TRINITY Christian Way of Talking about the Mystery of God
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
Becoming a DIY Believer / 3
Rev Dr Raymond Pelly, Priest Associate raymond.pelly@clear.net.nz
TRINITY Christian Way of Talking about the Mystery of God
It’s as if belief in God in not enough. Have I also to believe that three is one & one is three? That contradicts everything I know about truth. J.W. von Goethe, Enlightenment thinker, poet, dramatist, polymath
The Church’s teaching on the Trinity is sterile. It doesn’t teach us anything about real life. Immanuel Kant, Philosopher
The picture most people have of the Incarnation wouldn’t change much if there were no such thing as the Trinity. Karl Rahner S.J.
Christian faith consists first & foremost in confession of the holy Trinity. Thomas Aquinas, Dominican Theologian
The more we live a full life, the more we shall acknowledge the blessed Trinity. Rupert of Deutz, c. 1075-1129, Benedictine Monk
The cross is source & focus of Paul’s Trinitarian spirituality. In it the possibility of experiencing God’s love is made real. Here we learn that God is ‘on our side’ [Romans 8:31], for us in some unfathomable way. Christ’s death for us both demonstrates & defines divine love, the love of the Father who sends in love, the Son who dies in love, & the Spirit who produces the fruit of love in hearts he inhabits. Michael J. Gorman, Contemporary Biblical Scholar
I. Let’s start with a picture. It’s a wonderful piece of Kiwi ingenuity.
Something I once saw on Evans Bay Parade. There were three people running together. One of them, a man, is totally blind. To his right a woman – perhaps his wife? – who is tethered to him by a short wrist to wrist strap/strop. She guides him. In front of them is another person acting as a kind of ‘sweeper’ to prevent him cannoning into another runner or walker. He’s an athlete, and they’re moving fast. These three are not just individuals doing their own thing/making their own choices – modern free autonomous man – but three persons-in-relation. Each is needed by the other. Each enhances the life of the other. There’s a lot of talk/communication between the three. An atmosphere of reciprocity/mutuality reigns in the group. Is the blind man the passenger? No, for without him they might not be out for a run at all. Perhaps the whole thing was his idea. So let’s reflect more in depth about this picture.
1. It might tell us that people only exist as a function of their relationships. Thus the blind runner wouldn’t be a runner without the guide or the sweeper; nor would the guide be a guide without the runner and the sweeper; nor the sweeper without the runner or the guide. Notice, too, the high degree of communications between them; and something we can only call love. For why would they be doing this in the first place if it weren’t for some deep motivation like that? 2. We might also learn that people, however diverse, can be creatively related in a common task. Let’s imagine, for example, that in this group there are differences of gender, race, sexual orientation; that two are waged, one unwaged. Yet they are all perfectly at one in the task they are engaged in. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t work. They would all be pulling in different directions. 3. Summarizing 1, 2. Is communicative relationships in love the thing all three have in common, but which, at the same time, makes them what they are as individuals? Is the essence of being a person to be somebody who is maturing & growing in the context of loving, communicative relationships? 4. The solution to the problem – how a blind athlete can run a half-marathon using the Wellington waterfront on a Sunday afternoon – requires, A. a carefully thought-out method; B. the complete commitment of the people concerned to each other & to their shared task; C. the willingness to don running gear & go through the stink, sweat & stress of running a half-marathon at pace. [Thinking, feeling, acting, but all embodied in persons-in-relation]
II.Next, a bit of history.
From the New Testament onwards – perhaps from the time of Jesus himself – there was a problem – the perennial problem for Christians – as to the precise nature of the relation between Jesus & God.
In his own authentic prayer, ‘Our Father’ (or just ‘Father’), Jesus plays on the idea (or fact) of sonship. Fathers have sons. This posed the question: does that make Jesus ‘the’ son of God or, like others, ‘a’ son of God?
The largely unanimous verdict of many NT witnesses is the former: that he is ‘the’ son of God in an unique & privileged way. Thus Paul uses the word ‘Lord’, normally used of God (‘the Lord God’) of Jesus. He, like God, is worthy of the ‘name that is above every name’ ie Lord’ (Philippians 2:9-11). Or John, in Chapter 8 of his Gospel, picks up the traditional ‘I am’ language of Exodus 3:14 – ‘I am who I am’ – & applies it to Jesus. ‘Before Abraham was, I am’ (8:58).
Some of the language about God, in other words, could be transferred to Jesus without strain ie he was (& was seen to be) the perfect metaphor or parable of what God is in fact like. This is in contrast to normal metaphors which both accept & reject meanings that are transferred from one domain to another. If we say, ‘man is a wolf’, we are saying that he both is and is not like a wolf. With Jesus, however, it is all ‘yes’. As Paul puts it, ‘In him it is always “Yes”. For in him every one of God’s promises is a “Yes”. For this reason it is through him that we say the “Amen” to the glory of God’ (2 Corinthians 1:19-20).
