What if God were not Three Persons?

11 May 2009

Last week I was traveling again for work. You should see me when I travel. Really, it is very sad...the picture of self-indulgence. I bring along videos and 8 hours of power to view them. I have an mp3 player. I bring books. I have some inexpensive noise canceling headphones. I bring along "in-flight socks" so I can remove my shoes. I have a "memory foam" pillow for my back. What a princess!

After several hours of viewing and reading during my most recent flight I decided to sit back, close my eyes and just listen. I dug up the audio files of the Lutheran Orthodox Colloquium. First I listened to Deacon Roeber's talk--one of my favorites from an informational perspective as it focuses on the history of Lutheranism and its diversity across regions in Germany. And then I listened to another favorite, a talk on the Trinity by the only cradle Orthodox presenting at the conference, Hiermonk Calinic Berger. Father Calinic starts his presentation with what I think are most provocative questions for non-Orthodox.

What does the Trinity mean to you? What does it mean to your personal spiritual life? What does it mean to your experience of the Church, and to the Church?

And then Father Calinic explains why God could not be anything BUT Trinity. He asks, "What if God were not 3 persons? What if He were only 1 person? What difference would that make?"

If God were a single person before He created the world, whom did He love? He loved Himself. And for us, as we are created in God's image, this would mean the foundational principle of our life would be self love...and that is ugly...we inherently know this.

So Father Calinic asks a different question, "What if God were two Persons, could you have perfect love?" Two persons can be engrossed in themselves, an exclusive love that ignores others, a love that creates a "we" between the two instead of an "I / thou" with all others.

A third Person ensures an objective, unselfish love. Three Persons in perfect unity. And that is the model for human life. The meaning of life is always found in another person. We are not created for things. We become bored with things. Things can't satisfy. We are created for other persons. We are created in the image and likeness of God with Love as our center, our purpose.

Father Calinic further points out that the Trinity is the foundational principle of Orthodox theology (in contrast to Article IV of the Lutheran Confessions, the Lutheran doctrine of Justification). I recall first being taught this in my Orthodox catechumen classes and thinking how radically different this was from any of the other religious instruction I had had in my life, from Catholic Schools to college level coursework in Lutheranism. It was like discovering the quantum mechanics of theology. Akin to the notion of the electron as particle and wave is God as One and Three. And the Love of the Trinity is like the electron cloud around a molecule.

So Sunday morning I decided to find out if what I perceived as a radical difference was just me and my penchant for the scientific method and linear thought or if my impression was actually true...that this understanding of Trinity was something totally different. Before we headed off to our separate churches I asked my husband, "What does the Trinity mean to you?" and in the course of our discussion I shared Father Calinic's explanations of God as Love and how God could only be three Persons in one God and not one person or two persons.

My husband left for his Lutheran church services unimpressed thinking this explanation was just another hokey Orthodox twist on things. But when he came home he handed me his bulletin, showed me one of the readings for the day with a number of phrases underlined and some words circled and excitedly said, "You were right and it's all right here!"

The passage he referred to was 1 John 4:1-21 in the ESV translation:

Way cool....

All Glory to God!