I have been sharing the thoughts of St. Gregory of Nazianzen about our Triune God. He says, “I cannot grasp the greatness of that one so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light”. Our thought must be, he says, “in continuous motion, pursuing now the one, now the three, and returning again to the unity”. For Gregory our thoughts about God must swing ceaselessly between the “two poles of the antinomy, in order to attain to the contemplation of the sovereign repose of this threefold monad”. What he is saying is that while we think about the Three, Distinct Persons that are God, we must always also think about the fact that they are of ONE SUBSTANCE, equal and undivided. This, of course, is the mystery that faces us as Christians. There is no possible way that our human minds can accurately conceive of God. St. Gregory says, “How can this mystery be grasped save by the aid of an idea – be it that of movement or of development – which is inadmissible?

The Christian Godhead does not dwell within bounds, nor does it spread itself indefinitely. The one would be without honor, the other would be contrary to order. The one would be wholly Judaic, the other Hellenistic and polytheistic. One gains a glimpse of the mystery of the number, three; the deity is neither one nor many. Its perfection goes beyond the multiplicity of which duality is the root. God is Trinity. This fact can be deduced from no principle nor explained by any sufficient reason, for there are neither principles nor causes anterior to the Trinity.

It has only been the Christian religion that has conceived of God as Three-In-One. There are many people in the world who cannot accept our understanding of God. Our understanding of God as Three-In-One comes from our understanding that Jesus is God and Man. Once people accepted the fact that God become a human person in the man Jesus, they had to begin thinking about God in a different way. The Godhead had to be preserved. God is not just a super-human. He is beyond humanity. And yet He became man. Because this is beyond human comprehension, we be-lieve that God’s Spirit has led us to think about God as Trinity. This idea of God being Triune, connects us to God in a very intimate way.