One and One and One Are One - A Homily for Trinity Sunday

There is an old spiritual that says, “My God is so high you can’t get over Him. He’s so low you can’t get under Him. He’s so wide you can’t get around Him. You must come in, by and through the Lamb.”

It’s not a bad way of saying that God is “other.” He is beyond what human words can describe, beyond what human thoughts can conjure. On the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity we do well to remember that we are pondering a mystery that cannot fit in our minds.

A mystery, though, is not something wholly unknown. In the Christian tradition, the word “mystery” refers to (among other things) something that is partially revealed, something much more of which remains hidden. As we ponder the Trinity, consider that although there are some things we can know by revelation, much more is beyond our understanding.

Let’s ponder the Trinity by exploring it, seeing how it is exhibited in Scripture, and observing how we, who are made in God’s image, experience it.

Perhaps we do best to begin by quoting the Catechism, which says, The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons: [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] … The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God, whole and entire (Catechism, 253).

There is one God and each of the three persons of the Trinity possesses the one divine nature fully. The Father is God; He is not one-third of God. Likewise, the Son, Jesus, is God; He is not one-third of God. And the Holy Spirit is God, not merely one-third of God.

It is our human experience that if there is only one of something, and someone possesses it fully, then there is nothing left for anyone else. Yet mysteriously, each of the three persons of the Trinity fully possesses the one and only divine nature while remaining a distinct person.

One of the great masterpieces of the Latin Liturgy is the preface for Trinity Sunday. It compactly and clearly sets forth the Christian teaching on the Trinity. The following translation of the Latin is my own:

It is truly fitting and just, right and helpful unto salvation that we should always and everywhere give thanks to you O Holy Lord, Father almighty and eternal God: who, with your only begotten Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, one Lord: not in the oneness of a single person, but in a Trinity of one substance. For that which we believe from your revelation concerning your glory, we acknowledge of your Son and the Holy Spirit without difference or distinction. Thus, in the confession of the true and eternal Godhead there is adored a distinctness of persons, a oneness in essence, and an equality in majesty, whom the angels and archangels, the Cherubim also and the Seraphim, do not cease to daily cry out with one voice saying, Holy, Holy, Holy …

Wow! It’s a careful and clear masterpiece, but one that baffles the mind. So deep is this mystery that we had to “invent” a paradoxical word to summarize it: Triune (or Trinity). Triune literally means “three-one” (tri + unus), and “Trinity” is a conflation of “Tri-unity,” meaning the “three-oneness” of God.

If all of this baffles you, good! If you were to say that you fully understood all this, I would have to say you were likely a heretic. The teaching on the Trinity, while not contrary to reason per se, does transcend it and it is surely beyond human understanding.

Here is a final image before we leave our exploration stage. The picture at the upper right is from an experiment I remember doing when I was in high school. We took three projectors, each of which projected a circle: one red, one green, and one blue (the three primary colors). At the intersection of the three circles the color white appeared. Mysteriously, the three primary colors are present in the color white, but only one shows forth. The analogy is not perfect (no analogy is or it wouldn’t be an analogy) for Father, Son, and Spirit do not “blend” to make God, but it does manifest a mysterious “three-oneness” of the color white. Somehow in the one, three are present. (By the way, this experiment only works with light; don’t try it with paint!)

II. The Teaching on the Trinity Exhibited – Scripture also presents images of the Trinity. Interestingly enough, most of the ones I want to present here are from the Old Testament.

As a disclaimer, I’d like to point out that Scripture scholars debate the meaning of these texts; that’s what they get paid the big bucks to do. I am reading these texts as a New Testament Christian and seeing in them a doctrine that later became clear. I am not getting into a time machine and trying to understand them as a Jew from the 8th century B.C. might have. Why should I? That’s not what I am. I am reading these texts as a Christian in the light of the New Testament, as I have a perfect right to do. You, of course, are free to decide whether you think these texts really are images or hints of the Trinity. Here they are:

1. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness …” (Gen 1:26)

God speaks of himself in the plural: “Let us … our …” Some claim that this is just an instance of the “royal we” being used. Perhaps, but I see an image of the Trinity. There is one (“God said”) but there is also a plural (us, our). Right at the very beginning in Genesis there is already a hint that God is not all by himself, but rather is in a communion of love.

In the passage above, the word used for God is אֱלֹהִ֔ים (Elohim). It is interesting to note that this word is in the plural form. From a grammatical standpoint, Elohim actually means “Gods,” but the Jewish people understood the sense of the word to be singular. This is a much debated point, however. You can read more about it from a Jewish perspective here: Elohim as Plural yet Singular.

(We have certain words like this in English, words that are plural in form but singular in meaning such as news, mathematics, and acoustics.) My point here is not to try to understand it as a Jew from the 8th century B.C. or even as a present day Jew. Rather, I am observing with interest that one of the main words for God in the Old Testament is plural yet singular, singular yet plural. God is one yet three. I say this as a Christian observing this about one of the main titles of God, and I see an image of the Trinity.

