Trinity sunday

How often in our services we repeat the words, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit”, what we call the doxology.  Morning and Evening Prayer is full of it.  It really is the bedrock of our faith.  But how often I wonder do we really think about what we are saying.  It’s very familiar to all religious people, but what does it mean? 

Well, if nothing else, it should constantly remind us that the God we worship isn’t a singular figure, but “One in three, and Three in One”.  The Holy and undivided Trinity. Explaining the doctrine of the Holy Trinity to normal rational, thinking people is one of the most complex things to do, because in the normal scheme of things we are not used to explanations that tell us that there are three elements to a person or an article, when we see or experience a single figure or element.  Our world doesn’t think like that, we tend to believe what we see, what scientists assure us has a rational explanation.

The Creed, which was written by St Athanasius all those centuries ago, set out the Church’s understanding, and thereby the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which frankly didn’t make understanding the concept any easier.

“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....As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated: but one uncreated and one incomprehensible”.

The one thing St Athanasius made very clear is that the concept of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost is incomprehensible to ordinary humans, and always will be, because we cannot encompass God in our ordinary human minds. The Trinity is a fact we have to accept, which becomes clearer when we see it at work in our lives, and whether we want it to or not, it is at work in our lives, shaping the sort of person we are, how we act towards others and our response to others needs.

The writer, Jonathan Swift said, “All those who endeavour to explain the Trinity have utterly lost their way.....and have hurt the cause which they intended to promote” .

John Wesley suggested that there are many aspects of the natural world which could not be fully understood, such as natural light, and what causes the force of gravity.  And because there are many things we don’t understand about what happens in creation and the natural world around us, he suggests that we should not worry about trying to understand the concept of the Holy Trinity, and accept it as a fact, just as we accept natural light as a fact.

Well, that may have been alright 200 years ago when most people didn’t know much about science, but today we are more sceptical about things we don’t understand and expect science to explain everything or we don’t believe it.  Science cannot say definietly there is real concrete proof that there is a God who created the world and continues in that act of creation, so rational people say there is no God, or on the basis of probabilities there is no God.  Some scientists and intellectuals make fortunes writing books that denounce the concept of a creator God, and rubbish any religious belief. 

But thinking people have begun to realise that science cannot provide all the answers to the questions we ask, we have begun to realise there are many things that science cannot explain.  If earth was created by a big bang, who created the big bang in the first place.  What happens to our souls when we die?  Yes of course, science has enabled people to make amazing discoveries and cures for all manner of things, which gives us all a better, more healthier life, but is that all there is? Is there not something or someone behind all this?

Fundamentally science does not fully understand the way the particles in natural light behave, or what the force of gravity consists of even though we can harness these things and use them to our advantage. But because we don’t understand them we don’t deny them, we use them and thank God for them.  In the same way we shouldn’t deny the concept of the Holy Trinity just because we don’t understand it.  It’s a mystery, and will remain a mystery.

The concept of God as Trinity, is actually the end product of a long process of theologically working out what the Bible says about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  All the elements are there, and explained in the Bible, and especially the New Testament, even if it is not called the Holy Trinity.  We hear God saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” at Jesus’ baptism; we frequently hear Jesus talking about Abba, Father, and telling his disciples about what will happen when the Holy Spirit comes into their lives; and then the experience of the Holy Spirit on those disciples gathered together as Jesus had told them at Pentecost.

Belief in the Trinity, for a Christian, is not merely an optional extra we can take or leave, it is the core of our faith, we profess it every day and we have just professed it in the Apostles Creed.  If we don’t believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in equal measures, our faith becomes unbalanced. Whether or not we fully understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity, that equality, that balance, should be reflected in our faith.  A faith in God the Father, who is Creator both of cosmos and of atom, who is beyond the universe but also within it; A faith in God the Son, who is fully divine, existing before all creation, but also became fully human, living amongst us and sharing our joys and sorrows, and then conquering our human death, and faith in God the Holy Spirit, who is our Counsellor, Comforter, Advocate, Guide, fount of love and human joy and source of our prayer.

And we join in the united, never-ending songs of praise to the Blessed and Undivided Trinity, when we proclaim our faith by declaring the Nicene Creed with confidence, saying, "I believe". Amen.