January 20: The Trinity – who’s in charge here, anyway?

This famous icon by Andrei Rubliev, captured here by a wonderful free program called blockposters, is often referred to as the “Old Testament Trinity,” although its real name is simply “Trinity.” It is an icon of God’s presence in community and in hospitality. It was in the context of hospitality that Abraham was visited by angels and promised not only a son in his old age but also more descendants than there are stars in heaven or sand on the earth.

The most relevant thing I can say about the Holy Trinity comes from an ancient document that many Christians today consider most irrelevant, the Creed of St. Athanasius, written in the fifth or sixth century and attributed to the 4th Century St. Athanasius although he didn’t live long enough to actually write it. The Athanasian Creed, also called Quicumque vult (whomsoever would be saved) actually contains a bunch of stuff I don’t believe is absolutely necessary for salvation (shhhhh!). But right in the middle of this long, dense, rhythmically redundant text we read this:

And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another.

Now that is a Trinitarian theology that speaks to me and, I hope, to all who come looking for a God present in community. It is that nugget at the heart of the Athanasian Creed that is a battle cry for many Anglo-Catholic churches on both sides of the Atlantic; these words are in fact etched into the stone archway of one of the several churches in London’s East End dedicated to being in community with the poorest of the poor in neighborhoods that includes numbers of sex workers ostracized by the rest of the community. Like the food that Abraham set before the three strange visitors under the oaks at Mamre, these are words of welcome and promise.