Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Trinity Sunday, 12th June 2022
Jews and Muslims, our fellow monotheist ‘peoples of the book’, vehemently reject the idea of God as Trinity – they allege that Christians do not really believe in one God, but in three Gods. Even some Christians find it puzzling. How can one God possibly be divided into three persons? Surely 1 + 1 + 1 = 3?
Over the centuries Christian apologists have answered this question in different ways. We have all heard how St Patrick illustrated the Trinity with the trefoil-leaf of a shamrock – three leaflets within the one leaf. John Wesley said: ‘Tell me how it is that in this room there are three candles and but one light, and I will explain to you the mode of divine existence’. And it is true in mathematics that if you add three infinities the result is still infinity. But I personally don’t find such arguments helpful. The Catechism of the RC Church says that ‘God’s inmost being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone’. But to call it a mystery seems like a fudge to me.
So today let me reflect on how I as a Christian seek to understand the Trinity.
We must start, I think, with how the early
Christians came to understand God.
First, the early Christians had their roots in the Hebrew scriptures, our Old Testament. There they learned that God created all that was and is and is to come, as reflected in today’s reading from Proverbs. And they also learned that God had created them in his own image. More than that, God had an intimate relationship with them, as a parent, as a father or a mother. Hence the OT stories where their God hears the cries of the people, brings them out of bondage, cares for them as a hen cares for her chicks. The first Christians did not see God as remote, but as a loving and gracious God, like a parent, like a Father. They followed Jesus’s lead by praying to their Father in heaven. And following St Peter and St Paul, they came to see him as a God for all people, Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free
Second, the early Christians also understood God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. From the apostles and disciples they heard the story of Jesus - how in Jesus God lived and acted in new and profound ways among people. Through them they encountered the risen Christ, and heard him promise, ‘Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’. They learned that God was made manifest in Jesus, that God was not just out there somewhere, but had also lived as one of them, as their brother, through his Son, Jesus, who had ascended to his Father and would come again. The stories were written down in the Gospels to show that God was not only their Creator, but also Jesus Christ their Saviour and Redeemer.
Third, the early Christians
came to understand God as Holy Spirit. As we heard in today’s 3rd
reading, Jesus promised that the Spirit of truth would come to them. That
Spirit first came to them at Pentecost to the whole community, not just to a
select few. It made them fearless. Responding to Jesus’s call, ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations’,
they proclaimed their faith to all who would listen, baptising and gathering
around them people from every nation in the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond. And
the same Spirit came to the gathered groups of new Christians, just as it had
to the apostles and first disciples. The Acts of the Apostles reads like an
adventure story as the Spirit spreads like a wildfire through the Roman Empire.
And the Epistles reveal for us how the Spirit formed the self-understanding of
the gathered groups that we can now call churches.
It is clear that very early on Christians came to believe that the one God they worshipped was manifest in three different ways, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
By the 4th century the Church had captured the imperial Roman state. Amid power struggles in the church, dogmatic theologians were arguing bitterly over what the Trinity really meant. These disputes were eventually settled at a Council of Bishops, convened in Constantinople by the Emperor Theodosius in 381AD, which settled the doctrine of the Trinity in the words of a creed, which we now know as the Nicene Creed, but more properly the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed, and still use in the Holy Communion service.
Almost all Christians, including Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and our own Anglican Communion maintain that this is still the best way to think about God.
It is not hard to understand the historical
reasons why Christians came to believe in God as Trinity.
But I do not think that our belief should rest only on the words of scripture and the partisan arguments of Church Councils more than 1600 years ago. I believe that divine revelation did not cease when the last full stop was written in the last book of scripture. God continues to reveal himself in his creation. In the world around me, I see signs of our Trinitarian God everywhere.
I see the Loving Father in the beauty of the universe he created. He has precisely tuned the fundamental physical constants to support the miraculous, evolving web of life on our planet. He has made it to be a place where you and I and all creatures can flourish and be fed, if we would only tend and care both for it and for our neighbours, as we ought to do.
I see the Saving Son in the widespread altruism that exists in the natural world. I see him in communities of organisms, including ourselves, in which each part depends on others to flourish mutually. I see him in the worker bee’s dedication to raising a sister’s brood. I see him in the three-cornered dance of insects, fruit trees and seed dispersing animals. I see him in the cycles of death and resurrection that drive evolution. And I see him in our human capacity to love our neighbours as ourselves – even if we often fail to do so.
I see the Creative Spirit in the continual innovation of living creatures and ecosystems. I see him at work exploring new expressions of what is possible in the arts and the sciences. And I see him inspiring human beings, in all their variety, with their different gifts, to come together to make the world and their societies more like the kingdom of heaven.
We should not, I think, see the doctrine of the Trinity as very difficult or a great mystery, but rather as something very natural. It is very simple really – but also very profound.
Let me finish in prayer.
God of heaven and earth,before the foundation of the universe
and the beginning of time
you are the triune God:
Author of creation,
eternal Word of salvation,
life-giving Spirit of wisdom.
Guide us to all truth by your Spirit,
that we may proclaim all that Christ has revealed
and rejoice in the glory he shares with us.
Glory and praise to you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
now and for ever. Amen
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