(The Nationalist, 4 June 2004)
A dream that family, nation and world lived as one – that’s a dream about Trinity. The Trinity is about community life in God. God lives in a community of persons who are distinct but equal. They are not the same, like peas in a pod, they are distinct. But they are equal; there is no senior or junior among them. The Father is not senior to the Son, as with human parenthood. God is not personal in the same way that we are. He is not a bigger and better version of us, but far greater than anything we can conceive of or imagine.
The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God is personal, not an abstraction, a life-force, or something vaguely identifiable with Fate, destiny or history. It tells us that God is, in a sense, a community of persons, not a solitary living in solitude, alone and distant. It tells us something of the community life of God: that the three persons are distinct but equal. In human language we could say that there is differentiation without division, unity without uniformity, an inclusive society bound by love rather than law.
In this sense the Trinity provides a role model for family, society and church. It provides a pattern for bringing together diversity in unity, encouraging people to respect and accept each other despite differences, to be unifiers rather than dividers.
At the heart of community is communication; there can be no community worthy of the name without it. Of its nature, it is a two-way process, speaking and listening, giving and receiving. There is an eternal dialogue in God: Jesus, the Son, is the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit is the mutual love of the Father and the Son.
The Trinity is a pattern, a role model for human relations at their best.