Firmly I believe and truly...

‘...God is Three and God is One’. So wrote Cardinal Newman – but few of us who sing that hymn really understand the importance of faith in God as Trinity, let alone can claim to understand this most complex of Christian doctrines. (I recall one lecturer suggesting that the only non-heretical statement about the Holy Trinity was the Athanasian Creed, because as soon as it said anything about the relationship between God and the three Persons it contradicted it - e.g. ‘The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.’)

Orthodox theologians have always known that we cannot define God, or the nature and relationship of the three Persons of the Godhead. Evagrius of Pontus wrote: "God cannot be grasped by the mind. If he could be grasped he would not be God." There is, and must be, a mystery into which our minds and our language can only dimly peer.

But we have to say something. And Christians have agreed that that the least misleading thing we can say is that God is One, and at the same time eternally Father, Son and Spirit. We dare not divide God, if we are to be true to both scripture and theological reflection. But nor can we obscure, merge or confuse the different ‘Persons’.

Sermons and hymns on Trinity Sunday often focus on God as Creator, or on the mystery and otherness of God, and will usually steer well clear of talking about the relationship between the Persons. But the essential point to be made is that this is not an obscure dogma, but goes to the heart of what is distinctive and exciting about Christianity. For what it means is that we are not dealing with a single god who is transcendent and unknowable; nor are we talking about a god who is immanent and closer to us than breathing. The God we believe in is both of these - and more: wholly other, and incarnate in one place and time; beyond our comprehension and the source of inspiration and prophetic speech. We experience God equally in the Father, the Source of all; in the Son, who is known in Jesus of Nazareth; and in the Holy Spirit, giving life and enabling us to know both Father and Son.  And God is eternally all three of these, not merely acting sometimes in one way, sometimes in another; and each of these three are equally God.

All our language about God is provisional and approximate. But we can say that since God is in this way dynamic and ‘energetic ‘, we can relate to him directly, and not only by responding to his word or commandment. God is love – and that love exists within the Godhead from eternity. To put it rather baldly, God does not need us to express his love, but God draws us into this eternal ‘dance of love’ between the Persons. And just as God is not divided, nor the Persons ‘confused’, so we do not lose our identity through this relationship and love. We are not absorbed into God, as Eastern mysticism seems to imply. We – like the Triune God – retain our personal uniqueness at the same time as being drawn into a loving union.

And it may not be fanciful to see in the same way that the triune being of God provides an insight into the nature of human love and commitment. So we need not fear losing our identity to, or being absorbed by, those human persons that we love. On the contrary, just as – theologically – we only fully realise our potential in being related to God, so it is in our human friendships and love that we become the people we are created to be. ‘There is no fear in love,’ as St John reminds us; and because of who God is, we are not to be afraid to love God and other people.

We may not appreciate the subtle distinctions which the Fathers (especially in the Latin West) used in ‘explaining’ the doctrine of the Trinity. But it is to be hoped that we can glimpse its value and importance, and some of its many implications for our faith and life.