The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a serious attempt
to say something accurate about God… while suspecting all along that we can’t really
do that. If you go on line and track
down the Athanasian Creed, which is still honoured in major branches of the Christian
church, and read how that describes the Trinity, you may be inclined to agree
that more words does not always mean more clarity. The first of the Anglican Thirty-Nine
Articles however puts it as succinctly as you’ll find anywhere:
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts
or passions; of infinite power, wisdom and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of
all things both visible and invisible.
And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance,
power and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
But then, if we turn to the more mature writings that made
it into the Christian scriptures [I John 4:16], we find some simplicity:
God
is love.
those
who abide in love abide in God,
God abides in them.
Love is about all we can say accurately, or I would think
helpfully, regarding God. John, or
whoever the writer was, captures this simplicity. To abide in God is to abide in love – to
abide in love is to abide in God.
I think that probably frightens some people, because their
woundedness in life makes it hard for them to imagine living in love. Perhaps their hearts are blaming God for
their adversity in life. It can be
frightening also because such a concept brings God close. Love is an intimate relationship. The wonderful young French Christian thinker,
Simone Weil, wrote how in what she called affliction, when there may seem to be
no light and no healing: The soul has to go on loving in the
emptiness, or at least to go on wanting to love… If the soul stops loving it
falls, even in this life, into something which is almost equivalent to hell.[1]
The Trinity, looked at through the eye of love, as it were,
shows us God the Creator and Father, making and sustaining everything by
love. It shows us God in Jesus,
teaching, reconciling, healing, in love.
And it shows us God the Holy Spirit as the way God abides in us, leading
us, inspiring, fanning the flame of love.
And as we often say, the test of
our prayer is not whether we move mountains, so much as whether we grow in both
giving and receiving love.
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