“…𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘀, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲…”

“Trinity Sunday,” a wise man said to me when I was a young priest (many, many years ago), “is the one Sunday on which no clergyman should be allowed to preach.” There’s more than a kernel of truth to his 𝘣𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘰𝘵. It’s certainly true that 𝙣𝙤 𝙤𝙣𝙚 can grasp the truths Trinity Sunday celebrates, and few preachers, ancient or modern, are p to the challenges it presents.

Nonetheless, in many parishes this Sunday, the stately and intricate phrases of the Athanasian Creed will be recited and its Trinitarian faith will be preached on (by me, included, who should know better). Though the Athanasian Creed is lacking in the American 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯 𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳, the American Church is 𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳 among Anglicans in not printing this ancient version of the Creed in its Prayer Book. In spite of that, for generations many American parishes have sung it on this day.

In younger years, I spent Trinity Sunday engrossed in the wonderfully obscure repetitions and delightful Latinisms of the Creed. “Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly…we worship God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance.” And so, on it rolls, if not tripping off the tongue, at least tantalizing to the mind.

And yet, if we allow ourselves to fall into its phrases, we’ll find ourselves instructed by its words. Its repetitions and reiterations draw us in like a Bach fugue, its verbal interplay taking us into Truths beyond our comprehension.

The Creeds that are our daily teachers: the Apostles’ Creed at the Offices and the Nicene at the Eucharist are happy anchors of our Faith. While the words are pregnant with meaning, they’re straightforward in their presentation. Not so the Athanasian. It reminds us of an essential but sometimes shaded aspect of our Faith: the Athanasian Creed helps us to hold on to essentials of the Faith by telling us not only what we 𝙙𝙤 believe, but also by insisting there are things we 𝙙𝙤 𝙣𝙤𝙩 believe—and even more importantly—insisting that much of the Truth about God is completely and forever beyond us.

“The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Holy Ghost incomprehensible…and yet there are not three Incomprehensibles…but one Incomprehensible.”

God, St Athanasius’ Creed ponderously but enticingly insists, is utterly beyond us. We cannot understand Him and we never will. He is, the Creed proclaims, “uncreated,” “eternal,” “incomprehensible,” “almighty”: and we are not. We never will be.

Even in Heaven, when Scripture tells us we’ll see God “face to face,” we won’t ever (and “ever” is a long time in Heaven) understand What we’re looking at. You and I will 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 remain what we are: created, contingent and limited. Our minds, one of God’s greatest gifts, are capable of great things, but understanding God isn’t one of them.

𝘊𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘰, we say at the beginning of the Creed. “I believe.” We don’t begin saying 𝘤𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘰, “I think.” “I think about one God…” doesn’t quite work. Thoughts don’t save us. Belief does. When we say “I believe” at the beginning of the Creed, we’re not saying “It’s my opinion…” We’re saying “This is what my life is about. I ground myself in these truths and live them day by day.” The Athanasian Creed isn’t just a maze of convoluted statements about God, though that’s what it may seem. It’s an attempt to help us ground ourselves in the depths of the mystery of Who God Is. The Creed tells us how little we understand God not to dismiss our intellect, but so we can see that the intellect itself isn’t enough. God wants – requires – more than our thoughts. He requires that we give ourselves to Him completely. That’s what the labyrinthine passages of the Creed tells us.

The Athanasian Creed focuses on two things. First, “…the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity…” Second, “the right Faith is that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man… not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh but by taking of the Manhood into God.”

It doesn’t explain to us 𝘩𝘰𝘸 God is Three is One, it just tells us He is (St Maximus the Confessor delightfully wrote “God is beyond the rules of our arithmetic”). It doesn’t explain 𝘩𝘰𝘸 God became a human being but it does insist that He did so. “Not by changing God into a human being but by taking a human being into God.”

These two truths are at the heart of our religion: “this is the Catholic Faith…” the Creed says at its beginning and again at its end. These aren’t just facts to be accepted: they’re truths to be lived.

What does 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 mean?

Ah, now 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚'𝙨 the challenge! It’s not agreeing to the words of the Creed that’s so hard; it’s living 𝙖𝙨 𝙞𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙚.

How do we do that?

Here’s one of the best answers I’ve ever seen to that question: “By being cheerful when it’s difficult to be cheerful, patient when it’s difficult to be patient; by continuing on when we want to give up, by keeping silent when we want to talk, by being agreeable when we want to be disagreeable.” Fr Augustine Hoey, an Anglican monk about 70 years back said this in answer to the question, “What makes a saint a saint?”

God revealed Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit so we could become saints, so we could become holy. Why? Because He made us to be with Him in Heaven and Heaven’s population is limited ONLY to saints (sorry, His rules, not mine). It’s where God 𝙞𝙨 all, 𝙩𝙤 all.

St Athanasius said “God became like us so we could be like Him.”

The truth of Trinity Sunday, the Truth of the Athanasian Creed, the truth of the Gospels, is that God 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨 want us to be like Him. But to really enter into that Trinitarian truth, we have to spend the rest of the year, day by day, living the incomprehensible truths we recite on this day.