Why the Trinity Makes (Some) Sense

Three Cheers for the Mysterious, Three-in-One God

In many Christian traditions, the first Sunday after Pentecost is reckoned as “Trinity Sunday,” on which we remember the three persons of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This year, that Sunday is June 16th.

As a contemporary, non-denominational Christian pastor, I usually give scant attention to the “lesser” holy days, other than Easter and Christmas. (Although I’ve always had a soft spot for Epiphany. LOVE the wisemen.) But this year I noticed on some dusty church calendar somewhere that the Trinity has its own day. For some reason, that fact caught my imagination.

The Trinity is one of the teachings of Christianity that make it distinct from other world religions. And it has an interesting history. As a doctrine, the Trinity is not explicitly taught in the Bible. Rather, it came together slowly as early Christians realized the implications of Jesus the Son of God being God Himself but distinct from God the Creator, his Father. How could Jesus be one with the Father but distinct from Him? Eventually the Holy Spirit, the presence of God on earth and a distinct “person” in and of himself, got thrown into this discussion. What was the Spirit’s relationship to this new, more complicated notion of “God”?

This idea of a trinitarian God challenged ancient Jewish ideas of God as a singular unity: “Hear O Israel: The LORD is one,” Moses insisted (Deut. 6:4). Indeed, Jesus was executed for many reasons, one of which was the blasphemous and pagan suggestion that he was, in some sense, God. And the Trinity has continued to be divisive, as different traditions of Christianity have come to understand it in different ways—leading to some unfortunate breakage in the Church, and even bloodshed. (See “The Great Schism” of 1054.)

All this wrangling and controversy is understandable. It is a conundrum: One God in three distinct divine persons? Huh?

Theologians have tried to explain the mystery of the Trinity with various fancy words, like God’s one “essence” vs. his threes “substances.” And they’ve used metaphors to help us try to picture it: just as water has three states (gas, liquid, ice), or an egg has three parts (shell, yolk, white), God has three persons. Ultimately, though, all the metaphors break down. They either deny the full personhood of each member or describe one God in three different forms—which is not the Trinity. In the end, we always seem to be left with what appears to be an ineffable mystery. This is why plenty of thoughtful people over the years have abandoned the Trinity for a more basic belief in God or abandoned Christian theism altogether.

It is difficult. At the same time, I’ve come to appreciate some of the logic of the Trinity. By no means do I “get it,” but to me the Trinity does make some sense, at least. Here’s how.

Two Intuitions

When many people think about “God,” they start with two basic intuitions, or “hunches”:

1) First, God is all-powerful. God can do anything. If “he” (let’s stick with male pronouns for simplicity’s sake) can create the universe from nothing, he can do anything.

2) Second, God is love. God doesn’t just love, but he is love. Everything he does flows out of his love for all.

These are two intuitions we have about God: God is all-powerful, and God is love. Many of us have always had these intuitions about God, even apart from the Bible. It’s kind of the God we naturally want to believe in. Now, whether or not these intuitions are true is a different question. Although we have good reasons to believe that God exists as an all-powerful, loving being, I’m not here arguing that one way or another at this point. I’m just pointing out that to many of us, we have always had these two basic theological “hunches” about God: God is all-powerful, and God is love.

Basically, that’s the Trinity: God is all-powerful love. 

Here’s what I mean.

In order for God to be all-powerful there can be only one of him. Imagine two or more eternal divine beings creating and controlling the universe, or any universe. Neither of them would be, by definition, all-powerful. There would be matters outside of either god’s power, under the control of the other. (I will freely acknowledge that this simple argument leaves aside what it means for God to even be “in control.” But go with it for now.) If the United States, for some crazy constitutional reason, had two Presidents, neither of them would be genuine, authoritative executive authorities. There would be some things each President couldn’t do without the permission of the other. At one point there were several Popes at the same time, and none of them were in control.

So if we want to believe that God is really in control of the universe, then there care be only one of him. 

But here’s the thing: If we want to follow our other theological intuition that God is love, there must be MORE than one of him. How so? By definition, love implies relationship between two beings or entities. So does grace, or mercy. A strictly monotheistic God has nothing to love, because he is utterly alone.

Now, one might argue that this is why God created us and the world in the first place: so he could have someone or something to love. But that doesn’t work. Are we comfortable believing that an all-powerful God “needed to” create creatures to satisfy his inner yearning to love and be loved? And what about prior to our existence? Before the moment of creation did God live in perpetual loneliness? How is that possible for loneliness to even exist as a notion if, prior to creation, God had always been only one?

Both One and Many

You can see where I’m going with this. If we want to believe that God is all-powerful, we have to believe that God is One—singular. But if we want to believe that God is love, or even capable of relationship, we have to believe that the God is Many—a plurality. He could be two, or three, or a thousand. But a loving God has to be many.

Yes, these two ideas that God is singular and plural seem contradictory. How can God be both one and many? A skeptic would look at this conundrum and argue that it’s one more reason God isn’t real in any form: “See, God can’t be both many and one at the same time. Therefore, God isn’t real.” But that’s a logical flaw. Just because we don’t understand how two notions can both be true at the same time isn’t necessarily a good enough reason to chuck the idea altogether. That would be premature. Plenty of ideas seem contradictory but aren’t necessarily so. Scientists, for example, had thought that something must be a light or a wave, but probably not both. But as it turned out, light is both a particle and a wave.

Different ideas can sometimes both be true. It might just be possible for God to be both many and one at the same time.

The best current explanation I’ve heard for how this can be so is something the early Christian father Augustine suggested. It’s called “the psychological analogy”: Within each of us there are many of us. Each person has many selves. What do you think you’re doing when you talk to yourself? Even this metaphor breaks down eventually, but I think it comes close. And it makes some sense, given that the Bible teaches humans are made in the image of God. If this is so, we would reflect his singularity and plurality.

Even still, it’s hard for people to hold both these ideas in hand at the same time, that is both all-powerful (one) and loving (many). Lots of religions try to hold onto these two ideas at the same time, but inevitably fail. Judaism and Islam are the world’s great monotheistic religions, and they sacrifice the notion of divine love for his sovereign power—as strictly monotheistic religions would. Certain strands of Hinduism, which believes in many, many gods, prioritize divine love over divine power. (I say that with only the most basic understanding of Hinduism, but it does seem correct.)

The exception here is Christianity. Yes, many different Christian denominations end up giving up one of our intuitions. They sacrifice belief in God’s all-pervasive power to his love, or give up his love in favor of his power. But in its purest form, Christianity is the only religion I’m aware of that has built into its belief system BOTH the all-powerfulness and loving-kindness of God. I might be missing something, but it seems unique in that sense. It’s imbedded in the very notion of the Trinity: an all-powerful, all-loving God of Father, Son and Spirit.

We would do well, this Trinity Sunday, to remember that. Even if you don’t celebrate the lesser holy days, it’s worth remembering what it means to be a trinitarian Christian. It means to believe that our God is in control, and lovingly so.

-MRH (6/10/2019)