This week I read a interesting book about a very devout Muslim fellow. He was knowledgeable and practised his faith. His mother’s side had two generations of missionary preachers on it. Through a good friend, he became a Christian and is now a pastor. He related that in his passion growing up, he challenged many Christians about their belief. He admitted that though he had heard much about the errors of Christianity, he had never critically looked at his Islamic faith the same way. One thing he said that is going to be what I am talking about today, is that when he would challenge Christians about their faith in most things he said it was pretty easy to sow doubt into their mind, but the one thing he never heard defended was the Trinity. Of course the idea is repulsive to Islamic thought, the Trinitarian God, but, as Christians, we should know enough to give a good answer for all the main aspects of our faith, especially the Trinity which is the central Mystery of our faith and that relationship is key to understanding other aspects of our faith. It is not sufficient to say the Trinity is a mystery and leave it at that.
It is true that the word Trinity is not in the Bible. It is the word that we use to describe the revelation that Jesus gave us. We, as Catholics, did not make up the Trinity, we simply named the reality that God revealed Himself as and we call that Trinity.
How does God show us that reality of the Trinity? Amazingly He started in the Old Testament when He said, “Let Us make man in Our image and likeness.”
The next revelation of God as Trinitarian is when God visited Abraham as three persons, and He reveals that Sarah will have a son.
There are other smaller revelations in the Old Testament of the coming Son, but the main revelation is in the New Testament.
We have two Theophanies in the New Testament when God speaks – the Baptism and the Transfiguration where all three are present. At the Baptism of Jesus, the Father’s voice is heard, the Spirit comes down and the Son is there and declared by the voice that, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
In the Transfiguration, we see Jesus, a cloud that overshadowed and a voice is heard making a similar proclamation. How do we know that the Holy Spirit is the cloud? Well the Church tells us that it is, but we can also be reminded of another overshadowing when the angel told Mary that the Holy Spirit will over shadow her.
Jesus very clearly tells the world that He is God, that is why they keep trying to stone Him. Remember that each time Jesus uses the words, “I AM,” He is declaring His divinity. Why is that? Because the name, “Yahweh,” means, “I AM who AM.” Jesus is very clear in accepting this. Sometimes people will argue that because at times Jesus says, “The Father is greater than I,” that means He is not God because the Father is greater, but when Jesus says this it would be better taken to mean preeminent. Preeminent meaning that the Father is source of all but that the Son is equal to Him in all things except He is not the source of the Trinity. The Father is but this does not mean however that there was a time when the other members of the Trinity weren’t there, it is just that the Holy Trinity is always Trinitizing so to speak (a word I possibly just made up). What does it mean? Well since I made it up, it means that the Trinity is always proceeding out of one another. The Son is always proceeding from the Father and the Holy Spirit is always and still proceeding out of the Father and the Son, an infinite generation for an infinite God.
The next question I want to explore about the Trinity is why is God Triune? Besides the fact that He is. Some will say if He has three persons then there must have been something lacking for Him to need others. Indeed there is something lacking and that is if God is only one with no persons there is the lacking aspect of relationship. For a person to be Love, He must have an equal to love. If God was not Triune, then He could not be loving in a full sense because He would have nothing He could fully pour His love into. God’s Trinitarian nature allows Him to be a God of Love. Why does God need three instead of just two? Because love must not only have the ability to pour one self into an equal, it must also be creative. The Holy Spirit is the personified Love of the Father and the Son. That is the total persons it needs to be love, so that is why we have three and not two or four or more. God is one, yet He has three distinct persons within Him and that relationship is pure and perfect Love.
The big question then once we know this is what does this have to do with us? Many things. First of all, God is love and you and I were created into His image and likeness, that means to love authentically. It means to act like God. Further, every marriage is meant to be an image of God’s life giving love in the world. Just as the love between the Father and Son created the Holy Spirit, so can the love of husband and wife create a child. This also reminds us that to be an image of God’s life giving love, we need to be in contact with God. It is important to pray in marriage for the gift to love like God. Secondly, the Trinity being a family means that they all want us to be a part of that family which is why we hear the command, “Go out and preach to all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Heaven is being in union with the Trinity. Jesus died to bring us into this family. He paid the price, cancelled the debt of our human weakness so we can go to Heaven. Each Sunday, because of Jesus, we can physically enter into the Trinity through the Eucharist.
So that is the Trinity. We should daily pray to know more and love this great and saving mystery, which is our very life.