God’s Good Creation

Hey friends — welcome back to the podcast. Today, we are hearing about Traces of the Trinity. So far, we’ve talked about our bodies, our families, our language, our sense of time — all these everyday things pointing us back to a deeper pattern of mutual indwelling.

Today, we tune our ears to something that may just be the clearest everyday clue that the universe hums with Trinitarian echoes: music.

This is Chapter 6 of Leithart’s book: Chords.

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Leithart kicks this off with a few playful experiments. If you’re listening at home, try them sometime. First — look at someone nearby and shout! Not a gentle “Hey there” — a full-throated shout!!

They’ll jump. They’ll look confused. They’ll probably be annoyed. Why? Because sound moves — it crosses space. It connects what’s here with what’s there.

Sound, like smell, is presence in absence. You don’t need a clear line of sight — sound travels through walls, under doors, across fields.

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Try another experiment: play some music in your room — your phone, a piano, a speaker. Then walk around. Face away from it. Lie down on the floor. Stand on a chair. Step into the next room.

You’ll notice something strange: the music is everywhere. The same notes fill the air above you, beside you, behind you. Unlike your eyes — which can only see what’s right in front of them — your ears pick up vibrations from all directions. The sound wraps around you.

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Think about it. You can only see one side of your laptop at a time. You look at the front — the back disappears. You can’t see the whole thing in one glance.

But when you hear a song, you hear the whole chord at once. You don’t just catch one angle — the entire harmony pours through you.

Leithart says: sound fills space without taking up space. It occupies a room fully — yet leaves that same room open for everything else. The music and the chair and your cat and your coffee mug — they all share the same space.

And then there’s the magic of chords themselves. Hit a single note on a piano — say, middle C. That note is never alone. Hidden in that one sound are faint, ghostly overtones. Each note carries hidden passengers — other pitches that make it what it is.¹Musical overtones are frequencies that occur above the fundamental (lowest) note when a musical sound is produced. They are natural vibrations that happen simultaneously with the main pitch and help determine the sound’s tone color (timbre). For example: If you pluck a guitar string tuned to C:

1. The whole string vibrates → C (fundamental)
2. The string vibrates in two halves → higher C (1st overtone)
3. The string vibrates in thirds → G (2nd overtone)
4. In fourths → higher C, and so on

These pitches follow a predictable mathematical pattern.

Play two or three notes together — a chord — and the miracle gets richer. Each note doesn’t push the others aside. They don’t compete for space. Instead, each note fills the whole soundscape — yet all coexist, intertwined. They resonate through each other.

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Jeremy Begbie, a theologian and musician, says that when you hear multiple notes together, you’re hearing “mutual interpenetration.” That’s the fancy way of saying: no note shuts the others out. Each one makes room for the rest — and together they create something more than any single note could do alone.

It’s not just chords. A melody does this too — one note leans into the next. Think of a hymn or a favorite song. Each note is itself — but each depends on what came before, and what’s coming next.

A note that refuses to yield and make space? That’s not music — that’s noise.

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Here’s where this touches the Trinity. Sound and music model mutual indwelling — perichoresis. Each part distinct — yet each part fully inside the others. All together, yet not collapsed into a blur.

Leithart says: this is more than poetic. For centuries, thinkers like the Pythagoreans²The Pythagoreans were an ancient Greek philosophical and religious movement founded in the 6th century BC by Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570–495 BC). They believed that number and mathematical harmony are the fundamental principles of reality and that the cosmos is ordered according to rational, numerical relationships. The Pythagoreans practiced a disciplined communal way of life that combined philosophy, mathematics, ethics, and religious ritual, including beliefs in the immortality and transmigration of the soul. Their ideas profoundly influenced Plato and the later development of Western philosophy, mathematics, and cosmology., Plato³Plato (c. 428–348 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and a student of Socrates, and one of the foundational figures of Western philosophy. He founded the Academy in Athens, the first long-lasting institution of higher learning in the West. Through philosophical dialogues such as The Republic, Symposium, and Phaedo, Plato explored ethics, politics, metaphysics, and epistemology, developing influential doctrines including the Theory of Forms, the immortality of the soul, and the vision of a just society ruled by philosopher-kings. His thought shaped virtually all subsequent Western philosophy, especially through his student Aristotle., and early Christian theologians saw music as a clue to the cosmos itself. The “harmony of the spheres” was the idea that the whole universe moves like music — ordered, relational, beautiful.

