Three in One

Yesterday was Trinity Sunday, when the church (or, at least, the Anglican church :-) ) celebrates and ponders the mysterious nature of God. Traditional Christianity has affirmed with Judaism that God is one God. However, Christianity has also held that God is Three (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), and that this Threeness of God is as central and as true as the Oneness of God. The old creeds talk about this, perhaps most clearly in the Athaniasian creed, which says that “we worship one God in trinity and unity, neither confusing persons nor dividing substance. For the Father’s person is one, the Son’s person another and the Holy Spirit’s person another. But the deity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one. Their glory is equal and their majesty coeternal…Thus the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God – yet there are not three Gods but only one God“. And this is all very well, defining a mystery in which God is three and one at the same time. But how are we to think about this? What tools and images can we use to make it clear to ourselves?

The picture that has always spoken most clearly to me of the Trinity is to think of God as being like light. This is a good Biblical picture – the Bible often uses imagery of God’s majesty shining, of God’s face being radiant. So, when we think of God as light, perhaps we think of pure white light shining. This, then, is the one God, pure, glorious, undivided. However, when faced with white light, we know that it is equally true that we can speak of it as being made up of red, green and blue light; this is the way televisions work – combining these three colours to make white light (or any other colour). So, we can also see the white light as being three colours, especially if we split the light into a spectrum using a prism. We can see that the pure white light can be described just as well as being white and as being made up of equal amounts of the three colours red, green and blue.

Just as white light is “light”, so are red, green and blue equally “light” – they have the same nature but are distinct kinds of light. And just as the distinction between the red, green and blue light in a beam of white light are only seen when the beam interacts with a prism to make a spectrum, so the three persons of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) are only seen when God interacts with Creation. God in isolation is perfectly one, the three persons in perfect harmony and relationship, and whether we describe God as Three or One is a largely arbitrary choice. Once outside influences are involved, though (a prism in the case of light, Creation when we are thinking about God), God can be seen to have these three persons within that one God; each equally God but different and unique. The three members of the Godhead have their own distinctive characteristics and they each have their own way of being in relationship with Creation. So, whether we see God as One or Three depends not on changes within God but purely on the way we choose to look at God – each description is equally true.

As with all analogies, this can be pushed too far but this picture is one of the clearest ways I know to think about the Threeness and Oneness of the Christian God.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 11:08am on 23 May 2005
Category: Faith, Musing