The concept of the Trinity has flummoxed theologians for centuries. We might liken it to the birth of a child (a third person), or the branching out of a tree (a tree needs branches and leaves to bear fruit). In terms of language, we might identify three persons in the number one when written with capital letters: ONE.

And what is it we must believe? We must believe in God the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s as simple as that. The rest will take care of itself.

The Christian concept of the Trinity – three persons, one God – has perplexed even theologians over the centuries, but we might think of our own birth to understand it (two people come together in order to create a third, which is why birth and third are connected, pair of letters that look alike b-d). We might also think of the shoot that branches out – the tree that becomes three – in order to grow and bear fruit.

But as language has taught us about the creation of the world, about the importance of belief, about our final destination and the Last Judgement (when an angel will enter the field to glean the wheat), so I think we can turn to language for an understanding of the Trinity.

Three in one. This doesn’t help us. Let us try writing one with capital letters: ONE. Now we can begin to see.

The word ONE comprises three numbers: 0, 2 (on its side) and 3 (back to front). The one number that ONE does not contain is itself: 1.

This is because in chemistry the subscript ₁ is not written down. So if we take the first letter, O, to represent God (it has no beginning or end) and decide to write the three persons of the Trinity as chemical formulae, then God the Father would O₍₁₎, God the Son would be O₂ and God the Holy Spirit would be O₃. Three in ONE, literally.

For God the Father, we can read the formula O₁ as no one, the end of the progression from the name of God in Exodus, AM, and from the purpose of Adam in the Book of Genesis to name the creatures, so that they mean something, to which he says amen. When we apply the progression of the Greek alphabet, AIO, to these words, from AM we get I’m and om, which with the phonetic pair m-n and addition of final e gives no one, God the Father. We are back to the beginning. From amen-mean-name, we get mine and nemo, the Latin word for “no one”, and omen. Again, we find ourselves back at God the Father, O₁, the first person of the Holy Trinity.

Why would God the Father be “no one”? Because it’s the only way he can be everyone. We individual humans are someone – that is, as distinct from someone else, countable nouns, each with a line around them. The closest we can get to “no one” is the figure of the translator, that person who lives on the line, ferrying cultures across, enabling communication and understanding, and enriching people’s lives with what is other. The translator is “no man” – he lives inside the line, in no man’s land. He almost doesn’t exist – he is largely ignored, his name is sometimes omitted, he barely has enough to live on, and yet he believes in the value of the work he is doing… and so he continues beyond the bounds of what should be possible. He starts to push the boundaries of possibility, to test them, to see whether in fact they are real, whether the illusion will kill him or he will live to fight another day.

The translator, in human parlance, is no man. He doesn’t exist. He finds himself in the firing line between two opposite sides (sides that only exist because of the line), without a gun. He raises his arms in a semblance of crucifixion and implores an end to this madness of viewing people and things as external to ourselves. He doesn’t win, he loses, but he speaks the truth.

This is the closest we can come to the divine – “no one” – in this life. There are two indicators of truth: one is coincidence (things that happen together), the other is paradox (an apparent contradiction that turns out to be true). Language is full of paradox. God, who is in fact all that is, is no one. He is nowhere to be seen (which means he can be everywhere), but nowhere is also now here.

God the Son is O₂, the chemical formula for oxygen – we breathe him, just as we speak him (because he is the Word) and see by him (because he is the Son/sun). And God the Holy Spirit is O₃, the chemical formula for ozone, the layer that protects us from the sun’s rays (which we might understand as the Son’s wrath, existence in a precarious balance).

But let us remember that the letter in the alphabet that represents breath, wind (a word, by the way, comprised of the numbers 0, 1, 2 and 3: WIND), is h, so we can choose to represent the Holy Spirit (pneuma in Greek) as H. Combine H and the chemical formula for oxygen, O₂, in reverse (common in word connections) – that is, combine God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – and you have H₂0, the chemical formula for water. We breathe him, we speak him, we see by him, and we drink him in water.

God is three in ONE. The last symbol, O₃, can refer to God the Holy Spirit – the third person of the Trinity – or to the Trinity itself: 3 in One (the mantra om).

We have seen how three Os together spell GOD (just as three egos, three Is, spell ill). And we will find these three Os again in the word WOOD, with a lopsided 3 at the beginning. WOOD, of course, is the ultimate symbol of Christianity: the Cross, which is nothing more than a deleted I.

Language is clearly Trinitarian. It is also Christological.

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 12/15

Next: Heart of Language 13/15

Back to: Contents