But there were problems with this. Jesus seemed at times very unlike God. Hebrews 5:7 speaks of ‘loud cries and tears’. He became distressed, wept, at times failed, confessed ignorance, and, most excruciatingly, was said to have cried out on the cross out of his sense of abandonment, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’. What kind of intimacy or sonship was that? people asked.
Now the situation in which Christian thinkers (theologians) had to resolve these problems is called Hellenism ie late Greek (& to a certain extent, Latin) culture. On the one hand, the Church inherited the Scriptures of Judaism (along with all the material it had about Jesus, Gospels, Epistles & etc) which was at core monotheistic. God was one & could only be one. ‘The Lord our God, the Lord, is one’ (Deuteronomy 6:4). On the other hand, there was still the dominating the minds of intellectuals the debate between Plato & the tragic poets like Sophocles, Aeschylus & Euripides. Should we, as Plato taught, clean up our mythologies & simply talk about ‘the Good’? Or should we, as Sophocles & co advocated, tell tragic & terrible stories as the only way of understanding what life in all its depth is about?
Plato shot back: to do that was in effect to undermine public morality. Why? Because the tragic poets seemed to accept all too readily the disreputable stories of the gods on Mt. Olympus, who, if they felt like it, appeared on earth in manifold disguises – like Zeus who took on the appearance of a swan in order to seduce a beautiful woman called Leda. What will happen, asks Plato, in the human community if the gods themselves are involved in these kinds of shenanigans?
There was, however, in the popular imagination no clear distinction between gods & humans. The one could easily morph into te other, & back again. It was called metamorphosis. Moreover, people were all too familiar with with Emperors, & sometimes conquering heroes/generals, who claimed divine status for themselves.
Moving on to popular philosophy, we can see two key sets of ideas; the background against which (or the categories with which) the theologians of the Early Church thought & debated. In the first of these, what is called Late Platonism, followers (or elaborators) of Plato thought in terms of descending hierarchies. There was a highest God/Good/Being; & then, in descending hierarchies, lesser gods or lesser beings. The point of this was to connect the oneness & simplicity of God with the messy multiplicity of life on earth: the perennial problem of the ‘one & the many’. The strength of this way of describing reality was that it connected all levels of reality from top to bottom in one great ‘chain of being’ (as it was called). Its weakness, from Christian point of view, was that it could only place Jesus in the No. 2 spot after God; & underneath Jesus, came the angels, & below them, humans. And so on.
The other popular philosophy was Stoicism. Its central idea was that there was a macrocosmos & microcosmoses/micrososms, the latter models or expressions in miniature of the former. Moreover, both macro- & microcosmos were made of (or governed by) basically the same stuff – what they called spirit/pneuma, itself a highly refined kind of all-pervasive stuff that found expression in people or things. If for ‘spirit’ we substitute ‘energy’, we can see what they were getting at. In this way, everything was connected, but in a non-hierarchical way. Stoicism tended towards pantheism because the ‘one & the many’ were of the same basic category (viz. ‘spirit’) – rather like balloons on a fairground that can be knotted or squeezed into different shapes. But it’s always basically the same balloon! Stoicism was also popular because it provided an ethics of everyday life, in particular an account of how to endure suffering.
Theologians were both attracted & repelled by all of this. Some accepted it uncritically. Arius, for example, took the Platonic stream & argued vigorously that Jesus could only be No.2 in the divine hierarchy, essentially a creature. ‘There was when he was not’, was his slogan. Others took the Stoic line: Jesus & the Spirit were simply emanations or modes of the one divine essence; microcosms of the macrocosm. They partook, that is, of the same basic stuff or essence of God, but not in any way as different or as persons/individuals. This heresy was called Sabellianism, after its exponent, Sabellius. It was sometimes called ‘modalism’.
