The Trinity

Today is Trinity Sunday. As a conservative Evangelical, I believed in the Trinity. I embraced the dogma as a standard of Christian orthodoxy, but I never gave much thought to the process by which the dogma was established and the implications for the authority of the Church. This became a major issue during my journey into the fullness of the Church. Much has been written about this issue in recent years, so I will not even attempt to duplicate it here.

I have also been struck in recent years by how the reality of the Trinity regularly enters into Catholic belief and practice. I have heard more explicit implications of the Trinity in three years as a Catholic than I heard in thirty years as an Evangelical Protestant.

One example is: God is love. If God is outside all created things, then how was love expressed before something was created to love? Because God is Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are in an eternal love relationship; divine love is not conditional on creation.

We love – need love and do love – because we are made in the image of the Triune God, and for all eternity God is love. This is foundational to all Christian thought.