Trinity

Trinity Sunday, which we’ll celebrate this year on June 19, is one of the seven Principal Feasts of the Church Year, often described as our only commemoration of a Christian doctrine. The Trinity is said to be an ineffable mystery that can neither be defined nor understood. The doctrine of the Trinity was violently fought out in early centuries of the Church, eventually settled at the end of the fourth century by the General Councils that adopted what we know as the Nicene Creed.

Outside of the Nicene Creed, the most interesting description of the Trinity in my view is the first half of the Creed of Saint Athanasius (BCP 864) or quinque vult. The Latin means “whosoever would be” and the going in and coming out assertion is that whosoever would be saved must believe about the Trinity exactly as the creed describes it. The creed’s best sentence says the whole thing is incomprehensible. 

If the Trinity is an ineffable mystery that can neither be defined nor understood, that has not stopped artists down through the centuries from trying to depict it. There is wonderful art, all defining the Trinity from human perspective. 

The earliest known one seems to be the c.a. 330 AD Trinity Sarcophagus in the Vatican Museum.

There are hundreds of course, or thousands. Francesco Albani (1578-1660) painted God the Father and the Holy Spirit (dove) above the Son at Jesus' baptism.

One of my favorites is the icon depicting the Three sitting at a table. The table is either square or rectangular: perhaps more apt symbolism would have been a triangular table. Reverently and respectfully, I do wonder what’s in the cup, and whether there is a protocol of seniority about who takes the first sip.

Jean Fouquet’s (1420-1480) “Crowning of the Virgin” shows three identical Trinity figures stepping out from their identical thrones for the coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

All of this art has the “error” of seeing God anthropomorphically, which is to say in human terms, human form. Maybe that’s the best we can do; and if so that makes the creedal word incomprehensible even more appropriate. 

We might better accept that the Trinity is a theological concept, a formula that is suitably depicted in the classical triangle:

Monday. Pax vobiscum.

TW+