On our way home from Illinois, my wife and I passed through a tollway in Indiana with an abundance of dollar coins. Â Having only a $20 bill, the machine promptly threw to me 13 dollar coins bearing the faces of Susan B. Anthony and several presidents. Â Inscribed on the rim of the newer presidential dollars is the characteristic phrase E pluribus unum, which means “out of many, one.”
This is a wonderful phrase to describe democracy, but as I pondered its meaning, I realized it is a terrible way to describe the Trinity. Â As orthodox Christians, we must not prioritize the one over the many nor the many over the one. Â This is true not only for priority of place, but also for temporal priority. Â The oneness of God does not arise out of the many persons. Â Neither does God’s plurality of persons flow from his one essence. Â God is fundamentally simple, that is, not comprised of parts. He is eternally and most basically both one and many.
Gregory of Nazianzen famously said that whenever he thought of the one, his mind was inevitably drawn to the many. Â And whenever he thought of the many, his mind was likewise drawn to the one. This is perhaps the best way to describe how we ought to think of our incomprehensible Triune God. While the founding fathers of the United States have many great lessons to teach us, a Trinitarian lesson from U.S. currency is not one of them.
You know I find the most helpful way to think of the trinity is to assume the tripartite view of man. Spirit, body, soul, made in the image of God. And I don’t think of myself as three different people.
For what it’s worth.
Thanks Philip. I appreciate the comment, but I reject the tripartite view of man as does much of the reformed tradition. Spirit and soul are the same thing, though the words typically get used in different places to emphasize particular faculties.
I’m generally suspicious of any analogy we could present to conceptualize the trinity. Another example typically given is that I can be a father, son and uncle at the same time. The problem with these types of analogy are that God really is three distinct persons. He’s also a personal God in his unity. The three persons interpenetrate one another exhaustively. We don’t have any examples of this other than Godhead.