Seduced by the Trinity

I was once, when I was about 21, at an Episcopalian picnic. I’m not exactly sure how these things happen to me. But I popped my collar and played croquet and sat around smiling politely and keeping my mouth shut on religion and politics for almost the whole day.

Then some guy asked me, “Do you know why I love being Episcopalian?”

And again, I kept my mouth shut. Decades off of purgatory for that one.

“Because Episcopalians can believe whatever they want,” he said. Like that was a good thing!

Don’t say anything, I said to myself. It is RUDE to talk about religion at a party, I said to myself. It’s not fair to start arguing with this poor man, I said to myself. He doesn’t have any idea what he’s getting himself into, I said to myself. Bite your tongue!!

But I was young and self-righteous and so very educated and, much as I tried, I just couldn’t let that one slide.

“Well, there are some things you have to believe, right?” I said sweetly. My plan, of course, was to point out that in order to be a Christian one had to believe in the divinity of Christ. Then I would establish the principle of non-contradiction,¹ point out that either the Eucharist is God or not God, expose the inherent flaws in Episcopalianism, and BAM! make a new convert. Because I am that good. And it’s all about me.

“Like what?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“Well, either Jesus is God or he’s not, right? He can’t be both.”

“Why does it have to be so black and white? Why can’t it just be gray?” When I tell this story, he starts sounding like a stoner right about here.

“WHAT?” I shouted, genuinely shocked that anyone would say something that illogical.

“Well, he’s God now,” he continued. “But he wasn’t always God.”

“Oh!  Well you’re not a Christian at all,” I said with a smile, glad we had figured that out. Of course, with claim like the one he’d just made he was an Arian or an Adoptionist or maybe a Mormon, but certainly not a Trinitarian Christian.

Turns out people take offense at that kind of statement.

The conversation (if it merits the title) continued for two hours, with me pulling out Scripture and ancient prayers and him repeatedly dropping a beer can, making some point about truth being demonstrable, I think. It’s funny if I tell it in person. Here, I think, not so much. Suffice it to say that the difference we couldn’t get past, like many people in the first three centuries, was a disagreement over the nature of God.

Whether or not you’re a Christian comes down to this: the Trinity.

It’s hard to care about the Trinity–the doctrine, anyway. We come up with long arguments to explain the Eucharist and buy t-shirts to proclaim our commitment to chastity, but the central mystery of our faith gets little press. Sure, it begins and ends all our prayers (“In the name of the Father…”), but beyond that, nothing. I’d guess that many Catholics can’t even name the three persons of the Trinity. I’ve definitely heard some guess Mary.

Why? Because mystery is awkward. And maybe, for some of us, because it doesn’t make any sense. So we ignore it and hope it’ll go away.

The Trinity is our life’s destiny and greatest longing. -JPII

Our life’s destiny and our greatest longing–and we skim over it, dedicate one Sunday to it, and move on!  Or we mutter “One person in three gods…or in three persons…something about how one equals three…well, it’s a mystery, so you’ll never understand it anyway.”  I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pathetic.

Well, that clears everything up, doesn’t it?

When we use the word Trinity,² we mean one God in three persons, distinct but not separate. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all possess the one divine nature, each possessing it fully. Yet the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father.

We’re not saying 1 = 3. We’re saying label your terms. 1 yard = 3 feet. 1 nature = 3 persons. This is not illogical. Supra-logical, perhaps. Beyond our reason but not contrary to it.

Think of it this way: God is like H2O (bear with me here).

But H2O exists in three phases: solid (ice), liquid (water), and gas (steam). Ice is fully H2O, water is fully H2O, and steam is fully H2O. But ice is not water and water is not steam and–okay, you get it.

Or, for those who are more musical than scientific, try this on for size:

Each of these notes is C–ask any musician. Gentlemen, sing a low C to a child and he will echo the note a few octaves up. They’re the same. And yet they’re not. High C has a frequency of 512 hz, middle C 256 hz, and low C 128 hz.³ Distinct but not separate.

Or we could pull a St. Patrick and use the shamrock. One plant, three leaves. (As an aside, a shamrock is St. Patrick’s 3-leaved explanation of the Trinity; a four-leaf clover is a pagan symbol of luck. You’re welcome to tattoo either on your butt, just make sure you pick the one that matches your convictions.)

I could go on all day, but I think we’d do better to look at the nature of God.

God is love (1 Jn 4:16). But in order to be love, God must have a beloved. He could not be defined as love from all time if he were alone. If that were the case, he would have created us out of need, the need to have an object for his nature. But it is a fundamental truth believed by all monotheists that God does not need us. Peter Kreeft puts it simply: “If God is not Trinity, God is not love.” Because if he is not one God in three persons, he is either an egomaniac, eternally enamored of himself, or pathetically needy, creating an entire universe in order to fulfill the purpose of his being. None of those mesh with the testimony of Scripture.

The Fathers understood it this way: the Father is the Lover, the Son is the Beloved, and the Holy Spirit is the Love between them. They are eternally caught up in loving one another, eternally pouring themselves out as gift for the others.

What this means for us is that God doesn’t just choose to love us–he is love, which means that by his very nature he has to love us. He can’t stop loving us, no matter what we do.

It also means that God himself is community. The fact that we need each other is a manifestation of the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of God.

I think the doctrine of the Trinity is most important, though, because we don’t need to know it. We could be saved just knowing that Jesus came to save us, even if we didn’t understand how he relates eternally to the Father. God chose to reveal himself to us in his depths as Trinity not because he had to but because he wanted to.

Frank Sheed says (and really, just go read the whole chapter–it’s brilliant):

The revelation of the Trinity was in one sense an even more certain proof than Calvary that God loves mankind. To accept it politely and think no more of it is an insensitiveness beyond comprehension….

It seems natural that a God who is love would go to any lengths to save us (Rom 8:32), even dying for us. But to love us enough to reveal his inner workings–that’s extreme. I’d throw myself in front of a bus for a lot of people, but I’m much more hesitant to share my heart.

When we talk about the Trinity, we don’t mean some dry theology, drawing artificial distinctions between “person” and “nature” and calling everyone a heretic. We mean that God himself loved you so much that he wanted to reveal himself to you, a gesture so intimate it’s generally reserved for the marital embrace (in a perfect world). He wanted to be known by you–fully known and embraced.

Yes, it’s a mystery. Gentlemen, on the night you are married, your wife will reveal herself to you. And you will know her more fully and be enraptured by that knowledge. The next morning, she will still be a mystery. Each day of your life, God willing, you will understand her better. But she will never cease to be a mystery. And this mystery isn’t awkward, it’s fascinating, enticing!  In our personal lives, we find this alluring. Let’s look at God the same way.

The mystery of the Trinity is an invitation to unveil the beauty of One who loves you unconditionally. Why do you shy away?

1. A thing cannot be itself and not itself at the same time, or X is not equal to not X. That is to say, murder can’t be wrong for you because you think it’s wrong but not wrong for me, because I don’t. Or a doughnut doesn’t become God just because you believe it is. No joke–someone actually made that argument to me once. [↩]
2. Which, by the way, is nowhere in the Bible and comes to us solely from the Church’s authority, via the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (think Nicene Creed) in 325. What’s that you say about sola scriptura? Oops, turns out you can’t be a Christian without Tradition. [↩]
3. According to a million places on the internet. [↩]