Our Response

As we consider the Trinity, we all feel a bit out of our depths. Because again, God is incomprehensibly great. I've been helped by how the Baptist minister and theologian Steve Holmes frames the discussion. He says:

"According to quantum physics, what we are pleased to call 'subatomic particles' are very strange things…All of this is to say that we have no conceptual grasp of what they are - no non-quantum analogue which allows us to say, 'They are a bit like that.' We know much about how they behave, and can speak truly and extensively of what they do.

Similarly, Trinitarian doctrine for Thomas (Aquinas) is not an exercise in description of what God is, because we cannot know what God is, but a discussion of how we may speak truly about God."

So this is my hope: We will remember that a Triune God is incomprehensible. This is a mystery beyond our grasp. And we will seek to understand how God has revealed himself to us, so that we might truthfully worship him and witness to his reality.

And as we learn to speak faithfully about who God is, we learn some important lessons. One is that God does not need us. Second, within himself, God is love. And third, that the Trinity is supreme.

As Scott Swain writes:

"The triune God alone is the ultimate end of all his works, the supreme benefit he gives, the supreme benefit that can be received."

And this is not a benefit just for the educated. It is available to all of us, as C.S. Lewis wrote:

"An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the man who was God—that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him.

You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying—the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on—the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kind of life—what I called Zoe or spiritual life: he is being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself."

Holy, triune God, all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be belongs to you alone.

You have spoken to us through your Word made flesh. Now guide us into the truth by the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that we may glorify you forever and ever.

In Christ's name, Amen.

Practice C.S. Lewis's description of prayer this week—being aware that God is the goal you're reaching toward, the power pushing you on, and the road you're traveling.