Friends: Folks look at the Holy Trinity as something that needs to be split and defined rather than understood as a relationship and holy mystery.  Let’s hold it together. Have a great week, and all the best for 2025. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #947

January 7, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Splitting Image

By Bob Walters

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” – Hebrews 1:3

Pam and I are fortunate to have several savvy, sincere, and biblically literate Christian friends and teachers across the various cohorts of the life we lead together.

Feel free to drop an “Amen” if you can say the same thing.

Our New Year’s Eve gathering with some of our so-inclined church pals last week was a party, not vespers, but as invariably happens – amid family updates and chatting about life in general – a faith and scriptural issue popped up that sparked a lively post-dinner doctrinal conversation among a few of us still sitting at the table.

A lady we have known for years who is active in Bible studies, women’s ministry, and local missions lamented how many Bible studiers she encounters who refuse the aspect of the Trinity that names Jesus as God. Yes, I know … basic stuff.  And any of us who have been around “newer” Christians are well-acquainted with the question.

She noted, “They want to know, ‘If Jesus is God, where was God while Jesus was on the earth?’ What do you say?” I have a reputation in our Sunday school class of talking too much, so I took a shot at an answer because I can’t help it. To wit …

The Trinity as One – Father, Son, Spirit – is among my favorite teaching topics. The Trinity, of course, is a mystery of mathematics, physics, and personhood, how three beings can be one and one being can be three.  To me it is easily explained that if indeed “God is Love” (1 John 4:8), and if we can agree that “love” requires relationship, then it proceeds logically that God must be a relationship. Voila! God is one…and three.

And if indeed humans were and are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image’”) – for all the ways that notion can be considered – it further proceeds that we are created in that love of God’s relationship.

Why three?  This is what works for me. Three is the smallest number of a community (George Bebawi), God himself is a society (G.K. Chesterton), and we, even as fallen sinners, are restored to God’s divine community through our faith in Jesus and acceptance of His gift of salvation. But the math? Yes, 1+1+1=3. But 1x1x1=1. I am content to “multiply” my blessings and figure God “adds up” love however He likes.

To me the issue we were discussing at the table comes down to those who stubbornly demand human definitions of holy things that need to be known in faith.  It is, to me, reasonable to take God at His word.  We can ask of Him all the questions we can conjure, but everything about Jesus is designed to demand our faith, not proof.

I’m afraid the best evidence for Jesus and God’s laws, even beyond scripture, is written on our hearts, ala Hebrews 8:10, Romans 2:15, Psalms 40:8, 2 Corinthians 3:3. And I couldn’t help but think of George’s observation that Western Christianity tends to focus on “Father and Son,” often ignoring the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

We can’t argue faith and the Holy Spirit into anybody. One can witness and lead by example, but the Spirit does the heavy lifting of changing hearts and minds to accept God’s truth and the reality of an eternal realm humans are not yet equipped to fully understand. We glimpse eternity, in faith, all the time … yet it is still outside of time.

So, mysteries abound, but our faith must cohere into oneness with God, oneness with other believers, and not split the divine relationship in which we were created.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) enjoys the mysteries God presents. Praise Jesus.