If You Must Illustrate the Trinity...

Forget the metaphor of the egg—or the shamrock. Water (three states but one substance!) is worse. Equally bad is the typical man who plays the roles of father, son, and husband.

Why beware such popular images? They each foster one or another of the heresies plaguing the Church in the first four centuries, heresies that were dealt with authoritatively at the Council of Nicea—whose 1700th anniversary we celebrated last year. (You joined that celebration, didn’t you?)

Not even Augustine’s celebrated analogy of “lover—beloved—love” works well, not least because it completely depersonalizes the Holy Spirit.

If one must resort to analogy, the best I’ve found is one I credit to Jeremy Begbie, musician and theologian, and author of provocative extended musings on Theology, Music, and Time (Cambridge University Press, 2000). (Keen readers can look up my review of it, back in 2002, on the Christianity Today website.)

In that book, Professor Begbie merely drops a hint about a “three-note chord” (p. 25). I seem, however, to recall him elaborating on it in a public lecture at Regent College some years later. I hope he has written out his thoughts elsewhere, and I’d like to hear from readers if you have a citation to relay to me. I’ll take up his hint here—but please blame me, not Jeremy, for any nonsense in what follows.

A Special Triad

Let’s look at a very particular three-note chord: the C triad in root position on middle C, denotated in the treble clef. Here are some things that this chord can illustrate about the Trinity.

If we think of the triad being played as such—that is, all three notes simultaneously–we have, as Begbie says, “three distinct, mutually enhancing (not mutually exclusive) sounds…together occupying the same aural space.”

Begbie also adds, “Contrast the confusion of three people speaking simultaneously”—although one immediately thinks of opera, or really any kind of polyphony, in which one has no trouble identifying and enjoying three people singing simultaneously.

Let’s keep it simple, though: three notes in a single chord. Each note is a musical event in itself: C, E, G. Together, they form something greater than the mere sum of the parts: a chord. Again, a chord is itself a single thing even as it is made up of three distinct elements each of which is a thing (or “subsistence”) in itself. Thus a triad forms a kind of trinity: a three-in-one that is more than a mere trio (three different things somehow linked) or triplet (three identical things).

So far, what we’ve seen is true of any triad. I selected the C chord in root position at middle C for several reasons.

First, this chord is right in the centre of everything else. The rest of the piano keyboard is related to it. So is the standard musical staff on which music is commonly written. Hence its root note is known as “middle C.”

Second, the root note, C, determines what the chord is. It’s a C chord, and not something else (like, say, an E-minor chord with a dropped 5th and a diminished sixth in second inversion, which would also contain the notes C-E-G).

Three Special Notes

Let’s explore the individual notes a little more. This middle C note lies outside the staff. Visually, it’s off on its own: it has its own ledger line. It’s transcendent. Yet it also grounds the rest of the chord. (There: that’s as close as I’m ever going to get to giving a nod to Paul Tillich.) Let’s see that note standing for God the Father.

Next, the top note, the G, is completely immersed in the staff. But it occupies a unique and determinative space in that staff: the G line is the line that orients all the rest of the treble staff. (The treble clef is itself a stylized “G” curling around that G-line.) That’s the Holy Spirit: within us, and within all the world, blessing both.

Fourth, the middle note, the E, is both connected to the staff and yet also below/off the staff. Two natures! We might see it as in and of the material world and yet also in and of the heavenly realm. This note could stand for Jesus, the incarnate Word of God.

The E also has a unique role: it determines the nature of the chord: major or minor. It tells us exactly what kind of chord this is.

So there you have it: an analogy for the Trinity that depicts a few interesting things without implying wrong things—unless you insist on looking for trouble. (For instance, the notes aren’t personal, while each member of the Trinity is. Analogies all break down somewhere, and in the case of the Trinity, very quickly.)

Does “C” Help Us See Better?

Having engaged in this little exercise, have we learned anything?

We have learned, at least, that three truly can be one while also remaining three identifiably distinct things: one chord of three notes. That’s an advance on than the three-lobed shamrock attributed to St. Patrick.

Maybe we learn also that three elements can be distinctively themselves while also drawing additional identity and meaning by their relationship to two others: tonic, mediant, and dominant (first, third, and fifth notes of the scale).

The three elements work (sound) as one (chord) even while remaining themselves (separate notes). They produce a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. They produce a whole (the experience of the chord) that otherwise would not exist (as would the three notes played separately).

And we had a little fun in tying the characteristics of each note to properties of each Person.

Still, maybe any such exercise is, at best, a way of helping children and other inquirers get over the worry that the doctrine of the Trinity is a patent contradiction.

Whatever the use of analogies, Christians go on to learn, to love, and to live in communion with the Trinity as the Bible has revealed God to us. And this is the season best to do so, as Trinity Sunday nears!

(Check out TBM’s new minicourse on the Trinity here.)