Who Do We Say God Is? - Part 2: The Trinity

What do Christians really mean when we talk about the Trinity? Why has this doctrine inspired centuries of debate, mystery, wonder, and even fear? And what does the Trinity actually reveal about God, relationship, and ourselves?

In Part 2 of our Who Do We Say God Is? teaching series, Bishop DeDe and Adam continue their exploration of the nature of God by diving into one of Christianity’s most complex and sacred mysteries: the Trinity.

This conversation unpacks the foundations of Trinitarian theology while also making space for questions, uncertainty, curiosity, and grace. Together, they explore how the Trinity is less about having all the “right answers” and more about entering into a deeper relationship with God.

Topics include:

• What Christians mean by “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”
• The “economic Trinity” and how the Church has understood God through history
• Why the Trinity is rooted in mystery rather than certainty
• The difference between faith and facts
• How fear and control shape the way we talk about God
• Relationship as the center of Christian faith
• Why mystery matters in Christianity
• How our understanding of God affects how we understand ourselves
• The role of humility, curiosity, and doubt in spiritual growth
• Why Trinity Sunday can feel intimidating — even for clergy

The episode also explores themes of creation, redemption, the Holy Spirit, orthodoxy, and the importance of giving ourselves permission to wrestle honestly with faith.

Whether you’ve spent years in church or are still figuring out what you believe, this episode invites you into a conversation about the God who is always bigger than our understanding.

AI Disclosure: To support our staff in their limited time,  many of our episode summaries are first generated by AI and then edited by the Communications Director to accurately reflect and preview our podcast episodes.

Transcript

Bishop DeDe (00:02.596)
Hey friends, good to see you and be with you on this podcast, Speaking of Faith. Here we are today to talk about our faith. And I'm really excited about this podcast. I'm excited about all of them. I don't want to say I'm not ever excited, but I'm super excited about this one because we're going to talk about the Trinity of God. Trinity Sunday is coming up. And for those of you who are preaching on Trinity Sunday, it is not usually the most popular Sunday to preach on.

because it is mystery and we're engaging in mystery and it also there have been in history great punishments for people not preaching or talking about this correctly with orthodoxy that right thinking and so right off the top I want to put a pause and a caution and a grace for us that we're gonna talk and speak about the Trinity of God understanding that we cannot know.

that we are always, no matter who we are, no matter what mortal being it is, that we're always Hamlet trying to to describe Shakespeare, we always are the cre creature trying to describe our Creator and trying to engage with God. I take great comfort in Thomas Merton's prayer that that when we desire that our desire to please God pleases God. And so we're gonna lean into that with faith that Jesus died for our salvation. So

So, all of that preamble to say, we're going to talk about the Trinity and with grace and mercy. My name is DeDe Duncan-Probe. I am the Episcopal Bishop of Central New York. I'm joined by Adam Eichelberger, our director of communications. And part of speaking of faith is recognizing we may not get it right. And so whenever we're talking about our faith and sharing in our faith, to have that humility and curiosity.

To allow ourselves to question what we know, to maybe engage with doubt a bit, to step back from something and look at it in a new light, and to give ourselves permission to trust God is bigger than our questions, that God is bigger than our unknowing. And so right away when we talk about Trinity and a Trinitarian theology, this has long been a place of great debate, conflict.

Bishop DeDe (02:24.752)
the word heresy comes up quite a bit. No matter what side of any spectrum you're on, the fear of getting it wrong comes up. And so we're going to start with a grace that our God is with us and we will seek to please God by knowing God. So, first of all, what is the Trinity? What is this theological construct, this concept, this theological understanding? It's important to know, I guess, what it's not.

It is not actually a scriptural mandate. In scripture, we read last week in the podcast, kind of opening this conversation up about Matthew 28, that there is a sentence that includes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But throughout Scripture, no place does it really codify exactly what that means. To the point that there continues to be today, many may not realize this.

