Rev Harry Newton preaches on the Trinity and the Christian understanding of God on Pentecost Sunday
A sermon delivered by Rev Harry Newton at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church on Trinity Sunday, 15th June 2025.
Summary
Rev Harry Newton delivers a Trinity Sunday sermon at Sumner Redcliffs Church, working from John 16:12–15. He opens by contrasting the previous week's Pentecost focus with today's theme: the doctrine of the Trinity and what Christians actually mean when they use the word "God." He argues that much modern atheism — particularly that of thinkers like Richard Dawkins — rests on a misunderstanding rooted in the philosophical tradition of Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud, who framed God as a being in competition with humanity. Newton contends this framing is simply wrong, and that the classical Christian understanding — drawing on Thomas Aquinas — is that God is not a being among other beings but the very essence that underpins all reality. He then connects this to the incarnation and the Trinity, arguing that God is inherently relational, that love is the core of God's nature, and that through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, this otherwise unknowable God becomes personally knowable to every individual.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Context: Last Week's Pentecost and This Week's Trinity Sunday
Rev Harry Newton: You'll see the reason why I asked that question. Last week, we had something called Pentecost. Pentecost is a really big day in the life of the church. Each year, it's the birthday of the church. It's the day we remember and celebrate the arrival of the Holy Spirit in power — that first day in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. We also spend some time celebrating the fact that on that day, a guy called Peter got up and gave the second best sermon in the history of the planet, and over 3,000 people committed themselves to following the way of Jesus. Cool? Awesome. Great.
Last week's focus, as I say, was the Holy Spirit. This week is Trinity Sunday. The focus is on this thing called the Trinity and the nature of God. Today is an incredibly important day in the life of the church. It's when we celebrate and remember the great defining doctrine of the Trinity — this whole thing that makes the Christian faith different.
Now, usually when we have a text, we explain the context, we look at an issue to do with the human psyche or the human predicament or the human condition that comes out of the text, we look at how that relates to us personally, and then from that we look at how Jesus rescues us or remedies us from that predicament. That's usually the format we use when we look at Scripture. Today's a little bit different. Today we're going to get our geek on. If you're not into geekiness, you'll deal with it. I've got the microphone.
The Trinity: An Academic Passion
Rev Harry Newton: God is three in one, one in three, three personae without division of the one. You with me so far? Good. Which, if you're like me and you like being a bit of a religious geek, is great. The study of the Trinity, known as Trinitarianism, is really interesting at an academic level. When I was at Theological College doing my theology degree, I spent an entire semester looking just at level one Trinitarianism, and it blew my mind and I loved it. I then spent the next year looking into levels two, three, and four, because it was so interesting. This week, just to get my geek on, I got my old notes out. They're literally this thick — they make a thwack when you drop them on the table and scare your kids.
Here's the thing though: why should you care? When you're at theological college, they make you learn lots of random things — like, for example, how to iron and fold hurley linen. I did a whole course on that, quite seriously. They teach you some very strange things, which apparently are quite important. But for the average person such as yourself, why should you care?
I think there's a risk on a day like today of becoming an oxygen thief. I had a corporal who used to call anyone who talked too much an oxygen thief — "Stop stealing my oxygen!" and he'd throw a shoe at you. The risk of becoming the same way, of waxing lyrical about philosophical ins and outs, Trinitarian ruminations, and then sort of going, "Oh yes, navel gazing," and that's the end of it. But why should you care?
What Do We Mean by the Word "God"?
Rev Harry Newton: Well, one really cool thing about today is it challenges us to think very carefully about what we mean by the word "God." Who's heard of Stanley Hauerwas? Only a couple of people. For those of you who haven't read Stanley Hauerwas, your life is better for it. He is a very, very deep thinker who no one can understand. He's a theologian in America. He says that whenever he sneezes and someone says, "God bless you," he responds, "Ah, but which one?" — which must be super annoying, and I'm sure he's lots of fun at parties.
