Language about God
Trinity Sunday, 10th June, 2001
The Rev'd Dr Colin Holden
Assistant Priest and Archivist, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
St Peter responds to the Transfiguration of Jesus by suggesting: 'Let us
make three booths – three boxes – one for You, and one each for Moses
and Elijah' – three boxes to limit, contain, control an experience that
was beyond his real comprehension – it was an experience that couldn't be
boxed in. I want to begin by inviting us to forget any approach to the doctrine
of the Trinity that treats it as a set of boxes to neatly contain and control
the Divine.
Traditionally, greatness and power are attributes of God. In view of this
alone, are neat tidy little boxes appropriate? We speak of God as being greater
than creation: but to think of the movement of light between stars over huge
distances (something I have tried to do while looking at the night sky) and
start to try to comprehend the distances involved in a single galaxy of stars,
let alone the whole universe – this invites the mind to contemplate
greatness, in terms of distance, of an order beyond our comprehension. It is
beyond our capacity to create a tidy box to contain even the created order in
our minds – and yet we say God is 'bigger' than that.
We might come to a similar conclusion if we consider aspects of the recently
developed information technology: the speed with which all kinds of
communications can be made, information made available; and the extraordinary
systems (e-mail and internet) that are still only in their infancy. This
revolution in technology involves both great speed, and the acknowledgement
of quantities of information and systems for dealing with it. The scale of the
ideas involved is beyond most of us – and we are talking about a human
creation. We say that God is more powerful, more complex than all of that.
A third and last example. Although it took some time before it was accepted
seriously as a discipline, psychology has given us a slightly better picture
of the way human beings are. Words like 'repression', 'ego', 'subconscious',
'neurotic', appear in the day-to-day conversations of all of us. They are part
of a way of looking at the human constitution that presents a picture of us as
containing far more twists and turns than we were previously able to
acknowledge. We recognise that to be a person in human terms is to be
something far from simple – quite complex, even mysterious. If we say
that God is person, the ultimate, the most complete and satisfying form of
personal life, then we should expect that His mode of being should likewise
not be capable of being reduced to some simple and neat formula.
As a result, I don't find some of the images of God that might have been
used by preachers on Trinity Sunday at all helpful – three leafed clovers,
triangles, the subsistence of water as ice, steam and liquid. At first it
makes us feel a little less daunted at the thought of God – but that is
ultimately, I believe, to delude ourselves. God can't be reduced to
three-leafed clovers, triangles, or the various states of a chemical compound.
Once we begin to ask whether it is legitimate to say anything about God at
all, beyond that the categories we have are all too small, we have reached an
important and quite basic point. The distinctive Christian language about God
that talks of Him in terms of Trinity is not designed to be a set of tidy
containers. It is more like a set of pointers, a skeleton structure like a set
of steadying guide ropes; and like guide ropes, it leaves a lot of gaps in
between the parts that we move along or hold on to at the edges – gaps
for speculation, gaps in which we are able, and need, to say 'we don't know',
or 'we are not sure'; as well as the rope part, which is the basic, skeleton
structure.
I now want to make a point about each of the members of the Trinity, but I
want to do it in an order that you may not generally have been encouraged to
adopt. There is a formula that says we offer our prayer and worship to the
Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a very concise
statement, and like many concise statements, it is very tightly packed. Now to
unpack it, in three segments, starting with what for many people is the hardest
part of the Trinity to envisage, the Cinderella figure, the Holy Spirit. Forget
for the moment fire and breath, though these are important basic images.
Think instead about how easily we fail to recognise someone who is present; we
walk past them, preoccupied, because our whole concentration is engaged with a
particular subject and way of seeing things. Transfer this matter of
recognition to another level. Think for a moment about how difficult, indeed
impossible, it is to convince someone who has no faith like ours, even though
it might all seem very obvious, coherent, reasonable to us. We might think to
ourselves: 'I don't understand how they can look at the world around them, and
not believe in a God' – or whatever line it may be that clinches the
clearness of our vision. The others just don't get the point, however obvious
it might seem to us; and we eventually realise that talking at them is not
likely to have much effect. The recognition of the presence of God, indeed
the recognition and acknowledgement of anything about God, is not something
to be taken for granted, something that we naturally make. It is, in Christian
terms, a movement of God Himself, the Spirit opening our eyes to make that
recognition.
