). He is co-editor of the journal Nova et Vetera, a Distinguished Scholar of the McDonald Agape Foundation, and a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.