The regard the church has for the
Trinity can be seen in where it puts the lone day it dedicates to it every
year. It’s one of those “afterthought”
days, slid in between a pretty major feast day—Pentecost—and the long, hard
slog of Ordinary Time, which ends with another
afterthought day—Christ the King Sunday—which we hurry through to get to
Advent so we can try not to sing Christmas carols until December 25.
Biblical scholars, even New
Testament ones, have little patience with the doctrine, at times seeming
downright snooty about it. Francis
Watson says his colleagues have no great love for the doctrine of the Trinity
and think It should be left to “church historians and systematic theologians,” having
no place in their field. Ouch! Lions and tigers and systematic theologians,
oh my!
Of course, one of the reasons they
feel that way is that the Trinity isn’t in the Bible, not as such, anyway. The word isn't there, and neither is the
concept of which we sang this morning: God in three persons, Blessed Trinity. It is pretty clear that to the synoptic
Gospel writers—Matthew, Mark and Luke—as well as the Apostle Paul, Jesus was
just who they said: the Son of God, not God’s own self. Only in John do we get a slight movement
toward some kind of identity of Jesus with God the Father, and then it's
tentative at best.
Back in Seminary—I almost wrote
“cemetery,” was that a Freudian slip, or what?—back in seminary I knew a guy I’ll call “Dan.” I’ll call him that because (a) that was his
name and (b) I can’t remember any more of it.
Anyway, Dan was a high muckety-muck in the Church of God of Morrow,
Georgia, and like most Church-of-Godders, he didn’t believe in the Trinity, and
for the usual reason: it's not in Holy Scripture. And Dan would get incensed, simply incensed
when some uppity theology professor or another would imply he wasn’t a
Christian because of it. And at the
time, I would commiserate with him, because I have a strong anti-authoritarian
streak and don’t like being told what to believe and half-way agreed with him
at the time. I thought the Trinity was a
polite way of talking about God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit without sounding
like those nasty polytheists.
Well, sorry Dan, wherever you are
and whatever your last name is, I have turned around on that. Not on whether I
think you're a Christian or not--that's not up to me (or those uppity theology
professors, for that matter) to say. But
I have recently done a 180 on the value of the Trinity, and have come to
believe that it's the most important concept—and perhaps symbol—in Christianity. And my turn-around came about quite by
accident, beginning perhaps a year ago
when I picked up a book by Father Richard Rohr, the founder and dean of the
Living School of Contemplation and Action I’ll be starting in the Fall. And though his book wasn’t about the Trinity per se, he did say some startling things about it. More importantly, though, he pointed me to
other peoples’ works that were
concerned with it. And lo, the reading
of Richard Rohr begat the reading of Cynthia Bourgeault—another teacher at the
Living School—which begat the plowing through of Raimon Panikkar, who bounced
me back to Bourgeualt, the further reading of whom begat a study of the work of
George Gurdjieff and Jacob Boehme, and you get the picture.
And to make a long story short,
and because the sermon’s supposed to be about the Trinity, and not me, I have gained a new appreciation of the
Trinitarian notion—notice I don’t say “doctrine”—and beginning today, and over
the next couple of Sundays, I’ll try to give you a sense of what I’ve learned.
Who knows, maybe I’ll follow it up with a Sunday school course or something.
This week, I’m going to say a little
about where the doctrine (and this time I do mean doctrine, as in the orthodox doctrine) came from. Next week, God willing and the creek don’t
rise, we’ll talk further about the official doctrine, including some problems
with it, and then the final week we’ll explore some of the truly revolutionary
thinking being done on the topic by modern day theologians and, yes, biblical
scholars.
And the thing to remember is that
while the Trinity as such isn’t in
the Bible, its components are. Probably the most well-known instance, where
they’ll all together, is in what we call the great commission: “Go therefore
and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of Holy Spirit.” In fact,
the Bible can be viewed as a record of human interaction with the divine, in
three persons: the Father/Creator, the Son/Redeemer and the Holy Spirit/Sustainer. Note that though it is not my habit to speak
of God on exclusively male terms (my preaching teacher Anna Carter Florence would
wring my neck if I did), it is
difficult to speak of the formal doctrine of the Trinity without calling God
“father.” You can speak of the Mother or
Parent, and be just as correct, and I’m warning you now, sometimes I will.
Anyway. You can say that the New Testament contains
the framework for the Trinity, and
early on the first theologians of the Church cottoned onto that fact. There were theologians in the East, who did
their theologizing in Greek—the New Testament’s original language—and theologians
in the West, who worked in Latin. And
each “school” of theology had their own notions of what the Trinity is all
about. In the East, it began about the
turn of the first century, with the bishop Clement of Rome, who wrote that Christ
is God the creator’s agent for redemption, the Spirit is Christ's gift for
reconciliation and insight, and that a peaceful church is the fruit of Christ's
work. Christ addresses us through the
Spirit, who reveals that Christ is the pre-existent Word, and it was thus
Christ speaking in the Spirit all along, even in Old Testament times. This view didn’t develop in a vacuum,
however: it was in response to a crisis in governance in the Important
Corinthian church, just as had much of Paul’s theology fifty years before.
