Understand me, I’m not saying I don’t understand “the Trinity.” Actually, I *don’t* understand the Trinity, but so far as I can tell, neither does anyone else, so I feel in good company, anyway. What I really don’t get is, why is this a problem for anyone, or why is this question hard for us to respond to?

It seems to me that what we do, and don’t, and maybe understand about the Trinity is very similar to any number of other things on the fringes of understanding. Talk to a physicist, or pick up a copy of Scientific American, and ask about “String Theory” or “General Relativity” or “Quantum Mechanics,” and tell me you’re not just as confused as with the Trinity! There are some things that are clear, one by one, themselves, and there are some ways in which they just don’t go together quite right, and there’s the resigned response, “well, that’s just the way it is,” and the pragmatic response “these strangely contradictory ideas are the best explanation we can find for our real experience: they fit the data, that’s how the world acts, and our understanding or lack of it just has to find its own way to catch up with reality.”

Then, there’s this guy on Saturday morning cable TV who offers to teach you to paint. He makes colored blobs on paper, I make colored blobs on paper; he ends up with a landscape or a portrait, I end up with … colored blobs on paper! And the worst part is his explanation: “just put it here or there, whatever you feel like, have fun with it!” Why does that work for him? Why does it not work for me? Who knows? But there can be no doubt!

Or, there’s that car in my driveway. I happen to know a little bit about the theory of how cars work. I used to be able to fix ‘em. But when I open a modern hood, it just makes me cry But I get in the car, I turn the key, and I drive away: my sad inability to comprehend the modern automobile well enough to make one does not mean they don’t work, doesn’t make me doubt I’ll make it to work tomorrow, and frankly, doesn’t cross my mind more than a couple times a year.

So there’s no question a=but that there’s “a Trinity mystery.” But where’s the problem?