Trinity

Let silence be my prelude,
for words are poor insulation against what I seek to hold.
Here, where white blaze does not devour the branch,
where seraphim hide their faces,
The firmest mind unravels
I step forward, knowing I will fail.

Giants stumble to the strand- 

What hope have I, with this frail tongue,
when the greatest minds have waded in
only to find the ocean unmoved beneath their feet?

Augustine
who wrestled with the Trinity as Jacob with the angel,
who walked the labyrinth of his own intellect,
who traced the shadows of divine love upon the soul,
who built cathedrals of logic to house the mystery
and yet at the end, dusted his hands and called it futile,
whispering,
If you understand it, it is not God.

Athanasius
the hammer against the Arians,
who stood while the world swayed and said, No, He is God.
Who carved the truth into the bedrock of orthodoxy,
who lit a beacon against the creeping the pull of heresy
and still, even he, in all his blaze,
could not wrap his arms around the sun.

Aquinas
whose mind was a chisel against ignorance,
who sharpened words to their keenest edge,
who spoke of essence and procession,
who wrote until the ink ran dry,
until the words came emptied in his mouth
until at last, after a vision of kavod,
he let his pen fall and murmured, 

It is all straw.

The Cappadocians
Basil, Gregory, Gregory,
who wove a tapestry of words to catch what cannot be caught,
who stood at the borders of language and reached beyond
yet their greatest triumphs were only footholds,
their finest metaphors still cracked beneath the freight
of a God who cannot be measured in human respiration.

Even the councils
Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon
where the mightiest minds gathered to hammer truth
into creeds that would outlive empires
where the words were chosen with care,
guarded as treasure,
wrought like iron
even they, in all their wisdom,
could only say what is, and what is not,
but never how the blaze burns without turning to ash.

For the Trinity is not an equation to be balanced,
not a riddle to be unraveled,
not a puzzle of heaven’s architecture
where one missing piece would make the picture clear.

They named it rightly,
they safeguarded the mystery,
they passed down truth unshaken
but even their tongues trembled at the edge.

For the Infinite does not fit inside the finite.
The mind that spans galaxies is not contained
in the thought of creatures made from grit.

And so, we walk in their footsteps
bold, but not proud,
certain, yet humbled.
We confess what they confessed.
We stand where they stood.
And like them, we bow.

What radiance is this that neither dims nor divides?
What voice is this that speaks, yet never began?
What freight is this that bends the cosmos,
yet enters a womb unbroken?

Not the Sum of Three

The Father, whose voice called the void to order,
who is before the clock had hands to turn,
who is not first as in sequence
but as the fountain is first to the stream.

The Son, whose name does not suffer halves,
who is not lesser than He who sends,
not carved from the primordial by later chisels,
not another word whispered after the first
but the very speech of the Unspoken,
the radiance of the Unseen,
the hand that shaped the grit
and in time bore its freight.

The Spirit, no shadow, no fleeting vapor,
no mere force set loose upon the world
but Lord, proceeding not as from a craftsman’s will,
but from the life that is life itself.
He does not speak alone, yet He is not silent.
He moves where He pleases, yet never departs.

He is

Not Modalism, the lie of masks
for the sea is not merely the the pull,
nor the flame its flickering radiance.
God is not one shape shifting into three,
not a stage with changing scenery,
but One who has never been alone,
nor ever suffered division.

Not Arianism, the heresy of lesser glories
for the sun does not shine in fractions,
nor is the blaze of the forge weaker than its source.
The Son is not a younger echo,
not the highest of made things,
not clay kneeling before its sculptor,
but the life that was before life,
begotten, not built,
eternal, not emerged.

Not Partialism, the folly of fractions
as if the Three were merely thirds,
each a sliver, a limb of the divine.
No man sees the Father and says, He is but one piece.
No soul receives the Spirit and finds Him lacking.
No knee bows before the Son in vain.
Wholly God, wholly One,
wholly Three in Unity.

Not Docetism, the ghost of a Christ unreal
as if the Incarnation were a game,
as if the cross did not bite deep,
as if the blood were an illusion,
as if God would descend only in shadow,
too pure to take on the grit He Himself breathed to life.
No – He wore hunger, walked in dirt,
felt the hammer’s fall,
shivered beneath a sky gone black.
God does not pretend.

Not Macedonianism, the silencing of the Spirit
as if He were but an influence,
a sigh upon the lips of the Almighty,
less than, lower than,
a mere murmur sent but never speaking.
No – He is Lord, as the Father is Lord,
as the Son is Lord,
to be worshiped, not dismissed.

Grasping, quivering, empty hands…

And so we reach, and so we fail.
For He is not like us.
His being is not made of parts,
not woven from strands of logic,
not bound to the chains of our syllables.
To say three persons is to admit we do not know
how infinity may dance without division.
To say one God is to bow before a unity
that does not submit to the rules of men.

We are left grasping at air,
building ladders to the sky from broken planks,
drawing circles around a flame
that burns but does not diminish.

Yet He does not leave us to ignorance.
For though we cannot climb to Him,
He has come to us.

The Son has worn our flesh,
the Spirit has set our hearts alight,
the Father has called us His own.

And so, though we cannot see His fullness,
though our words crack and fail,
though our minds snap beneath the freight of kavod
we bow.
We believe.
We worship.