A young man about to be ordained as a deacon once told me he feared preaching on Trinity Sunday because, he said, the Trinity was too complicated to be understood by ordinary Christians. How sad! Because the Trinity is the central dogma of Christian theology – one God exists in three persons and one substance, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
If anyone attempts in a short homily to sketch the evolution of the doctrine – how it came to be explained and clarified in the first four centuries of Christianity – the young deacon was correct; the development of the doctrine was indeed complicated. But if one looks at how our understanding was shaped by God’s interaction with the beloved community, the result is simpler and, surprisingly, shows more love.
Nearly everybody in Old Testament times accepted divine causality affecting the world; they accepted the existence and activity of the gods. That fact alone did not necessarily make them pious nor did it mean that everybody liked the gods. To them, the gods “were simply there,” influencing events on earth for good or ill. What set Israel’s Lord apart from these multiple “gods”? It was the Lord’s consistent love and justice, and his choosing Israel. Israel came to realize through experience of his guidance that her Lord was the only real God and the most powerful among all the divine beings.
Israelites experienced the Lord interacting with his beloved people, revealing extraordinary love, justice, presence, and patience, but also demanding love and faithfulness in return. In short, there would be no revelation of the living God unless there were a people to experience and record it.
The New Testament writings reveal Jesus as the human face of the God already known from the Old Testament. In word and deed, Jesus does what Israel’s Lord did in the Old Testament, healing, teaching, protecting. Israel traditionally responded to her Lord by observing the Torah and visiting the Temple and taking part in its ceremonies. The earliest followers of Jesus found their Lord similarly, but also in Messiah Jesus. The earliest followers of Jesus learned to direct their worship to Jesus as well as to the Lord already revealed in the Old Testament. In addition, Christian thinkers and teachers discovered the Spirit’s lively presence and power in their community life. St. Paul began to express this three-fold divine presence active in the communities he ministered to. Furthermore, since the metaphor of family was deeply ingrained in the culture of that era, it was natural for Christians to reflect on the relationships using family metaphors – father, son, nurturing spirit. The vocabulary of Scripture invites to see the Trinity in terms of family relationships. Today’s readings invite us to do the same.