By Canon Chris Palmer
St Patrick is reputed to have used a shamrock in fifth century Ireland to explain the Trinity to his hearers. With its three leaves in one plant it was a plentiful, if inadequate, illustration of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This is just an early example of searching for visual aids for God as Trinity. Many a school assembly have been adorned with water, ice and steam; or the three strands of a plait; or the shell, yoke and white of an egg. One of my favourite metaphors is suggested by Dorothy L Sayers. God is like a book: there’s the book in the mind of the author; the book written and bound on paper; and the book read and understood by the reader. I suspect that this represents the rather academic, bookish culture in which she existed – but it appeals to me.
These illustrations are often criticised for being inadequate, or for prioritising threeness over oneness, or vice versa. I find such criticism tedious. Everyone knows these aids to understanding don’t really capture God’s majesty, but it’s still important to try to say something – however imperfect that is.
What I think is more important, though, is to remember that all talk of God isn’t really about trying to understand God, or understand the ‘doctrine of the Trinity’. Rather, the goal and journey of the Christian life is simply to know God. We are called to relationships more than to comprehension.
After all, how can we possibly know the God who surpasses understanding? But God is essentially relational. If talk of the Trinity tells us anything it is this: God is three persons bound in perfect harmony and mutual love. And the relationships which are God spill over. God desires to draw us also into the fellowship and belonging of God’s life.
And when we see this, we realise that the shamrocks and plaits and every other illustration of the life of the Trinity need to give way to practices of communion. We encounter God in beauty, contemplation and conversation – and a multiplicity of other ways. Very often we only catch a sense of God in retrospect, realising that God was the unacknowledged presence in times of joy or difficulty.
And these moments of insight are the gift that really reveals God as Trinity – not adding to our list of school-assembly illustrations, but to the story of our encounters with God who sustains us day by day.