“For we should wonder not only at the essential and personal properties of God in themselves but also in comparison with the superwonderful union of God and man in the unity of the Person of Christ.” Bonaventure, “The Soul’s Journey Into God,” 6:4
After deep philosophical reflections on the nature of God as being and goodness, Bonaventure turns to discussing the Trinity. For many people, the Trinity is obscure theological details that are best kept an unintelligible mystery. That is not how Bonaventure sees it. Rather, it is a spiritual description of our encounter with God. We can ponder about God all we want, but it does not get us close to God. All of his previous considerations are interesting, but they are not about a spiritual experience. It is in the Trinity that we come to know that God is for us.
The nature of God can feel like a distant and abstract concept. What matters, though, is that those properties of a good and loving God who creates us are known to us through Christ. It is when we look at Christ that we know that this vast and mighty God also cares for us. We come to know and trust this because the Holy Spirit works within us to give us faith to see that Jesus is not merely a good and important person, but is truly God With Us, the Christ. The Trinity is the story of God reaching out to us and giving us faith. The result of this work by God is salvation. As the Gospel of John explains, “This is eternal life: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent.” (John 17:3 CEB). To be empowered by the Holy Spirit to know God as seen is Jesus is precisely what is meant by eternal life. When we see God we are transformed and our lives become God-like through our following Jesus. That is the importance of the Trinity.
For Bonaventure, then, to think about the Trinity is the sixth and highest level of spiritual thought that we can have. To think about the Trinity means that we have had an experience of God. God is not just about ideas but about our spiritual practice, devotion, and daily life. In having this experience we come to follow Jesus’ ways in our life.
I find Bonaventure helpful in grounding our idea of the Trinity is our actual experience. It is a reminder that God is with us each and every moment. As we open ourselves to that presence, we are opened to God’s continual love and we are transformed. It can be challenging to think of God with us as we deal with picking up prescriptions or managing financial transactions or any of the other pressing tasks of our day. Yet if we can be open to that presence, we will begin to see Christ each day and we will become opened to eternal life through him. As we do that, we will experience and understand the Trinity more powerfully than any philosophical explanation could ever do.