Perhaps St. Augustine, one of Christianity’s earliest and greatest theologians, put the matter in its proper light when, as a young convert and fledgling priest, he began to contend that, “Every measure of Christian progress comes through a spiritual and reasoned understanding of the Trinity.”1
The difficulty Augustine was wrestling with in the late fourth century would come, in time, to be known as enigma fidei, or perhaps better said as the enigma fidei: the “enigma of the faith.” That’s what the famous Benedictine-turned-Cistercian abbot William of St. Thierry called the Holy Trinity seven hundred years after St. Augustine’s observation, and enigma fidei it has remained ever since.
Abbot William wrote a book about the whole thing in the twelfth century, claiming, even as he did so, that the Trinity is an inexplicable mystery. Despite that acknowledgment and following in the way of many other theologians, Abbot William went on—at considerable length, in fact—to try to explain the entire matter anyway.
On the other hand, and to give William his just due, there have never, up until recently, been many Christians, other than professional or academic religionists like him, who have even been equipped to work on, or sustain much interest in, the business of defining the Trinity. The truth of the thing is that until the last century or so, most of us in the naves and pews of Christendom have rarely known enough about the history of the faith to pause for long over theological mysteries. Even more rarely have we ever thought to ask where and how an idea like the Trinity got started. But our times are not like those of our Christian ancestors. Unlike them, we know that we can no longer speak, even cautiously, about God, the Holy Spirit—or for that matter, about God, the Father or God, the Son—without speaking of Being-nesses inherent within an Is-ness that has no Being-nesses.
All of this is not to suggest, of course, that we—whether laity or congregational clergy—have consistently ignored our Trinitarian confusions for the last two thousand years or that we have in any way failed to acknowledge over the centuries since St. Augustine the Trinity’s foundational place in Christianity. Quite the opposite has been true, in fact, and as a result, thousands and thousands of our fellow Christians have died over those centuries defending one Trinitarian position or another.2 It is more accurate, then, to say that over the years since the fourth century CE, many, but hardly all of us, have simply been fairly insouciant about the whole thing. The irony or disconnect in all of our historic nonchalance really does lie, as Augustine says, in the irrefutable fact that the Trinity is a central and defining mystery of Christianity. Without it, we are no more than organized moralists and well-intentioned citizens of our various secular polities.
Some would argue, of course (and probably quite accurately), that it is the very centrality—the so-called horrible wonder—of “Trinity” which has turned us and most of our forebears into infantile believers: that it is the inscrutable terror of offending such mystery that has made us all too willing to be satisfied with and/or deterred by the easy metaphors of workaday sermons and well-intentioned but one-size-must-fit-all Bible studies.3 Who among us does not remember having been instructed by at least some of those?4
Who, for example, does not remember Sunday school tricks with a “holy triangle” on a chalkboard or with a three-leafed clover plucked from the church lawn? Or a shamrock pulled from an old St. Patrick’s Day poster? Or what about that somewhat more urbane and sophisticated example of a fleur-de-lis? Or, for that matter, who can forget those brief, distressing moments when from the pulpit an actual pretzel, salt and all, was used to illuminate Christianity’s most sacred secret?5
There are, of course, less inane but still popular metaphors that attempt to use scientific or quasi-scientific categories to explain this thing that seems inexplicable but that we somehow feel should be “tangible” or “graspable.” One of the more ubiquitous of those pseudo-scientific metaphors uses space and its three primary components: height, width, and depth (but conveniently omitting time, of course). Another employs the three forms of H2O: solid, liquid, and vapor—i.e., ice, water, and steam. But therein lies at least part of the tale, for all of these contrivances of ours, whether recent or less so, are variances on the most common and oldest (we can date it from the third century CE right into the twenty-first) theological error in all of Christianity: modalism.
A modalist is a Christian who, whether intentionally or not, explains the three persons of the Trinity to himself or others as aspects or personalities or “modes” of one God and then, having done that, goes on to believe that these “presentations” are not so much “real” as they are simply “ways” in which we human beings are able to perceive God in the world. In other words, the modalists among us believe that God is not in essence “a three, co-eternal oneness.”
Admittedly, there is some re-enforcement or justification for modalism’s “oneness” or absolute monotheism position. As Christians, and as we have already acknowledged, we come up and out from the absolute monotheism of our Jewish roots. It follows from that that the monotheism that is so implicit in Christian theology and practice, as well as in Christianity’s self-image, understandably is going to have considerable trouble—at least syntactically anyway—with a non-modalist or non-modalist-like Trinity, except, of course, that things are not that simple. They never are. Nor, as far as that is concerned, is the lineage of our inherited monotheism quite so clean and clear-cut as we would like to think.
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus. This, to use the Latin of the medieval church, is how we have praised the Godhead in Christian liturgy for two thousand years, and for very good reason. The reason, however, is not of Christian making.