But the point is that there are lots of different views of God. Some see God as a mythological figure. Others see God as a distant first cause to the cosmos, a supreme being in the conventional sense. And some even see God as an existential threat to human flourishing and freedom. That idea — of belief in God being a threat to human freedom and flourishing — is what underpins pop culture atheists like Richard Dawkins and others, Christopher Hitchens, and all those kinds of figures on YouTube and elsewhere.
Interestingly, a lot of these people whose names are well recognized — their arguments about the existence of God seem to stem from the writings of a man called Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach's main contribution to philosophy was that God is simply a projection of the inner self. To give an example: if you say God is good, you only say that because deep down you wish to be good. If you say God is all-powerful, it's only because you feel disempowered in your status quo and want to be powerful. You see where I'm going with this.
Now, a disciple of Feuerbach was Sigmund Freud. You may have heard of him — he's referred to as the godfather of psychology. Freud took Feuerbach's work to another whole level, and in doing so he declared that belief in God was actually an infantile fantasy. Because you have suppressed issues from your childhood, you're bringing them up and projecting them onto God, making God in your own image. So your infantile fantasies are being brought up and projected. And so for humans to flourish — this is his argument — we need to stop projecting our childish desires onto God and realize we are the only ones who can truly make our lives better. Does that sound familiar? It's very similar to the basis of neoliberalism in some respects. It's on the self to excel, on the self to self-identify, on the self to sort one's own problems.
There's heaps more we could wax lyrical about here — don't worry, I'm not going to. But the key thing that emerged from people like Feuerbach and Freud and a few others in the mix, and that influences modern-day atheists such as Dawkins, is this assumption that God is in competition with humanity — that God is essentially the enemy to human flourishing. Some contemporary writers even go so far as to say, okay, perhaps God does exist, but we need to avoid this God at all costs. This God is dangerous because they are anti-human. This God exists to compete against our flourishing and freedom.
Now, here's the thing. They're wrong. Simple. We can go home now.
Because that's not what the whole God thing means. God is not a being — real or imagined — who exists in competition with humanity. There's actually a distinctive Christian understanding of what we mean by the word "God." And I've mentioned this before many times, so please forgive me, but there's a reason this is really important. Even if you're not sure about the God thing, if you're a bit skeptical, whether you're a lifelong Christian or somewhere in between, the fact is we need to be honest with ourselves and have a decent understanding about what it is we mean by the word "God." And I can't help but feel that part of the reason there's so much pushback in certain circles against the idea of particularly the Christian God is because we've gotten a little bit confused about what it is we actually mean by God.
Who Is Jesus? The Confusion Around the Incarnation
Rev Harry Newton: And sometimes we can get confused even about Jesus himself. Remember I mentioned three in one, one in three — God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all three in one, somehow but mystically also in the three. Jesus — God — how? It's all confusing.
Many years ago, I used to run quite a large youth group, and we took a lot of kids to Easter camp. There was one particular boy who became a Christian at Easter camp, gave his life to Christ. Wonderful. So I took him out afterwards for a milkshake — as you do when you can't buy them a beer because they're only 14. I sat him down and said, "Right, tell me about this. What about the God thing?" He goes, "Oh, mate, it's awesome." I said, "All right, tell me about the faith." He goes, "Oh, well, Jesus died for me. I've been redeemed" — he had all the right language. And I was like, wow, this is awesome. "Who's Jesus?" He goes, "Oh, he's God's son." I said, "Great. Is Jesus God?" He just looks at me like I'm an idiot and goes, "No, I just said he's God's son."
And that's fair. Because who is Jesus? Is he God? Or is he God's son? Or is he sort of both? And if he is both, is it sometimes or always? And then if Jesus is God, then who's God? How does God fit into the Jesus thing? Is he separate? Or is he the same? Is he schizophrenic? Quite seriously — this is a legitimate question. That's why today, Trinity Sunday, is really kind of cool. Because it gives us the chance to explore what it is we mean by the word "God."
