RETHINKING THE TRINITY

Then Jesus came to them and said,
“All authority in heaven and on earth
has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit,

Matthew 28:18-19 (read 28.16-20) - NIV

The Gospel according to Luke relates that the resurrected Jesus appeared on the outskirts of Jerusalem to manifest himself to his followers. Jerusalem was used as the launching place for the Gospel throughout the world. Jesus ascended to heaven from the nearby village of Bethany and told his disciples to wait for the descent of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem.

The Gospel according to Matthew tells it differently. For Matthew the resurrected Jesus went to a hill in Galilee some 100 kilometers north of Jerusalem where he had arranged to meet with his disciples. It was from Galilee that Jesus sent his followers to all nations to make disciples.

The two narratives, which are quite different from one another, have a fundamental point in common – the inclusion of the world in God's salvific plan. For Lucas it was through the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh as related in Acts 2:17 and for Matthew it was through baptism “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. The idea of the Trinity became embedded in this sentence.

We err in using the concept "Trinity" when trying to describe God as being “three persons in one." God is unfathomable and cannot be described or analyzed in any way! We cannot say anything about God unless that He/She/It is absolute mystery. The Trinity is valid only as a description of our perception of the Great Mystery which calls attention to the many facets of God.

The idea of God having many facets was not new. It is in the first chapter of Genesis. The first name was given to God was "Elohim”, a plural word. When the time came to create human beings, Elohim said "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness”. (1:26) and Elohim created them male and female. The context of this passage shows God to be male and female, a God Couple or maybe a God Family or even a God Tribe.

We cannot describe God as a couple, but we can say that we can feel God as male and female and call divinity Father or Mother. Jesus broke barriers by calling God “Daddy”. Many theologians of the Church try to put God in a cage and use the concept of Trinity to define God. But we can only describe our human experience of the Divine in a very limited way.

Trinity is a doorway that we can use to be able to experience the grandeur of the Divine. God may not be only "three-in-one". He/She/It may be a “million-in-one”, a “billion-in-one” or an infinite multitude. We can affirm nothing except our ignorance before the Divine Mystery.

It is impossible to see God. We can see only the masks that we ourselves put on Divinity. Christians put the masks of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We must not confuse the masks with God him/her/itself. We must not idolize the masks that we put on the Divine and condemn the masks that others put, thinking that God belongs to us and that we are the only ones who correctly understand.

The realization that these are only masks that represent our understanding of Divinity should free us from the illusion that we are the unique possessors of truth and that we have it all. This opens the door for us to examine other understandings and enrich our own. We need not forget that the Gospel according to John depicts Jesus as the Light of the World and that he is “the light of all mankind” (John 1:4). Others may place different masks, but the One who is behind the mask is the same.

MATTHEW 28:16-20 – NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV)

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”