Great debate and division in the Christian church writ large. Where does the spirit come from? And so we'll get into that. But first I want to talk about the economic trinity, which is Orthodox. This is, you know, very this is the foundation, this understanding that the economy of God is that God is three persons, but all of the same substance. And that these three persons, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are.

are equal in personage and that they are part of the same spirit of God, that there's one God, three persons, and to recognize that God the Father is viewed as the source or the the creator, the the progen the originator of all things, and it's uncreated and undescendant. he's the creator of the or God is the creator of the universe. I slipped into saying male. We're gonna get into that too.

so God, the creator of all, that from the out of the creator, the eternal word or logos of God who's spoken, the logos of Jesus. The word of God is Jesus, it becomes incarnate and is human, but also is begotten of the Father, is of the same substance as God, is not only human, but is of the same essence. And then this is where the debate comes in with the the Holy Spirit.

Bishop DeDe (04:47.844)
That the essence of God in the world that proceeds from the Father, in Western create Christianity, also from the Son, but in Eastern Christianity, singularly from the Father. You'll see this controversy in our Nicene Creed, the Holy Spirit of the Father and of the Son. in the future editions of the prayer book, that of the Son will be taken out as a nod to our

Community with Eastern Christianity that believes that the Holy Spirit descends from God, the primal source, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are both personages of God, the same source. So that is kind of that's a very small, quick tour through economic trinity, but I want to make sure that we have that foundation of understanding that this basis is

And then that has come out of ecumenical councils, out of debate, out of long thousands of years of discussion and wrestling with the economic trinity, the three persons of God, one substance, and as all interrelated, all part of the same being of God's essence. So add to that some of the controversies. So

Modalism is one that you really have to talk about. Modalism would have us talk about God as three distinct actions of God. sometimes what people want to talk about the Trinity and say, like for instance, I'm a I'm a daughter, I'm a mother, I'm a spouse. These are three ways that I act. And so if we take that to the Trinitarian theology, then we're talking about modalism, that these are one person who's acted in three ways.

That has three modes of being. And that would be different than persons of the Trinity. and so it sounds like we're splitting hairs. And for some of us, that may be how it feels. For Christianity and historically, these are very, very important and have great importance in our faith. And I think we can see this when we think, so who do we believe God to believe be? What do we know about God?

Bishop DeDe (07:11.482)
How do we believe in God? Our belief in God and who we see God as being, who we understand God to be, will have a direct impact on how we relate to God, how we what we expect from God, how we f emulate God, how what are the ways in which our faith informs our life? And I find it very important when we're having these conversations that can feel very trepidatious, that can feel dangerous.

Like to question who God is feels like we're about to be thrown out of something, which it comes for a good reason. There have been people been people thrown out of the church for these things. but for us in this space of grace, when we're talking about it, to allow ourselves to question and think about how we actually really think about God. What I love about Trinitari Trinity Sunday is it gives us an opportunity to respond to that question.

That is asked with the apostles, who do you say Jesus is? When Jesus says, Who do you say that I am? on Trinity Sunday, this is our opportunity to respond. Who do we say Jesus is? Have we slipped into polytheism where we think of Jesus and then the Holy Spirit's over there and the and God the Father is over there somewhere, that these are unrelated, sort of a Godhead that's like a Zeus and Hera situation? Have we slid into that?

