I imagine that a great many people, if asked “What is the Trinity?” would begin their answer with the words “It is the doctrine that. . .”. And I suspect the question would conjure up in their minds the picture of a group of senile and bearded clergymen—though beardedness today is perhaps as characteristic of the young as of the senile—sitting round a table and thinking up ways of making the Christian religion difficult for the laity. “Ah, I've got an idea”, they imagine the most long-bearded and senile of the party twittering, as he sucks his toothless gums, “Let's tell them that God is both three and one; that'll give them something to swallow.”
Now the first point I want to make is that the Trinity is not a doctrine at all. There is a doctrine about the Trinity, as there are doctrines about many other facts of existence, but, if Christianity is true, the Trinity is not a doctrine; the Trinity is God. And the fact that God is Trinity—that in some deep mysterious sense there are three divine Persons eternally united in one life of complete perfection and beatitude —is not a piece of mystification thrust by dictatorial theologians down the throats of an unwilling but helpless laity; and therefore to be accepted, if at all, only with reluctance and discontent. It is the secret of God's most intimate life, into which, in his infinite love and generosity, he has admitted us; and it is therefore to be accepted with amazed and exultant thankfulness. The way in which the Church, as it reflected on the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth and its experience of his liberating activity, was led to formulate its belief in the best words at its disposal is an interesting subject for Church historians; it must not detain us now. What we are concerned to see is what the Trinity means as an answer to the problem of the ultimate explanation of the world's existence and of the ultimate meaning of human life.
It means that the world and human beings depend for their existence from moment to moment upon the unfailing creative activity of a personal Being of unimaginable splendour, bliss and love. I have said “a personal Being” and not “a Person”, only for this reason: that, if Christianity is true, God is not one Person but three Persons, united in one life of perfect mutual giving and receiving, a giving and receiving that is so complete that there is nothing to distinguish one from another except the ways in which each gives and receives from the others; a life of sharing so perfect that the most intimate of human unions bears only the remotest com-parison to it. The belief that the world's ultimate explanation is to· be found in a Being of infinite splendour, bliss and love is open to immediate and obvious objections, and we must not gloss them over. In particular we must face the problem of evil in all its sickening horror; how could a God who was absolutely powerful and loving allow babies to be born without limbs, or men to destroy one another's personalities by brain-washing? But problems such as this arise after you have come to believe in God, and not before. At the moment I want to ask you to consider how unutterably glorious is a view of existence that sees the ultimate reality with which each one of us is concerned as a Being such as I have described, rather than as the cribbed, cabined and confined existence of poor Hamm in his one little room and of his parents in their dust-bins.
It has become customary in some circles to ridicule the use of images in religion, but it is difficult to see how we can avoid them. The very people who pour scorn on the picture of heaven as a place where a celestial orchestra performs unending symphonies for the glory of God and the delectation of the redeemed will in many cases tell you that the most intense delight which they know is that of listening to music; and how can we more fit-tingly express our enjoyment of God than by comparing it, however inadequately, with the greatest of our earthly pleasures? Again, it is significant that the church has adopted the luxuriant nuptial imagery of the Song of Solomon as an analogy of the love of God for man and of man for God; for our enjoyment of God in heaven will be more, not less, ecstatic than the most passionate sensual experience on earth. And, if we want to acquire some remote understanding of the wonder and glory of the Christian God, we may well find the poets more helpful than the theologians.
Taken from a chapter in The Christian Universe by E. L. Mascall. Available now from Angelico Press.