When we come to prayer, the God to whom we pray, if we pray as Christians, is the God stipulated by the Threefold Name – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The doctrine of the Trinity states, among other things, that the eternity, unity, and mutuality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the final truth of God’s being – beyond and behind which there is no other.
Now, I love praying into mystery. One of my favorite devotional books is the 14th century “Cloud of Unknowing”, which tirelessly (and helpfully!) asserts that God cannot be ‘thought’ into – we must ‘love’ our way into God. For the effort of prayer is not finally an effort of the intellect but an effort of the soul. (And indeed ‘effort’ is really not the right word – prayer at its best is a responding to the impetus of grace.)
Accordingly, when we come into prayer, the important thing is not trying to hold lots of ideas about God in our heads, but rather to let go of our ideas as we embrace the One who ever and always embraces us. (This is sometimes called ‘the apophatic’ way – union with God by way of negation.) We need to be staggered and undone by the Divine Being.
Yes, yes, and yes, I say. But in so doing we must never think that there is a ‘graduation’ beyond the revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Indeed, when we grasp the Trinity, we come to realize that the doctrine includes the apophatic way as part of the revelation itself. Barth helpfully characterizes the Triune God as:
- The Father, who is the Revealer
- The Son, who is the Revelation
- The Spirit, who is the ‘Revealedness’; i.e., the one who brings the Revelation of the Revealer home to us
As such, to be touched and awakened by the Spirit is to be drawn into union with Jesus Christ who is the revelation of the God whose essence, according to St. Augustine, cannot be fully thought or grasped by human minds. Indeed, as Augustine said, “If you can comprehend it, it is not God.”
So, I’ll say it like this…
The Triune God cannot finally be comprehended. But he can be adored. As we contemplate the mystery of God’s Three-in-Oneness and One-in-Threeness, we find ourselves staggered and undone and drawn into mystery that baffles the intellect even as it warms and comforts the heart.
Prayer is finally not a journey beyond the Trinity to some ‘Fourth’ thing lying behind Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; rather, it is but a resting comfortably and safely inside the unbounded boundary of a mystery.
And so we extol God with the great communion of saints in heaven and on earth, saying:
Holy, holy, holy!
Lord God Almighty
early in the morning
our song shall rise to Thee
Holy, holy, holy!
Merciful and mighty
God in three persons
Blessed Trinity!
Holy, holy, holy
Though the darkness hide thee
Though the eye of sinful man
Thy glory may not see
Only Thou art holy,
There is none beside Thee
perfect in power, in love and purity.
Holy, holy, holy
Lord God Almighty
All thy works shall praise Thy name
In earth and sky and sea
Holy, holy, holy
Merciful and mighty
God in three persons
Blessed Trinity!
Amen.
