Trinity Sunday

I don't want to talk about theology. Theology is much too head-level thinking. It is twice removed from experiences of God. It is often a way of explaining something that we really don't know. Take the theologies of Holy Communion. We could talk forever about what the correct theology is. We could further split Christianity into more smaller groups just by doing so. Remember, personal experience is first; telling someone else about your experience is second; explaining the experience is third.

As far as I'm concerned getting back to the original experience of the Trinity is probably much easier than with some theological doctrines. Yes, the Trinity is a doctrine. It is only peripherally biblical. It is an explanation of something that we can't explain. We can only experience it.

God the Father,
God the Son,
God the Holy Spirit.

Any way you try to describe what that means will make you a heretic to someone.

In short, to me, it is simply the three ways that God had been experienced by God's people. There was no problem with any of this until Jesus came along. He really threw things into a theological uproar. How could he be God when God was God. Then this Holy Spirit. Wait, God is God, Jesus is God, the Holy Spirit is God? I can't wrap my human mind around that.

Which is good because we can look at the many ways we have gotten into trouble when we have tried to wrap our human minds around something with human logic and reason. Human logic and reason don't work. We're talking about God here. We're not talking about something we could understand. John Chrysostom (345-407) said it well in a quote I read recently.

A comprehended God is no God.

So I'm not comfortable talking about theology in times like this. God is Father- Creator, yes, but more than that. Father is a relationship word. As is Son- God the Son. These aren't cold theological constructs. These are words we understand if only poorly in some families and better in others. In the end for me faith is always about relationships more than it is about correct theology. None of us will ever have a truly correct theology. So we might as well work at the relationships.