(The Nationalist, 09 June 2006)
It’s almost embarrassing to say this, but, when we think about the Trinity, we should forget that silly story about Saint Patrick explaining it by using a shamrock to illustrate. Historically, and in every other way, that’s nonsense.
When we humans try to say something about God’s nature, we are like a blind person looking for a black hat in a dark room. One of the greatest theologians in the Christian church, Saint Thomas Aquinas, said simply, ‘No one knows what God is’. It’s often easier to say what God isn’t than what God is. This applies especially when we speak of something which is at the heart and foundation of the Christian faith – the Trinity, the doctrine that, in God, there are three persons, really distinct and equal in all things, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Saint Augustine said, ‘The phrase “Three persons” has been coined, not in order to give an explanation, but so that we might not be obliged to remain silent’. (The Trinity, 5.10.) For example, we use the language of human personality in talking about God. That might suggest that God is a person, as we understand personality. That would be misleading. God is infinitely greater than anything the human mind can ever imagine or conceive of.
Rather than seeing the Trinity in our terms, as separate persons who live in relationship, it could be more helpful to begin by acknowledging that everything exists in relationship. Nothing and nobody is solitary; everything is related to everything else. Relationships are at the heart of God’s life – and of all life, just as communication is at the heart of community.
The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God is not an abstraction, a life-force, or something vaguely identifiable with Fate, Destiny or History. It tells us that God is, in some sense, a community, not a solitary in solitude, alone and distant. God is one, but not solitary.
One image of the Trinity is that of different lights merging into one. That is not meant to describe the Trinity as it is, much less to define it, but it gives a hint of something which is beyond our capacity to grasp in our terms. And one single light seen through multi-coloured glass is an example of diversity in unity, of differ-entiation without division.
We can think of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as ‘a source of life, an expression of life, and a sharing of life’. (Archbishop Rowan Williams, quoted in The Tablet, 18 September 2004, p.30)
If you can imagine all the nations of the earth sitting down to a meal in harmony – that’s Trinity. If you can imagine a community of persons, united in love and respect, celebrating their differences and not turning them into divisions – that’s Trinity. The Trinity is more than an idea to think about; it’s a quality of life to be lived.
For those in a hurry: “Do not say what you do not know, but neither say all of what you do know.” (Hadrat Ali, a Sufi mystic, Living and Dying with Grace: Counsels of Hadrat Ali, Shambhala, Boston, 1995)