The Holy Trinity

Traditional Christianity embraces the doctrine of the Holy Trinity: God is one in essence but tripersonal, operating as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Mathematicians might well ask how three can be one, but Christians accept it as revealed truth. Jews and Muslims, Christianity's Abrahamic cousins, consider the doctrine repugnant; the Jews insist that Yahweh's unique solitude is compromised by the doctrine, and the Muslims deny that Allah can have any associates. Nevertheless, virtually all Christians (Unitarians excepted) must affirm this central tenet, following the commandment of Jesus as expressed in (appended to?) Matthew's gospel: ÒGo therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. . . .' (Matt 28:19 NRSV).

John Donne, a seventeenth century Anglican priest, would have naturally subscribed to this doctrine as an objective fact. He begins one of his most famous sonnets ÒBatter my heart, three-personed God.' What then follows is an impassioned plea for regeneration in which the speaker addresses the Trinity as a torrid lover. Using paradox and analogy--fitting devices both for theological reflection and poetic discourse since both attempt to translate the ineffable into language--Donne rehearses the drama of Christians' fickle nature in the love dance with their God.

The speaker cannot 'rise and stand' unless he be 'o'erthrow[n]' and 'ben[t].'

Why? What is it that prevents him from standing?

Notice the tension between what the speaker knows is his duty--to love God--by virtue of his 'Reason,' and what the speaker experiences--his captivity to sin--as he expresses in the following:

The 'enemy' of God, in traditional language, Satan, has captured the speaker's 'heart,' which the speaker has begged God to 'batter.' It is as though the speaker can no longer withstand the nuptial advances of his 'betrothed' and so petitions the triune God for remedy:

Rich with irony, these lines ask God to 'divorce' (but isn't marriage insoluble?), to 'imprison' (but doesn't God respect free will?), to 'ravish' (but is God sexual?). The point, here expressed in the metaphor of anguished, unrequited love--is that the speaker cannot return to his original, graceful state without God's taking the initiative. The beauty of it is, of course, that God already has in the Eternal Yes to which the speaker affirmed at his baptism. Sin may separate us from God, may capture our Reason--that which is the image of God in us--but when we return to our senses, as it were; when we invite, nay demand that God 'break that knot again,' we may be assured that our feeble love shall be returned.

Why didn't Donne begin ÒBatter my heart, almighty God'? Why the emphatic 'three-personed God'? Donne's peers understood the Trinity as an ontological fact, but that understanding does not undermine contemporary Trinitarian explanations, which seek to describe God's essentially communal nature. God is a trinity of persons because that is how Christians have come to experience the divine. Love demands the Other; Love seeks the Beloved. God as some solitary monarch or as some wholly self-sufficient entity is not the God of Christians.

As there is a bond of love between Father, Son, and Spirit, so there is a bond of love in the communion of saints. We are to love one another as the Divine Persons love. Donne can use the imagery of lovers in this sonnet because, for Donne, and for traditional Christians, God is not some autocrat on high but a Trinity, a union of lovers.