Apr 5, 2012 -- 1:24AM, Blü wrote:

The Catholic Encyclopedia tells me -

The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion — the truth that in the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another.

Part of the exposition that follows translates as -

it's termed a 'mystery'
because human reason can't derive it
so it can only be known through revelation

That's what "mystery" means in Christianity.  Not that "gee, we just don't know how it's so--it's a mystery" but that "it's revealed"--a "top down" approach rather than "bottom up."

and reason can make no cogent demonstration of it after it's revealed.

Um...

Now I find that hard to believe coming from a Christian encyclopedia...

I s'pose the key to this statement is your prior "part of the exposition that follows translates as"...

Apr 5, 2012 -- 1:24AM, Blü wrote:

Is that not just a pretty way of admitting that the notion founders on the rock of reason? That the whole thing's a total nonsense?

It seems to me that you've formed a hypothesis and then set out to prove the hypothesis was true.  I don't suppose I'll try and convince you since I'm not too sure that you bother to let evidence contrary to your opinion inform that opinion. 

In any case, "Mystery" means that something is divinely revealed – just as Mme. Adelphe said – and the mystery of the Trinity no more founders on the rock of reason than the mystery that matter can be neither created nor destroyed and yet the singularity from which we get the “Big Bang” originated somewhere – possibly when two “branes” collided with each other producing that singularity.  Virgins having babies requires no less imagination, IMO. 

Koolpoi

Maybe after many centuries of trying to make sense of the Trinity by reason,the RCC has the intellectual integrity to simply admit it is a mystery.

Here I'm trying to understand the difference between a mystery and a nonsense.

None indicated so far.

Apr 5, 2012 -- 10:08AM, Blü wrote:

Here I'm trying to understand the difference between a mystery and a nonsense.

All you had to do was click on the word "mystery" and it would have defined it for you:

This term signifies in general that which is unknowable, or valuable knowledge that is kept secret. In pagan antiquity the word mystery was used to designate certain esoteric doctrines, such as Pythagoreanism, or certain ceremonies that were performed in private or whose meaning was known only to the initiated, e.g., the Eleusinian rites, Phallic worship. In the language of the early Christians the mysteries were those religious teachings that were carefully guarded from the knowledge of the profane.

Ed

I know the difference between a mystery and a nonsense in normal parlance.

I simply can't see a difference in this instance.