3. And the LORD appeared to [Abram] by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the earth, and said, “My Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I fetch a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said” (Gen 18:1-5).

From a purely grammatical standpoint this is a very difficult passage because it switches back and forth between singular and plural references. The Lord (singular) appears to Abram, yet Abram sees three men (some have said that this is just God and two angels, but I think it is the Trinity). Then when Abram addresses “them” he says, “My Lord” (singular). The tortured grammar continues as Abram suggests that the Lord (singular) rest “yourselves” (plural) under the tree. The same thing happens in the next sentence, in which Abram wants to fetch bread so that you may refresh “yourselves” (plural). In the end, the Lord (singular) answers, but it is rendered as “So they said.” Plural, singular … which is it? Both. God is one and God is three. For me as a Christian, this is a picture of the Trinity. Because the reality of God cannot be reduced to mere words, this is a grammatically difficult passage, but I can “see” what is going on: God is one and God is three; He is singular and He is plural.

4. Having come down in a cloud, the Lord stood with Moses there and proclaimed his Name, “Lord.” Thus the Lord passed before him and cried out, “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity” (Exodus 34:5).

When God announces His name, He does so in a threefold way: Lord! … The Lord, the Lord. There is implicit a threefold introduction or announcement of God. Is it a coincidence or is it significant? You decide.

5. In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the Seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Is 6:1-3).

God is Holy, Holy, and yet again, Holy. Some say that this is just a Jewish way of saying “very Holy,” but as Christian I see more. I see a reference to each of the three persons of the Trinity. Perfect praise here requires three “holys.” Why? Omni Trinum Perfectum (all things are perfect in threes). But why? As a Christian, I see the angels praising each of the three persons of the Trinity. God is three (Holy, holy, holy …) and yet God is one (holy is the Lord …). There are three declarations of the word “Holy.” Is it a coincidence or is it significant? You decide.

Thus Scripture exhibits the teaching of the Trinity, going back even to the beginning.

III. The Teaching of the Trinity Experienced – We who are made in the image and likeness of God ought to experience something of the mystery of the Trinity within us, and sure enough, we do.

We must be careful to understand that what humans manifest sexually, God manifests spiritually, for God is neither male nor female in His essence. We may say that the First Person loves the Second Person and the Second Person loves the First Person. So real is that love that it bears fruit in the Third Person. In this way the married couple images God, for the husband and wife love each other and their love bears fruit in their children (See, USCCB, “Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan”).

So today, as we extol the great mystery of the Trinity, we look not merely outward and upward so as to understand, but also inward to discover that mystery at work in us, who are made in the image and likeness of God.

And now for the scientific and Biblical evidence for the Trinity.

In the twentieth century AD, it became obvious that energy and energy states were quantized and could be emitted or absorbed only in discrete units. However, the theories and equations that were developed regarded space and time as continuous and thus infinitely divisible. As a result of not having a minimum space-time unit all of these theories postulate infinities within the physical universe that have not been observed.

The current “Standard Model” for Quantum Mechanics compensates for this through a process called “renormalization” in which one subtracts a big infinity from a smaller infinity to get a measured answer. The “Big Bang Theory” says the universe started as a singularity, then the laws of physics were suspended for a while as everything expanded at faster than the speed of light. “Here the magic happens” is clearly only a “scientific” theory because it is proposed by “scientists.”

But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. (Daniel 12:4)

Since we are near the time of the end, knowledge has increased! The Unified Field Theory proposed by Burkhard Heim (1925-2001) is a completely discrete theory that is based on the quantization of areas in multiple dimensions. It treats the universe as an accounting system, which is clearly in consonance with the Holy Scriptures, as we shall see. Originally proposed with six dimensions; it was later expanded into 12 dimensions to fully account for Quantum Mechanics. Heim calculated the mass values of the elemental particles using the 6-dimensional formulation and six experimentally measured fundamental constants, such as the speed of light in a vacuum, and arrived at values that were in good (!) agreement with observations.

Burkhard Heim arrived at a description of “the beginning” from the currently observed universe using logic and mathematics. He described the process he used in a presentation to the scientists at Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) in Ottoburnn, Germany on November 25, 1976. An annotated transcript of the presentation and an English translation was produced by Olar Posdzech, Jim Graham, John Reed and Wilfried Kugel between 2000 and 2009. In this presentation, Heim derived the fundamental quantum of area which he called a “metron”.

In 1992, Tamar Auerbach explained the cosmology of Heim’s Theory as follows:

“In Heim’s theory both the metronic size, t, and the largest diameter D depend on the age of the universe. The dependence is such that D is expanding and t is contracting, so that D was smaller in the past and t was larger. It stands to reason that at one time in the distant past the surface area of a sphere of diameter D in our 3-dimensional world was equal to the size of t. This instant marks the origin of the universe and of time.
The mathematical relation between D and t is not simple, so that 3 different values of D are found to satisfy the criterion that the area of a sphere of diameter D be equal to t at the beginning of time. Evidently, the universe started as a trinity of spheres, whose diameters turn out to be (in meters):

D1 = 0.90992 m, D2 = 1.06426 m, D3 = 3.70121 m.

