I thought it was a great idea by ShortSeller to look up and see what different Encylopedias say about the Trinity.
Here is what 3 different Encylopedias say about the Trinity:
Encylopedia.com:
Trinity:
[Lat.,threefoldness], fundamental doctrine in Christianity, by which God is considered as existing in three persons. While the doctrine is not explicitly taught in the New Testament, early Christian communities testified to a perception that Jesus was God in the flesh; the idea of the Trinity has been inferred from the Gospel of St. John. The developed doctrine of the Trinity purports that God exists in three coequal and coeternal elements -- God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit (see creed 1). It sees these persons as constituted by their mutual relations, yet does not mean that God in his essence is Father, or a male deity. Jesus spoke of a relation of mutual giving and love with the Father, which believers could also enjoy through the Spirit. The Trinity is commemorated liturgically in the Western Church on Trinity Sunday. For systems denying the Trinity, see Unitarianism.
Bibliography: See studies by L. Hodgson (1960) and A. W. Wainwright (1962); G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (repr. 1964); J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (1977); E. Jngel, God as the Mystery of the World (1983).
-------------------------------------------------
Encarta.com:
Trinity:
Trinity, in Christian theology, doctrine that God exists as three personsFather, Son, and Holy Spiritwho are united in one substance or being. The doctrine is not taught explicitly in the New Testament, where the word God almost invariably refers to the Father; but already Jesus Christ, the Son, is seen as standing in a unique relation to the Father, while the Holy Spirit is also emerging as a distinct divine person.
The term trinitas was first used in the 2nd century, by the Latin theologian Tertullian, but the concept was developed in the course of the debates on the nature of Christ. In the 4th century, the doctrine was finally formulated; using terminology still employed by Christian theologians, the doctrine taught the co-equality of the persons of the Godhead. In the West, the 4th-century theologian St Augustine of Hippo's influential work De Trinitate (On the Trinity, 400-416) compared the three-in-oneness of God with analogous structures in the human mind and suggested that the Holy Spirit may be understood as the mutual love between Father and Son (although this second point seems difficult to reconcile with the belief that the Spirit is a distinct, co-equal member of the Trinity). The stress on equality, however, was never understood as detracting from a certain primacy of the Fatherfrom whom the other two persons derive, even if they do so eternally. For an adequate understanding of the trinitarian conception of God, the distinctions among the persons of the Trinity must not become so sharp that there seems to be a plurality of gods, nor may these distinctions be swallowed up in an undifferentiated monism.
The doctrine of the Trinity may be understood on different levels. On one level, it is a means of construing the word God in Christian discourse. God is not a uniquely Christian word, and it needs specific definition in Christian theology. This need for a specifically Christian definition is already apparent in the New Testament, where Paul says, "there are many 'gods' and many 'lords'yet for us there is one God, the Father ..., and one Lord, Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 8:5-6). These words constitute the beginning of a process of clarification and definition, of which the end product is the doctrine of the Trinity. At another level, the doctrine may be seen as a transcript of Christian experience: the God of the Hebrew tradition had become known in a new way, first in the person of Christ, and then in the Spirit that moved in the Church. On a third, speculative level of understanding, the doctrine reveals the dynamism of the Christian conception of Godinvolving notions of a source, a coming forth, and a return (primordial, expressive, and unitive Being). In this sense, the Christian doctrine has parallels both in philosophy (the 19th-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel's Absolute) and in other religions (the Trimurti of Hinduism).
------------------------------------------------
WorldBookOnline.com:
Trinity:
Trinity TRIHN uh tee, is a term used to express the belief that in the one God there are three Divine Personsthe Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost). The idea is based on various passages in the New Testament. Belief in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was defined by early general councils of the Christian church. The Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Constantinople in 381 declared that the Son is of the same essence as the Father, and that the three Persons are one God. The East and West branches of the church later disagreed as to how the Holy Spirit proceeds from the other Divine Persons. The Eastern Church held that the Son comes from the Father, and that the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son. The Western Church held that the Spirit comes from Father and Son together. A special activity has been ascribed to each of the Persons. The Father creates, the Son became human, and the Spirit makes holy.
______________
Contributor:
Joseph M. Hallman, Ph.D., Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas.
