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| This beautiful image of the Holy Trinity is to be seen in the Trinity Dome of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C., USA. |
We read in the 11th
chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, the following words:
"O the depth
of the riches
and wisdom
and knowledge
of God;
how impossible to understand his
judgements and
how difficult to follow his ways.
For who knows the mind of the Lord?
Or who could be his counsellor?
Or who could give him anything,
and have to be paid back by Him?
For from him
and through him
and in him
exist all things;
To him be glory through the ages,
Amen."
Trinity Sunday is
by tradition one of the days on which Christians of the various churches come
together to pray for Christian unity.
"God is three, yet God is one," so the ancient formula goes. Surely,
many ask, this is a sign of unity in
diversity for the many different denominations of the Christian Church?
Would that it were
that simple! for the division of Christianity is a countersign, a sad reminder
that we are sinners. But three-ness-in-oneness is an unfathomable mystery of
God. There must be thousands of ways through which this three-ness-in-oneness
has been explained. Even musicians have tried. When the organist strikes a chord,
it consists of many single notes played together. But there is still only one chord, so that
that chord, a single sound, is both one and many. So is the three-in-one God,
sublime and serene in his majesty. In Church music there are often many groups
of voices, male and female, high and
low, singing together at once. But there
is only one choir, so that many voices, interplaying and combining the same
melody in many ingenious and varied ways, speak in vigorous concord and perfect
unity. Thus is God in his creation, the Father, Son and Spirit ceaselessly at
work, never in repose, yet one in purpose and nature.
But whatever the
model we use to explain the Trinity, or three-in-oneness of God, its nature
remains eons beyond our grasp. The very word "Trinity" is an
absurdity, for what is a "Tri-unity"?
Though we are called to know God, who reveals himself to us, His
three-ness-in-oneness will remain forever beyond our grasp. The divine
mathematics of 1+1+1=1 is a reality which bursts asunder the reality within the
grasp of our senses. It lives intangibly as an article of faith at the very
borders of our intuition.
Paul the Apostle
speaks truly when he refers to the "depths of the riches and wisdom and
knowledge of the Father." For the Jewish mind depths were the bottom of
the sea, and the seas were the remnants of the chaos which preceded the
creation, and the only being who controlled the depths was God himself, who had
populated then with great sea monsters with which He could "play."
The Greek word for depths, bathos,
calls to our mind a picture which is remarkably similar though seen through a
different window; the window of the bathyscaphe, one of the earliest deep sea
diving vehicles, through which we saw visions of the incomprehensible creatures
living at those tremendous depths, surviving under vast pressures in the inky
darkness at the very bottom of the oceans. It is a world beyond our reach, unless
it is somehow made open to us.
But our faith must
start with the single most important fact of God's Revelation, the crux without
which the Old Testament, indeed the whole Bible, falls apart; that God is One.
"Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is one," says the
creed of Israel
Yet we encounter
God in a threefold way. We are aware of him as One who not only creates, but
who cares for and sustains his creation, who is intimately involved with it.
This protecting, providing God has revealed himself as a Father. It is an image
of God within our grasp. But the God who identified himself to Israel Israel
But God wanted to
reveal himself to us more intimately, more approachably. He did this through
the person of Jesus, the "radiance of his glory and the exact likeness of
his nature." He did this so that we "might see and know in him what
we see and know in Christ." Jesus was revealed to us as the Son, and in
Jesus' sharing of the Father's nature, authority and purpose, his son-ship is
made clear to us. But the Son is not revealed as merely a human person with
some of the attributes of God. He is revealed as partaking in the very nature
of God the Father. "Know that I am in the Father and that the Father is in
me." "The Father and I are one." The Son is God after the nature
of the Father, yet he is distinct from the Father.
When Jesus in turn
speaks of sending the Spirit, he affirms the distinctness of Father and Son; he
then speaks of the Spirit as a distinct from both of them. The language he uses
leaves us in no doubt that in speaking of the Spirit he is speaking of a
person, not merely some vague active force of God.
The language of
John in particular confronts us with Father, Son and Spirit as distinct
persons. It is the Spirit, blowing where he wills throughout time and space,
the life and breath of God's Church, who makes the historical Jesus present to
us here and now. And it is the Lord Jesus, living within us, who shows us the
Father. In another context, we speak of the Father as Creator; the Son as
Redeemer; the Spirit as Fulfiller. We
are confronted with three distinctive experiences of God, through three
distinct Persons. And yet we are to believe that God is one. How are we to
grasp this mystery which none can explain?
It was just this
mystery which caused the Fathers of our ancient faith to formulate the doctrine
of the Trinity. "God is Three in Person, yet God is One in nature,"
they said, throwing up their hands in despair of ever comprehending. This is
the clue to our own understanding. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is an
ending, not a beginning. Having encountered the One God as Father, Son and
Spirit, what else is there to say? But the fact that we cannot hold the two
teachings together without diminishing either the oneness of God or the
distinctness of the Father, Son and Spirit, does not mean that God cannot. It
is at this point that well known cry of our old Irish seminary professors,
"'Tis a mystery!" acquires its deepest meaning. We can grasp the
Oneness of God, since our Faith depends on it. We can grasp the distinctness
and equality of Father, Son and Spirit, since this is the experience of our
Christian lives. Having grasped them, we need to hold them as individual
truths, affirming the fullness of both, without troubling ourselves as to how
they fit together, since we will not harmonise the two truths without
diminishing one of them.
We need to be like
a blindfolded tightrope walker, crossing the Niagara Falls on a single-wheeled
bicycle, juggling one large ball in the left hand and three smaller ones in the
right. As long as he moves forwards and keeps all the balls in perfect motion,
he will not lose his balance. Let him drop just one, and he will overbalance
and plunge to his death. The doctrine of the Trinity is something like this.
"Hear, O Israel,
the Lord is your God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul..." There is a depth of wisdom
in that ancient Hebrew creed. God is One, and He is the Only God, and he is the
God we worship. Whether we understand his deepest mysteries or not, we are
called to love him with all that is within us, and to keep his word. In this
way, he will make his home within us, and bring us ultimately to make our home
within him. Our end is to live with him forever, to exist for all eternity
within his depths, to gaze upon him and to contemplate his impenetrable riches
and wisdom and knowledge. Then his three-ness-in-oneness will no longer matter,
for we shall simply know him as he is, and that knowledge will be beyond
anything we can imagine now. Let us then praise the Living God, the one and
only God whom we adore; for "from him and through him and in him exist all
things. To him be glory through the ages.
Amen."
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