Some Thoughts on the Trinity

(I made the mistake of deciding to check my work before I published. Not that the checking itself was a mistake, far from it, but the notion that I could do it quickly and without a lot of head-scratching and ponderments may have been. This is difficult stuff to grasp, and when I went to the early Church Fathers: Augustine, St. John of the Cross, Origen, Hilary, Ambrose, and others for guidance, although I found a wealth of wisdom and depth of analysis, a lot of it is about as interesting to read as tax code. It’s taken a lot longer than I thought it would, and I’m beginning to wonder if theoretical physics, particle mechanics, and string theory are going to be any easier. Plus, it’s just damn difficult to make this breezy, humorous, and irreverent as is my usual style . Bear with me.)

I’m going to start with some thoughts on the Trinity. I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a long time. It resonates for me. It makes sense to me, although it may not make the same kind of sense to you. I accept this. I already know from whence some of the arguments against what I have to say are going to come.

Pulpit Theology

The first thing you hear about the Trinity, growing up Catholic like me, is that the particulars are a mystery and unknowable. After you hear this a number of times from the pulpit, you begin to suspect that what this really means is that your parish priest doesn’t know how to explain it in a satisfactory way in the short time allotted – especially when his parishioners begin checking their watches after about 7 good minutes of homily. So, we are left with the incomplete idea that there is only one true God, and He is comprised of three distinct but equal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but the rest, the internal workings, is beyond our understanding and has to be accepted on faith.

You will note that some questions are left unanswered. Father and Son seem fairly self-evident, but what the hell is the Holy Spirit and how is this name any more revealing than Holy Ghost, which served for centuries? And, what’s the deal with the pronoun and the masculine appellations? Even so, this short shrift explanation has become the defining understanding of the Creator of the universe for a majority of Christians, and props up more arguments than it ought.

For instance, I have proposed in this blog and other places that Yahweh, Allah, and the Father of Jesus are all the same divine fellow. This seems to me to be hard to dispute, but disputed it was by a well-meaning fundamentalist preacher. Not so, says he. Allah is not a triune god, whereas Yahweh and the Father of Jesus are, even if the Jews have yet to admit it. I argued that this is a difference of human understanding and not of divine essence. Stop giving cover to godless Muslims was the gist of his reply…as well as the end of this particular exchange.

I still maintain that if Abraham and Abram are the same biblical forebear, which everyone seems to agree they are, then their respective Gods have to be the same person. Any perceived difference is an example of imperfect human understanding of the mysteries of faith. Therefore, any attempt to impose a reality on God that dovetails with our understanding of Him, imperfect as we know that to be, is an attempt to limit God to what we think about him. That can’t be right, can it?

The answer seems obvious to me, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Biblical Theology (and mine)

My personal understanding of the Trinity comes from four Bible passages and a bit of applied logic.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

John 1:1-4

John at his best. Beautifully wrought, even in translation. More poetic than polemic. Absolutely fundamental!

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:26-27

Again – poetic and poignant. But then, to complete the origin picture.

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Genesis 2:7

What to make of two seemingly divergent accounts of the creation of man? Here is what I think.

The Genesis 2 account of creation, especially of the creation of mankind, is not contrary to the account in Genesis 1. It expands upon a theme. We have to wonder at some point how a God who is pure spirit floating about in the Void has an image and a likeness. Because He tells us so. He has an image and likeness on which to model the work. It is His idea, His self-image, His very self-awareness. He instills it into mankind with the breath of life.

This parallels the way in which a word is formed. There is an idea. This is the beginning of things. As Rene Descartes postulates, “I think. Therefore I am.” This auspicious beginning goes nowhere, however, unless it is animated by the breath to form a word expelled from the mouth to fall upon deaf ears. At least this is how my ideas fare in the world. Presumably, God’s ideas carry more clout.

God’s Word begets a person, the Son. As St. Paul has it:

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

Heb 1:3

To summarize, the breath of life, the Spirit of God, animates God’s self-concept or image into a Word. That Word perfectly reveals God’s essence to us – sustaining all things.

This surprising phrase, “sustaining all things,” is instructive, I think. It imparts agency to the Word. It takes the Word from mere expression to an entity that acts in concert with the Father. It is very like what John tells us of the Word in the first passage above: “Without him nothing was made that has been made.”

Stay tuned for the next installment: Part III, which will include wisdom and lofty thoughts on the Trinity from the Early Church Fathers, at least one of whom (my personal favorite) was branded a heretic 300 years after his death. The Early Church, in all it’s sundry locations, was apparently a hotbed of really remarkable, inventive, philosophical and theological thought. Thinking was even dangerous, as it appears to be again. I for one look forward to a time when shopkeepers and tradesmen are arguing the finer points of the meaning of life on the streets rather than chanting, “We will not be replaced,” or “Lock her up.” Just sayin’.

As per usual, if this post resonates for you, tickles your fancy, or gives you pause, please consider punching one or all of the social media buttons below to share it with your friends and acquaintances. I’ll appreciate it even if your friends and acquaintances do not.