What eventually emerged as orthodoxy was a critique or de-hellenization of this (all too) Hellenistic way of thinking. Basically, three things were said.
a. Council of Nicaea, 325 AD/CE
Jesus, to exclude Arius’s subordinationsim, was said to be ‘of one substance (or being) with the Father’ (see our Creed). In Greek, ‘homoousios to patri’. This stated that what Jesus incarnated or acted out was not just an outstanding human life (though it was that), but the very life, spirit or essence of God; & this in its fullness & not in some dilute form. By now, by the way, they had been prodded by Origen to see that ‘Spirit’ in the Bible does not refer to any kind of stuff, no matter how refined. Exit Stoicism/ Sabellianism. The creed of Nicaea picks up texts like John 1:14, ‘The word [or self-communication] of God became flesh [or fully human]’; or Colossians 1:19, ‘For in him the whole fullness of God was pleased to dwell bodily’ (compare, 2:2-3). The motive behind this was twofold. If Jesus was to act effectively as saviour or redeemer, he had to be God in the same sense that God is God. And yet, on the other hand, if he is to be redeemer of humankind, he must share the human condition to the full. ‘What was not assumed, was not redeemed’ was the catch-cry of the architects of Nicaea.
b. Council of Chalcedon, 451 AD/CE
Now the problem arose in its acutest form. If Jesus was ‘one in being with the Father’, how are we to understand his (equally important) ‘oneness with us humans’? The Bishops, in noting that there were many more or less one-sided responses to this question, made a statement that in effect outlines the problem, rather than provides its solution. See Appendix I. One way of interpreting this is to say that, just as we need grammar to speak a language, so we need ground rules or guidelines if we are to speak adequately of Christ. Or, to put it another way, given that we are talking about the one undivided person of Jesus Christ, it is equally correct to talk of his full humanity as it is to speak of his full divinity. The proviso is, though, that we don’t absolutize the one at the expense of the other. Beware, that is, of trying to reduce the mystery of Christ to the dimensions of your own mind. Learn to live with the mystery; let it draw you into ever-deepening understandings, not to speak of maturity of faith as of life.
c. Persons-in-Relation
The third set of reflections, just as important, was the beginnings of the discovery of what it means to be a ‘person’; &, more than that, what it means to be ‘persons-in-relation’. This essentially was the work of the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, & Gregory of Nyssa. The idea they came up with is that God is a Koinonia/Sharing/Communio of Persons-in-Relation. This had several advantages. It liberated theology further from overuse of philosophical categories like being or essence. Instead of a descending hierarchy that prioritized the Father over the Son or the Spirit, it put them all on the same footing as ‘equi-primordial’. But did this, some objected, risk tritheism ie making God a ‘three’ rather than a ‘one’? Be this as it may, in using a category like ‘person’, it opened the way to both closer relation with the biblical sources of theology, and, at the same time, a more fruitful way of connecting theology with real life. For as soon as people start understanding themselves as ‘persons’, the next question they ask themselves is, how do we as persons relate to one another? And beyond that, how do we form community?
III. To summarize, we might say that Nicaea forces us to reflect about the nature of the connection between Jesus & God [father/son model of intimacy]; that Chalcedon invites us to go the hard road of a ‘both/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’; and that Trinitarian reflection works best on the model of ‘persons-in-relation’ or ‘related diversity’. Now the stage is set for some fruitful reflections.
So let’s reflect about that from a couple of angles and in ways that makes connections between theological reflection and our experience of real life.
1. One way into this difficult subject is simply to list the roles (or jobs) of the different ‘persons’ of the Trinity and see how they relate to one another, given that our basic model of the Trinity is of ‘Communio of Persons-in-Relation’. We have already spoken of communicative, loving relationships as belonging to the essence of what it means to be a person. Take that one step further. Suppose:
a. that the ‘Father’ is pure giving or gift; b. that the ‘Son’ is both the receiver & reciprocator of that original gift (of love); c. that the Spirit is the nature of that love, given & received, the link, as it were, between Giver & Reciprocator; also the expression or fruit of that love (like the child/children of a family/parents);
then in this way of thinking, we can see that the common term (or model) is the ‘giving and receiving (or reciprocating) of love between persons’. Let’s take that now and ‘dunk’ it in history. Now we might get this.
i. We can see God the Father as pure Gift, as Giver. In this way, Creation becomes a ‘gift-like’ place where, for example, the best way to live in relation to Creation is on this model of ‘the giving and receiving of gifts in love’ – in contrast to another model that might be about domination or exploitation. ii. In God the Son we can see reproduced in time and place the same model of the ‘giving and receiving of love’ but now acted out by Jesus amongst people (and in the Creation). He is the one who gives – in this sense is now the Gift or Giver – and who also constantly receives from God the Father (in prayer, for example). Jesus also, incidentally, is the person uniquely capable of receiving the gifts of others & transforming them in the process. His self-giving, however, his nature as Gift, goes so far as put his life at risk (or actually give it away) in Passion and Cross. This shows ‘what he is made of’; but also potentially alienates him from the Ground of his Being as Gift (aka, the Father). iii. How is this alienation to be resolved? Answer, by the Spirit whose ‘giving and receiving of love’ both sends Jesus on his mission or ‘journey into a far country’, but also preserves/upholds/repairs the Father/Son intimacy in such a way that not only can it not be broken, but also that it is actually strengthened. The Spirit qua ‘person-in-relation’ then has a second, equally important role. That role is to reproduce the ‘giving and receiving of love’ expressed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus in the lives of an infinite number of other people. In this way the Spirit is the one Person in many persons. The Spirit makes it happen, a continuing Pentecost in which Jesus becomes ‘the firstborn of many brothers and sisters’ (Romans 8:29).
