Behold! I’ve started working on Chapter 5 (of 7) of my book “Surprising God.”

The Chapter is called: God is One.

It’s actually about:
• Trinity
• Covenant Bonding
• Agape Love.

Right now I’m slogging through Trinity research (pray for me).

While it’s true that I’ve now come to a place in life where I find great joy in the reality of the triune God, the topic of Trinity darkens my humors. I wouldn’t doubt it if several layers of hell involve intensive academic reading about God’s triune nature.

My negative tingle is well justified.

I’m reading this “Introduction to Trinity.” At some point I approach a landmark—60 pages in—where the writers are finally getting to their definition. My eyes have already gone numb from endless logical indicators (indeed, therefore, moreover, however, thus), countless nominalizations (simplicity, spiration[!], consummation, filiation[!]), and an all-you-can-eat-buffet of other sour forms of academic jargon.

But now, finally, I come to their answer! How to understand the Trinity. My eyes awaken, just a bit, eager for the long awaited light.

First, I read their setup:

“The Father is not the Son.
The Son is not the Father.
The Spirit is not the Father or the Son.”

Okay, fine. So far, so good.

And then I read (I kid you not):

“While these distinct personal ways of being the one God require absolutely no distinction between the persons of the Trinity and the one God, thus preserving divine simplicity, they also exhibit how the persons of the Trinity are truly distinct from each other—by the manner in which they communicate God’s simple essence to each other.”

Ugh!

Think of all the money spent on college, and the hours spent in classrooms, all to come out with this trainwreck of a sentence—at the book’s apex!

To write this poorly, you need advanced training.

If you can unpack this “Introduction to Trinity” sentence—maybe by breaking the sentence up, diagramming it, then soaking it in holy water—what do you find? You’d hope to find a cogent understanding of what the Triune God is.

But, no. You find little clarity at all.

My first question is this. If there are three “distinct personal ways of being the one God,” how is that simplicity? How is that not variation?

Maybe there’s an answer to this basic, rudimentary question, but the writers give no such answer.

Then there’s “the manner in which they communicate God’s simple essence to each other.” What does that even mean, to communicate one’s simple essence to another? If it’s so simple, what is there to communicate? If the communication is echoing within the Godhead, what could be communicated that the interlocutor doesn’t already know?

The writers go on to suggest that “the Father eternally communicates his simple essence to the person of the Son…”

Why does it take so long (eternity) to communicate something so simple? And to a recipient who already knows the content? And what exactly is being communicated?

Do the persons of the Triune God eternally face one another, then twitter compliments to one another, like some old lady mammering to her poodle?

“You’re so perfect, aren’t you? Yes you are! Perfect in every way! Look at you! Who’s my perfect begotten Son? You are!”

What these writers will say is that, when it comes to God, all talk is analogous, and “analogies are partial,” and “all analogies break down at some point.”

Okay, fine.

But that doesn’t mean that every broken analogy is good. Or true.

Reading theology and philosophy for 30 years, I’ve learned a secret:

SOME THINKERS ADORE PARADOX.

I don’t want to go so far as to say they make paradox an idol. But they seem to defend paradox with great fervor (while pursuing clarity with much less fervor).

Many are the roads that end in fog when seeking God.

Sure.

But I think God’s triune nature is not one of those roads.

I say this because, while God doesn’t promise humans omnipotence, or omniscience, God does invite us to share in his triune oneness.

In Jesus’s final prayer to God, he pleads that we believers “may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us . . . that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:21-22).

Many foggy paradoxes might reside in God. But, God’s simultaneous plural nature and monistic nature cannot be one of those paradoxes. Not if we—mere humans—can partake in the same experience.

What’s the answer, then? What is the oneness of God? The bond?

Aha! That’s the treasure I’m unearthing . . .