The Politics of the Trinity Michael Knowles

Introduction

“The ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of God’s creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity. But we are called even here and now to be a dwelling for the Most Holy Trinity”.

That is the declaration of the Catholic Catechism in paragraph 260. That is the voice of Christ here on earth. It locates our being within the inmost being of God which is the Trinity, which is mystery. That is where we all are as human beings. Our awareness of where we are, God in us and us in God, is the mysticism which is our calling as human beings. That indwelling in every human being is the kingdom that we pray will come about here on earth as in heaven. For that we are called to strive. That is Eden. That is the Garden of Paradise where the Lord God walks in the cool of the evening.

‘Brothers. What use is it for a man to say he has faith when he does nothing to show it?’ (James.2.14).

The reality of the Trinity is not just a doctrine to be believed. The Trinity is a reality that must govern every aspect of our being as surely as it created our being in its image and likeness.

But is that just words and nothing else? Just sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, really empty of meaning? Can there possibly be a connection between the ineffable mystery of the Trinity, which is the reality of God, and our political and civic life? Is such an idea a sort of theological gobbledegook. Readers must judge for themselves. And besides that there is then the further problem of speaking of God at all. We can use only human language and experience. The limitation is severe. “God is more truly thought than he is uttered, and exists more truly that he is thought” states Augustine (De Trinitate.VII.4.7). But it is not a limitation so severe as to make discourse about God impossible, not least because that would entail we do not think at all.

God speaks. Speech takes many forms. Everything that anything does is an expression of itself in some way. Actio sequitur esse. Whatever God –Father, Son and Spirit- has made is a self-utterance and expression of themselves. The principle of analogy does not imply that God is unknowable or that our knowledge of him can only be negative. We know something of what God is as well as of what he is not. God cannot create what is not a positive expression of himself. Otherwise nothing would have been created. Everything that exists expresses and communicates God the Creator as he is in himself.

Of the essence of any religion is its understanding of God. The God of Christianity is God as revealed in and by Jesus Christ is Trinity. The startling reality of God’s revelation of himself in and by Christ is this, that God is Father, Son and Spirit in a union and community. Both words are hopelessly inexact. The best they can do is point towards the reality we know by faith to exist. The union and the community are total. They do not share divinity between themselves Each person is God whole and entire; each person is the supreme reality. “I and the Father are one.” Jn.10.30. “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (14.10). “The Spirit of Truth that issues from the Father, he will bear witness to me” (15.26).This is what Christianity is about and what sets it apart. “The faith of all Christians rests on the Trinity” declares the Catholic Catechism. (CC 232) quoting St. Caesarius of Arles. Actio sequitur esse. Whatever God does expresses and communicates what he is. Therefore, there is Father Son Spirit/Speaker Word Spirit in all creation and in all creatures. All creation is community. All creation in virtue of its single origin is a union. Whatever we do to any single slightest element of creation we do to ourselves and others. As the Son is begotten from the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, so everything has being through that same relationship and expresses that relationship. The method is the Trinity, the model is the Trinity, the goal is the Trinity. Augustine in ‘De Trinitate’ seeks the manifestation of the Trinity in all creation. This is God as found in no other religion. ‘Jesus revealed that God is Father in an unheard-of sense” (CC. 240). God is Father not just as a the point of origin but also in the un-heard of sense of begetting the Son, which relationship analogously therefore is in every creature. This all may be a laughing stock to human enlightenment and the secular mind and blasphemy to other faiths. No matter. No religion can be true to itself unless it is clear as to the kind of God it believes in and lives out that understanding individually and collectively. This is the gospel we are instructed by the Lord himself to preach unto every nation. This is one aspect of the ecumenism the Lord himself envisaged, it is in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit (Matt.28.19) that we are instructed to baptise. That name is one name (CC 233), the mystery and significance of which is, and will be, an eternity of meaning and contemplation.

“The Father, Son and Holy Spirit created man after their image that man might subsist as the image of God. And God is the Trinity” (Augustine. De Trin. VII.6.11). The God of Christianity is the Triune God, a community of Father, Son and Spirit. Yet that is not the whole of God. God also revealed himself as God who emptied himself for us. The one true God is God who became man, sharing our humanity, emptying himself and taking the nature of a slave, humbling himself and in obedience accepting even death –death on a cross. That is the Christian God, which is God. And that is our calling. If the Triune God dwells in us, we are dwelt in by a God who is a unity of three equal persons. “We are called to be a dwelling here and now for the Most Holy Trinity” (CC.260) That is our existential goal, outside of which all is existential frustration.

