On the Trinity

In the church calendar, today is Trinity Sunday.  After Easter, it's my next favorite Sunday of the year (followed by Pentecost, which was last Sunday, and then the last Sunday of the church year, the feast of Christ the King).  I really wish I could speak eloquently about the Trinity and how the contemplation of this Christian doctrine has profoundly impacted my life.  I am a philosopher, and I have found that the Trinity is the existentially satisfying truth of life and the universe.  Wow, that's great, Joel.  Really.  So what in the world does that mean?  Well, I'll do my best to explain one thing that it means, but it won't be as fantastic on paper as it is in my head.  It just won't be.  But, I'll try.

First, a brief side note, but related.  I have spent many years teaching children and being around children, and it seems to me that society in general systematically beats out of us, at an early age, the motivation to ask the question, "Why?"  I don't exactly blame society for this, because children often ask "why?" to things are kind of ridiculous, or they don't ask the question "why?" sincerely as much as just to get attention, etc.  If you've spent any amount of time around kids, you know what I mean.  However, for whatever reason or another, I never grew out my sometimes obsessive impulse to ask, "why?" about almost everything.  It's one of the things that makes me a good engineer.  It also makes me a very irritating philosopher, both to myself and to others.

However, at some point this line of questioning must stop.  The question "why?" cannot be asked into perpetuity.  Any good engineer knows this (even if not every good philosopher does).  If you are scientifically investigating any system in the natural world, at some point you will finally reach the answer, "because that's the way it works."  For example, we don't really understand why matter that contains mass generates an attractive force called gravity -- we just know that it does.  Why, when I throw an apple in the air, does it come down again?  The final answer, at least at this point in the science of physics, is, "because it does."  G.K. Chesterton masterfully discusses this in his book Orthodoxy, although he uses the question, "Why does a tree grow?"  The science of biology can explain how a tree grows, but no one can explain why it grows.  It grows because it does.

Now there are brilliant philosophers (much smarter than I) who would disagree with me on this, but I have learned that the same principle also holds true in the metaphysical aspects of the universe.  If you ask "why?" long enough about things like morality, or why you exist, or why you will die ... you must eventually come to say, "because of God," or "because God is..." or something like that.  To demonstrate, take a question like, "why do I exist?" and try to answer it without any mention or reference to God.  You can't answer it in a satisfactory way that is provable with any kind of intellectual honesty.  You can't do it, you'll keep going in a circle forever.  [Of course, only God can (or could) empirically prove that He exists, so I don't empirically know that God exists.  And actually, as the movie The Matrix seeks to convince you, there is very little that you can know empirically.  Yet, if it's demonstrably reasonable to conclude that God exists, even if not empirically provable, then we can satisfactorily believe in Him.]  When you toss these metaphysical questions up in the air, they must come down again and hit something solid.  They cannot fall on nothing.

But here's the thing.  These questions don't land on the simple concept of "God" either.  A simple concept of divinity, even a personal divine being, will not satisfy.  Because eventually you must ask this question "why?" of God Himself.  If God is good instead of evil, why?  And how?  If God existed before anything, how could He be good?  How could He be loving, or generous, or kind, or any of those other things that we connect with goodness?  How can God be gracious and just and merciful and angry and joyful all at the same time?  This last one especially will cook your noodle for a long time if you really think about it.

So here's the other thing.  Finally, these questions have to land on a God who you (or I, or any human) don't understand.  If we could understand Him, then He wouldn't be God at all.  And yet, the questions must land on something solid.  If they don't, we will go insane.  And I'm not speaking hyperbolically here, we will literally go insane.

To briefly summarize the doctrine of the Trinity:
Three Persons are God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Father is not the Son.
The Father is not the Holy Spirit.
The Son is not the Holy Spirit.
There is only One God.

Here is the beauty of the Trinity.  The doctrine of the Trinity does not really answer very many questions about God.  At all.  But it provides something solid for these "why?" questions about God to land on, while at the same time maintaining the immense mystery of God.  The Trinity does not reduce God to a being made in the image of a human.  But the Trinity offers an explanation of how God can be eternally good and not evil, on the basis of something substantive, and not mere speculation or fancy.  How God can be both just and gracious.  How God can be both loving and angry. All at the same time.

The Trinity is existentially satisfying.  Put that in your metaphysical pipe and smoke it.  Inhale deeply.  For He is your very life...