26 May 2024 Matthew 28:16-20
“…baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit….” Matthew 28:16 Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
The formula “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” appeared pretty early – probably in the first century, but certainly by the early second century. Then people argued about it for the next few centuries. It was a central feature in several notable early heresies – Arianism, Sabellianism, Monarchism, Apollinarianism. The Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses today never use the formula – they don’t believe in the Holy Trinity. They think God is One Person, not three. Catholic teaching, which says One God in Three Persons, still strikes some as too much philosophy and not enough Bible.
It isn’t likely that we will get to the bottom of what we mean when we say, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” any time soon. When we are talking about the Holy Trinity, we are trying to describe the inner life of God, and on this side of the Kingdom at least some of that is going to be guesswork. We’ll have to see God face to face in order to know it all. Still, there is some reason to think that One God in Three Persons comes pretty close to describing what we can know about the inner life of God because it reveals so much about our own inner lives.
There is a “three-ness” to life that we find attractive, helpful, and satisfying. Groups of three help us to remember things, help us to tell stories, help us to tell jokes, and help us to play games. So there are Three Strikes, Three Wise Men, Three Wishes from the genie in the lamp, and Three Periods in a Hockey Game. We have stories about Three Bears, Three Stooges, Three Musketeers, and Three Little Pigs. Our best jokes are always about Three Guys who go into a bar. We tell stories about “Friends, Romans, and Countrymen,” “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” and “Wine, Women, and Song.” Hip, Hip, Hooray.
Three-ness explains some of our deepest thinking, too. We have all had the experience of taking an inward step back from ourselves to observe ourselves, and sometimes we say things like, “Self, why did you do that?” or, “Self, why do you think that?” Every time we do that, we are the ones who are stepping back to observe, and at the same time we are the ones we are observing. We have the capacity, in other words, to be the Subject and the Object of thought simultaneously. That is the nature of self-knowledge. We are the only animals who can do that.
But there’s more. We can step back and observe ourselves, and learn something that we didn’t already know. We can question ourselves, and get an answer. So we can be simultaneously the Subject of thought, the Object of thought, and the Result of thought. Three modes of being, but the same consciousness. Three modes of being, and it is all still us. Three-ness in One-ness, One-ness in Three-ness. There is a Trinity in our experience of ourselves that explains the deep uniqueness of being human. There is a Trinity that explains the deepest places of how we think.
The Bible says that we are made in the image and likeness of God. So maybe it makes sense to say that there is a Trinity that explains the deep uniqueness of God, too.
Obviously this doesn’t explain everything Christians mean when we talk about the Holy Trinity. Not even close. Not by a country mile. It may, however, provide some comfort to know that when we talk about the Holy Trinity, we are not talking about something too high up, and too far away. We are talking about something as near to us as conscience, as familiar as Goldilocks, and as comfortable and inviting as Three Guys who walk into a bar.
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