[Cal]

Originally Posted by OBW

I realize that this is just one statement of several from which we learn about the nature of God. And each is given in a context and is not revealing everything about what we call the Trinity (and therefore cannot be construed as simply the rest of the story). But this claim of a well-defined doctrine of the Trinity is more like a committee effort. Lee's was worse than the regular definition. But Athanasius got it better than either. It is Three, and it is One. Don't conflate the one or compress the three. Accept it as it is . . . something beyond our understanding. Triune is not "simply one." Nor is it simply three. It is Three and it is One — in a way that we cannot fully comprehend.

I get that. The question I ask is, if we are in the image of God, how are we triune? God is the whole God, not just one of the three. So if we are truly in his image, we must be triune, too. Lame explanations like body, soul, spirit as our three don't cut it.

Years ago, I was reading an article in Time or Newsweek about Christianity. Someone was quoted in it saying, "The Trinity shows us that reality at its most fundamental level is relational." That jumped out at me, and was the seed of my realizing that the way to "understand" the Trinity is to see it, not from the aspect of substances or hypostases, but from seeing at as the result of a singular, perfect, all-knowing Being who is self-conscious.

This Being would have had, before anything else existed, a Relationship with himself. He would have a perfect relationship with and know and love everything about his perfect self. He would have a self-image, so to speak, which in him somehow (this is the part I don't understand) became Another, the Son.

The Son is what God sees when he thinks about himself, so he is the perfect "image" of God. Where did that image first exist? In God's own thought about himself. This is why the Son is the expression of God, the God we see, because he is the God that God sees.

What about the Spirit? The Spirit is the relationship between the Father and the Son. That is, the Spirit is God's experience of himself. That is why he is our experience of God, too. The Bible says the Father loves the Son. It never says the Father loves the Spirit. Why? Because the Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son. The Spirit is the essence of God because a being's essence is summed up in how he feels about himself.

We can pick up a faint notion of this, because we have a self-image and we have a relationship with our self-image. But because we are imperfect and our knowledge of ourselves is incomplete, this experience is shadowy for us. Yet, we still can have a notion of our triune-ness. I am me. My self-image is me. And my relationship with my self-image is me.

Anyway, in the beginning there was a Relationship. Somehow, within the being of the Perfect Singular Being, the principle of Relationship with Another was born. THAT is the mystery of mysteries. And from it, God's whole purpose of creating and loving others, and his intent for us to love others, were born.

This theory may be accurate, it may not. But it is a better explanation that any I've heard. If it's not true then, as C.S. Lewis said, something better is.