“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the Trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus”.[1] These are the words of Thomas Jefferson, but the sentiment they express can equally be heard trotting off contemporary lips. Indeed, they are quoted approvingly by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, where he suggests for good measure that the doctrine is not only muddle-headed but dangerous because “[r]ivers of medieval ink, not to mention blood, have been squandered over the ‘mystery’ of the Trinity, and in suppressing deviations such as the Arian heresy”.[2]

While most Christians would not go so far in their rhetoric today, there is nevertheless a widespread sneaking suspicion that the contemporary church would find itself in a stronger position if it forgot about, or at least played down, the doctrine of the Trinity. After all, the word “Trinity” itself is not in the Bible, is it? And wasn’t the doctrine of the Trinity only established at the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D.? If the Christian faith is to have a contemporary, relevant and culture-forming voice today, then surely it would do well if not to renounce adoption like the Trinity, then quietly to retire it to a place where it can do less harm and be less of an embarrassment. For many Christians today, the Trinity is either filed in the “too hard” box of doctrine or seen an abstruse curio that has no concrete impact on everyday life and should be left to the hair-splitting academic theologians with nothing better or more relevant to think about.

It is my aim in this opening chapter to show that this is not only a scandal for theology but also for Christian cultural engagement and the voice of Christianity in the marketplace of ideas. I want to demonstrate how the doctrine of the Trinity is far from a recondite idea in a dusty corner of Christian theology, and is in fact the very heartbeat of a contemporary, informed, deep Christian engagement with culture. Far from being embarrassed by the doctrine of the Trinity and far from seeking simply to defend it, Christians with a desire to understand and shape our contemporary culture should act towards the Trinity in the same way that Charles Spurgeon urged his listeners to act towards the scriptures in general:

Suppose a number of persons were to take it into their heads that they had to defend a lion, a full-grown king of beasts! There he is in the cage, and here come all the soldiers of the army to fight for him. Well, I should suggest to them, if they would not object, and feel that it was humbling to them, that they should kindly stand back, and open the door, and let the lion out![3]

In this chapter my aim is to “let the Trinity out” by showing how it provides a compelling and sophisticated Christian alternative to some major problems and questions of philosophy and society.

 

Giving content to the empty signifier “God”

 

It was Friedrich Nietzsche who, observing the religious and social formalism of 19th-century German society, likened truth to a coin that has lost its imprint and now circulates as a blank and meaningless token:

 

truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.[4]

 

The word “God” today circulates in our society as just such a worn-down coin, no longer carrying any determinate content but acting as a placeholder for the projection of whatever meanings our desires or our prejudices choose to give it.[5] Our discussion of the Trinity in this chapter will seeks to re-stamp that old, worn out coin with the image of the God of the Bible, and to accomplish that task we need (with all due respect to Julie Andrews) to start before the very beginning. To begin with the Bible’s own “In the beginning. . .” would risk skipping over the fact that “before” the beginning of creation (for want of a better way of putting it!) there was God, and that in a number of places the Bible gives us details about the sort of existence enjoyed by God before he created the world. If the term “prehistory” designates a time of which no authoritative written records remain, and “history” begins with the emergence of the first writing, then Christians find themselves in the jaw-dropping position of having a history that stretches back before the beginning of time. In this chapter we will explore what the Bible reveals of God’s existence before creation, not least for the reason that it is one of the most foundational of all biblical truths for shaping the Christian’s attitude to, behavior in, and engagement with contemporary thought and culture.

 

[1] Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp on July 30, 1816.

[2] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston, MA: Mariner) 54.

[3] The Complete Works of C. H. Spurgeon, vol. 42: Sermons 1896, sermon 2467: “Christ and his Coworkers”.  Available at: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/sermons42.html

[4] Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”, in Philosophy and Truth, trans. and ed. Daniel Breazeale (Atlantic Heights, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979) 84.

[5] Frederiek Depoortere makes this point in Badiou and Theology (London: Continuum, 2009) 23.