Ages ago, in a seminary course on the Trinity, our professor chided us students, most of us Lutheran, that our tribe had been described by some as “unitarians of the Second Person of the Trinity.” Without missing much more than a beat, the one Assemblies of God student in the seminar chimed in, “I guess that makes my people unitarians of the Third Person of the Trinity.”
The point was shared in good humor, but I have ever since tried to be mindful in my preaching and teaching of the imbalance inherent in resting on a one-legged stool. That was also the moment at which my little mind was stretched enough to let the concept of Holy Trinity out of the intellectual box in which it had been so neatly and tightly stored. That was the moment for me when the Trinity finally ceased to be a What and became fully a Who.
Which is, of course, not at all the same as suggesting that I understand the Trinity, anymore than I can claim to understand my spouse (or my children or closest friends, for that matter). Understanding isn’t the point—relationship is. And Trinity is all about relationship.
