by Tim Giles

Created on: May 28, 2011   Last Updated: May 29, 2011

The core belief of Christianity is the Incarnation: Jesus Christ is equal to the God of Genesis, the creator and maintainer of all things. I don't think any other religion makes a comparable claim. Judaism so reveres God that it was reluctant to say his name. Islam believes that God is so great that artistic representation of a created thing is irreverent. The ancient Greeks, before monotheism, believed in a multiplicity of gods who interacted with humans.

The doctrine of the Trinity took hundreds of years to develop. Its major opponent was Arianism, which held that Jesus was God, but lesser than the Father and not of the same substance. The outcome was forcibly imposed by the emperor Constantine who wanted a uniform belief system throughout his empire.

That the creator would humble Himself to live among us is literally incredible. We must depend on revelation, not our own reasoning powers. Jesus had a very hard life, harder than any one of us. To be born in an occupied territory is an unusual choice. We cannot protest to Him that life is hard.

He had to approach us humbly in order to preserve our free will, itself an incredible gift. Could we imagine ourselves making a robot that could do whatever it wanted, even refusing to obey?  If he arrived among us to the blare of trumpets, perhaps in the form of a giant, perhaps temporarily, for example, attaching a horn to our foreheads to get our attention, we would be compelled to believe.

The aspect of the Trinity that I have been contemplating is: When did Jesus know that He was God? If He knew it throughout His earthly life, He would be more than human. Some say that He did not know His identity until He returned to the Father after the Crucifixion. John’s Gospel has Him telling Philip at the Last Supper “Do you not know that I am the Father and He is in Me?” Perhaps the Father declared His identity during the Agony in the Garden and assured Him that they would die together.

The concept of the Trinity is the source of speculation for all of us. We rely on faith, not learning, that Jesus came to save all of us. He created all of us in love and knew at our creation how we would use our free will and he created us anyway. Should we believe the concept of the Trinity? We could not imagine a more loving God.

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