The Heresies of Trinity Sunday: or the Trinity unexplained

On Trinity Sunday every preacher will commit heresy no matter how or what they say.  The very idea that we can plumb the inner workings of God Almighty is preposterous but it hasn’t kept us from trying.  After all, Christians know God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so it’s only natural that people will want to know how one God can be understood in three different ways that make God appear as three different beings. In one sense it can’t be explained.  It’s a holy mystery to be lived into, not solved.  Nevertheless, there are ways to say something of a provisional sort that may explain a little, at least in a way that limited human brains can apprehend, if not comprehend.

There has been a struggle throughout the story of God’s people to understand the God who has no name, cannot be seen or represented by any sculpture or painting, and is utterly unlike the gods of  other people.  Indeed, in the course of time ‘he’ is revealed as the only God, no other, not one.  Even the word God is merely a place holder for the unknown, unpronounceable holy name. Whenever God spoke to prophets it was in inexplicable ways, metaphors that could be put into human language: a disembodied voice, burning bush, smoke and fire, dark clouds, psychedelic visions.  Other people were informed of God’s word through messengers, angels that came and went in ways humans could not. All mysterious until the coming of Jesus.

Jesus was the Word of God made flesh, a human being of flesh and blood who boldly proclaimed that if you had seen Jesus, you had seen God the Father because he and God were one.  Was that all there was of God?  That was it?  No!  It was only all of God that could be portrayed in human form, which is but a nano-vision of God who cannot be known in full.  The truth of his divinity was on full display in his death, resurrection and ascension.  What he did, said, taught and promised could be trusted.  It was and is the rock on which true life is built.  Through that reality it was possible to more clearly understand how God’s presence is always with us to guide and guard us insofar as we allow it to happen.  It’s a presence we call the Holy Spirit.

I don’t know what happened on Pentecost.  I only know it was so powerful that it could only be described as wind and fire that changed cringing cowards into courageous proclaimers of God’s word.  I have no doubt the same Holy Spirit is as active today as it was then. We are used to the triteness of thoughts and prayers promised in place of action, and to the insincerity of the old cliche “I’ll be with you in spirit” when we know full well it’s not true. It’s hard to believe the active reality of God’s Spirit being with us always, but there it is.  Are there other ways God can be known, even manifested among us?  No doubt there are; we cannot put any limits on what God can or cannot do. 

The Nicene Creed and Calcedonian Definition do a wonderful job of explaining God in human terms that made sense to the Greek mind and, with a little effort, to our minds also.  Rowan Williams wrote an extensive history of Christology that traced the philosophical and theological works probing the mechanics of how Father, Son and Holy Spirit fit together.  In my opinion, the deeper they went with their profound discoveries, the farther they dived down an unending rabbit hole, and the more stuck they got in the proverbial tar baby.  Interesting work, but in the words of Shakespeare, it seemed to be all sound and fury signifying nothing. 

The Trinity is a mystery.  Let us be satisfied to live into it in the sure and certain faith that everything we need to know, we know in Christ Jesus, the holy scriptures, with the Holy Spirit as God with us now and always. The Trinity is for me the fullest measure of God that I need, and I trust it to be true.