Music is order in motion. Unlike a statue or pyramid — frozen and rigid — music is alive. It’s always moving. It never stays still — yet it isn’t chaotic. It’s order made of flow.

Rowan Williams⁴Former Archbishop of Canterbury (Anglican). says that music teaches us about time too. Music forces you to wait. You can’t hear a whole symphony in an instant. You can’t jam all the notes on top of each other. You have to sit there, in time, receiving it moment by moment.

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And that’s a gift. We often think of time as an enemy — ticking away, stealing youth, ending dreams. But music reminds us that transience — notes giving way — is what makes beauty possible. If every note refused to end, there would be no song.

Music shows us how to live in time — not as a prison, but as a dance.

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Here’s another layer. Singing together makes this real in our bodies. If you’ve sung in a choir, you know: your voice doesn’t stand alone. Your sound blends into others. Your chest vibrates with the bass beside you, the soprano behind you. You dwell in their sound, and they dwell in yours.

Leithart says — this is society at its best: each person distinct, yet each one opening space for the other. Music is community made audible.

So next time you hum a tune, or feel goosebumps at a chord, or get swept away by a choir — remember: you’re feeling a living parable. A hint of the shape that holds everything together.

The world hums with chords — notes distinct yet dwelling in each other — a faint echo of the Father in the Son, the Son in the Spirit, the Spirit in the Father.

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Next time, we’ll look at what happens when this pattern of making room spills out into how we live — how we love, lead, and open our lives to others.

Until then, may your days be filled with songs that remind you: the universe is not just atoms crashing in the dark — it’s a chord, a harmony, an invitation to listen deeper.

The Trinity leaves fingerprints on every inch of creation.

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Next Episode 7 – Making Room (coming soon)

I welcome any questions or comments. [Don’t worry, your personal info will not be given to anyone.] Thanks!

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Welcome back to this podcast series where we are uncovering, Traces of the Trinity. So far, we’ve peered into our bodies, our families, our loves, our sense of time — all to see how the world hums with hints of mutual indwelling, of the Triune God’s signature everywhere.

Today, we tackle something that wraps around all of that — language. Not just grammar drills and spelling tests — but language as a living sign of how the world itself works. This is Chapter 5 of Leithart’s book: Word in Word in World.

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Language is weird. It’s so familiar, we forget how strange it is. Little squiggles on a page, vibrations in the air — somehow they pass thoughts from my mind into yours. Or do they?

Leithart starts by poking that idea. He says — maybe we’ve asked the wrong question all along. Are words just tiny packages that move ideas from one head to another, like digital files? Or do they do more than carry meaning — do they create meaning?

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Think about it. Plato and Aristotle thought spoken words were closer to thought than written ones. A spoken word was the living breath of the thinker. But a written word? Just a mark on a page — a ghost of the living voice. Once you scribble it down, you lose control of it.

Yet here we are — thousands of years later — still reading Plato’s ghost words. Somehow, the ideas still come through. How?

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Leithart says the clue is this: language is never just words. It’s words in the world — and the world in the words.

You yell “Duck!” when a baseball flies off course. You’re not just passing a thought. You’re trying to move a body — to get someone to bend their knees and dodge. The word isn’t a fact to file away — it’s an action that changes the world.

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And it goes deeper. Words reshape the world — but the world also shapes words.

Think about nicknames. Or local slang. Or that family phrase only your siblings get. Language isn’t just a static list of labels. It’s a living web of meanings, stories, mistakes, jokes, memories — words that contain other words, histories that echo inside each phrase.

When you say “White House,” you don’t mean the building alone — you mean the whole government it stands for. That’s called metonymy — one thing standing in for something bigger. But that only works because we know the history behind it. The world inhabits the word.

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Or think about metaphor. Metaphor isn’t just fancy speech for poets. It’s how we think. “Life is a journey.” “Time is money.” “Argument is war.” These aren’t just decorative flourishes — they’re the mental handles we grab to navigate life.

