Trinity: Two Guys and a Bird

The three-fold depiction of God in St. Paul's famous apse

In my first year of Seminary, my German-born liturgy professor Teresa Berger keenly observed “The Trinity is not two guys and a bird”! Her point, terribly well illustrated, is that as much as we visually imagine the Triune God as an old man with a beard, a younger man with a beard, and a dove with a halo, that image is a terribly misleading and often dangerous mischaracterization. That the almighty and everlasting God – the One who alone transcends every possible boundary and definition – could somehow be confined to these three ridiculously overused images would be preposterous. But somehow, in this tradition that so often depicts our holiest figures in art & architecture everywhere, we’ve become artistically and even theologically dependent on picturing the Divine as two white guys and their avian companion.

Over the last four or so years, my annual tradition (along with many other enthusiasts of nerdy church humor) has been to watch this famously funny yet pointedly biting video every Trinity Sunday. In it, the hilariously animatronic St. Patrick is repeatedly flummoxed by two Leprachaun friends pointing out wryly that every analogy he tries to use for the Trinity is incomplete and even accidentally heretical! Witty as it is, the comedic sketch makes a poignant message – our images and analogies, no matter how clever, will always fail to capture even a fragment of the indefinable and ineffable Deity.

One image, however, that comes much closer than most is the stunningly powerful Holy Trinity by Andrei Rublev. By far the most famous Russian icon in Christian history, the 15^th Century work powerfully portrays the Divine Persons as three notoriously winged, haloed and markedly androgynous figures, seated at a table around what one might identify as the Blessed Sacrament. Most remarkable of all, the table leaves an open space right at the front directly at the point where the gazes of the three holy figures meet. That open space, as theologians and art scholars have often suggested, is the place for each of us, as the beloved children of God, to experience the all-consuming welcome of the Holy One. It is not that the believer comes to the table to be a member of the Trinity, or even to approach it as if on an equal footing with the Divine. But it is to receive the invitation to be reconciled, re-membered, into the full family of God. That open space at the table is the place where we come to love God not distantly but up close, as dearest kin and greatest friend and beloved parent.

In his Trinity Sunday sermon this week, Fr. Austin said wisely that we are called to “enter into the space where we can both trust and question the way we are supposed to as human beings created in the image of God.” It is a difficult balance to both obey trustingly and question faithfully the movements of the Divine in our daily lives. 

Fortunately, all of us here at St. Paul’s had the honor to know and love a man whose very life was a model of this powerful grace and faith. In my next post, you can read about our beloved friend & parishioner Luis, whose dedicated service to the Triune Lord continues to inspire all of us in the St. Paul's community.