trinitas est Principium

The design on the right is taken from an ornament in the Lindisfarne Gospels, fol. 211r, where it appears at the base of the P of principium in the opening phrase of the Gospel of John. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Principium means beginning or basis or basic. In principium - In the beginning … The illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels are thought to be the work of a monk named Eadfrith. He became Bishop of Lindisfarne in 698 and died in 721. Lindisfarne is in northern England, a few miles south of Scotland.

Jesus did not write a single word. He spoke in parables, and the four evangelists, two of whom were eyewitnesses, wrote them down and retraced His movements. That is the beginning of oral tradition, which is prominent in Jewish history. The Catholic Church put the Bible together on the basis of oral tradition under the guidance of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity and exercised its authority to do so, authority given by Our Lord to the Church alone. These things are not opinion: they are principia.