Language layers word upon word. Meaning curls into meaning. Each phrase is a Möbius strip — an inside and an outside that twist into each other.

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Leithart pushes it even further. He says — this tangled pattern is not just about words but about world.

Words don’t stand apart from the world, looking in. Words are in the world — and the world is inside our words. When you name something — a swan, a rock, a friend — you reshape how you see it, touch it, even live with it. Words are like little worlds that contain pieces of the bigger world.

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And the Trinity? That’s the shape echoing again. Words dwell in other words. The world dwells in the word. The word dwells in the world. It’s perichoresis — mutual indwelling — in grammar, poetry, politics, and everyday speech.

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Leithart gives examples from literature. Shakespeare’s lines live inside our speech. Phrases from Hamlet (“to be or not to be”), Macbeth (“something wicked this way comes!” OR a “wild goose chase” & “it’s all Greek to me”) — these lines echo through new books, new jokes, new memes. Words nest inside words. Texts dwell inside texts.

And this isn’t just literary trivia (Alex, I’ll take literary trivia for 400 please) — it’s how meaning happens at all. Without older words, new words have nowhere to live. Without a bigger world, words have nothing to point at. And without words, we can’t even see the world clearly.

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Here’s the kicker: language is never just labels stuck on things. It’s how we join with the world. How we act on it. How we let it act on us.

When Augustine asked how we can learn anything new through language, he puzzled: if you need to know something to understand the word, how does the word teach you anything? Augustine’s answer: ultimately, God teaches the mind from the inside.

Leithart says — yes, but don’t miss this: language also teaches from the outside. Words pour the world into us. Marks on paper pull dead philosophers or playwrights back to life (that’s all Greek to me!). A single word can unlock a new part of your world.

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So here’s the takeaway: language is a sign of the Trinity because it’s a dance of difference and union. Words are distinct — each means something unique — but they only work because they indwell each other.

Sense and sound. History and meaning. World and word. They live in one another — and we live inside that swirl every time we speak.

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Next time you shout “Duck!” or whisper “I love you” or read a text from a friend — remember: you’re not just swapping info. You’re tracing the shape of something deeper. A world stitched together by words. Words stitched together by the world.

And maybe — just maybe — all this chatter points back to the divine Word that was with God and was God, the Word through whom all worlds were made.

Next episode, we’ll tune our ears to another clue — music. If words are swirling hints of the Trinity — what about sound itself? Until then — listen well, speak carefully, and keep your mind open to the hidden music of word in word in world.

The Trinity leaves fingerprints on every inch of creation.

***

Next Episode (6) – Chords.

Traces of the Trinity: Chords

I welcome any questions or comments. [Don’t worry, your personal info will not be given to anyone.] Thanks!

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Hey friends — welcome back to the podcast. In this podcast series we are finding out that Traces of the Trinity are everywhere. If you’ve traveled with us so far, you know the drill: we’re following theologian Peter Leithart up this winding mountain path where the world’s everyday features — our bodies, our relationships, our words — all whisper a hidden shape: the triune shape of mutual indwelling.

Today, we step into Chapter 4 — and we’re turning our gaze to something we usually take for granted: time.

Leithart calls this one Presence of the Past.

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Time is slippery. Augustine¹Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was a Christian theologian, philosopher, and bishop of Hippo in North Africa, and one of the most influential figures in Western Christianity. After a restless youth, he converted to Christianity in 386 under the influence of St. Ambrose. His writings shaped Christian doctrine on grace, sin, free will, and the Trinity. Augustine’s most famous works include Confessions, a spiritual autobiography; The City of God, a vision of history shaped by the love of God; and On the Trinity. Blending classical philosophy with biblical faith, Augustine profoundly influenced medieval theology, the Protestant Reformers, and Western thought as a whole. once said, “I know what time is — until someone asks me.” Then it slips through his fingers.

We live inside time. We watch it tick by on screens and clocks. But do we ever really see it?

Leithart says: look again. Because if you pay attention, even time reveals the same strange pattern — inside and outside, past and future, all tangled up inside the present.

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Here’s the classic problem. The past? It’s gone — right? I am no longer the child obsessed with football, no longer the teen at my first job. That version of me doesn’t exist anymore. The past is memory.

