In our world today the byword for everything is diversity. This diversity is not simply a celebration of difference but the promotion of such difference. In fact, it is the presumption that diversity by itself is a cardinal tenet of human rights and authenticity in people and in our institutions. We have all become blank canvases in which we paint the picture of ourselves and repaint it as often as we want. The job of the world around us is to celebrate every incarnation of ourselves and our truth and our identity and cheer us on. I do not need to tell you this. You already know it well. Diversity is good and uniformity is bad. That is the shape of things in our world today.
In contrast to this, the confession of the Holy Trinity is not about diversity at all. We are not confessing three Gods or three persons who share part of the Godhead or persons with competing wills and purposes. The great mystery of God is not the Three Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No, the great mystery of God is that the Trinity is unity. The Father is not the Son is not the Spirit – as the Athanasian Creed takes pains to point out. But the confession of the Trinity would be a lie about God unless we accompanied this with the Unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This Unity is revealed in the love of the Triune God for us sinners. This is not a celebration of diversity or even distinctions as much as it is the joyful confession of love in the shape of a family. When God sent Adam out to name creation it was so that Adam would realize he was not a family but alone. From that realization, God reflected on earth the familial shape within the Trinity. It was not good for man to be alone because God was not alone. Because God created man with a will, the man that God made had to realize this before understanding and appreciating the blessing of family.
The Trinity is Unity. That is the mystery revealed in Christ. The Father is the source of love. From His love, the Son is eternally begotten of the Father. In love the Spirit proceeds to reveal this love to creation. All manifest this love for us sinners, for you and me. In this saving work, we see the Unity of the Trinity displayed. The Son comes with the words of the Father. The Spirit makes known the words of the Son. There is no competition in love. There is no pride of place or jealousy or envy. Love perfectly unites the Son and the Spirit in the fulfillment of the saving will and purpose of the Father. That is the mystery of the Trinity.
When the Church confesses the doctrine of the Trinity we are not looking for distinctions between the persons but celebrating the unity of the Trinity. It is not then about a law laid down but love manifest from the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Sure, in the words of the creed there are teeth. Any who will be saved must so think of God. This is not about putting God into a box. Rather it is about the marvel and joy of sinners who by the power of the Spirit see the love of God at work in Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
When the Church confesses the doctrine of the Trinity, we are not trying to explain God or to cut God down to a size that fits our reason or understanding. The Trinity certainly defies understanding. But who wants a God who can be understood? Such a God is not a God at all but only an extension of our own reason and selves. If you want a God you can understand, go to the Pantheon or Olympus. There are explainable deities. But if you want a God who loves with the perfect love that saves you, then the Trinity is exactly that God. Trinity Sunday is not about explaining the mystery of God anymore than it is about understanding it. On this day we join with the Church that has gone before us to confess the God of love – the Father who is love’s source, the Son who is eternally begotten in love, and the Spirit who reveals this love that we might believe.
When the Church confesses the Trinity, we are confessing what Scripture says. Instead of bending God to our wills and making Him a creature of our imagination, we confess what God has said about Himself in His Word. It may make your head spin but it warms your heart to speak of the Father from whom all things come, the Son who rescues and redeems those captive to sin and death, and the Spirit who fills our minds and hearts with this glorious knowledge by faith. This is not a mathematical formula. This is not some philosophical proof. This is the Church, hearing the Word of God and then speaking that Word back to God and in witness to the world. This is God manifesting the love within the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to you and me – sinners and enemies who have been saved by grace.
To think rightly of the Trinity is to believe, to submit both mind and heart to the Scriptures and the Spirit. To think rightly of the Trinity is to worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To think rightly of the Trinity is to preach this pure Gospel of love to a world which has lost hope of ever knowing such love and lives in the darkness as the blind feeling their way through life until death. To think rightly of the Trinity is to rejoice in the love of God that has saved you.
Let me say one more thing. If you are not sure the Trinity is correct or whether it even matters at all how we define God, think about this. What kind of God allows His Church to get His very identity wrong? If God is all powerful, then He has had every opportunity to correct the error of the Trinity and rewrite the creeds to reflect this correction. But He has not done so. The Holy Trinity has been confessed in preaching and teaching, in creed and confession, in worship and in catechesis down through the ages to the present day. The authority of the Church hinges upon this doctrine of one God in the Three Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If we have gotten this wrong, we have gotten nothing else right.
In the end it is this simple. To think rightly of the Trinity is to believe the Gospel. To think wrongly of the Trinity is to reject the Gospel. You cannot pick and choose between the Trinity and the Gospel. They go together. No where is this more profoundly revealed than in the Gospel reading for today. Its shape is distinctly Trinitarian. The Father sent His one and only-begotten Son into the world not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him. The Spirit begets us into the family of God, born not of flesh and blood but of water and the Spirit. We do not enter the Kingdom of God as individuals but as the members of the body, the family of God, to be joined to God and call Him Father, to know Jesus Christ as our brother, and to live in the blessed unity of the family of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.
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