Because ‘persons’ matter

GOD so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

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Perhaps there is no other teaching that the Catholic Church holds dear that can be as perplexing and confounding as her teaching on the Trinity—that there are three Persons in one God. That very formulation alone, even plain old common sense tells us, is problematic. "How can that be?" many have asked, and many more have tried to answer. But as we all have realized, it is a truth that human logic can never completely comprehend and human words can never fully communicate. The Trinitarian character of God will always be a mystery.

But that does not stop us from trying. Yes, as a teaching, the Trinity is difficult to uphold, much less to teach, especially in a contemporary culture where Christianity is being relegated to the sidelines. Surely, at times like these, we would rather stick to the simpler "essentials." God is good and loving; God came down to this world to redeem us; God remains with us all our days. Such are the religious sound bites that we would rather hear. Why sweat the nitty-gritty stuff? Why give critics more ammunition to shoot our faith down as illogical and irrelevant? Why bother with three persons in one God? To these, we can respond with three reasons.

First, the teaching on the Trinity is not something the Church invented but something God himself revealed to us. While the term itself does not appear anywhere in the Bible, the reality in the Trinity is nevertheless attested by it. And this can be gleaned from God’s interactions with his people, who in different times revealed various facets of himself to us. It is through such thousands of years of relating with God that we have come to understand, albeit incompletely, and through his guidance and grace, the complexity of who God is. God as Trinity is something we have experienced, and which is at the foundation of the very life and history of the Church. Perhaps that is why the apostle Paul was able to mark his greeting with the Trinitarian formulation we still use today: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the holy Spirit be with all of you."

Second, we are made in the image of this Trinitarian God. Thus, we find in God the secrets of our own persons—our purpose and essence. And what we find in God is this: that as he is, so are we created out of and for love. In God we find three Persons locked in an eternal gaze toward each other, an endless and omnipotent exchange of divine love. Especially in the human experience, it is difficult to substantiate a love that is isolated. Indeed, we only find love when there is a possibility of sharing it. To understand God as three Persons makes the truth of God’s loving essence more accessible—because in God’s very essence love is real. And with this knowledge we can proceed to make this love just as real in all our relationships.

Third, and most simple of all, we teach the Trinity because God matters. Christianity is not a mere set of ethical principles to live by, a collection of laws that must be followed to be a good person. At the core of Christianity is a relationship. As such, we care not only about what is taught but who teaches. When we love someone, we are not satisfied with a cursory knowledge of his or her character. Rather, we strive to know the minutest intricacies of the person in order to love him or her more. The same must be true with all Christians. We are not merely interested in living good and orderly lives through Christian tenets; in fact, as Christians we are most interested in the person, rather the Persons, of God—so that we may order ourselves to become more like God, so that we can understand and relate to God and to others better, so that we can more completely love God. And thus remains the challenge that the truth and mystery of the Trinity always posts to us.

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– Cl. Albert Garong, SSP

– (June 19, 2011)