What Trinity Means

Today is Trinity Sunday.  Trinity is the way in which Christians throughout the ages have tried to understand God.   When I was growing up in Sunday School I was taught to view the Trinity as a triangle: God the Father or Creator at the top of the triangle, Jesus the Son or Redeemer at one of the other angles; and the Holy Spirit, the sustainer, or God at work in the world and in our lives, at the third angle.  This provided a visual image with a circle placed around the triangle to describe the Unity or Oneness of God.  You can see this image in the stained glass window high up on the east wall above the chapel altar.

In our opening prayer this morning, the Collect for Trinity Sunday, we “acknowledge the glory of the eternal trinity, and the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity.”  Is this confusing?  What does it mean?  How are we to understand or comprehend God as triune, as one in three?

During our worship we normally use the ancient statement of faith, the Nicene Creed, and affirm our belief in a triune God: “in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth;…in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,…God from God, begotten not made; and  in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”

There are phrases in the Creed that many people find difficult to follow, especially in a literal sense.  What is important, however, is that the Creed was developed and adopted in the year 325 at the Council of Nicaea as a statement of faith designed to bring the Christian churches together from many different regions and countries.  The Creed reflected the language and culture of that time.  Much of its value is as an historical document that puts us in line with faithful Christians of the last 2,000 years and continues today to affirm our faith in the reality of God.

In discussing of the Creed and the Trinity in his book, “The Meaning of Jesus,” Marcus Borg writes, “the one God is known in three primary ways: as the God of Israel, as the Word and Wisdom of God in Jesus, and as the abiding Spirit.”

This coming Fall I will be teaching a Philosophy course at Rhode Island College.  It is titled “The Idea of God.”  The description of the course states, “concepts of Divinity are critically examined.  Issues include polytheism, monotheism, atheism, gender and the God(ess).  Students are challenged to critically examine their own ideas through various philosophical and religious traditions.”

One of the texts we shall use is a book titled “The Case for God,” by the British theologian, Karen Armstrong.  As part of her case for God she discusses the doctrine of the Trinity and examines our understanding of its meaning.  She cites Basil, the bishop of Caesarea in the 4^th Century, who insisted that we could never know God’s ousia, a word that means “being” or “essence.”  But we could form an idea about the divine “energies” that have translated the ineffable God into human idiom: the incarnate Word and the immanent divine presence within us that scripture calls the Holy Spirit.  Armstrong says the whole point of the doctrine of the Trinity was to stop Christians from thinking about God in rational terms.  Trinity was mythos, mystery.  It spoke a truth that was not accessible to logos, to reason, and it made sense only when translated into practical action. 

One of the most influential figures in Christian history was Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa.  St. Augustine lived from the middle of the fourth century to the year 430.  He was a major figure in both Protestant and Catholic Christianity.  Augustine understood the Spirit of God as the bond of love between the Father and the Son.  As in God he stated that three different faculties – memory, understanding, and love – constitute “one life, one mind, and one essence” within ourselves. 

Augustine also thought that wherever the literal meaning of scripture clashed with reliable scientific information, the interpreter must respect the integrity of science or he would bring scripture into disrepute.  The text had to establish the reign of charity, compassion, and be treated allegorically if it appeared to do otherwise.

All of this has implications for us as it is realized in our practice of liturgy and worship.  When you worship are you drawn into another dimension of life, a mysterium, or a sense of awe?  One of St. Paul’s converts to Christianity, Denys the Areopagite, said that priests and congregants should plunge together into that darkness which is beyond intellect, a space in which we are actually speechless and unknowing.  It is being drawn into the mystery that is beyond our rational capacity, a place that gives us an awesome experience of being in relation to God.  It is mystical, a conscious awareness or communion with God the Holy Spirit.

So as we celebrate the ancient Doctrine of the Trinity, I invite us all to enter into the divine mystery of what we cannot in our human and rational limitation fully comprehend.  It is our worship of God who is beyond all that is and yet is fully present to us in the life of his Son Jesus, and in the Spirit of truth who strengthens and sustains us throughout our lives.  Amen.