Do we think of Jesus as our friend and God as the big bad stranger? How in our theology, in ourselves, in our thinking, do we understand God to be with us? For many people, God the Father is a problematic statement because they've had difficult relationships with fathers. They've had difficult engagements with fathers. Fathers have been punitive and punishing. And we see that in some of our theologies of salvation or

soteriology, the punishing God, sinners in the hand of an angry God, atonement theory, these these ideas of God as punisher. And then and that will impact how we engage with God. Or do we see God the Creator as this beautiful you know growing garden of you know constant productivity and you know plants and right now when spring and all of that beautiful growth that God delights

Bishop DeDe (09:36.91)
delights in creation. I love a long time ago there was a a a speaker who would talk about God and creation as delighting and you know do it again another daisy my gosh look at this a God who delights in us and for some of us that I understanding of God as creator delighting us seems very foreign to us we just isn't something we thought about

So to sit with that a bit and to speak with one another and say, what would it be like if we think of God as delighting in us, as creating us with joy and hope and wonder, and not with requirement and punishment? How does that change the way we relate to God? And that's a good conversation starter. And then to think about Jesus, how do we relate to Jesus? Jesus is my best friend, Jesus as God walking among us.

To show us how God lives, the salvation of Jesus, how we understand the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the humanity of Jesus. You know, at at times in history, and these are these are some of those controversies, it was believed that Jesus didn't really eat. He just appeared to eat. He was divine and was so divine that he wasn't even really human.

Well, what does the passion then have to do with us? How does that bring salvation if a divine being dies? What is what is brought into that? How does that heal and renew us? It can seem like in these conversations when we're speaking about faith, I can almost hear you listeners saying, Well, I just don't know enough to talk about that. And I think that's important to stop here and acknowledge.

Is knowing necessary to talk about the Trinity? And to think about that question. Is it necessary to know? In one way, I would say yes. We need to have a basis for what we think. We need to have an understanding that we're not coming to this tabula rasa. There's been scripture, there's been lots of the theology, there's been lots of lots of lots of things. And all of those are need to be part of the conversation. And within us, there's a realized relationship with God.

Bishop DeDe (11:56.89)
That also has import. When do we feel God? When we're standing by the ocean and we feel the enormity of God's creation, when we look at the night sky, when we're listening to music and we hear our heart singing, when we, you know, all of those moments of encounter with God are about an ontological inhabitation of God being present to us, Emmanuel with us. So how does that inform our understanding?

And then of course we talked last week about the Holy Spirit, about in scripture, the Holy Spirit has made some gender changes from ruach with feminine to you know pneuma with neuter to spiritu with male. that this inhabitation of the spirit that we can feel the spirit at times we walk into a church and we feel embraced by love and mercy, or we walk into a place and we feel a different spirit.

A cautionary anything, I need to get out of here. This isn't safe here. That spirit that's relating to us and moving with us. The importance of the Trinity to me as a person and as a bishop is how this empowers our faith. All of our faith is about faith. Our faith isn't about getting it right and Christian nationalism and all the power and prestige aside.

It is not about power, it is about our relationship with God, our deepest relationship with ourselves. So, how will our understanding of Trinity embolden a deeper connectivity with God and in our faith and in our life? How might it inform us? I sometimes think that one of the better ways to figure out how we think about God is to think about hymns that draw us. When you sing a hymn that just makes you feel God.

Is it a hymn about Jesus Christ is risen today? Is it a hymn about there's a sweet, sweet spirit in this place? Is it a hymn about in create in the creation God is known? We naturally have a way of relating to the different persons of the Trinity with for some of us it's easier to relate to God the Creator because we are gardeners and we can kind of get that. For some of us, it's easier to relate to Jesus who embodies humanity and we see

Bishop DeDe (14:19.604)
our journey and can relate to it in a human way. For some of us it's the spirit because we can feel that we were really attuned to the spirit's movements. And so that's where our connection is. So I'm going to stop there because this, you know, talking about the Trinity is a lifelong prospect. We could be here a very long time if we talked about the Trinity in all the details. you know, all the heresies and and all the the ways that people have believed that that it's

been wrongly interpreted. But I think for our purposes in this podcast, this podcast is about learning to speak our faith, learning to say what we believe, learning to articulate things that we often have a tough time putting into words. And so as we've said before on the podcast, I really want to say this many times here, getting it wrong is part of it. Because when we fail, we often learn the most.

