It's All About Relationship

[It's Trinity Sunday, a Sunday specifically observed for the contemplation of the Divine Mystery of Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity. The readings for this year may be found at the Episcopal Church lectionary page at this link.]

Trinity Sunday, another year passed, and priests and pastors the world over wonder how they are going to preach on what is admittedly one of the greatest mysteries of God.

So they pass it off to an assistant, junior, or adjunct.

All joking aside, everything that we think we understand about the Trinity is the result of centuries of squabble among Christians, with nuances causing one group to cry, "Foul!" and another to dig in their heels. Some, to help simplify things, deny it altogether, creating logical issues with things like, oh, I don't know, the atonement, salvation, sin and redemption. Perhaps we should avoid drastic measures of that nature.

I took my New Testament studies at, ironically, a Jewish University (Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati). To say that was a worthwhile move would be a gross understatement. Here were rabbinical students trying to wrap their heads around a series of books written by first-century Jews in a tradition that split off and paralleled their own. One day, I walked into a class where a group of about twenty of them were discussing the Trinity, a concept definitely foreign to them. Here were students of a tradition that believed there is one God only with Person, but no defined plurality of persons, pondering another related tradition's doctrine that there is one God only, with three distinct and uncombined Persons yet being of a single nature and being. They discussed the varying perspectives, including the Mediaeval triangular diagram that only served to distress them more, finally listening with rapt attention when one lady mentioned that the Eastern Orthodox perspective of the unity being based on love between the persons was the perspective that most made sense to her.

As if on queue, the entire group turned to the lone Orthodox goy in the class and asked for clarification (that was me if you were wondering, the other goy being Baptist).

On the spot, I probably fumbled my answer (it was almost thirty-five years ago), but I agreed in essence, stating that the love was so selfless and so all-encompassing it caused each person to dwell within the other, celebrating each Person's specific relation to the other in an unbreakable harmony so complete that while distinct, the Persons is a single being with a single nature and a single will.

Then, some wit brought up monotheletism, which started a discussion on the dual nature of Christ, until the rabbi, who was the professor of the class, broke us up to focus on the actual syllabus.

The point of this long story is that the mystery of the Trinity is a doctrine of all-encompassing love and relationship. The love and indwelling is so complete that the Father begets the Son eternally and sends forth the Spirit eternally as they eternally indwell each other without fracturing the being, the nature, and the will. The fact that the Son, as part of the Incarnation, has brought Human nature and will to the table to share in the indwelling is another extension of the mystery that many shy away from. Never forget that this loving Trinity is so made up of love that the Trinity can pour all that love into each Person and still overflow into any human who approaches. This love the Trinity has for each person, this indwelling each Person has for the other Persons the Trinity wishes to share with us, not to the consumption of our beings and wills and natures but to complement them, to align our beings and wills and natures with that of the Holy Trinity, that we can spend a loving, fulfilling, ever expanding eternity with the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity, one in essence, and undivided.