The author of First Isaiah envisioned the Godhead as being praised by six-winged angels, and it was those angels who first sang the “Holy, Holy, Holy.” The frequent reiteration of that glory-filled anthem is still today an essential piece of Jewish liturgy, evoking not only a vocal but also a physical expression. Each time Jews in worship utter the thrice-spoken kadosh, they rise up onto the very tips of their toes, thereby symbolizing their desire to join the angels in this most ancient and tri-part song of adoration.
The Sanctus, or kadosh, while it may be the most aesthetic example of a multifaceted mystery inherent in Jewish monotheism, is hardly the only one, however. In fact, Jewish theologians have argued among themselves for millennia about whether or not Moses actually declared monotheism at Mount Sinai. Was the decree at Sinai monotheism? Did Moses say that there was precisely only one God in existence? Or was it monolatry: Is the Lord simply the God above all others? Even the second of the Ten Commandments might suggest this latter possibility: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Deut. 5:6).
Either way (and the debate, so to speak, goes on), the monotheistic imperative in ancient Judaism remains unmistakable, even if the details of it are slightly beclouded. Certainly the world’s other religions all point to the singular Abraham, the founder of the people Israel, as the discoverer of monotheism and the one God.6
Christians have, as we know, adopted and adapted Jewish monotheism to their own religious ends for some two thousand years. In 2007, in a video entitled Everything Is Spiritual, Rob Bell (at that time the teaching pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, and a recognized leader in Emergence Christian thought) produced what is now regarded as a more or less classic expression of the problem for contemporary Christians.
In the clip, Bell, standing before his congregation at Mars Hill, explicates the opening portions of Hebrew Scripture. The first Hebrew word for God in Scripture, he explains, is the one transliterated into English as Elohim, a noun that grammatically is either singular or plural, being dependent for its grammatical number upon the verbs and adjectives accompanying it. Bell then begins to review what the first few verses of Genesis say about the activity of this God, pointing out other Hebrew words that describe this God’s activity. A minute or so later, he summarizes:
In verse one, this God is some sort of creator; in verse two, this God is some sort of spirit; and in verse three, this God is some sort of word. This God is one, and yet this God is several. God is some sort of multiple persons, some sort of community of creativity. What a strange way to begin a very, very long book.7
He says this last sentence in a slow, dramatic, almost mysterious way. No one can do this quite like Rob Bell, and the whole thing is brilliant in its apparent simplicity.
So this is the present conundrum: Toward whom and for whom are monotheistic Jews rising up onto the tips of their toes as they chant the three-part hymn of the adoring angels? To whom are Trinitarian Christians praying when they pray the Sanctus taken out of monotheistic Judaism? Even more foundational, how are we—Christians and Jews alike—to perceive our own beginnings? How should we reverence correctly the God in whose image we hold ourselves to have been fashioned? The only tenable answer is to say that in a Christian context, at least, the Godhead of the Godhead is utterly inexplicable.8
But for us and in our times, such a resolution to the problem is no longer possible. Truth be told, it probably never was. Certainly, it can scarcely be adopted as an intellectually honorable position. In effect, the theologically inclined among us, both lay and professional, persist as they have from the beginning because they and/or we have to.9 The desire to “get behind” the Three in order to analyze how such threeness might interact burns within us.
Perhaps, so the argument goes, by coming to understand that interaction, we will come to understand how the threeness interact(s) with us. That, too, isn’t possible, of course, but ironically, as a line of thinking, it always leads, and always has led, to another form or variant of modalism.
To seek after the “inner meaning” of the Trinity by trying to “get behind” the three persons in hope of finding the God “behind” the God leads directly to that fatal other problem inherent in the modalist approach: it makes the Godhead itself into something analogous to a fourth divine being. Thus, first there is the Godhead and then, after that, there are the three personalities whom we perceive and read about in Scripture.
Yet, despite all the words and anxious study and even prayerful pondering, none of this is right and none of this will work. It never has. Midway through his Enigma Fidei, old William of St. Thierry himself offered an almost exquisite lament about it all:
Now, why do I seek what cannot be known in this life? For example, why do I seek to know how the Trinity in heaven can be a unity, or how three can be one; since the Lord and the Apostles and the prophets before them taught that this is the nature of the Lord our God, and added nothing more than this? If the Word and Wisdom of God had wished us to know this in this life, no one could have taught it better in this world than he.10
Well said, but not enough to deter William, not enough for the saints before him, and certainly not enough for those of us who, like Rob Bell, are alive and believing in this time of the Great Emergence.
Notes
1. Augustine, De libero arbitrio 3.21.60 (authors’ translation). We perhaps should also recall here Basil of Caesarea’s cautionary comments in his treatise, On the Holy Spirit: “Those who are idle in the pursuit of righteousness count theological terminology as secondary” (St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, trans. David Anderson [Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980], 16).
