Trinity and trinities (II)

There have been many attempts to describe Trinity, and all of them are inevitably doomed to failure. You cannot adequately describe the indescribable God! One attempt has been to look at the egg. The egg consists of a shell, white and yolk, yet the whole thing is a unity, an egg. But God is not an egg, not even a good egg! The triple point of water, that place of temperature and pressure were water is solid (ice), liquid and vapour all at the same time. Such illustrations describe unity in diversity, but this do not illustrate that the Son prays to the Father? How do you illustrate that?

It struck me one day when I was thinking about this, that if God is Trinity, and He is, then we would see pale reflections of this characteristic all over the place in nature. Another illustration struck me recently from Scripture “A threefold cord is not easily broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12). The point is that twined together the cord is far stronger than if it was simply put together without the intertwining. What we have here, is the idea that the whole is more than the sum of the individual parts. But this too is inadequate, since it fails to illustrate the relationship between the "parts," that the the Father loves the Son for example (John 5:20). I am seeing three things here, firstly unity in diversity, secondly the concept of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, and thirdly the interrelationships between the said parts. I call these three concepts put together “trinity,” with a lower case t. Such trinities are pale inadequate reflections of Trinity, and they are everywhere!

The trinity that, to my way of thinking, best reflects Trinity is mankind. We are after all, made in His image, we are body, soul and spirit. It’s interesting to me, that the various attempts to understand man reflect the various heresies about Trinity. We have the mechanistic view for example, that man is merely a machine, merely a body, and that anything else is illusion. Psychology has at times tended to see only the soul. But as I have said elsewhere, research which is essentially looking for the truth, will eventually get there. In particular we have started to talk about psychosomatic illnesses, illnesses of the body that are results of the sickness in the soul (i.e. ulcers). On the other hand we are understanding more about how brain chemistry affects personality. But what I want to say this morning in closing, is that we cannot even begin to be fully whole until our spirit is made alive through regeneration (Ephesians 2:1).

Father, the Scriptures tell us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:4), and is very clear to me that any reductionist view of who we are, or of creation, is ultimately doomed to failure. How for example, will we ever explain the beauty of creation in terms of evolution. But creation is beautiful because You are a beautiful God (Psalm 27:4). And how will we explain art and other forms of human creativity in terms of the survival of the fittest? But it’s easy to explain theologically, we are creative because we are made in the image of a creative God. And my Shakespearean misquote comes to mind again “There are more things under heaven and earth than you have dreamed of in your theology, Horatio.” Truly we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and for this and many other things I give You praise and thanks again this morning Lord, in Jesus Name Amen