And we sometimes don't realize we've got it wrong until we start talking to somebody and we realize, my gosh, that can't be right. That that doesn't jive with scripture. Wait a minute. You know, this idea of God lightning bolts from heaven isn't valid when you think of Jesus as a salvation of all and God knowing that we're sinners saved by grace. So let's dare to trust God's love for us.

And God's desire to be in connection with us and to think about how we talk about God ontologically, God's being, and how God's being heals and redeems and informs our own being. So I'm going to stop here and Adam bring you into this conversation because there is so much to talk about here. But from what we're trying to do is to speak about faith.

What are some things that percolate for you when you think about speaking about the Trinity?

Adam Eichelberger (16:19.543)
One of the things that's been really helpful for me as somebody who is, relatively speaking, a new Episcopalian, is embracing a part of episcopal thought or practice, which is that it's a word that I learned just a little while ago that via media, that middle way, that we as Episcopalians, I oftentimes make the joke that Episcopalian Christianity, Episcopal thought or theology, whatever you want to call it, it's kind of like the improv comedy of

Bishop DeDe (16:37.22)
Yes.

Adam Eichelberger (16:49.563)
Of monotheistic religions, it's always yes and rather than no. And this has been really helpful for me. And this I I want to preface what I'm about to say with this is not a dig at any other faith practice. But as somebody who came from a pretty conservative Roman Catholic background, there was a lot of like, this is certainty. You have to kind of you have to fit this model or fit this belief in what the Trinity is, or else like.

Bishop DeDe (16:53.209)
Uh-huh.

Adam Eichelberger (17:17.379)
There's going to be eternal ramifications for that. It's been really helpful for me to be able to kind of unpack some of that and let some of that go because it's like you said, we were talking earlier. it's like you said, faith is not certain faith is not doubt, faith is cer is clinging to certainty. You know what I mean? Like it's we we cannot explain all of this. And

Bishop DeDe (17:20.111)
Uh-huh.

Bishop DeDe (17:36.367)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (17:41.136)
Mm.

Adam Eichelberger (17:41.954)
For me, my question for you when it comes to this, when we're talking about this middle way, like what does it look like for us as we take a look at God through the lens of the Trinity and how that relates to us in how we want to be in relationship? Because I feel like there's a little bit of a conversation here about this relationship of God. Again, not without trying to avoid stumbling into heresies here. There's this relationship that God has with himself.

Bishop DeDe (18:05.604)
Ha ha ha.

Bishop DeDe (18:09.872)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (18:10.153)
But also with us. But what does the Trinity say to us about how we want to be loved, how we want to be in relationship, especially as it's kind of revealed through God?

Bishop DeDe (18:20.9)
Such a great question. And listener, you know, I kinda always pu preface this by what how you might answer this question. Because this is about us seeking together. I mean, the part about speaking of faith is having the humility and the curiosity, as I'd say, about getting it wrong, but also being willing to get it right and to have courage in that. So when you're talking what you just said, Adam really spoke to me because, you know,

That via media and then also you know, how do we allow ourselves the space to to to deal with this? Faith, you know, the opposite of faith is fact. And if we think about the facts, the things we believe in, like, okay, the fact is it's this time to right now, or the fact is I was at the grocery store at five o'clock yesterday, whatever the fact is, it doesn't tell the story.

And when you start to poke at the fact, you start to realize that actually the fact may be limiting something that's actually more true. and so faith is about having the courage to be in relationship with God. You what you said fundamentally, when we look at the economic trinity, what we know right off the bat is relationship matters to God. Relationship, relationship, relationship.

