The Trinity is a human creation. It is an attempt to summarize and explain what the Bible says about God. If it can’t be understood it is a failure. There are certainly things about God we don’t understand. But if we don’t understand our own explanations of God, we’ve got a problem.
The problem with this conceptualization is that it presupposes four things: firstly that the doctrine of the Trinity is not divinely inspired but is rather a human attempt to make sense of the revelations of the New Testament, which I would argue is erroneous because the doctrine of the Trinity figuratively drips from the pages of Scripture like sacred myrhh (and for the sake of clarity, I am not considering in this assessment the
Comma Johanneum, which while not wrong, is in my view a helpful gloss over the original text rather than the original text itself).
Secondly, building on the idea that the Trinity is a human explanation rather than the natural inference of reading the text, it presupposes that humans must be able to understand it, and thirdly, that they are unable to. Lastly, it suggests that an explanation which is difficult to understand is inherently problematic.
I submit respectfully that these four points are in error. I would propose instead the following:
- As I stated in my first paragraph, the doctrine of the Trinity is implicit in the New Testament text, with only the name* being human-defined based on the parameters of Indo-Iranian languages, specifically Latin and European languages proximate to it (compare the Hindu theological term Trimurti, which has a vaguely similar meaning within Hindu pantheist theology, referring to the gods of creation, sustainment and destruction, namely Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva**).
- Since God Himself, as the Cappadocian Fathers asserted, is incomprehensible in His Divine Essence, and knowable only through His uncreated energies, there is an epistemological limitation which precludes humans from ever, in this lifetime at least (but perhaps in the world to come this limitation might not apply) fully comprehending the mysteries of God, such as the Holy Trinity.
- Insofar as the doctrine of the Trinity is both implicit in scripture and well defined, it can be comprehended, and is indeed one of the most clearly revealed facts about God. This is especially the case if we use apophatic theology, and indeed, the explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity is arguably the most widely encountered example of Apophatic Theology, and indeed is one of the few places in Western Christianity where many people encounter it, in the form of the famous Trefoil, which as we are all doubtless aware declares that while the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are all God, the Father is neither the Son nor the Holy Ghost, neither is the Son the Father or the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Ghost the Father and the Son.
- Any human explanation of the ineffable God will by its very nature reflect His ineffability, to the extent that the “simple explanations” are very often heretical, for God is mysterious, and these explanations fail to take into account the great and wondrous mystery that is God in the majesty of His Divine Essence, a boundless sea of being, as St. Gregory the Theologian put it, or as his friend St. Basil expressed it, the fullness of all qualities and perfections in their highest and ultimate degree. In other words, God is both infinite and infinitely perfect. Words fail us when describing the divine essence of God, for the infinite is beyond the ability of our finite and fallen human minds to fully comprehend. However, as any mathematician can attest, we can, to a certain extent, reason about infinities despite our inability to comprehend their unbounded vastness. In like manner, we can reason about God, with difficulty.
In summary, we can comprehend in a limited way the doctrine of the Trinity, even if some aspects of it, such as the idea of one being having not one, but three persons, are mind-boggling. Helping us in our effort to understand God in his wonderful and majestic splendor is the understanding that God is Love, and this is particularly so in the case of the Holy Trinity, which is most literally a union of perfect love. Also helpful is the aformentioned technique of apophatic theology, known in the Latin Church as the
Via Negativa, which is the preferred method of reasoning about God in the Christian East, and for good reason, because objectively speaking, the only valid cataphatic assertions about God are those which have either been directly included in the sacred matter of divine revelations, or which represent the logical implications of divine revelation. Using the data of revelation, which is given to us in Sacred Scripture in both cataphatic and apophatic forms (for indeed, in Scripture much of what is revealed about God defines what God isn’t, while Scripture is also our sole source of information about what God is). and the implications thereof as a cataphatic matrix of facts, we can then proceed to derive from these revealed truths additional truths about God apophatically.
In doing this, we can begin to comprehend the nature of God, and indeed doing so is a truly blissful activity, constituting theology proper, and this activity must only be approached prayerfully.
For the most important consideration in this entire discussion is that if we attempt to understand the Trinity as a purely intellectual activity, we will fail, and the comprehension of the doctrine will elude us. Only by uniting ourselves with the most Holy Trinity in prayer can we hope to understand it. And I will personally attest that such a hope is not unfounded, for I myself have been rewarded spiritually and intellectually through a union of the two with God in contemplation of the Holy Trinity, and to me, there is no doubt whatsoever that the Holy Trinity exists, that God subsides in the persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in a union of perfect love older than time itself, and that God desires to share this love with us.*****
*The name ironically was coined by Tertullian, that tragic figure of the Early Church Fathers, who showed so much potential, before being driven by rigorism and influence from a dangerous cult leader, Montanus, to join the Montanist heresy, which I think we should use to remind ourselves of the danger of cult leaders and how even those of us who are both well educated and well versed in theology are at risk of falling into a cult).
** This is one of the reasons why the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian churches are entirely right to reject baptisms performed “creatively” in the name of the “creator, redeemer and sustainer,” insofar as such a baptism, in addition to violating the only certainly authentic text of instruction on this point, Matthew 28:19***, and imposing narrow functional criteria on the Three Persons of the Trinity which do not quite fit****, also suffers from an allusion to Hindu theology, which is not only unfortunate but completely unacceptable. Indeed, a desire to show Christian truth instead of continuing to accept Pagan beliefs and practices can also be seen in the historic Christian preference for burial rather than cremation, something which was tragically undermined in the 20th century by the encroachment into Christianity of certain misguided ideas and a natural revulsion at some of the grotesque profiteering and exploitation of the bereaved conducted by funeral directors (it of course turns out that crematory operators are every bit as capable of evil), although this is indeed another topic of discussion.
*** I am sure all of us are aware, the authenticity of the Longer Ending of Mark, which seems to disproportionately influence various Pentecostal movements, including the Snake Handling Pentecostals of Appalachia and the heretical neo-Sabellian “Jesus Name” Pentecostals whose theology is modal rather than Trinitarian, is actually disputed - that said, while I understand why some recent Bibles just delete it, I would prefer it if they didn’t.
**** Specifically, the Holy Spirit is described as our comforter and paraclete, but not as our sustainer, this I suspect being the work of God as a whole, and likewise, John 1 clearly shows that the Only Begotten Son and Word of God, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, the Divine Logos, actively participated in the process of creation.
***** This is not to say that we shall become additional members of the Trinity, for there exists an ontological distinction between us and the unoriginate and uncreated persons of God the Holy Trinity. The doctrine of Theosis, which I am alluding to here, is a doctrine of deification, that we might participate as fully as is possible for created beings in the shared love of the Trinity. It should not however be confused with the Pagan concept of apotheosis, wherein it is asserted that men can become divinities equal to those already in the Pantheon.