The Incarnation: 100% Divine, 100% Human
Rev Harry Newton: To answer all those questions, we have to start with the very core claim of Christianity — something called the incarnation. That in Jesus, God became one of us. He became human. Now, here's the confusing part. He became human without ceasing to be God, and without undermining the integrity of the human he became. What that means is that Jesus is 100% God and 100% human. 100% divine, 100% human. In Jesus, you've got the two natures — divine and human — coming together in a way that the integrity of both is protected.
Now, I often say to people, "Oh, well, Jesus is 100% God, 100% divine, 100% human," and people go, "Oh yeah, I get that. You can be two things at the same time." No — he's not like light milk. He's not 50/50. What happens when you put red and yellow together? You get orange. Right — for those who didn't do preschool, you get orange. Red and yellow together makes orange. But when you put the red and the yellow together in Jesus, he doesn't turn orange. He remains fully red, but also remains fully yellow. That's impossible. It can't be done. Nothing can be 100% two things at the same time, because all things that exist, exist in competition with each other.
For example, this little lectern thing and I can't occupy the same physical space. We bash into each other. We're separate, distinct, unique from each other. We can't occupy the same space. Julian and I — I could sit on his lap, it might be a bit awkward, but we can't both sit on the same chair because we're two beings. Does this kind of make sense?
What all this means is that beings — all things in our universe — exist either alongside or in competition with each other. And part of the reason why atheists like Richard Dawkins presume that if there is a God, he must be in competition with us humans, is because they believe he's fundamentally a being — a thing that you can quantify. And yet when it comes to Jesus, what Christians have been claiming for over 2,000 years is that in him you find God and humanity joined together, each being, each nature 100% present simultaneously without impeding on the other — which, as I said, is impossible.
Now, have I lost you slightly? A few people — great. If I have, that's fine, because the whole point of this is not really supposed to make sense. This is at a real surface level. As soon as you start going down the rabbit hole, holy moly, it's intense. It messes with your mind.
God Is Not a Being Among Other Beings
Rev Harry Newton: In fact, the only way we can make sense of this whole Trinitarian thing is by realizing that God is not a being among other beings. God isn't even the supreme being at the top of the pyramid of existence. Somewhere down the bottom, locusts — the only animal on the planet that has no ecological benefit for existing, no ecological service to provide. I don't like locusts from my childhood, that's why I'm picking on them. Right there at the bottom. All the way up to the top, humans. And then above that, God? No. Because that would imply a hierarchy of order — beings hierarchied above each other, a pyramid of existence. But God is other.
Thomas Aquinas — my old mate, my favorite ancient Christian philosopher and theologian — referred to God as being strange. He didn't mean that in an offensive manner. He meant God is strange because God is completely other. He's completely different to everything we experience in life. That's why he also coined the phrase — and I've used this before — ipsum esse subsistens. It's Latin, and it roughly translates to "being itself," meaning that God is the essence that underpins your reality and your very existence.
This is really important, because what it means is that God is not a being among other beings. God is the very essence that underpins our existence and our reality. God is the essence that sustains creation and makes all of this exist — including the little dust mites that live inside your eyebrows and all the bacteria inside your mouth and the floor and the other gross things and not so gross things out on the planet. They all exist and are sustained in this moment because of God.
Because God is not a being, because God is not a thing among others, the end outcome is that God is completely beyond our ability to understand, conceptualize, or even know — because he's beyond our ability to comprehend. We can't see him, we can't smell him, we can't touch him, we can't hear him. Which is why Jesus is so important.