Another crisis ignited at the
church at Philadelphia (not a church in Pennsylvania): they seemed to have a problem
with the nascent church hierarchy of bishop, priest and deacon. This prompted another bishop-theologian, Ignatius of
Antioch, to develop another Trinitarian formula: Bishops are icons of God the
Father; priests are like Christ; deacons are the angels present in the
churches. The threefold ministry is described as a living sign of the Trinity
present in the mysteries of communion and baptism. Therefore, according to this
theology, the Philadelphian church should obey the (earthly) hierarchy that is
the icon of the heavenly harmony of God himself.
Are you beginning to see a pattern
here? One more example: it’s toward
the end of the second century, and although Christianity has been around for
over a century, it has just now become big enough to draw the attention of the
religious intellectuals of the day: Jewish sages and religious philosophers.
And the problem is, whereas these groups are steeped in dialectical discourse,
in the arguments using the logic of philosophical thought, Christian
theologians by and large are not. Thus,
in the words of historian and theologian John McGuckin, the Christians in the
cities of the Empire, where inter-religious discourse is a daily event, were
sitting ducks. As a reaction to this, a new group of theologians arose
which tried to put their faith in terms the philosophical crowd could get
behind. Specifically, they tried to
explain, using the methods of the Greco-Roman perennial philosophy, how they could claim to be continuing the
Jewish monotheism while worshiping Christ as God. Thus, Trinitarian theology became couched in
the language and metaphysics of Neoplatonism, substantialism and all, and the
road to Trinitarian orthodoxy was born.
I hope you can see where I’m going
with this . . . Advancements, or perhaps better, changes in our understanding of the makeup of God were driven by circumstances.
Problems in church governance, both internal and external, and a need to keep
up with the intellectual big boys shaped the development of theology. I dare say that it's always that way: as the
faith spread, it had to move beyond
its New Testament foundations to confront new situations and cultures. Feminist
theology is a reaction to the patriarchal nature of orthodox Christianity. Liberation theology is a reaction to oppressive
Latin-American governments, and the Belhar Confession, recently ratified by our
denomination, arose in response to Apartheid.
Ok . . . one more dead theologian,
then no more, I promise. But this guy was a biggie, and much of what
followed until the Trinity was calcified in its present form, was clarification
and reaction to his work. His name was Origen, and he spent the first half of his life in Alexandria, the second
half being chased around the Mediterranean by some bishop he’d angered or
another. Origen was a towering figure in
early theology, having his hand in just about everything. But his work on the Trinity was arguably the
most influential. For him, it was one of the key issues in all
theology. He called our faith “a triple
woven rope from which the whole Church hangs and by which it is sustained.” “There are three hypostases,” he writes, “three
concrete beings: the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. Only the Father is Unbegotten.” Only the Father is pre-existent, unborn . . . Finally,
while, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are different realities of God, they “are one in terms of like- mindedness, and
harmony, and identity of will.”
And there you have it: the basic
outline of how the Trinity stands today, at least in terms of Orthodox doctrine. Three hypostases,
three concrete beings, one singleness of mind.
The only thing lacking was the final piece: the homoousian of the God-head, that the Father and Son and Holy Spirit
were of one substance, but this was a biggie, and its development and debate, within
Origen’s framework, occupied most of the next century, leading up to the
Council of Nicea, from whence sprung the Nicene Creed, and the second
ecumenical Council at Constantinople,
which confirmed the full divinity of the Holy Spirit. From that point on, with minor harmonic
differences in emphasis, the Trinity has remained static.
Until recently, that is, when
there has been a major revival of theological work on it. And why?
Because of the same old same old: things have changed, and the old
doctrines and ways of doing business are not adequate any more. Theology develops not in a vacuum, but in
response to real things going on in the real world, and—finally—the Trinity is
catching up. We will have more to say about
these exciting, meaningful developments in the third part of this sermon
series.
But for now, you might be asking
what difference any of this makes in
our lives, as either members of the body of Christ or as members of the human
race as a whole. What possible
consequence can the relationships within the God-head have on how we live? Well, as you might have figured out, I
believe a lot. Because how we view the divine determines
how we view one another. . . are we intimately connected to one another in
reality, or are we isolated, alone, apart?
If God is three in one, if the very nature
of God is relationship, how can we be otherwise?
Our notion of the divine affects
our dealings with other cultures as well . . . Christians are increasingly
bumping up against other cultures, other faiths that are older than our own by
centuries. Can the Trinity—three in one,
relationship flowing like living water between its members—be a basis for
understanding between Eastern faiths, like Hinduism for instance, built upon
it’s own Trinity of Gods?
Finally, what does the Trinity
have to say about our own nature as
children of God through Jesus Christ?
After all, it was the words of Jesus that set all this off . . . I in
you and you in me . . . What is done by me is done by the father . . . The
father and I are one. How do we, as individuals with the divine spark
within, relate those parts of us, how
do we access and use our own “inner Trinity” to enrich ourselves and the lives
of those we love?
Sisters and brothers, I believe
that these questions are vital to the survival of our faith in this new millennium. I believe that a revitalized notion of the
Trinity will be foundational to this enterprise; I hope you stick around for
the next couple of weeks as I try to explore why. I say these things in the name of God the one
who creates us, God the one who redeems us, and God the one who sustains us,
Amen.
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