St. Mary Catholic Church

Another Conversation, Another Reflection… This Time on the Nature of the Trinity

After the conversation with my creationist friend, I entered into another conversation with a second friend and colleague. This reflection is born of the second conversation (and directly connected to the first…).  Originally written March 19, 2009.

In the last note, I theorized that if God is love and love inherently creates, creation is the inevitable product God’s perfect love. If the very existence of God/love makes creation inevitable and “true love” is love freely given (no strings attached), sin is an inevitable eventuality. And since God desires nothing but the perfect union (all things being subjected to him and returning to the state of perfect love in which they were created per Corinthians), the existence of the Christ is also inevitable.

Some might say that I’m on the edge of Arianism here, that calling the Christ “inevitable” means that Christ did not exist with the Father and Spirit in the beginning. But this isn’t what I’m saying. For, all of these events “happened,” which isn’t the right word (but I don’t think there is a word that describes what I mean) “simultaneously.”

So, as God was, Creation was, as were the propensity for sin and the necessity of the Christ. I can’t quite articulate that concept, since it requires me to do something I can’t – to think outside time (baffled again!), but the idea here is that the eternal existence of the Trinity “simultaneously” gives birth to and seeks to redeem the universe, necessitating each aspect (creation, redemption, indwelling) of the expression of one shared nature, one essence: namely, love.

In our conversation, my friend stated that he often has great difficulty seeing the Trinity as anything more than a polytheistic trio of gods.

But the three aspects of the Trinity share one essence: the perfect, creating love in which the universe was born. God the Father is the first, the alpha, the lover, the perfect love by which creation was born. Christ the Son is the omega, the last, the beloved, the element necessary for the universe to exist again in perfect love. The Holy Spirit, the love expressed between alpha and omega, between beginning and end, is the unifying force of love that lies in the dark spaces of the universe, the essence of God present in the expression of love (agape) between members of a common human race, the very force that brings unity and peace into our experience.

Together, these three aspects, united in essence, comprise the Trinity. In essence, each is God/love, but each has a specific purpose in God’s plan of creation, salvation, and the expression of love we experience in life.

Barbara Brown Taylor, an episcopal priest, described this three-fold existence beautifully in a sermon she gave on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, 2009.

“The first time I came here (to the Washington National Cathedral), a docent told me that you could bring the Washington Monument in here, right down the central aisle, and it would fit inside with just fifteen feet hanging out at the end…until the base is resting outside, underneath that incredible carving of creation on the porch, and the point would be pointing right up there at that vision of heaven over the high altar. That way, you could not miss the fact that every thing between those two points, everything between God’s first word and last word is in this place…” Taylor then lists numerous things: birth, death, creation, apocalypse, wood, stone, water, light, people, and more…that are contained between the two.

Just as the Washington Monument, when placed on its side in a cathedral, stretches from creation to apocalypse and is joined by human experience, the Godhead exists as one essence, beginning with the love that birthed creation and extended to the end of time, existence, and consciousness, to the point at which the beloved, the Christ, waits for the moment when creation can return again to the state of perfect love in which it first existed. Joined by the Holy Spirit, this love is extended but never separated, outstretched but never broken, as the point and base and body of the Washington Monument are all part of one structure that spans the length of creation, from alpha to omega, beginning to end.

The Trinity, then, persists in its perfect, unbroken love, ever interacting with humanity in the eternal dance named perichoresis, with each aspect mutually indwelling the others and penetrating our experience in the movement of eternal love.

When we share love, we share God. In our expressions of love, in the sacramental experience of daily life and the ritual experience of the sacraments, we participate in the dance; we glimpse the perfection from which we were created and for which we are destined. We encounter the living, loving Trinity in our very midst.