Jesus Makes God Knowable
Rev Harry Newton: In Jesus, God — or as some may say, being itself, the essence that underpins our reality — becomes knowable and tangible. Jesus, that one who is 100% divine and 100% human, in him we find God made knowable to you and me. And the even cooler thing about this is that it shows us something really awesome about God. God is beyond our ability to fully comprehend, understand, articulate, and even fully know. And yet the same God came into the world in the form of a little baby boy so you and I could connect with this other — this transcendent being who's beyond our realm of understanding.
And once you grab hold of that, what we learn about God is something really, really important. We learn that God is inherently relational.
The Trinity as Relationship and Love
Rev Harry Newton: We talk about the Trinity — God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three in one, one yet three, somehow indivisible but also somehow separate, all very mystical, but there is only one God. But within the Trinity itself, God relates to God's self in a perfect symbiotic relationship of unity and love. What that means is God's very being is love. And what is one of the key ways that love expresses itself? Relationship. So what this tells us is that God is inherently relational, and God wants a relationship — here, with you.
This God reaches out to you, not out of pity or mercy or because God needs you, but simply because God likes you. God wants to know you. He wants to relate with you. And as I say, this is where you get to the heart of who God really is. God is relational. God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, ipsum esse subsistens — being itself, the creator and sustainer of all things in the cosmos — he wants to have a relationship with you. He wants you to know him personally, to revel in the joy, the peace, the love, and the hope that we find in Jesus. So much so that he was willing to humble himself into the form of a little baby and come to earth as 100% human while remaining 100% God. Red and yellow. And he did that because he wants to have a relationship with every single person on the planet, including you.
Summing Up: The Good News of Today
Rev Harry Newton: So, summing this all up — there is a lot of confusion about what we mean by the word "God." You might have your own thoughts, your own questions, your own doubts, and those are completely legitimate. But the classical Christian understanding of God is that God just is. God is ipsum esse subsistens — the essence that underpins our reality. If you want to get into the metaphysics of it: God never was not. Therefore, God always was. Therefore, love always was. Therefore, relationship always was. So when you engage in love and engage in relationship, you are, in essence, fulfilling the universe's purpose. Weird, isn't it? Thomas Aquinas wrote a lot about that.
This God — this essence that you can't taste, smell, hear, touch, or see — is knowable to you in Jesus. And through Jesus, you can enjoy a relationship with the creator and the sustainer of the universe. And more than that, this other, this strange non-being, doesn't just love you — he really likes you, and he wants you to know him. That is what we mean by the word "God" when we use it in Christian circles. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
And here's the great thing. God — strange, completely out there — which in some respects matches what some people who aren't necessarily Christian but who believe in a God might think of. My wife Amy and I have a very close friend who believes that there is a God, but she doesn't believe this God cares. This God is completely out there in the universe, completely aloof and distant. Have you heard the divine watchmaker idea? The idea that God just sets things in motion and then steps back and lets everything play itself out? This friend of ours believes that because of some tragedies that happened in her own life.
But what we as Christians actually profess is that that other — that completely separate thing — has actually become knowable to us in Jesus. And Jesus came into the world to show us what God is like. He taught, lived, healed, did miracles, did all sorts of amazing things — arrested, unjustly tried, butchered, tortured, and murdered. His body thrown in a hole. Three days later, he came back to life, spent 40 days with his friends and followers before ascending back into heaven. And then what happens a few days later? The Holy Spirit comes. And what that means is the Holy Spirit is still here to this day. Through the Holy Spirit, you can come to know Jesus. And when you know Jesus, you know God. That is the good news of today.
Closing Prayer
Rev Harry Newton: Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we just give you thanks that you are knowable. We give you thanks that in this weird, mystical way, you have become the God who we can know personally. Lord God, we give you thanks that you sent Jesus. We give you thanks, Lord Jesus, that you have sent your Spirit, and we give you thanks that through your Spirit we can know you and come to know our creator and sustainer. We pray for ourselves that you'll encourage us to remember and know that we are deeply loved — not because we deserve it, but because you love us and we have inherent value. And we pray this all in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.