Three in one and One in three

 The Trinity, a problem for all ages and a thorn in the side of many monotheistic religions claiming that Christianity is not one of these as it is poly-theistic. Today this is what we celebrate as Christians. This exceedingly anomalous philosophical construct to explain God as it was, is and will be perceived by millions of Christian faithful. The philosophy behind this construct is a problematic as it has caused many a person called into ministry to fail and become a pariah as a result of what was perceived to be a misunderstanding of the construct. All of this philosophical construction was used to try and incorporate the corporate into the incorporate of God. In other words explain Jesus the human in terms of God the beyond human. Our belief in the Trinity comes out of the theological and philosophical debates in the early years of Christianity and much of our belief is contained in the the Creeds, namely the Athanasian, Nicene and Apostles. All of which, particularly the Athanasian, give us the bare bones of the Trinitarian belief. If our construct of belief arises in these debates, how much relevance have these debates for us today and how would we begin to discern the truth of our belief systems without having to rely on philosophical systems from centuries ago?  

Are we too focussed on an analogy with insufficient focus on God's [w]holeness?

Trinitarian wisdom dictates our attempts to convey the truth of three in one and one in three. We attempt this by sinking into the inane with conceptual analogies such as the source of a stream, a candle, a woman or man, a shamrock, etc.  Especially in this day and age when those who are asked to preach more often then not do not have the philosophical or theological background to elucidate the earlier attempts that we hang on to. The concept of three in one and one in three is elusive and as impossible to accurately describe as perhaps God is. This is why we become circumspect with our words and our thoughts when preaching on Trinity Sunday fully aware that we may be reported for saying the wrong thing. Yet, what is the wrong thing when speaking of the incomprehensibility of God? Do we just throw out our past and just acknowledge that we cannot explain fully a relationship that has bugged us for centuries? Is there something some glimmer that we can find in the old adages which can help us understand the incarnation and the relationship between "Father", "Son" and "Spirit"?

Am I dodging the question here by posing more questions? Quite possibly but these are valid questions to pose in the modern age. Unless we can incorporate our modern knowledge into our faith how can we in any manner of speaking interact with the people of today. As the new Archbishop of Sydney said when speaking about the present day "We must engage with all of that [modern society], we must be creative, courageous, contemporary, willing to fail". There is a swirling enigma surrounding our understanding of God. Especially when we begin to celebrate / emphasise one feature over another because we have a complete inability to incorporate all three into one in a manner that the modern mind can encompass while paying tribute to the tradition of three. It is perhaps prudent to turn to what is known as process theology to assist us in thinking towards a modern paradigm that encompasses this three in one. Maybe, it is elements of process theology combined with a healthy dose of modern physics and philosophical meanderings that we need to add into the mix. One of the more unusual ways of thinking that could be incorporated are Chaos theory and an understanding of continual ongoing growth rather than split things into distinct units. We then look at God as a continuing and ongoing process which starts with wells of attraction that form and evolve through incarnation into wisdom rather than spots of specific time. 

We speak of Jesus as the son of God and the only Son of God and yet also in Scripture it speaks of us being made in the image of God and as Children of God who are due God's inheritance as we can call God Abba, how does this become part of our acknowledgement of Jesus as God's only son? At the end of the day when we think of the Trinity we must not be captured and halted in our thinking of God by our traditional analogy of God, for that is all that the trinitarian formulation is as we can see from its history. By focussing on the trinity we focus on the wholeness of God not on the particles that make up God. It means that we start to become [w]holistic in our outlook which means we draw closer in [w]holiness rather than being petty and focussed on division. Instead of splitting the light into its component parts and focussing our energy on one part of the spectrum we begin to realise that God is a lot more than the parts. However, we have a tendency to focus on the minutiae and singularities rather than wholeness. Thus, we focus purely on the analogy of the three rather than the wholeness of God. We are a [w]holey people who should be focussing on the [w]holeness of God who is perfected in love and shown in love and lives for love.