The future? That doesn’t exist either — not yet. It’s all possibility. Plans, hopes, fears — but they’re not real today.

So what do we have? We have now. But here’s Augustine’s puzzle: as soon as you name the present, it vanishes. It’s swallowed by the past. The present is a knife edge — and it’s gone before you can point at it.

So how does this fragile sliver hold our lives together?

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Leithart says: it does — because the past and future don’t just hover outside the present. They dwell inside it.

Think about it: you remember what you did this morning. (At least I hope you do.) You remember your childhood. Those memories live in you. They shape you. They are you, in part.

And the future? It leaks into now, too. You’re listening to this podcast probably because you hope to learn something, to grow, to reach some future you want. Deadlines push us. Dreams pull us. Futures shape the present.

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Leithart borrows an idea from Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy²Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888–1973) was a German social philosopher, historian, and Christian thinker known for his emphasis on speech, community, and historical transformation. Trained in law and history, he rejected purely abstract philosophy in favor of a dialogical, lived understanding of reality, arguing that human life is shaped by command, response, and shared language. After emigrating to the United States in the 1930s, he taught at Harvard and later at Dartmouth College. His major works, including Out of Revolution and Speech and Reality, explore how language, faith, and social order arise through historical crises and renewal.— a quirky name, but worth remembering. Rosenstock-Huessy said that time isn’t just clock ticks on a wall. Real time is shaped by what fills it.

A basketball game has its own time — the “time of the game” isn’t just minutes. It’s the drama, the rush, the roar of the crowd.

A classroom has its own time — the old knowledge of the teacher meets the fresh curiosity of students. Past and future collide in the present moment of teaching.

History itself works this way. We speak of “the Victorian Age,” “the Reformation,” “the Digital Era.” These aren’t just dates — they’re times-with-shape, where past, present, and future press into each other.

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So look around your life. You’re surrounded by traces of the past. The buildings in your town — someone built them decades ago. That chair you’re sitting in? Designed, carved, assembled long before you sat down. Your own body bears scars, moles, wrinkles — little footprints of time.

The future lives here too. Maybe you wear a ring, a sign of promises made long ago that bind you now and propel you ahead. Maybe you’re studying for a test or saving for a trip. The future inhabits your present — just like the past.

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Leithart says: this is the same Möbius twist we’ve seen all along. Things that are separate actually dwell in one another. Just as your body is not sealed off from the world but porous — so time is not chopped into neat slices. It’s a swirl.

Without memory, there is no now. Without anticipation, there is no present action. The past makes sense only because it lives on in us. The future only matters because it reaches back to tug at our now.

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And here’s the deep point: time’s dance of mutual indwelling points us to the Triune God.

For Christians, God is not frozen above time, untouched and unmoved. He steps into time — in Christ, in history, in the Spirit who inhabits every moment.

And the Trinity itself is a dance of eternity — Father, Son, and Spirit indwelling, pouring life into each other without beginning or end. The shape of time echoes the shape of the Trinity — difference united, separate yet together, all folded into a living story.

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So, what do we do with this?

For starters, we can stop fearing time. We live in an age obsessed with youth, terrified of aging. We chase anti-wrinkle creams and digital illusions of forever. But Leithart says: what if change is not our enemy? What if time’s passage is gift — a pattern that invites us to live inside the dance?

We don’t have to run from the past. We don’t have to fear the future. The Triune God holds both — and holds us inside it.

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So today — maybe pay attention to time in a new way. Notice the memories that rise when you see an old photo. Notice how a plan for tomorrow shapes your choices now.

Remember: past and future aren’t enemies of the present. They’re the frame that makes now possible. And all of it — all this swirl — is a whisper that we live inside a world shaped by the Trinity.

Next time, we’ll see how this pattern seeps into something else we take for granted: language. But until then — may you find the traces of the Triune dance in every tick of the clock, every scar on your skin, every hope that wakes you up in the morning.

The Trinity leaves fingerprints on every inch of creation.

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Next Episode (5) – Word in Word in World.

Traces of the Trinity: Word in Word in World

I welcome any questions or comments. [Don’t worry, your personal info will not be given to anyone.] Thanks!