This trinity of spheres has important bearings on the structure of elementary particles.

From the first moment the universe began to expand, though at a slower rate than is presently predicted on the basis of the red shift of distant galaxies. Heim’s theory results in a present age of the universe approximately equal to 5.45 x 10^107 years, and a diameter D of about 6.37 x 10^109 light years. During most of its existence the universe consisted of an empty metronic lattice, whose metrons kept getting smaller as the universe grew larger.
Eventually, metrons became small enough for matter to come into existence. This may have occurred some 15-40 billion (10^9) years ago, at which time matter was created throughout the volume of the universe. Hence, according to Heim matter did not originate very soon after a “big bang” explosion but more uniformly in scattered “fire-cracker” like bursts, perhaps of galactic proportions. Spontaneous uniform creation of matter, coupled with the partly attractive and partly repulsive force of gravity mentioned in Section 3 resulted in the observed large-scale galactic structure of the universe. Creation of matter continues to this day, though on a very much reduced scale.”
Heim’s Theory of Elementary Particle Structures, T. Auerbach and Illobrand von Ludwiger published by the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 217-231, 1992

Heim’s Theory then starts in an analogous way to the way the Hebrew Sages explain it:

And He created His universe with three books (Sepharim), with text (Sepher) with number (Sephar) and with communication (Sippur).
Kaplan, Aryeh (2004-03-15). Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and Practice (Kindle Locations 445-449). Red Wheel Weiser. Kindle Edition.

Now the Sefer Yetzirah is said to be part of the oral Torah, but we don’t know for sure, so it should be treated as commentary. So we must look for a pattern in the Torah that matches Heim’s Theory in order to consider Heim’s theory a match for the first creation story. The amazing thing is that the Torah’s description of the creation of the Nation of Israel fits the pattern of these three spheres (books) and the organization of the dimensions used in Extended Heim Theory.

If we simply number the 12 sons of Jacob in the order they were born, we get the following:

x1 Gen 29:32 So Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben; for she said, “The LORD has surely seen my affliction. Now therefore, my husband will love me.”
x2 Gen 29:33 Then she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Because the LORD has heard that I am unloved, He has therefore given me this son also.” And she called his name Simeon.
x3 Gen 29:34 She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Now this time my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” Therefore his name was called Levi.
x4 Gen 29:35 And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Now I will praise Yahweh.” Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she stopped bearing.
x5 Gen 30:6 Then Rachel said, “God has judged my case; and He has also heard my voice and given me a son.” Therefore she called his name Dan.
x6 Gen 30:8 Rachel said, “With great wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and indeed I have prevailed.” So she called him Naphtali.
x7 Gen 30:11 Then Leah said, “A troop comes!” So she called his name Gad.
x8 Gen 30:13 Then Leah said, “I am happy, for the daughters will call me blessed.” So she called his name Asher.
x9 Gen 30:18 Leah said, “God has given me my hire [wages] because I have given my maid to my husband.” So she called his name Issachar.
x10 Gen 30:20b Leah said, “...now my husband will dwell with me, because I have borne him six sons.” So she called his name Zebulun.
x11 Gen 30:24 So she [Rebecca] called his name Joseph, and said, “The LORD shall add to me another son.”
x12 Gen 35:18 As her soul was departing (for she died), she [Rebecca] called his name Ben-Oni [son of my sorrow]; but his father called him Ben-Jamin.

There probably is some significance to the names themselves, but at this point I have only looked at the birth order and grouping related to the dimensions used in Extended Heim Theory.

Leah’s first three sons, Reuben, Simion, and Levi, represent the R3 (x,y,z) Spatial Dimensions. Her fourth son, Judah, represents T! (t) Time. Note that this associates the genealogy of Jesus with time!

Rachel’s maid, Bihah, two sons, Dan and Naphtali, represent S2 (x5, x6) the Structure dimensions. These are the dimensions that provide the electromagnetic force. Heim’s initial theory used only these six dimensions.

Leah’s maid, Zilpha, responds with two sons, Gad and Asher, who represent I2 (x7,x8) the Information dimensions.

The next four dimensions are called the God Dimensions because these dimensions contains structures that steer the events of the other dimensions. They are associated with Jacob’s two wives. Leah’s last two sons, Issachar and Zebulun, and Rachel’s two sons, Joseph and Benjamin represent G4 (x9,x10,x11,x12).

Once I recognized this pattern, it was apparent that the Three Spheres (Books) were symbolized by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

What are the chances of this happening if the Holy Scriptures are not the Word of YHWH, the True and Living God, Creator of the Universe?

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