Bound in Love

Preaching on the Trinity is tricky because the doctrine of the Trinity is
simply beyond human understanding. Look at how the Church has
decided to address the doctrine in the readings today. The Old Testament
reading is all about God the Father; the Epistle is all about the Holy
Spirit; the Gospel is all about the Son. One might reasonably ask if the
doctrine on the Trinity is so important to what it means to be a Christian,
then why didn’t we get a full explanation from God through his
Scriptures?

Fr. Lopez was Fr. Neil’s high school theology teacher and is a senior
priest in the archdiocese of Atlanta. Fr. Lopez had a sign in his
classroom: “There is a God, and You’re not Him.” It is a good reminder
that we are limited but God is limitless. We are not the boss; He is. We
don’t know everything; He does. He doesn’t need anything from us, but
he loves us so much he sent his only begotten son to die on the Cross so
that we might believe in Him and have everlasting life.

St. Athanasius was a deacon at the Council of Ephesus in the 4th
century, and he became bishop of Alexandria. The Council of Ephesus
was addressing the question of the Trinity, specifically whether or not
Jesus was truly God.

St. Athanasius wrote a tract, which is sometimes known as the
Athanasian Creed. I’m going to read you a little of that creed:

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he
hold the Catholic Faith. And the Catholic Faith is this, that we
worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.
Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For
there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another
of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and
of the Holy Ghost is all One, the Glory Equal, the Majesty
Co-Eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the
Holy Ghost. The Father Uncreated, the Son Uncreated, and the
Holy Ghost Uncreated. The Father Incomprehensible, the Son
Incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost Incomprehensible. The
Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost Eternal and yet
they are not Three Eternals but One Eternal. As also there are not
Three Uncreated, nor Three Incomprehensibles, but One
Uncreated, and One Incomprehensible. So likewise the Father is
Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And
yet they are not Three Almighties but One Almighty.

Got that? St. Athanasius, with all the time in the world to develop a
teaching on the central tenet of the Christian faith is reduced to
declarations without any “proof.”

The creed is a list of assertions: One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.
(What does that even mean, one might ask.) We don’t confound (mix)
the Persons; neither do we divide the Substance. (So they are not three
gods, but one God.) Three distinct – but not separate – Persons while
simultaneously one Godhead. The three Persons are all “Uncreated,”
“Incomprehensible,” and “Eternal.”

One cannot defend this teaching by logic because it is a truth above and
beyond the realm of logic. It is what we call divine revelation. It’s what
our fundamentalist friends mean when they say, “God said it; I believe
it, and that settles it.”

Revelation is good for us because we generally dislike that sign in Fr.
Lopez’s classroom. It may be true that “There is a God, and I’m not
Him,” but we’re not happy about the situation. We want to be gods. We
want the knowledge that he has. We want to decide things, like God
does. We don’t want to approach him as little children; we’d rather put
on our big boy pants and argue with him about our current situation and
our future.

The point of these mysteries like the Trinity is they are an invitation
from God, and they are also sort of an instruction for climbing the ascent
to God in two ways that are difficult for us. Those are intimacy and
vulnerability. God in the Trinity is revealed to be intimate; they are three
and yet they are one. And God dying on the Cross reveals himself to be
vulnerable. Consider some of Jesus’s last words on the Cross. He says,
“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” But he also says, “Into
your hands I commend my spirit.” The Son cries out to the Father while
always trusting the Father. God wants us to be intimate and vulnerable
with him; He made us for that kind of relationship.

He made us to be with him. In the Garden of Eden we experienced this.
We walked with God. We were open. We were intimate with Him. We
were naked and felt no shame with God. It was only after the Fall, when
we turned to serve the Devil, that we decided to hide from God and to
put on a fig leaf for shame of our nakedness.

So, we were made for intimacy and we were made for vulnerability. God
wants that for us in our relationship with Him and he wants it in our
relationships with each other. The human relationship where this is most
obviously appropriate and intended by God is Holy Matrimony. In that
union – and only there – we appropriately take off the fig leaves and are
physically intimate and vulnerable with each other. Happy marriages are
marked by a commitment to intimacy and vulnerability, not just in the
physical realm but in the emotional and spiritual realm as well. All rich
human relationships marked by Christ share a commitment to intimacy
and vulnerability. God invites us to grow closer to Him by being more
open with each other.

The Trinity is a statement that we cannot prove logically, and that in
itself is an opportunity for Christian vulnerability. It is vulnerable to
know a thing to be true, but unable to prove it logically to someone who
is skeptical. In our vulnerability, we just state it.

And then we live it. That is how we teach these mysterious doctrines of
our faith like the Resurrection, the Real Presence, and the Trinity. These
are things we know to be true, they are requirements of our faith, and yet
a skeptic cannot be convinced by our argument alone. But he can be
convinced by our witness.

And that is why intimacy and vulnerability are aspects of our Christian
lives that we should prayerfully seek to grow day after day, because it is
through our willingness to be vulnerable first with God and then with
each other, to be intimate first with God and then with each other –
respecting appropriate human boundaries, of course – but it is through
that willingness to be open that people can see the truth of God’s love
for them and appreciate God’s justice for them.

God is mysterious. That is the lesson of Fr. Lopez’s classroom sign.
Mysteries like the Trinity are invitations to accept God as He is rather
than how we might try to re-make him. Let us not only learn but live the
mysterious teachings of our “Uncreated,” “Incomprehensible,” and
“Eternal” God.