Jimmy Akin gives several layman-friendly resources for learning about the Trinity, including the works of Frank Sheed, the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Compendium of the Catechism.
Transcript:
Host: We go now to Katherine in Ohio, listening on Living Bread Radio. Katherine, you’re on with Jimmy Akin, what’s your question?
Caller: Yes, good evening, gentlemen. I wanted to ask, based on a question that was answered by Tim Staples in recent weeks on a show where he was answering, and he mentioned several sources about the nature of the Holy Trinity. I don’t have a comprehensive background in philosophy and theology, but I’m doing the best I can and if you could recommend, Jimmy, some books primarily, and also perhaps some internet sources, on reading that I could do for an individual like myself who has just basics in philosophy, including a little bit of Dominican background when I worked at the House of Studies library in Washington DC, and I was able to audit a couple of classes from some, you know, tremendous instructors.
Jimmy: Okay, well, I didn’t hear the question that, you know, Tim answered, so I can only go based on on what you’ve just said. But if you’re looking for resources about the Trinity, a couple of famous ones that that have been very popular in English to help people understand the Trinity were written by Frank Sheed. Frank Sheed was a British author and apologist in the twentieth century, he wrote a couple of books, one of them—I mean, wrote a bunch of books—but a couple of them where he talks about the Trinity are his book “Theology For Beginners,” and also his book “Theology and Sanity.” And both of those contain discussions of the doctrine of the Trinity that are meant to be intelligible for a popular audience, so you don’t have to have had a lot of training in order to be able to understand them. They’re meant to be popularly understandable. So I’d recommend those.
In terms of things you can read on the internet, I would suggest going by NewAdvent.org or Catholic.com and looking in the original Catholic Encyclopedia, where it’s gonna have articles on the Trinity, and on God, and on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and between those you should be able to get a good background. It may not be quite as easy to understand because, you know, it was written more than a hundred years ago, and so it kind of has an elevated tone and some archaic terms, but it still will be a good orthodox resource for you that’s online for free.
Also, you could go to Vatican.va and look in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It’s gonna have a discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity, it’s gonna be in pretty brief terms, because, you know, they won’t spend pages and pages discussing it, but it’ll give you a good summary of the Church’s official teaching regarding the Trinity.
And if that’s a little much for you–because the Catechism can be a little heady at times–you might take a look at the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is written in a very accessible Q&A format and covers the same material in a kind of summary way. And that’s also at Vatican.va, you’ll find the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church there, and you can also just search directly on Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and it’ll come up.
Host: Thank you very much, Catherine, does that help you?
Caller: Yes it did.