Humility and the Trinity
The Search for Truth is a Process, One That Leads Us to a Divine Community
An egg has three parts — the shell, the white, and the yolk. But it is one egg.
Water has three forms — liquid, ice, vapor. But it is one substance.
A woman can be a wife, a mother, and an employer. But she is still one woman.
All these illustrations attempt to explain the Triune God and all of them fail. Some are even wildly off the mark. Which is no surprise, since the Trinity is a mystery.
The doctrine of the Trinity says that God is one being, existing in three distinct persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not three gods, but one God in three persons. This is a difficult concept, one that separates us from our religious cousins the Jews and the Muslims.
Although the word “Trinity” is never mentioned in the Bible, Jesus hints at it in the Gospel of John. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,” says Jesus. “All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (16:13, 15). Clearly, there is a deep relationship between Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father.
In the face of such a divine mystery, it is good to practice humility. In particular, intellectual humility. “No one knows everything,” reports The Washington Post. “The idea of intellectual humility has been around for centuries, with philosophers deeming it a virtue to be aware of and acknowledge our limitations.”
Yes, intellectual humility is a virtue. But it is not widely practiced.
Here is the problem: We don’t like to acknowledge our limitations. We think we are correct, whether we are speaking about politics, child-rearing, human sexuality, or how to load the dishwasher. It’s been said that in every household, there is a person who stacks the dishwasher like a Scandinavian architect and a person who loads the dishwasher like a racoon on drugs.
You know who you are.
Point is, we all tend to think we are right. However we do something, we figure that it must be the best way to do it. And this causes problems for us, in our homes, churches, communities, and nation. If we are politically Red, we think that it is wrong to be Blue. If we are Blue, we don’t understand how a person can be Red. We scratch our heads and look at people who have a different understanding of life, whether they are urban, rural, young, old, gay, straight, trans, immigrant or native-born.
But guess what? No one knows everything. The complexity of life, like the complexity of the Trinity, demands that we practice humility. The problem is, we don’t want to do it. “Intellectual humility is hard,” says Tenelle Porter, an assistant professor of psychology at Rowan University. It is hard “because we want to be right, and we think we’re right.”
The world would be a better place if we all practiced a little humility. Over the past decade or so, psychologists have been suggesting that humility might actually be an antidote to rising political polarization in the United States.
That’s an issue even more important than dishwasher-loading.
So, how can God the Trinity help us to become more humble? For starters, the Trinity suggests that the search for truth is a process. Jesus says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (vv. 12-13). Jesus is speaking to his followers on the night before his own death, and he is trying to prepare them for the future. But he does not perform an enormous data dump on them, telling them how to think and act and feel in every potential situation.
No, he knows that they cannot absorb everything all at once, so he says that when “the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” The search for truth is a process.
In my novel War Bug, a Methodist pastor named Harley Camden sits down for coffee with a church member named Andy Stackhouse. Andy is upset about changes in the church, so he says to Harley, “I’m just concerned that our church — and even more so, our denomination — is getting away from the Bible.”
Harley sips his coffee and wonders how to respond. Then he has an inspiration and says, “Andy, I know that you are a Civil War buff.”
“Absolutely.”
“Think back to the 1860s,” says Harley. “One hundred and sixty years ago. Southern preachers took the Bible literally, and they defended slavery. They asked who could question the Word of God when it said, ‘slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling.’ That’s from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.”
“Yes, I guess that made sense to them,” says Andy, “at the time.”
“And in Paul’s letter to Titus: ‘tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect.’ You don’t believe that, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” says Andy. “Of course not.”
“The Christians who wanted to preserve slavery had the literal words of the Bible to back them up,” says Harley. “They had all of the clearest scripture verses.”
The Bible said for slaves to be submissive. But the Holy Spirit came along and guided us into the truth. The search for truth is a process, one that is still going on. We should never become too certain about our correctness.
In addition, the Trinity illustrates humility by being a community. Yes, it is true that God is one God, the Almighty Creator of all that exists. God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. God is eternal, infinite, and unchangeable. God is outside of space, time, and matter. As the praise song says, our God is an “Awesome God.”
But at the same time, God is in an intimate relationship with God’s own self as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is ongoing communication between the three persons of the Trinity, which Jesus reveals when he says that the Spirit “will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (v. 13).
Within the community of the Trinity, there is constant communication between the Holy Spirit, the Father, and the Son — also known as the Word. The first letter of John says, “There are three that testify in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one” (1 John 5:7).
This is a model for us, as we listen to each other and learn from each other in the communities of our families, friends, congregations, and neighborhoods. When we talk, we learn that none of us is right all the time. We discover that we have much to teach each other, and that we need to learn from each other.
Finally, God the Trinity helps us to become humbler by showing love and generosity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit want nothing but the best for each other, and for each of us. Jesus reveals this when he says that the Spirit “will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14-15).
There is no competition within the Trinity, but rather a desire to support each other, glorify each other, and share the gifts that each possesses. In the end, they work together for our benefit, gathering all of God’s truth and declaring it to us. The apostle Paul illustrates the selfless work of the Trinity so well when he offers this blessing, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you” (2 Corinthians 13:13).
The mystery of the Trinity is revealed in a truth-filled, loving and generous relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is a relationship that we can imitate, with gratitude and humility.