Blog over.
Nah, I can explain the Trinity. And I can explain it in a way that you can understand. Watch me work.
There's a great bit right at the beginning of Star Trek 4, the voyage home, in which McCoy and Spock are talking about Spock's death. McCoy asks Spock what it was like to be dead, Spock replies 'I'd like to discuss it with you, doctor, but I'm afraid you lack the necessary frame of reference.' McCoy retorts 'So you mean I'd have to die to discuss your position on death?' Sure enough. But all sorts of things are relative. They're relative in a way that doesn't make sense outside of their relation to you. All sorts of things work like that. I can't discuss colours without talking about colours that you see. I can't talk about smells except in relation to things you've smelled before. Things that are part of your senses can't really be experienced unless in relation to other things you've experienced. Make sense so far? Good. Now, let's talk about the Trinity.
God the Father, the creator of the universe, is the first thing that we perceive about God. That is, the creative work of God the father can be seen and perceived by almost everyone. This is something that should be relatively clear, even among the most hard hearted atheists. For everyone who stands at the edge of a cliff and gazes out at the great salt sea will have an experience of the divine. Everyone who looks up at the sky, at the milky way or at the sunset, will be awestruck by the majesty of it. This is something that can give you an idea that all these things are made by the Lord our God who created heaven and earth. Now, this is something called the natural revelation of God. That is, you can see that things are made by God, but that's all that you can or will ever know about him. You can know that God made things, but you can't know anything about him beyond that from just seeing the natural world. And this will lead you, almost inevitably to the conclusion that the crowd Paul was speaking to in Acts 17 as well as an awful lot of people that I get stuck talking to at parties. They all came to the conclusion that we could be 'spiritual but not religious.' That is, they have an idea of a God out there somewhere, out that in the greatness of the void, but figure that they can't know anything about him. And surely, if all you can do is to look at the vastness of the cosmos, you'll only get to an idea that there is a God, but you can never know him. You will know that there is a God, but not anything about him in the slightest.
So, thus Jesus. I understand that you may have an idea of Jesus as a person, or as the son of God, as a man who lived a couple of thousand years ago, and that's all true. But there is more to the story than that. Because the story of Jesus is the story of how we understand God. You can know that there is a God out there by gazing at the vastness of his creation, but like with everything else, if you want to learn about someone, you'll have to do something every specific. When Jesus speaks, people frequently get upset, sometimes angry enough to kill. And when he does this, it is because something very familiar to you is playing out. Have you ever witnessed an argument proceed like this:
"When you go to the store could you get some milk?"
"Yes, fine, I'll get the milk."
"Could you make sure that you get the 2%..."
"Yes, yes, I get it, 2% Milk, 4 litres, I got it. Gosh, get off my case!"
And sure enough, when person B comes home, they do so without the 2% milk. But they'll insist the whole time that they have the right thing. Now, if they'd just listen, they would get things figure out, but we don't like listening, even to relatively straightforward conversations. Think about things like this. How often is more communication expected in collapsing relationships? How many times have you heard someone complain about a friend, a lover, a co-worker or a boss, and then have the response come forward 'why don't you just talk to them?'
I can't talk to them! If I do, then I'll know what they want, and they'll know what I want, and then things might work out properly between us! Sure! That's the idea! And in the case of God, Jesus is the means through which we know the unknowable God. Jesus Christ, the word made flesh, is the way we can understand the incomprehensible. Because God exists outside of our immediacy, outside of time, outside of frailty, we can't wrap our heads around his enormity or his grandeur. But we can absolutely understand Jesus in the real world. We can understand God because we can understand Jesus. I know we're used to understanding Jesus crucified, and that's going to come up later, I promise, but here's the deal: the only way you are ever going to get past the unknown God is to understand Jesus as God. The word of God made flesh. The one whose job it is to make God understandable to us. The massive God who formed and fashioned the milky way, that God is a bit too distant for us to come close to, to understand or arrive at. But Jesus, we understand him. His words are simple, succinct, and straightforward. Sometimes too straightforward for people. They may not like it at all when Jesus is as plain as he is. They resist his words, as they do in the Gospel reading for today. They hear his words, and pick up rocks to throw at him, to stone him to death, because he told them the truth about God, and about themselves.
Eventually they kill Jesus, they put him to death for this reason. He tells the truth. He is quick to let people know that they have the potential to be liars, to say that they understand God when they don't. But Jesus is extremely truthful. The word of God is always truthful, it is always accurate. It cannot and will not deceive. Even if the truth of it is too acute, and too severe for us. Even if the word of God cuts us too deep, and we want to be rid of it. And so they take Christ and have him crucified. But the Christian faith, which rests on Christ and him crucified, is not the same as just knowing about what happened. The crucifixion is a fact of history, and it is something that we can know about in the same way that we know about the murder of Julius Caesar on the ideas of March. We can know about Jesus and his death in much that same way, but God works on us another way.
God the Father is what we perceive in the universe. God the Son is how we know that God, but God the spirit is the way in which we experience God. This is the presence of God in the world, working to sanctify the church. It's what changes our understanding of the crucifixion of Christ from a thing that happens, to a thing that happens for you. This is different than just historical knowledge, for even the demons know there is only one God, and they tremble. This isn't historical fact, it's the working of God in your life. Creator, redeemer and sanctifier, Father son and Holy Spirit. God, his word and his spirit. And the thing is, we can only really explain it in relation to you. You are living in a world, in a creation that God made. God came into this world to save you. And thanks to God the spirit, you know and experience that it was all done for you, on your behalf.
The trinity isn't just a part of your faith, it is your faith. This is what the catholic faith is, as the Athanasian creed tells us. Your faith is the father, the son and the holy spirit. The dogma is the drama.
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