The Triune God Spills into Creation, Calling Us to Love One Another

Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from our One-in-Three and Three-in-One, God most merciful and majestic, who mothers and accompanies us on our journeys.Amen.hose of you who are long-time Christians and those of you who are relatively new to the faith most likely have something in common: you both are not quite sure what to make of this central doctrine of Christianity.God is One, but God is also Three-and these Three are somehow connected to remain One.Are you confused yet?Well, you're not alone.The concluding lines of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel, what has come to be known as the "Great Commission," provide the anchor text for subsequent baptismal liturgies in which God is described in familial terms consistent with the rest of the gospels.Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the customary language of the Trinity, conjures up images of an old guy, a young guy, and some ambiguous bird or wind floating among them.Over the centuries, Christian artwork has reinforced this understanding-a male-dominated lineage of God's work in the world.While Jesus certainly does use the language of "Father" or "Abba," and Jesus is referred to as the "Son of God" throughout the biblical witness, we must take care not to limit our understanding of God, and thus our language of the Trinity, to that approach.Our biblical canon-both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament-speaks of God in multiple ways: through attributes, motions, persons, animals, and so on.That may address one of our problems-understanding the persons of the Trinity beyond our male and hierarchical construct.But that is only half the issue.The Trinity is not three separate persons or three different modes of God.The familiar language that Jesus uses at the end of Matthew's Gospel highlights that the Trinity is relational and active, not a collection of static persons.Generations of theologians-including St. Augustine, who attempted to describe the Trinity as "lover, the loved object, and the lover's love for that object"-have attempted to explain the very nature of God in terms of what and how.Yet a doctrine, especially one that can be as technical and complicated as the Trinity, has no role in our faith unless it describes the why.Otherwise, it might as well be the "cleverly devised myths" Peter warns us against in his second letter.