Trinity Sunday – 3rd June 2007

Preaching about the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity is never easy. Some wise clergy suggest that Trinity Sunday is a good day to invite the Bishop to come and preach. Theologians are often asked to explain the Trinity, which is, of course, to miss the whole point of it. Christian teaching of the Trinity is not an explanation of God; it is, rather, a description of what we understand about God, albeit contradictory and contrary to logic, as we know it.

   In 1997 a 14-year-old American schoolboy won first prize at a Science Fair by showing how conditioned people have become to alarmists who use questionable science to spread a fear of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding total elimination, or at least strict control, of a chemical called ‘Di-hydrogen monoxide’ because, as he explained:

     1. it can cause excessive sweating and vomiting;
     2. death can result from accidental inhalation;
     3. it is found in cancerous tumours;
     4. in its gaseous state it can cause severe burns;
     5. it contributes to the erosion of the natural landscape;
     6. it is a major component in acid rain; and, finally
     7. it decreases the effectiveness of the brakes of motor vehicles.

He asked 50 people if they would support a ban: 43 said yes, six were undecided and only one knew that the chemical he was talking about was otherwise known as water. Christian understanding of the nature of the Trinity can become similarly and artificially conditioned.

   Early Christians worshipped God, but they also knew that Jesus was God and that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit, who was also God, to be with them. This complex truth was embodied in the use of the word Trinity. It is not a word that Jesus used, it is not a word found anywhere in the Bible, but it is used by the church to describe what we know about God. This is the important point! The Trinity does not explain God, because nobody can do that. It just describes what we know about God. It is, as I have said, contrary to logic, because what we do know about God is totally beyond our understanding. One day we might be able to comprehend it, in the same way that we have come to realise, in the last five hundred years or so, that planet Earth is spherical in shape and orbits the sun. But at the moment the Trinity is a mystery.

   Trinity Sunday is a special Sunday in the church’s calendar. It has been celebrated since 1334 when Pope John XXII established it as the Sunday after Pentecost. It is a Sunday that is not tied to any special event. We don’t have to bring to mind any particular person or enact any distinct rituals. Instead it is a day when we remember just God for himself; it is a day to focus our hearts and minds on him. It’s a bit like a birthday when all we do is celebrate a specific person and that individual’s presence with us. But, of course, when we celebrate God we have a problem of sorts. Do we celebrate God the Father, God the Son or God the Holy Spirit? Should we have three days, one for each of them? This sometimes presents difficulties for Christians. The church’s Trinitarian doctrine is threefold:

     1. God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;
     2. each of these person is fully God; and
     3. there is only one God.

In attempts to develop an understanding of the Trinity down the ages, various symbols have been adopted. The first and perhaps most obvious was the triangle. It has three sides but it is not three sides, it is a triangle. It is a poor illustration because, unlike in the Trinity, each side of the triangle is not a triangle! Saint Patrick used the example of a shamrock, which appears to have three leaves, which are actually only one leaf. Each of the parts is an essential component of the leaf, but the leaf is greater than just the three parts. Like the triangle, this illustration fails because each leaf is only a part of the shamrock; any one leaf cannot be said to be the whole shamrock. Within the Trinity each of the persons is not just a separate part of God, each person is fully God. Perhaps the best pictorial representation of the Trinity may be seen in the leftmost panel of the carved, wooden reredos behind our altar. It is difficult to see with the candlesticks in front of it so I will try to describe it. It consists of a triangular shaped shield. Within the shield’s three corners there are small circular panels and there is a larger, more decorated, panel in the centre. The corner panels are labelled Pater, Filius and Spiritus Sanctus and the central one Deus. I’m sorry about the language but this Shield of Faith, or Scutum Fidei, is traditionally created in this Latin form. There are links connecting each panel to every other panel and these, too, have Latin inscriptions. Those ringing the shield, that is, those connecting the outer panels to each other have ‘non est’ while those linking the outer panels to the central one each say ‘est’. What does this all signify? Even if you are not classical scholars you will have gathered that God (Deus) is at the centre, surrounded by panels indicating the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. ‘Est’ means ‘is’ and ‘Non est’ means ‘is not’. So, the Father is not the Son, nor is he the Holy Spirit. The Son is not the Father – et cetera. But, all three are God and God is, likewise, all three.