At two points in the liturgy, we express this understanding. In the collect
for purity (Almighty God, to whom all hearts be open . . .) we clearly imply
that we pray, not simply through our own initiative, but as a result of a
movement, a stirring of the Spirit. And just after the Sanctus, in the
consecration prayer at the eucharist, we refer to the Spirit again; the gifts
are going to be recognised by us for what they are, through the power of the
Holy Spirit.
Next to the middle person in the Trinity. We have just said that the Spirit
is God present, opening our eyes to recognise, to acknowledge, to identify, to
interpret the signs of that presence. Without the third person of the Trinity,
we don't come to grips with the other two. Now remember St Paul's statement,
'No-one can say that Jesus is Lord, except through the Spirit'. Our recognition
of Jesus as something other than a great teacher, or a radical prophet, is
made not just as a result of unaided human logic – any more than is our
prayer, or our recognition that Jesus is here through the eucharistic gifts.
Many others can share our belief in Jesus as a historical figure, without
reaching these other conclusions. But we claim that in this life there is a
complete and unbroken unity with the infinite, mysterious, complex person
that I kept referring to before. We express that in the Creed: Jesus is not
only 'truly human', but 'light from light, one in being with Him, by whom all
things were made'. Not an adopted child, a stunningly good boy, but of the
same substance.
We say that in Jesus, all of God that it is essential for us to respond to,
to believe, to know, is presented to us. The purpose of the Incarnation, God
taking our humanity upon Himself, is to make visible, to provide a tangible
form, for what might otherwise remain unclear, incomprehensible. When we make
statements that come as close as we dare to saying that God is in any way
simple, we tie these to God in Jesus. 'God is love'; 'God so loved the
world . . .' But while it might sound simple, the practice of this, like
the person, turns out to be far from simple. Love that involves suffering,
working through forgiveness, reconciling people, is far from simple. In Jesus,
the power of God is revealed – whatever is meant here by power, and there
is real strength here. It is a very different account of power and strength
from that presented to people in Fiji by a George Speight, or in South Africa
by the dismantled apartheid regime, or in parts of South America by
dictatorships of the left or the right, such as Pinochet's.
Lastly, the Incarnation, God in Jesus, is not there as the point at which
we are to stop, a self-contained act. St Paul speaks of God in Jesus
reconciling the world to Himself. Some of the great Greek minds of the first
centuries spoke of God becoming man, that man might become God. To reiterate
from before: Jesus is one in complete and unbroken unity with the
infinite, mysterious, complex and invisible God – not so that we might
feel that we have a tidy little contained form; a potted, controlled and
easily understood God. Instead, it is to point beyond; and, to do more than
point beyond, to provide a way through; to open the door to that infinite
which has no limit, like a sea without a shore. The Spirit points us to, assists us in, identifying Jesus: the third person of the Trinity points us
to the centre; and that central person leads us back to the first. We are back
with the infinite, uncontrollable and uncontainable life with which I began.
The Trinity isn't a formula to assist the tidy-minded in enforcing a belief
in a particular set of boxes about God – instead, it should lead us to
the very opposite. It is a formula that is truly a paradox. We all know that
in terms of arithmetic, three into one won't go. Yet this is precisely what
we claim with this doctrine, which we have treated as a core belief. At once
it encourages us to believe that there is a core, a minimum of essentials, in
our relationship and response to God; and at the same time, it points us to
the gaps, the inadequacy of the words, the concepts that we use in dealing
with this core.
What do I love, when I love Thee, O my God? Not the beauty of a body, nor the comeliness of time, nor the brightness of light . . . nor the sweet melodies of songs in various measures, nor the fragrance of flowers and unguents and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs delightful to the embraces of the flesh. It is not these I love when I love my God. And yet I do love a kind of light and a kind of voice and a kind of scent and a kind of food and a kind of embrace when I love my God – the light. Voice, scent, food, embrace of my inner person, where a light shines into my soul which no place can hold, and a voice sounds which no time can snatch away, where breathes a fragrance which no wind can disperse, where there is a flavour which no voracity diminishes, where there clings an embrace which no satiety can wrest away. This it is that I love when I love my God.
(St Augustine, Confessions, 10.6)
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