I've taken a hiatus, folks who know me, for a little while from saying that, but I think it's back. Relationship, relationship, relationship. God is fundamentally about relationship and is inviting us into a mutual relationship. Not mutual in that we're as powerful as God, mutual in that we get to be part of this as agents, as people who have agency in the relationship. So

The value God places on relationship is a high premium. first of all, the Trinity is a dance, you know, that beautiful iconography about the dance of the Trinity dancing together, the three persons in this wonderful relationship. When we think about our connection with God as a dance with God, that beautiful relationship that's unfolding and has ebbs and flows and kind of has movement to it. that that is really a

Bishop DeDe (20:41.316)
What God is about. And then when you look at the salvation that Jesus offers, it's about restoration of relationship. That when we get off track, we're called back into the redemption of relationship. And so when we're talking about the Trinity, and we're talking about, especially when we think about orthodox thinking and this idea of you have to subscribe to this, and your opinion doesn't matter here, that

Is changing the gospel. We have to recognize that when there's a requirement on us to believe these ten principles, those can inform our faith, but we need to be cautious about it because the purpose of our faith isn't to know the right answers. The purpose of our faith is to have a right relationship with God and with Jesus Christ. The purpose of our faith is to be renewed by our faith.

That's what scripture tells us is what we feel when we pray. And so it's a complex conversation, which is why I think a lot of people fear it. Because already there's some of you who want to write in and say, you know, this is a heretic. And I'm and I'm okay with that because I stand with Jesus. At the end of the day, no matter what I say or do in my life, I know that my prime directive, borrowing in there.

My prime directive is Jesus Christ. and so I am about a relationship with Jesus. The point of this podcast is for us to speak about our faith, to deepen our relationship with one another as fellow seekers, and in expressing our faith to deepen our connection with ourselves and with God, to be informed speakers, that we aren't just throwing out these trite things that have been said before.

But we're speaking from a realized relationship within us and outside of us. So when I hear that question, that's what kind of comes to my mind, Adam, is that primacy of relationship for us, what does it matter if you believe all the right things, but lose your soul? That's what Saint Paul talks about. If you have all the power of the universe and yet you're not in right relationship with God. we are St. Paul gives us a great help in

Bishop DeDe (23:03.758)
that we see dimly and you know and that we don't know. But then we will know and then we will be known. That promise in Corinthians about that is really important for us to to rest in and to stop thinking if I just say the right things, do the right things, I'll feel right. And to start, if I am in right relationship with God, I will feel right. If I

do the right things out of right relationship, I will feel right.

Adam Eichelberger (23:37.796)
This this is really good for me because it's important for me to remember that so much of Christian thought is steeped in mystery that we are not supposed to have this all figured out, like we just said. But the fact that we have to have that we have kind of in some veins of Christianity very strict and rigid, codified belief, but then we also have to accept mystery. It's really crazy to me.

Again, coming from my Roman Catholic background, when people were so opposed to how some churches look at things like the Godhead and then saints and things like that, and then accusing it of kind of building our own pantheon, which isn't what's happening, obviously. But

Bishop DeDe (24:22.798)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (24:25.627)
But that they can we can be so rigid, but then also, hey, we have to accept the Trinity. Well, we you don't know what the Trinity is all I don't know what the Trinity is all about. We have to accept that there is mystery. We accept mystery in Eucharist. We accept mystery in so many things in being a Christian. My question, I guess, not only for you, Bishop, but for the for the listener: but why does the mystery matter? Because I feel like

Again, I'm glad I'm not God, but if I was God, I wouldn't have gone this way. Like I wouldn't have taken this route. Like it doesn't make sense to me. Like I could just be like, hi, I'm God. This is all you get. And it's a lot easier for you to conceive me if this is all you get. Why does the mystery matter to us as Christians?

Bishop DeDe (24:51.098)
Yeah.

Bishop DeDe (25:09.018)
Wow, really great question. and the first thing that springs to my mind is that if mystery doesn't matter, then all we want to be are know it alls. And the difference between a know it all and someone who knows all about God is a lot. Because mystery, if we think we can know God, then we have lost our minds. You know, there is one God and you're not it.

Adam Eichelberger (25:20.12)
Mm.