The Scutum Fidei - or Shield of Faith

   In the New Testament the difficulty of speaking of God in traditional terms as ‘one God’ becomes obvious, because there is Jesus and then there are his references to the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the best illustration of the difficulty is seen in the episode of Jesus’ baptism. After Jesus was baptised, as he came up from the water, ‘behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased”.’ So we have Father, Son and Holy Spirit all in one short Biblical episode!

   Trying to understand the Holy Trinity can be a little like trying to understand the science of atomic theory. In the early years of the nineteenth century John Dalton proposed an hypothesis that atoms were the essential building blocks of matter and that they were incapable of further subdivision. Then, in 1917, Ernest Rutherford split the atom and we were subsequently taught that they were in fact built up from protons, neutrons and orbiting electrons. I must admit to being totally confused by today’s physics that has positrons, mesons, neutrinos, gluons and strange things called quarks among many other particles in its atomic vocabulary. All atomic theories, simple or complex, are just models that explain something about how atoms work. They don’t tell us about what they are. So it is with the Trinity. Trinitarian theology tells us something about how God has revealed himself to us, what God has done in history and how God works in human events. But it doesn’t tell us who or what God is. That, I suppose, is the secret of the experience we have of God – this understanding we have of God as a Trinity – it doesn’t tell us fully, but it does tell us something important, never-the-less. But, how much better it is to have some understanding of God than none at all.

   That is why we as Christians ascribe to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It helps us to understand how God has revealed himself to us. The doctrine of the Trinity is not a mathematical puzzle or a set of academic formulae for theologians to discuss and debate – as they have done down the centuries, and continue so to do. Instead, it is a belief born out of the experience of ordinary Christians, as a real life answer to the question, ‘Where do we find God?’ It is an answer that we believe God continues to reveal to us. God has made himself known to us in a unique way: namely, that there is only one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is one God who is: loving, just, holy, intimate, powerful, wrathful, awesome, forgiving, and light and life itself. This revelation has developed over time. It was not, for example, until the fourth century that pneumatology, the academic study of the Holy Spirit, began to occupy the minds of the church fathers.

   If you study this complex yet fascinating subject you may come across the Greek word, perichoresis. It is used by theologians to describe the triune relationship between the three persons of the Trinity. Among definitions, are phrases such as: co-indwelling, co-inhering or mutual interpenetration. It is a word that very much expresses the view of the Trinity shown in the Scutum Fidei, the Shield of Faith, that I described earlier. This understanding is also very much the basis of the third and least known of our Christian Creeds, written by perhaps the greatest theologian of the patristic church. A fourth century Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius is the man, outside the pages of the New Testament, to whom we chiefly owe the preservation of our Christian faith. If you wish to study The Athanasian Creed it is to be found in our Scottish Prayer Book, beginning on page 41, between the Order for Compline and The Litany, where it has assumed the Latin title, Quicumque vult, a translation of its opening words, ‘Whosoever would…’. It deals almost entirely with the nature of the Trinity – it’s worth a read!

   Saint Augustine of Hippo, another great, fourth century Father of the Church, wrote his own academic treatise on the Trinity, entitled De Trinitate. Scholars argue that in his writings Augustine vacillated between tritheism (a belief in three Gods) and modalistic monarchianism (a belief that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not one God but are one kingly person). We needn’t involve ourselves in such arcane debate this morning. However, tradition has it that while trying to formulate his understanding of these complex matters he walked along his native, North African seashore. A small boy had dug a hole in the sand and was running back and forth with a container, carrying water from the sea and pouring it into the hole. Augustine was so intrigued that he asked the child what he was doing. ‘I’m going to put the sea into my hole,’ he replied. ‘But, that’s impossible,’ said Augustine, and at that very moment realised that his attempts to explain the Trinity in words written on a page were equally impossible.

   Our Christian creeds have been formulated, adjusted, fine tuned and honed down the centuries to inculcate a belief in us that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He is one God in three persons. That is all we are expected to believe. Today the church celebrates that Trinitarian faith.

Copyright © David Fuller 2007

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