Three Old Men Throwing Olives

You are going to have to suffer through my Capon period for a while yet. Here is another quote, this one from his book The Third Peacock: The Problem of God and Evil. Stick this one in your pipe and smoke it.

Let me tell you why God made the world.

One afternoon, before anything was made, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost sat around in the unity of their Godhead discussing one of the Father’s fixations. From all eternity, it seems he had had this thing about being. He would keep thinking up all kinds of unnecessary things—new ways of being and new kinds of beings to be. And as they talked, God the Son suddenly said, “Really, this is absolutely great stuff. Why don’t I go out and mix us up a batch?” And God the Holy Ghost said, “Terrific, I’ll help you.” So they all pitched in, and after supper that night, the Son and the Holy Ghost put on this tremendous show of being for the Father. It was full of water and light and frogs; pine cones kept dropping all over the place and crazy fish swam around in the wineglasses. There were mushrooms and grapes, horseradishes and tigers—and men and women everywhere to taste them, to juggle them, to join them and to love them. And God the Father looked at the whole wild party and he said, “Wonderful! Just what I had in mind! Tov! Tov! Tov!” And all God the Son and God the Holy Ghost could think of to say was the same thing. “Tov! Tov! Tov!” So they shouted together “Tov meod!” and they laughed for ages and ages, saying things like how great it was for things to be, and how clever of the Father to think of the idea, and how kind of the Son to go to all that trouble putting it together, and how considerate of the Spirit to spend so much time directing and choreographing. And forever and ever they told old jokes, and the Father and the Son drank their wine in unitate Spiritus Sancti, and they all threw ripe olives and pickled mushrooms at each other per omnia saecula saeulorum. Amen.

It is, I grant you, a crass analogy; but crass analogies are the safest. Everybody knows that God is not three old men throwing olives at each other. Not everyone, I’m afraid, is equally clear that God is not a cosmic force or a principle of being or any other dish of celestial blancmange we might choose to call him. Accordingly, I give you the central truth that creation is the result of a Trinitarian bash, and leave the details of the analogy to sort themselves out as best they can.

One slight elucidation, however. It is very easy, when talking about creation, to conceive of God’s part in it as simply getting the ball rolling—as if he were a kind of divine billiard cue, after whose action inexorable laws took over and excused him from further involvement with the balls. But that won’t work. This world is fundamentally unnecessary. Nothing has to be. It needs a creator, not only for its beginning, but for every moment of its being. Accordingly, the Trinitarian bash doesn’t really come before creation; what actually happens is that all of creation, from start to finish, occurs within the bash—that the raucousness of the divine party is simultaneous with the being of everything that ever was or will be. If you like paradoxes, it means that God is the eternal contemporary of all of the events and beings in time.

Ridiculous Truth

Once, on a plane, I sat next to a president of a successful software company that provided computer applications for the insurance business. We had a fascinating conversation about his business, and also about the nature of engineering, and problems solving. We also spoke about India, as my father-in-law was from Bangalore, and this gentlemen is also from India. He was a very thoughtful, well educated and obviously intelligent man.

We reached one of those pauses in the conversation where we both retreated into our own space for a few minutes. Then he asked me if I believed in Astrology.

I answered that I really had not thought much about astrology. He then began explaining to me the scientific nature of the discipline and why it is so helpful and valuable. I asked about differences between Indian astrology and the astrology commonly practiced in the states. He did not seem to think there was much difference. This conversation continued on for some time and then ended as the plane landed.

I remember thinking about how odd it is that a man of his education, an engineer no less, would put such faith in such a system. He is obviously trained in western scientific method, and in the kind of analysis and problem solving necessary for an engineer, and yet he believes in astrology. Go figure.

Then it struck me that I am not so much different. I had a conversation recently with another friend, regarding a central doctrine of the Christian faith, that little thing called the Trinity. My friend does not believe that God is three and one. When she started explaining why it doesn’t make much sense to have One God also be three persons, I had to agree with her. It does not. And frankly, this very improbability actually makes the concept more appealing and even more sensible to me.

If one were to invent a god, and make him really really big and powerful, it would be relatively easy to come up with a Simple God (my own term. I’m not sure I like it, but bear with me). But why would anyone ever come up with this concept of Three and One? In some sense, one might take this as evidence (certainly nothing to clinch the case, but evidence nonetheless) of the truth of the matter. So many things in this world are stranger than we might think, and Occam’s Razor notwithstanding, the world is much more complex than we imagine. Now if God actually revealed himself, might there be certain things about Him that are exactly the opposite of what we might expect? No one would invent a Triune God, but a Triune God might indeed reveal Himself as such. The very unexpectedness of it rings true.

Not that astrology is on the same level as the Trinity. Rather, I find that in some ways, I am on the same level as the astrologicalizing engineer.

Not a sound biblical argument, I grant you. Just a random thought I’m inflicting on you, dear reader.