Reader's Letter

A Little Theology - The Trinity

As I prepare these notes, I am sitting in gorgeous hot sunshine, surrounded by flowering and very green shrubs, climbers and trees, with a myriad tadpoles kicking up a stink in the middle of the pool. I am very conscious that in a couple of days it will be Trinity Sunday. With these thoughts in mind I thought I might treat you to a little homespun theology and a Winter's Tale.

The much-maligned doctrine of the Trinity is an assertion that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, there is only one God,

Father, Son and Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us and the mystery within us are all the same mystery. Thus the Trinity is a way of saying something about us and the way we experience God.

The Trinity is also a way of saying something about God and the way he is within himself - that is to say, God does not need the Creation in order to have something to love because within himself love happens. In other words (this is for the semanticists and word-smiths!) the love that God is is love not as a noun but as a verb - and this verb is both reflexive and transitive!

If the idea of God as Three in One seems far fetched and too confusing for consideration, take a look in the mirror one day. There you will see (a) the interior life known only to yourself and those to whom you choose to communicate it (the Father?). There is also (b) the visible face which in some measure reflects that inner life (the Son?). And there is also (c) the invisible power that you have to communicate that interior life in such a way that others do not merely know about it, but also know it in the sense of its becoming part of who they are (the Holy Spirit?).

Yet, what you are looking at in the mirror is clearly and indivisibly You.

Keith MacLeod