This is indeed the heart of mysticism. Mysticism is the very nature of Christianity and any form of Christianity which is not mystical and does not exhort Christians to mysticism is deficient at its very roots. The Beatific Vision, the contemplation of God, which we cannot fully know about till it is experienced, is the goal of our being. What we do know is that that vision will make us like God is, like fire transforms metal. Our ultimate good is union with God, when metaphorically, and like the ideal in human relationships, the two become one flesh. But that must also happen ‘even here and now’, on earth as in heaven. We are in-dwelt by the Trinity if we become like the Trinity which is a total union and community and is God who pours himself out even unto death for his creatures. Therefore, we fulfil the nature of our creation by expressing, even in a sense becoming, the Divine Community of Three in One, and we attain to the goal and model of our being by generosity of spirit. We frustrate it by the individualism of selfishness and self-centredness. Community and sharing is the fulfilment of our created nature. Self-centredness negates our nature and frustrates our being. That in a word is the politics of the Trinity.

“If then our common life in Christ yields anything to stir the heart, any loving consolation, any sharing of the Spirit, any warmth of affection or compassion, fill up my cup of happiness by thinking and feeling alike, with the same love for one another, the same turn of mind, the same care for unity…Let your bearing towards one another arise out of your life in Christ Jesus. For the divine nature was his from the start; yet he did not think to snatch at equality with God, but made himself nothing, assuming the nature of a slave. Bearing the human likeness, revealed in human shape, he humbled himself and in obedience he accepted death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2.1-9). This really is God as found in no other religion. This is the reality of God. The oneness of God, the equality and community of the Three Persons, who are really distinct from one another, yet each being God whole and entire, the one consubstantial God, the Father wholly in the Son and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Son is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Son –this is our Christian faith. “This is indeed my faith” says Augustine (De Trin. I 4) “ because it is the Catholic faith”. This is the God who made us, in whose image and likeness we are made. The God who made us assumed the nature of a slave and submitted to death for us. Neither thoughts nor words can embrace or comprehend or fathom or express this community and generosity. It is the object of mystical contemplation. It is achievable only by loving our neighbour. “Do not think I am giving a new command”, says the unknown Elder to the unknown Lady and her children writing 2^nd John 5f. “I am recalling the one we had before us from the beginning: Let us love one another. And love means following the commands of God” which unites us to God who “is love; he who dwells in love is dwelling in God and God in him” (I Jn.416)..

Therefore, because this divine community and generosity are our origin and our goal, any economic or political system or philosophy that does not strive wholeheartedly towards it or denies community or exalts the individuals above the common good is not Christianity. It negates Christianity. Anything that repudiates the sharing of wealth, power and property communally, nationally and internationally negates Christianity. It would indeed negate the Creator himself, which cannot of course be done. Instead what it does achieve is the negation and frustration of the being we are created to be. Any society which is not inclusive, which does not found itself upon an equal love and esteem and concern for all its members regardless of physical, social and cultural differences, where there is a system of wealth creation and the exercise of power which is not commonwealth negates Christianity and frustrates the goal of our being. “God has no favourites. In every nation a man who is god-fearing and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts.11.34) “There is no such thing as Jew or Greek, slave or freeman, male or female, for you are all one person in Christ Jesus” (Gal.3.28).

There just is nothing so radical as this. In a way it is more than flesh and blood can bear. We can only aspire towards it. It is the aspiration for heaven to be on earth. It is the Garden of Paradise which we are invited to enter. “All whose faith had drawn them together held everything in common; they would sell their property and possessions and make a general distribution as the need of each required” (Act. 2.45). This may well have been the raw and instinctive response of the first Christians to their new faith. Excessive and impractical maybe. Doubtless more than flesh and blood could bear. But their instincts were right. The direction was right. Any political or economic or legislative system which is not commonwealth, which is not equality, which is not the common good, is not Christian. Citizenship, power, wealth and property must be for the community to be Christian.

Commonwealth and Common Good is what the Trinity is. The generosity of giving in the act of creation and the outpouring and empty of self in the Incarnation and life and death of the Son who is God whole and entire, is what the Trinity is. Only to the extent that we live that out collectively as well as individually are we in-dwelt by the Trinity. This is not just a matter of morality. This is about ‘being’.

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