Trinity Sunday: The Christian God

Trinity Sunday and the Church Year

The transition from the part of the church year focused on Jesus’ life and work to the church’s life and work begins with Trinity Sunday. This part of the year is an extended sequel to Pentecost which closes out the Easter cycle hinged by the Ascension.  It’s called Ordinary Time not because it’s boring or unimportant but because there are no major feast days till Advent. Trinity Sunday offers a reflection on the Christian God we have met in Jesus Christ.

The Triune God

“God” is the most dangerous word in any language. More mischief, damage, and death occur under its auspices than any other word. Get “God” on your side and almost any terrible thing you want to do can be done. A parade example is the Old Testament deity considered by himself as a solitary deity. Christopher Hitchens is brilliant in skewering this figure: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Even without its rhetorical overkill and one-sided reading the God of the Old Testament can come off as an unpleasant character (as were many of the deities in the ancient world).

However, the Christian God is different, unique. And it’s its mind-bending claim that God is triune that makes it so.

That unique difference may not bring the believer much comfort though. Trading the ethical discomfort of  Hitchens-style tirade for a view of God that confounds our understanding may not seem like much of an improvement to many. An oft-quoted saying about it captures this well:

“Try to understand it and you’ll lose your mind. Try to deny it and you’ll lose your soul.”

Or as another saying goes:

The Father incomprehensible,                                                                                                                                                                 the Son incomprehensible,                                                                                                                                         the whole thing incomprehensible!

This is not surprising. No one ever said the Christian God was comprehensible. After all, what kind of God is actually understandable to its devotees? No, the church has always confessed the triune nature of its God a mystery. And by mystery they did not mean a puzzle we might figure out with enough time, intelligence, evidence, and a little good luck. Mystery as they used means something we would never ever figure out, something beyond human comprehension. Something we’d never know unless God told us. And the good news is that he has done just that. In Jesus Christ and the Bible’s witness to him we may by God’s grace apprehend his reality even if we cannot comprehend it. We call that revelation.

Realizing what’s at stake in this understanding of God may spur us to want to try to understand what of this mystery we can.

What the Trinity Means

1.       This little picture captures the mystery of the Trinity in the most “comprehensible” way I am aware of. Which is not very comprehensible. Not comprehensible at all. After all, how can the Father be God but not the Son or the Spirit who are also God but not one another?

2.       The PCUSA’s study document A Declaration of Faith puts it well:

“In his eternal being and in all his activity,                                                                                                                                                the one God is always and at the same time                                                                                                             the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (ch.5, par.8)

“Always and at the same time” – that’s another way to get at it.

3.       Yet another way to parse this mystery is in the claim that what one member of the trinity does, they all do. The Father is particularly associated  with creation, the Son with redemption, and the Spirit with sanctification but scripture is clear that in each case all three participate fully in the work each one does. The works of the trinity are indivisible.

4.       Since God is an incomprehensible mystery, only knowable as he makes himself known (revelation, see above), we must look at where he says that has happened: in the birth, life, work, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is the human face of God, who and what God is and is like as a human being. Jesus is not God-like. That presumes we already know what God is like and can tell Jesus fits that model. But that’s precisely what we don’t know! What we do know is the God, the Christian God, is Jesus-like. Jesus is not God-like; God is Jesus-like. That’s the unique and distinctive claim Christian faith makes. And it only works if Jesus is anything less than the incarnation of the eternal Son of God.

Why the Trinity Matters

1.       So we can know God.

As we just saw, it’s in the Jesus-likeness of God that we learn who God truly is. And that only works if Jesus shares in God’s triune identity.

2.       So we can know God loves us.

God is love. So the scripture tells us (1 Jn.4:16). Love drives a lover to go to whatever length is required to save the beloved. But if Jesus is not God, then God’s professed love for us and desire to save us rings hollow. He sent someone else to do the dirty work and heavy lifting of actually liberating us. God did not come himself. But if Jesus shares God’s triune identity, then God was as good as his word and “descended into hell” (Apostles’ Creed) two save us from ourselves.

3.       So we can know we are meant for each other in community.

God created us in his own image (Gen.1:26-28). His own triune image. This means that we are only who we truly in in relationship to those around us. We are not like billiard balls, complete and self-sufficient in ourselves, rolling around the table bumping into other balls and table rails that change our direction (for good or ill) but in no way change or effect who we are (though this is what our individualistic culture wants us to believe). Rather, biblically, we are more like molecules, various atoms bound together by their electrical charges and forces. Water is H₂O – two hydrogen atoms, one oxygen atom, plus the various forces holding them together. Human being is humanity together in and under the triune God.

A Declaration of Faith makes this point well:

God created human beings with a need for community                                                                                                   and with freedom to enter into it                                                                                                                      by responding to their Maker with grateful obedience                                                                                and to one another with love and helpfulness.                                                                                            We believe that we have been created to relate                                                                                            to God and each other                                                                                                                                            in freedom and responsibility.                                                                                                                         We may misuse our freedom and deny our responsibility                                                                           by trying to live without God and other people                                                                                               or against God and other people.                                                                                                                       Yet we are still bound to them for our life and well-being,                                                                         and intended for free and responsible fellowship with them.                                                                    Since every human being is made                                                                                                                       for communion with God and others,                                                                                                                  we must treat no one with contempt.                                                                                                                               We are to respect and love all other people                                                                                                       and ourselves as well (ch.2, par.5).

True knowledge of God, genuine awareness that we are fully and unconditionally love, and knowledge that authentic humanity is co-humanity with all others and even with the creation itself. Fullness of life rests on these awarenesses and these awarenesses alone. And they depend on a triune deity like the one the Christian faith proclaims!