TRINITY SUNDAY
18 May 2008

When we talk about the Trinity, what are we actually talking about?

At one level, we're obviously talking about doctrine – the way in which the Church formally express what she believes. And doctine is important. It forces us to be precise; to say, This is true; but that is not true. And a religion without doctrine very rapidly descends into nothing more than unexamined feeling.

But we're also talking, equally obviously about God. And there we run into a problem, because when people use the word “God”, while they often assume they mean the same thing, in actual fact they may mean very different things. For some the word is little more than a shorthand expression for whatever impersonal force created the universe in the first place... a remote, distant entity who, whatever he (or it) did in the past, has no ongoing interaction with his creation, or with us his creatures today. This is the view known in its purest form as “Deism”.

On the other hand, for others, the word “God” is really just a synonym for creation itself, equally impersonal, but somehow part of every rock, tree and flower... an attitude we call Pantheism, meaning “God in everything”. And sometimes it can become very sentimentalized: some of you no doubt know the poem I occasionally have to grit my teeth and read at funerals, about nowhere being closer to God's heart than a garden.

But if that's so, what does it say about people in inner city housing estates, or the victims of Burmese cyclones and Chinese earthquakes? Are they less close to God's heart because they don't have the luxury of a neat English garden to potter about in? Of course not. If anything, it is the poor and needy who are closest to God's heart, and the poem is sentimental rubbish. But it is popular sentimental rubbish, and illustrative of what many people mean when they use the word “God” ... someone or something who makes us feel good, but who is on the whole as remote from the concerns of the world as his deist cousin.

So what we mean by “God” is also important, because it has implications for what we believe about the world we live in, and how we will act in it. After all, if God is no more than an absent landlord, as in the first example, we can do pretty much as we please; and if we really are closest to God's heart when we feel good about ourselves, as in the second, then why should we exert ourselves for the less fortunate?

Of course, both the Deist and the Pantheist ideas of God as I've expressed them, represent extreme positions. But they also represent a polarity that is at the heart of any attempt to talk about God, the polarity between what theologians call, immanence and transcendance – between the idea that God is completely beyond us and inaccessible to us; and that he is so close to us as to be inseparable from his creation. And the problem is, both are true – God is both immanent and transcendant, both “out there” and “in here” – but neither is true on its own. Above all, as Scripture constantly remind us,s he is passionately committed to what he has made.

And when you leave one part out of the equation, you end up with distortions like those I have just descibed... distortions that arise from not taking doctrine seriously. Which is why the doctrine of the Trinity – that we worship One God in Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is key to getting the rest of our Christian faith right. Because (at the risk of a gross oversimplification) we can see in each of the Divine Persons a different aspect of this complex relationship between God and creation.

In the Father, we see the One who created all that is, seen and unseen, throned in eternal majesty, to whose full glory our sin blinds us. In the Spirit, we know the voice of God speaking within us, the One whose presence sustains all things like a breath, blowing where it will like the wind. And in the Son, Jesus, we see God's commitment to his creation, sharing in its joys and sorrows, and bearing all our burdens; especially the burdens of those who, like him, are despised and rejected by others.

Now I repeat: this is a gross oversimplification. The Father is no less committed to his creation than the Son and Spirit he sends; the Spirit no less with us than the Father and Son from whom he proceeds; the Son no less to be worshipped and adored than the eternal Father and the Spirit who is One with Both. But when we as Christians speak of God, this is the God we mean; a God at once Transcendent, Immanent, and Committed to all he has made. And he calls us to worship his glory, to know his presence, and to share his commitment to all creation.

One last caveat. I began by saying that to talk about the Trinity is to talk about God. And it is important, as I have indicated, that we get our God-talk right. But we must not thereby fall into the trap of thinking that it is simply talk. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not simply labels we have invented to describe the different aspects of our relationship with God, or our experience of him. They are names of the divine Persons and describe, not our perception, but the reality of God in his inner life as he has chosen to reveal himself to us in Scripture and in his Son.

But that is ultimately a mystery beyond the limits of earthly language. We see now, as Saint Paul reminds us, through a glass darkly – dim reflections in a mirror. And there comes a point at which all God-talk must cease as it leads us (or does if it is serving its proper purpose) simply to adoration. And one day we will come to that place where, as Saint Augustine puts it in the closing words of his great work, The City of God:

We shall be still and see;
we shall see and we shall love;
we shall love and we shall praise.

It is in that spirit we affirm our faith in the One God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, this morning.