Bishop DeDe (25:38.618)
God is bigger than what we can imagine. I mean, just ontologically, let's just talk about creation. So God, theologically, we believe, has always existed and will eternally exist. Well, you just lost us all because we're mortal being beings who understand birth and death. We understand those. Things have a beginning and an end.

To think about God as never beginning and always being. Well, how do we think we're going to understand the Trinity if we can't get the eternal being? and so we say, well, I just accept that that is. Okay, well, that's good. So we just accept that God's always been. But we can't conceive of it, but we accept it. but then we'll take the next step, some of us, and say things like,

But I can never believe that God is female. Why? Well, because that's just not right. Well, what's not right about it? And if we keep asking ourselves, well, why? Well, what about that bothers us? Well, what is it that we're struggling with? We'll get to a place where we want God to be bigger than us or smaller than us, stronger than us or weaker than us. And a lot of us actually relate to God.

In a way where we want to control God. We want to pray and have God answer our prayers the way God should, which is to do what we tell God to do. And when there's mystery, it means we don't have power or control. We might have influence, but we don't have power and control. And for human beings, we're not big on that. We like thinking we're God. We do. We want to control our time.

We want to control other people. We want to control what's right and wrong. And when we say God is mystery, which I had a I think we all have somebody we can hear saying that. For me it was a an older professor who had a accent who was is mystery, you know. But but that mystery is fear producing because we can't control it. It's the unknown.

Bishop DeDe (27:56.36)
And we like known things, which is why I think so for so long fighting and killing and harming others about religious thinking is a go-to because it we want to control that thing or it scares us. Chaos and scares us. Which is interesting because when we say so, we should definitely in this podcast talk about, you know, God is love. These these things we say about God.

in addition to the Trinity, God is love. And that in in scripture and and tradition and reason we believe is true. God is love, God is an eternal love, the hymnity of love that's calling us into a loving relationship. But we could also say that something we see in scripture and in the world is change, that God is eternal change.

For some of us, that is not a hap as happy a thought. But yet it's also exceedingly true because as we've been sitting here, cells have changed. We've aged, you know. the world has changed, trees are budding, birds are singing. All around us, there is no such thing as a static moment. Every moment is built on the last and every moment continues. The clock never stops.

whether it has batteries or not, time is moving. So God is change, God is eternal time, God is all of these things that we actually would probably say are scare us. We're afraid of aging, we're afraid of death, we're afraid of, you know, change, and and and yet God is always in that mystery, which then can bring us such hope. Isn't that great? That God is bigger than the challenge before us, that God is

Bigger than our fear, that God is greater than our desire for sameness. God is greater than our fear of the unknown. that God, that God is mystery to us is an essential part of the humility necessary for repentance. We have to repent of our high-minded, prideful, power-seeking, control-managing selves. We will never have peace.

Bishop DeDe (30:21.74)
until we relinquish that reign of control. And a lot of our issues stem from wanting to control everyone so they don't f frighten us. But when we rest in the mystery of God, we're unscarable.

Bishop DeDe (30:41.732)
Well, friends, we haven't gotten any questions for a while. So is this thing on? You really have to send in your questions to us. so comments. I mean, this one surely by now I'm gonna get some feedback on this, maybe, because we are talking about some tough stuff. And how do we talk about these things together? So you are welcomed into the conversation. I encourage you to find someone, trusted person to talk with about how do you really see God? What is your real

Like if you could just say anything about God, what would you say? And if you could talk about the Trinity and weren't afraid of somebody telling you you're wrong, what would you what do you really believe? Because only when we talk about what we really believe can we find redemption and know God. And so welcome to the conversation. Continue to speak of faith. And may you know God's deep, profound love for you as your creator. That the

The love of God is manifest in the person of Jesus Christ who redeems us all and teaches us how to live. And that the person of the Holy Spirit is with you, walking with you, and guiding with you and guiding you. May you know peace and may you share that peace with the world. Blessings. And we'll talk soon.