God the Holy Spirit, Mentor's Guide, MG14

2 2 6 /

G O D T H E H O L Y S P I R I T

and other instances we see the Father, Son, and Spirit relating to each other, something that they could not do if they were one person playing separate roles). Have students think of and discuss a few of these illustrations and how they help us or hinder us in thinking rightly about God. Transition: “Our lesson today will help us discover what the role of the Holy Spirit is in the life of the Trinity. We will try to find ways to describe the difference between the Son of God and the Spirit of God and we will try to discover the ways in which the Spirit relates to the Father and the Son. Some of these ideas will be difficult because we are talking about a great mystery but the Church has learned from experience how important it is to think rightly about the nature of God and to correct wrong ideas whenever they appear. No matter how difficult these theological ideas about the Trinity are, we should remember that the most basic truths of the Trinity can be learned by memorizing the Nicene Creed which describes the essential truths about God’s nature in just a few paragraphs.” The Trinitarian Principle can be described in three words: Unity, Diversity, and Equality. Each of the three members comprise one, and only one, God. There is absolute, unbroken unity between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God is one. There is only one Divine Being (the Church councils said the Father, Son, and Spirit are of “one substance”), with one unchanging nature. The doctrine of the Trinity safeguards God’s unity. But there is also diversity. God has revealed himself in Scripture as a complex and mysterious being. The infinite God of the universe is never easily (or fully) understood by human minds. God, in himself, is diversified. The Father is not the Son or the Spirit, the Son is not the Spirit or the Father, the Spirit is not Father or the Son. The Church councils described this as “three persons”( hypostases ). (A person is a rational being with a distinct center of consciousness. Persons know things and they know that they know things.) Therefore, there is one God eternally existing as three persons. You cannot understand the Scriptures or explain the

7 Page 18 Outline Point I-B-3