2. Christians have accommodated to these very real dangers over the centuries and, upon occasion, limited doctrinal conversation as a result. One of the best examples of this occurred in 1230 CE, when the Cistercians forbade all sermons on the Feast of the Holy Trinity because they themselves deemed the subject to be too difficult to handle safely or productively.
3. There are no more arresting and sobering words in Holy Writ than those of our Lord on this subject as recorded in Mark 3:28–29 (NKJV): “Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation.”
4. One of the dangers in brevity is that in trying to be succinct, one can be guilty of broad brush strokes that, lacking nuance, also introduce error into the conversation, however inadvertently. Nowhere is that more obscuring than in situations like this one. While it is true that “fear” can intimidate the faithful into docile and unanalyzed compliance, it is equally true that genuine and holy fear or awe before the ineffable is a part of Christian living. It is, in fact, one that must never be set aside or lost. There is perhaps no better example of this distinction and its holy use than a prayer first written by John Piper in 2004 and now used on occasion in contemporary cohorts and gatherings when approaching the Trinity. The opening lines of that prayer express elegantly the place of a holy fear in the presence of the unknown. They read thus:
Eternal Father, you never had a beginning. You will never have an ending. You are the Alpha and the Omega. This we believe, because you have revealed it to us. Our hearts leap up with gratitude that you have opened our eyes to see and know that Jesus Christ is your eternal, divine Son, begotten, not made, and that Jesus is the Glory of God. You, O Father, and he, your Son, are one God.
We tremble even to take such glorious truths on our lips for fear of dishonoring you with withering and inadequate words. But we must speak, because we praise you. Silence would shame us, and the rocks themselves would cry out. You must be praised for who you are in the world you have made. And we must thank you because you have made us taste and see the glory of Jesus Christ, your Son. Oh, to know him!
The prayer may be found in its entirety in John Piper, Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004), 25.
5. That great poet and woman of faith/doubt Emily Dickinson also had fun with religion’s tendency to trivialize such things in these few, brief, memorable lines imagining God’s Spirit at the zoo or the state fair:
A Diagram—of Rapture!
A sixpence at a show
With Holy Ghosts in Cages!
6. The Talmud has Abraham knowing God, the one true Creator, at the age of three. Maimonides, on the other hand, says that it happened when Abraham smashed the idols when he was forty. This story does not appear in any Bible. Midrash Bereshit 38:13 adds, as all midrash does, to the scriptural and historical narrative, with the rabbis telling us that Abraham’s father was an idol-maker. The story goes like this:
Abraham’s father, Terach, was an idol manufacturer. Once he had to travel, so he left Abraham to manage the shop. People would come in and ask to buy idols. Abraham would say, “How old are you?” The person would say, “Fifty,” or “Sixty.” Abraham would say, “Isn’t it pathetic that a man of sixty wants to bow down to a one-day-old idol?” The man would feel ashamed and leave. One time a woman came with a basket of bread. She said to Abraham, “Take this and offer it to the gods.” Abraham got up, took a hammer in his hand, broke all the idols to pieces, and then put the hammer in the hand of the biggest idol among them. When his father came back and saw the broken idols, he was appalled. “Who did this?” he cried. “How can I hide anything from you?” replied Abraham calmly. “A woman came with a basket of bread and told me to offer it to them. I brought it in front of them, and each one said, ‘I’m going to eat first.’ Then the biggest one got up, took the hammer and broke all the others to pieces.” “What are you trying to pull on me?” asked Terach, “Do they have minds?” Said Abraham: “Listen to what your own mouth is saying? They have no power at all! Why worship idols?”
7. Rob Bell, Everything Is Spiritual (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), DVD. Transcription by Tickle and Sweeney.
8. One of the best contemporary quips about all of this was made by one of our most eminent pastors and preachers, Fred Craddock. Craddock is quoted as having, upon occasion, dealt with the problem by telling his seminary students, with tongue in cheek, “I’m not all that interested in the Trinity. I’m more of a Bible person myself”; quoted in Robin R. Meyers, The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012), 68.
9. Even a historical theologian of the caliber of Bernard McGinn (in the context of discussing the disputes between East and West on the nature of the Trinity) once succumbed to inquiring after “the inner meaning of the Trinity”—as if there is an inner meaning in contrast to an outer or more intelligible meaning. As if one might know something about how the persons of the Trinity understand their own unity? Absolutely impossible, of course, but admitting to not knowing is rarely a popular theological solution. See Bernard McGinn, “The Abbot and the Doctors: Scholastic Reactions to the Radical Eschatology of Joachim of Fiore,” Church History, 40 (1971): 31.
10. William of St. Thierry, The Enigma of Faith, trans. John D. Anderson (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1973), para. 25, p. 57. It was also William who once said, “To the extent that the divine plan allows itself to be understood, we must eagerly pursue it” (op. cit., para. 1, p. 36). Every serious Christian would probably agree. But then we will always differ in opinion about how much of the divine plan is indeed intended to be understood.