Many Trinities

Comments coming in toEckhart's Trinity highlight the contrast between inclusive and exclusive, one accepting truth in all its rich, variegated forms, the other rejecting stories different from our own. But the narrow, constricting view limits Divinity, which reveals Itself in many forms—the very point of the Trinity.

I got overwhelmingly affirmative email responses to that blogpost. The religious sister who asked about Diekmann’s comment and wanted to hear more about the Trinity (June 14 post) wrote:

I really appreciated your explanation of trinity to me. I especially like how you describe the resurrection and ascension, as well as the relationships we have. . . . Joseph Campbell says God is not a person.

I appreciate her reference to Joseph Campbell because no one has done more to help cradle Christians out of narrow literalism while directing them toward a deeper spirituality. I’m sure Campbell meant that God is not a humanlike individual. Sister threw in a significant reminder:

You probably know that Campbell was a consultant to the Star Wars movie writer.

I wonder if Campbell is the one who supplied the word “Force” for the movie. I think terms like Life Force, Higher Power, and Energy should be used more and that the pronoun It should be used more often than either He or She. He and She tend to conjure up idols.

Some people who hear the objection to God/He, immediately assume the only alternative is God/She. But the reason for introducing God/She is to mix the images. We need to use all genders—She/It/He—to jolt us into awareness that our familiar God-images vastly underrate Infinity. It’s Something much larger than our puny human reasoning can fathom.

Thank you to all who respond to my writings. Now information to show that a divine trinity is not unique to Christianity.

Buddhism has Three Jewels; Hinduism has the gods Shiva, Vishnu, and Shakti. Gnostic Christians included the feminine in their Trinity—Father, Mother, and Son. Female-centered religions honored maiden, mother, and crone as together making up the triune Goddess they worshipped.

Anthropologist Robert Briffault reports that the Arabian Goddess was triune and known as three Holy Virgins. Ishtar, the Babylonian and Assyrian Goddess known as “Queen of Heaven,” was triune. The Celtic Goddess Brigit was triune, represented either as sisters or daughters. She ruled the British Isles, France, and Spain.

Augustine of Hippo taunted "his pagan countrymen with the absurdity of the notion that the goddess could be one person and at the same time three persons." As Briffault noted, this was a bit of "scathing irony," because Augustine's contribution to Christian trinitarian theology is well-known.

More startling examples of trinities in pre-Christian religions come from Briffault:

Countless triads of Greek goddesses, such as the three Charities, the three Horai, the three Syrens, the three Hesperides, the three Gorgons, the three Erinyes, are primitively scarcely distinguishable from one another....
The Muses were originally also three in number, and were deities of the night heavens, governing the stars. . . . triads of Hellenic goddesses were regarded at will as one or three. They were triune, or three in one. Like them, the great goddess of the Semites was worshipped at Mecca in threefold form as three sacred trees, and was spoken of as the Three Virgins. In Phoenicia and Carthage, as in Krete and ancient Greece, the great goddess was represented by three pillars. . .

Threefold deities are prominent among the races of Northern Europe and among the Celts. Thus Brigit, the Norns, the Walkyries had the threefold character. . . . Similarly the ancient Mexicans worshipped their gods as a trinity denoted by three crosses. The heathen Slavs similarly represented their deity with three heads. The Nordic gods were worshipped at Upsala as a trinity.

Christians liked to blame the devil when they encountered facts that challenged their beliefs. Faced with a ritual in the mysteries of Mithra similar to the Christian Eucharist, Justin Martyr in the second century blamed demons, saying they knew of Jesus’ coming and set up copies ahead of time. He had to make the claim this way because the Christian rite developed after the pagan rite. In like fashion, later Christian missionaries faced with non-Christian trinities blamed the devil. These are the words of one incensed because his charges already worshipped a trinity:

. . . the Indians did worship an idoll called Tangatanga, which they saide was one in three, and three in one. . . . I saide that the Divell by his infernall and obstinate pride (whereby he alwayes pretendes to make himself God) did steale all that he could from the trueth to imploy it in his lyings and deceits.

I find similar befuddlement yet today. Blaming the devil has come out of fashion, but I see strict Christian believers avoiding, disbelieving, explaining away disconcerting facts about other religions. As I stated in Trinity 1, the universe expresses a three-foldedness in its structures, and I’m thrilled that many religions reflect this holy mystery. Sharing the Mystery is something to cherish, not avoid. We Christians have gotta stop claiming to be Number 1.