The A-Bomb and the Trinity

Trinity Nuclear Test 1945

Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of one of the most diabolical inventions by human beings, the atom bomb. The first detonation of an atomic bomb took place on the morning of July 16, 1945, in the desert of New Mexico. It seems like madness that no one was sure of what the outcome might be, including the beginning of a reaction which would cause untold devastation. Eventually two atomic bombs were used by the Americans to wipe out the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. In the decades since the end of World War 2 there has been a nuclear arms race which has developed enough weapons to wipe out all the major cities on Earth several times over.

The so-called Cold War of nuclear proliferation seemed to dominate diplomacy in the 1950's and 60's. In 1987 a treaty called the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was signed by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.But last August  the US and Nato accused Russia of violating the pact by deploying a new type of cruise missile, which Moscow has denied, and the States pulled out.



What I find chilling is that the first test had the code name Trinity. No one know why for certain, but it is often attributed to testing director Robert Oppenheimer as a reference to the poetry of John Donne, which in turn references the Christian notion of the Trinity (three-fold nature of God). Someone wrote wrote to Oppenheimer years later about the origin of the name, asking if he had chosen it because it was a name common to rivers and peaks in the West and would not attract attention, and elicited this reply:

I did suggest it, but not on that ground ... Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation:

As West and East

In all flatt Maps—and I am one—are one,

So death doth touch the Resurrection.

That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, Batter my heart, three person'd God

It all seems perverse, doesn't it? How is the Prince of Peace invoked as the secret name for a weapon of mass destruction? Ah well, we humans do manage to destroy what we love most, over and over again. At this anniversary we can pray to God-in-three-Persons for the peace of Christ in our world and for our planet.