Trinity - Mystery Math and the Holy Spirit

Current in Carmel - #12 - Trinity
Spirituality column / January 30, 2007

Mystery Math and the Holy Spirit
By Bob Walters

“Seven” may be the Bible’s perfect number and “Twelve” its perfect consensus, but “Three” creates the mystery of Communion.

The Holy Trinity – God the Father, Christ the Son, the Holy Ghost – is God in three persons, not three gods. One God, three manifestations … confounding mathematics.

Three divided by none is one.

Why three? Three is the smallest number for a community. The Trinity teaches the importance God places on community, and provides the key clue into our personal relationship with God.

Ever been to a church that serves communion – the Bread and the Cup? It’s not just a light mid-morning snack. Christ become human – His body and blood – is our physical and spiritual communion with God, through Christ Jesus who physically became us, in the Holy Spirit who reveals God to us.

The Trinity is not mentioned in the Bible, yet God, Christ and The Holy Spirit are clearly the key players of God’s New Covenant. Augustine, a north African universalist Christian in the fifth century, congealed the Biblical manifestations of God into what has been known ever since as the Trinity. Augustine unmistakably saw the Holy community of three as God’s call to our relationship with Him.

Three? One? “The Trinity Are?” “The Trinity Is?”

Fear not. Ever notice, while there is great order in nature, nature has no perfect geometric shapes? The earth is round but not a circle. A tree trunk is straight but not a line. A trillion hexagonal snowflakes fall and no two are alike. Squares and triangles are mathematical specifics, not God’s natural order.

Struggling with the math of the Trinity? Maybe God’s purpose wasn’t about specifics, but instead about relationships … like the one He wants to have with each of us, and the ones we’re supposed to have with each other.

Walters, a Carmel resident, can be reached at rlwcom@aol.com. He is relieved there is evidence God didn’t create math.