Our Loose Canon...
with Canon Eric Woods DL
Trinity – three for the price of one One of the Christian doctrines most troublesome to adherents of the other great monotheistic religions (e.g. Judaism and Islam) is that of the Trinity. God as Three and God as One. What gobbledygook is this? Well, if I were a scientist (which I’m not, though I’m married to a good one) I would tell you that apparent contradictions are commonplace in the scientific realm – such as parthenogenesis (‘virgin birth’ to simpletons like me), which occurs amongst many insects and some fish, birds and reptiles. Or there’s light as both waves and particles, which puzzled scientists for decades. They didn’t understand it, but they couldn’t deny it. And this is how science works – finding
hypotheses to account for the apparently inexplicable. Theology is not much different. So, how are we to begin to comprehend God as both Three and One, as we approach Trinity Sunday this weekend? Perhaps one way is to think of God as love (which he is). That means he cannot be solitary. Unrequited love is tragic – poets write about it and sometimes even die of it! Love must be given, and returned. The wonder and joy only begin when your love is returned. But – and it’s a big ‘but’ – it will not be complete unless the happiness it brings can overflow and be shared with others. And so it is with God. The Father’s love is poured out to the Son – ‘This
is my beloved Son’ – and returned, and is then shared with the Spirit. And that means shared with us too, for the Spirit is God’s gift to us: the very overflow of the divine life and the divine love. Love in its fullness and perfection must always be a trinity. A simpler analogy still. If you are a parent, you are a trinity. To your parents you are son or daughter. Your ‘better half” knows you as husband, wife or partner. Your son or daughter knows you as dad or mum. You are simultaneously son, husband and father, or daughter, wife and mother. These three identities are fundamental to who you are – but they don’t make you three people. You are three-in-one. So we cannot say all that we
mean by the word ‘God’ until we have said ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. Of course there is mystery here, but it is a deep and profound mystery with which we need to engage – or rather, which we need to allow to engage with us. The high priest of atheism, Richard Dawkins, was asked on Desert Island Discs why he had chosen mostly Christian choral music to take to his desert island. He replied that it created pleasurable ‘electrochemical impulses’ in his brain. It made me wonder what he says to his wife when we lesser mortals would simply say ‘I love you’! The Trinity is not about impulses in the brain. It is about how God loves, and how we love too.
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