Trinity and Generosity

The Beaker Trinity Sunday is always a special event. Participants try to express an interesting analogy for the Trinity, avoiding hesitation, deviation or heresy. Most fail at the third fence.

It strikes me, though, that there must be some mileage in the concept of generosity. If you look at the first of the various Biblical creation stories, men and women are created in God's image,  collectively.  And if you look at the second, it is not good for the man to be alone. Obviously not - who's gonna be able to tell him how many beans make five, when the first bean harvest is brought in?

So that's the first clue.  We can't be on our own, and we're made in God's image. And there's already generosity built in there - especially when the forbidden fruit's been eaten and he blames it on her.Whereas any sensible woman would have put the blame on the snake. Not least as, if God had bought that line, there might have been a nice pair of shoes and a decent handbsg being delivered as a reckoning for the snake. No, I reckon after that act of gormlessness,  Adam was lucky there was any begetting happened at all in the outskirts of Eden.

And that brings us back to that second example of generosity - the begetting.  It wasn't enough for Adam and Eve to just be the two of them.  There had to be more. They had to open up their relationship beyond themselves - and the love between them expanded so they gave their love away to the kids. And what a bunch of kids. But still, they had them. And then they had more of them. Sharing love, so as to share more love.

And maybe that's one reason I think of Trinity and generosity.  This is no glorious-isolation God. Not even a wrapped-in-each-other's-presence,  closed-loop God. This is an open, sharing, generous God where love is shared from Person to Person, then opened up again. Shared to many billions of children, with the expectation that they will share it again, because they share God's Image.

Hnaef has rung that buzzer. Wonder which one I failed on?