Maintaining the Mystery, Unveiling the Power
Speaking of the Holy Trinity
All similitudes and illustrations about the doctrine of the Holy Trinity eventually either fail or frustrate, misfire or mislead. When you hear, “The Trinity is like . . .” or “Perhaps, this little story will help us understand the Trinity . . .” keep your hands on your Bible. There is an inherent danger of going off-course.1 Many attempts to explain the Trinity can be characterized as an unintended revision of the Holy Scripture asserted by otherwise well-intending believers.
I do not believe for a moment that these folks are heretics. However, it is often the case that even those who worship in (wise) Christian communities that recite the Apostles’ Creed or (most clearly for the doctrine of the Trinity) the Nicene Creed find teaching on the biblical truth of the Trinity of God to be scant. So, what can we say? One good answer would be, “as little as possible.” By that, I mean to believe, affirm, and uphold the revelation of Scripture, but not go beyond it. Settling the intellectual and spiritual dissonance one experiences when contemplating the Trinity is another matter altogether. We will get to that.
The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity
The Trinity, as B. B. Warfield of old Princeton urged, is a doctrine revealed in Scripture and in time. Warfield’s peer, the second principal of Princeton Theological Seminary, Charles Hodge (1797-1878), described this revelation as having a “progressive character,” a way of perceiving the self-identity of Almighty God. There is no single doctrinal description of the Holy Trinity. Instead, as one reads through the Scriptures, one becomes aware that God is one and God is three in one. The Persons of the Godhead are distinct, not commingled, and one Person of the One True God is not subordinate to another. The first article of the 39 Articles of Religion wisely asserts the truth of the Triunity of God with an economy of words:
“I. Of Faith in the Holy Trinity.
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
The Westminster Confession of Faith expresses this clarity in brevity:
“In the unity of the Godhead, there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost: the Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son” (Westminster Confession of Faith, 2.3).
Accordingly, Charles Hodge wrote in his Systematic Theology,
“To say that this doctrine [of the Holy Trinity] is incomprehensible is to say nothing more than must be admitted of any other great truth, whether of revelation or of science. To say that it is impossible that the one divine substance can subsist in three distinct persons is certainly unreasonable.”
Warfield describes the revelation of the Trinity of God as a “solution” to the mystery that presents itself in our conception of the Almighty:
“Difficult, therefore, as the idea of the Trinity in itself is, it does not come to us as an added burden upon our intelligence; it brings us rather the solution of the deepest and most persistent difficulties in our conception of God as an infinite moral Being, and illuminates, enriches, and elevates all our thought of God.”
God, and thus His self-revelation as Triune, is at once a mystery and a mystery unveiled. Yet, unveiling the truth of the Trinity does not remove human limitations in understanding the Trinity. The Holy Trinity is, as Hodge asserts, “incomprehensible.” We have no pure reference for the Holy Trinity. We have only the truth of the Word of God, sustained by the Person of our resurrected and ascended Jesus. He testified to the One True God as Triune. The rest of the biblical texts are sufficient unto themselves, but in Christ, all of these assertions are sealed with divine authority. The Word became flesh. The resurrection foretold by Jesus (and the prophets) and witnessed by many, over five hundred at one time (who could, of course, counter the testimony if not true), is the ultimate measure of inerrancy and infallibility for all other biblical assertions. We thus state the doctrine of the Trinity with the words of Scripture. The doctrine is not a philosophical formula. It is a biblical proposition gathered from the unity of the many assertions in Scripture. If there are no precise references, there are “hints,” to borrow an idea from C. S. Lewis. And this leads us to the evangelist to the Picts, Columba.
Saint Columba and Iona
The Celtic cross is more correctly called “Saint Martin’s cross” or “the Iona cross.” However, it will always be associated with “The Apostle to the Picts,” Columba (521-597). Columba was an Irish minister who studied under the Welsh Christian community in Ireland. The seminary was founded by one of Saint David’s students from Pembrokeshire. Columba departed Ireland to evangelize Western Scotland. The area was not only home to the Picts but also to the Gaelic-speaking peoples. In fact, Columba’s kinsmen lived at Iona, and that might have helped the great missionary establish his ministry there.
While much of the evangelistic ministries of the first several hundred years after Christ are sometimes recorded at the nexus of legend and history, the sparse facts can be trusted that this man Columba arrived and conducted a successful mission to Iona. He would later return to Ireland to establish an abbey there. Columba, like David in Wales, was very much what we would call a “church planter.” He established communities of believers who could then perpetuate a life in Christ as taught in the Holy Scriptures. Among other obstacles in evangelizing the Pictish peoples, Saint Columba must have faced the challenge of preaching the truth of the Trinity. Though he likely borrowed this from another, he established what we know as the Celtic cross, which stands today on the Isle of Iona. The Celtic cross bears witness to the Triunity of God by connecting the chancel (top extension) of the cross’ center column with the transept (the horizontal beam at the top of the center column; transept is “from Lat. trans, across, and septum, enclosure”) to create a one-in-three visual. Thus, the Celtic cross is associated with stating the truth of the Trinity, though not pretending to explain it. Over time, British Christians from all branches of the Church began to use the symbol in art and architecture to proclaim the One in Three, best understood at the cross.
The Celtic Cross is ancient, but ever new; ordered, but spontaneous; plain, but artistic; quiet, yet speaking; reverent, but joyful; mysterious, but open; leaving our own place to help others find their true home; seeking to establish Something by the power of Someone greater than the sum of ourselves; and finding ourselves by losing ourselves in a divine vision, which will endure throughout all generations. This cross helps all who enter the covenant community to recalibrate faith and life in Jesus Christ, who paid for our sins on a place of unthinkable shame, that mount of incredible hope.
Yet, even this ancient symbol is inadequate to express the simple yet profound truth that acknowledges God and gives dignity to Mankind, male and female:
There is but One God in three persons: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
References
“Articles of Religion.” Accessed August 27, 2024. https://www.anglicanism.info/articles-of-religion.
Cooper, Michael. “Missiological Reflections On Celtic Christianity.” Mission Studies 20, no. 1 (2003): 35–55. https://brill.com/view/journals/mist/20/1/article-p35_8.xml.
Hodge, Archibald Alexander. Doctrine of the Trinity. Bellefonte Press, 1939.
Lewis, C. S. “Mere Christianity.” In The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics. London: HarperCollins, 2007. https://books.google.com/books?id=JaC0_Yvffr0C.
Owen, John. A Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity: As Also, of the Person and Satisfaction of Christ.... By the Rev. John Owen, DD. Glasgow: printed by Napier and Khull for R. Hutchinson, 1798. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=NwM3AAAAMAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=related:8sUVsGKgsfkJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=8S1jDdAfSN&sig=HfpivG0Fuc450lBfqPUQ6zpLpSA.
Podroužková, Mgr Lucie, and Eliška Vaníčková. “The Celtic Cross.” Accessed August 27, 2024. https://is.muni.cz/th/km7d9/The_Celtic_Cross_Archive.pdf.
Poythress, Vern S. The Mystery of the Trinity: A Trinitarian Approach to the Attributes of God. P&R Publishing Company, 2020.
Tozer, A. W. Meditations on the Trinity: Beauty, Mystery, and Glory in the Life of God. Moody Publishers, 2017.
“Transept.” In Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 27:172, 1911.
Of course, God himself reveals, e.g., that He is like a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29). See, e.g., Tozer, Meditations on the Trinity. But there are no passages that encourage us to express “The Holy Trinity is like. . .”