Trinity Sunday: The Christian God (2)

   C. S. Lewis on the Triune God

Only Christianity, according to Lewis (in Mere Christianity), gives us an idea of what something “super-personal” might look like. Eastern religions picture God as finally non-personal, a single reality into which all entities are part of, like water drops in the ocean, and will be absorbed into. Lewis observes, “If that is what happens to us, then being absorbed is the same as ceasing to exist.”

Christianity alone has “any idea of how human souls can be taken into the life of God and yet remain themselves—in fact, be very much more themselves than they were before.” Here’s Lewis’ analogy for this:

-One-dimensionally, there is a straight line.

-Two-dimensionally, there is a square.

-Three-dimensionally, squares can be combined to form a cube, something inconceivable in a one-or-two-dimensional world.

Similarly, in our world we believe one person is one being. Some marriages, perhaps, give us a hint of “two becoming one.” But still we are basically a one person one being world.

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity, according to Lewis, pictures a “higher kind of life.” A life where “a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube.” Now if you were a square, a picture of a cube might look like this,  





but this isn’t really a cube, it’s a two-dimensional rendering of a cube. We can get an idea of what is being described, however, it is not until we step into a three-dimensional world, that we truly know what a cube is.

If we are one-dimensional people who have at best only vague hints of a two-dimensional world, and God as triune is a three-dimensional reality, how can we grasp or experience God? Well, we can’t grasp him but by his grace we can experience his kind of life, a “Trinity life.”

-we pray to God (the Father),

-God (the Holy Spirit) also within us moving us to pray, and

-God (the Son) is the way provided us to reach that goal

Such was the experience of the early Christians after the resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Caught up in this kind of life, this “Trinity life,” the experience outran their ability to explain it. It took time for them to articulate in theological terms just what they were experiencing.

The roots or raw materials, of a trinitarian view of God are all over the New Testament, but it is not a “doctrine” there. That came later as the early church worked it out. Even the developed doctrine, however, is but a doctrine. The reality of God is far deeper, richer, and more complex than even the marvelously sophisticated doctrine of the Trinity can express. Yet though the reality of God exceeds our grasp, we can and do experience that reality as a personally. And that’s why relationships with others is the best way to know God. Those who are “united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another” is the chief way we come to know God.

Because we can’t get our heads around the reality of God very well, Rowan Williams is right to say: “[The doctrine of the Trinity] is the ‘least worst’ language we have found for talking about something very disturbing and inexhaustible” (Living the Questions (the Converging Worlds of Rowan Williams), The Christian Century, Apr 24, 2002, David S. Cunningham). But you can “know” it on a relational level, through others who are trying to do the same. Is it a difficult concept? Of course. But Christian doctrine isn’t going to be easy. Catherine Mowry LaCugna in her God For Us summarizes:

“The mystery of God, indeed, the mystery of existence, is the mystery of communion of God with all, all with God. The heart of Christian life is the encounter with a personal god who makes possible both our union with God and communion with each other. The mystery of God is revealed to be a matter of invitation and incorporation into divine life through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit; at the same time it is also invitation and incorporation into new relationship with each other, as we are gathered together by the Spirit into the body of Christ.”

Peter Kreeft captures the relevance of this triune reality of God well:

“Nothing could be more relevant to your life than the doctrine of the Trinity. For life is meaningless to you unless you know life’s meaning. And the meaning of life, the ultimate purpose of life, the greatest good, the supreme value, is love. And the doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation for that, because it means that love ‘goes all the way up’ into ultimate reality, into the very essence of God. The doctrine of the Trinity means that God Is love” (Because God Is Real, [Ignatius Press, 2008], 87).