Richard Rohr, OFM, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, in his book of daily meditations entitled A Spring Within (p.217), comments on today’s passage from the Hebrew scriptures in relation to the Trinity. “In Genesis, God says, ‘Let us make humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves’ (see 1:26). It is quite interesting that the plural form is used. It seems almost an intuition of what we will later call the Trinity. One could see this as an early capsulation of what finally becomes the revelation of God as community, God as relationship itself, a God who, for Christians, is seen as a mystery of perfect giving and perfect receiving, within and without. I personally take the pattern of God as the central template and pattern of all reality—which we now see in the atom, the ecosystem, and the planets and galaxies of the universe. Everything lives in cycles and orbits and very creative balancing acts.”

He goes on to say (pp. 257-258), “For too many Christians, the doctrine of the Trinity was unfathomable, abstract, and boring theology because they tried to process it with their left brain, their dualistic mind. . . . it was not much more than a speculative curiosity or mathematical conundrum (yet surely never to be questioned by orthodox Christians). . . . The Trinity cannot be proved rationally. You must experience its flow in your life on different levels . . . have moments where you know that a Big Life is happening in you (Holy Spirit), yet beyond you (Father), and also as you (Christ)! . . . Most of us began by thinking of God as One Being and then tried to make God into three. However, what I want you to do—as the early fathers of the Greek Church in the 4^(th) century did—is start with three, focus on the nature of relationship between them, and recognize that such relationality creates ONE.”

If you find that way of coming to know the Trinity as intriguing as I do, you may want to check out The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity by Cynthia Borgeault and The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation by Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell.