A QUANTUM GOD

3rd June 2007 : TRINITY SUNDAY : Year C
Proverbs 8:1-4, 23-31 : Romans 5:1-5 : John 16:12-15

So I’m back at the University of Western Australia. I’m part of a rough band of what one of my Politics tutors would later call “young intellectuals” and I’m studying English, which in UWA-speak meant English LITERATURE. (We openly scoffed at Harold Robbins – and at anyone sub-literate enough to mention his name.)

But not all is well in the Garden. Rumour has it that in the Department of Philosophy they sit around discussing whether anything exists if they cannot apprehend it with one or more of their five senses. In other words, if yon philosophers can’t see, hear, touch, taste or smell it, does it exist?

Weird, man. Real freaky. I mean, like, “young intellectual” or not, I had no doubts at all about the existence of certain things or people that at any given point in the time-space continuum were beyond the capabilities of my sensory systems.

Flash forward to May and June 2007 and I’m sitting waiting for an appointment and getting real immersed in a New Scientist article on Schrödinger’s cat, the poor beast in a box that’s rigged up to produce cyanide gas if certain conditions prevail.
Schrödinger’s cat is an illustration of the New Physics – Quantum Theory. Deals with matter at sub-atomic levels. That’s small. Smaller than small. Smaller than the topmost atom at the peak of a pinhead small.

Here’s the thing. Schrödinger’s cat sez that until we know what’s happened to the cat by taking a peak inside the box, then at any given moment UNTIL we look, sed feline beastie is both dead AND alive!

Defies logic, doesn’t it? Reminds me of those philosophy students three decades ago.

Problem is, science, in its inimitable fashion, had long since demonstrated that these sub-atomic particles could – and did – exist in several different places ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Controlled experiments can demonstrate, for instance, that an atom can exist in three or more places AT THE SAME TIME.

If it reminds anyone of all those parallel universe stories and movies we keep seeing, don’t worry. It’s not accidental. Yes, we are talking about parallel universes, states of existence, etc. At least fictionally.

Scientifically, no one, apparently, has leapt from Quantum theory and sub-atomic particles to more complex collections of atoms, such as leaves or mice or humans but if I were a gambler I would bet someone’s thought about it …

All of which is a long-winded way of suggesting the Church has long had its own Quantum Theology, namely the doctrine of the Trinity – the One God who is three Persons AT THE SAME TIME; one in three yet three in one.

I have to admit Trinity reminds me again of those philosophy students, and now Schrödinger’s Cat and Quantum theory. Of course the Church doesn’t call it Quantum Theology or anything like that. This is just as well because Quantum theory, as opposed to theology, posits a well-nigh de facto infinity of possible states of existence whereas the Church in its conservative wisdom will only give us three possibilities – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

For several reasons Trinity is a most confusing and aggravating doctrine, not least of which is because it IS a doctrine.
For one thing, as I’ve sed on other occasions, despite our best and most ingenious attempts we cannot conceive of or produce a single analogy that adequately describes Trinity. ALL our analogies ultimately fail because none of our analogies can restrict themselves to three and ONLY three different parts.

S. Patrick’s three-petalled clover has a stem, or can’t exist separately from its mother branch or twig. A peeled apple contains things like seeds as well as a peel, flesh and core. Ice, water and steam come close but they rely on external agents and cannot exist independently. That is, ice must have a drop in temperature; steam requires heat. We do not find them together at the same time but rather changing from one form to another.

But, in addition, for those of us who value such things, Trinity seems to exist outside holy scripture. Flashing back to my pew-warming days in the Parish of Christ Church, Claremont, I still remember the then-Assistant Curate, one Peter Basil Ratnam Manuel, now Rector of Bayswater, preaching a Trinity sermon in which he spoke the following sentence: “It’s not in the bible, you know.”

I remember feeling outraged. I felt cheated. I felt as if the Church had pulled a swifty and was operating under false pretences. Silently I screamed, Foul! but young Pete, having amused himself by this shock pronouncement, happily preached on, offering a pretty sound analogy of his own – the sun as heat, light and radiant energy.

At least Peter didn’t try to fob us off the old “it’s-a-Mystery-and-ya-can’t-understand-a-Mystery-or-it-wouldn’t-be-a-Mystery-any-more” line. Not that Trinity isn’t a Mystery but we so often miss the point about Mystery and use Mystery as an excuse to stop thinking about it. The point is that Mystery offers an invitation to participate in, to wrestle with, become involved in it.

And so we must. Because, just as we cannot have a healthy spirituality if we banish Trinity to our back-burners hoping it will fade away, equally we cannot in any healthy way dismiss it as a fanciful intrusion into our comfortable spiritual life by saying, Well, it’s not in holy scripture so it can’t be kosher.

The reason is, as I suggest in the pewsheet, that today, right now, we each have the same sorts of experiences of the Living God as the people of the Christian scriptures.
Namely, we do have those moments when God is for us a caring and protective parent-like figure. But sometimes we find ourselves filled with gut-wrenching compassion of Jesus and know God in that all-consuming way. At other times we move with the creative energy and passion of the Spirit, find words and ideas and strength that seem to come from nowhere.

This is the experience of the early Church. This is our experience. We cannot blame our ancestors in the faith for trying to make sense of it and ultimately creating the doctrine of the Trinity. Privately, I often suspect it was an ill-conceived enterprise but I do understand the impulse to carve out the doctrine.

What these people were doing was actually entering into the Mystery and engaging it, not side-lining it. But just as our Trinitarian analogies inevitably fail, so does our wrestling. But the point is never to win the bout. We ARE talking about the Living God here – and even though Jacob apparently won his wrestle with God, he left with a permanent injury and perhaps a life-long question about who really won …

The point is – and this is true for all of our spiritual journey, engagement and encounter – the point is that we learn and grow and become stronger by these very acts of participation. For instance, I’ve been regular at my local gym for a few months now and I can do more or do it more easily or for longer than I could when I first began. How many bicep-curls does anyone imagine I could do if I simply sed, It’s a mystery to me how anyone can lift that much weight??

But the fact is it IS a mystery how anyone can lift that much weight but by giving it a go, by engaging the dread machines, by continuing to participate in the mystery, who knows? maybe one day I too will be one of those hunky sweaty dudes who exude as much attitude as perspiration and ripple away as if they emerged from the womb that way!

As for valid objections that we don’t find Trinity in scripture, perhaps we expect too much wanting neat answers and ready-made, ready-formed conclusions. It’s as dangerous as missing the point of Mystery because when we get the pro-forma stuff laid out neat-as-a-pin and only have to go through the motions to make it work, then we’re simply acting automatically, without having to do any thinking or engaging.

The Living God is not a series of pre-defined propositions or spiritual templates that we simply call up and accept as-is or tweak to our liking. God asks for a relationship. We can only have a relationship with those beings to whom we bother to talk, with whom we walk, to whom we go to share our joys and sorrows and successes and aggravations. This is what makes a relationship LIVING. This is why I always refer to the LIVING God – to remind myself that God is not a theory but as complex and worthy of my full attention as any other person with whom I seek to be in relationship.

So where do we go with this? Honestly, I don’t know, except to say that the journey has not ended. As good as our relationship with the Living God may be, we ALWAYS have something more to learn, something to bring, offer and receive. Praise be to the Living God for that!

And, of course, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all!