Some of the spin-offs from this might be (in contemporary language) that the Father is pure generativity ie the kind of person who sparks life all around them (like an artistic genius); that the Son resembles a beloved child ie a person who, through having experienced the love of a family, then goes on to create a loving, person-creating family of his or her own, and, furthermore, makes outstanding and costly contributions to his/her job or the community at large; that the Spirit is like wildfire or the kind of infectious freedom that people will always find wonderfully attractive. Or, we’re talking of the Spirit as being like a love that overflows and which, at the same time, pulls people together (creates community).
In all this, if we’re smart, we can begin to discern patterns or models for our own life. These have the huge advantage of reaching for ways of being human that reproduce or echo the life of God. In this way, we may begin to understand what people have meant when they say that in essence the Christian life is a sharing in the life of the Trinity.
2. So let’s now look at another way of understanding the Trinity. This starts from the deceptively simple premise that to be human – or grow into what it means to be a ‘human being’ – we have to look first at key statements of the verb ‘to be’. These are: ‘I am’, ‘Thou art’, ‘We are’. Let us say, then, that ‘I am’ - ‘I am – who? what?’ – is about identity and the search for identity. In biblical context, we ask that question against the background of God’s ‘I am who I am’ (Exodus 3:14). Moving on from there, we could see ‘Thou art’ posing the question of the nature of relationship – the giving & receiving of love (see above); but this seen against the backdrop of the primordial ‘I – Thou’ relationship between Jesus and God (Father and Son). The key texts here would be Mark 1:11; 9:7 & //’s in which the key words are, ‘Thou art my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased’. Finally, we might view ‘We are’ as the statement of (or search for) community. Here we might envision (as model) community as created by the Spirit descending like ‘tongues of fire’ resting ‘on each one of them’.
There is clearly rich material for reflection here. Not only are we invited to reflect about the vital dimensions of our existence such as identity, relationship, community, we are also lead to see that no one of these can exist without the other. Or, that there is no ‘I’ without a ‘Thou’; just as ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ don’t make sense unless we can talk about ‘We’ (or us). Can this, at one and the same time, give us insight into the mystery of human being just as it gives us glimpses in the mystery of the Being of God (viz. the ‘Communio of Persons-in- Relation’).
Let’s take this one step further. One way of envisaging the human life-cycle is to say that it goes through three stages: 1. The search for identity, finding out who we are; 2: the exploring of relationships, who is it that we love, want to share our life with, co-parent children with, who our real friends are ; 3: community, making a contribution to the community out of our whole life-experience. In maturity all these dimensions overlap, intermingle, interpenetrate, make us the person we are. Thus we might say that God is the ‘I’ or identity of the Trinity; Jesus in his life, death, resurrection is the ‘Thou’ or relatedness of the Trinity; & the Spirit is the ‘We’ (or ‘We-all’) of community of persons in relation in God. We thus arrive at a model of ‘I-Thou-We’; and these personal dimensions being equally basic to the Being of God. But once again, we could see the I/identity, Thou/Relationship, We/Community not only encapsulating what we want to say about the mystery of God, but also encoding the whole story of our life with all its struggles and ups and downs. In this way, too, we could say that we are sharing or participating in the (Trinitarian) life of God. Or, in our life-long search for identity, relationship, community, these can be the ‘places’ where we experience God.
IV.Other nodal points for Trinitarian reflections
• Different persons of the Trinity do different jobs, albeit in the same cause. Here is an example of how this can help. Suppose we want to say that in the Cross, God was so immersed in the suffering of the world that God ceased to be God in any extra-historical or objective sense. With the help Trinitarian theology, we can see this rests on a confusion of the roles of Father and Son. It’s the Son’s self-emptying (or ‘kenotic ‘) mission to share suffering and the human condition generally to the full, up to & including death itself. The Father, however, for all the grief he may feel at the death of the Son – NB God’s suffering always far exceeds any suffering we can imagine –, has a different, yet related, role: to remain the creator and sustainer of the universe &, at the same time, to have the leverage or clout to raise Jesus, the Son, from the dead. For if I’m drowning, I don’t want someone to drown with me, but, if possible, to yank me out onto the shore, administer CPR & etc.
• The model of ‘Communio – Persons-in-Relation’ doesn’t prioritize any one person of the Trinity at the expense of the others. It is a lateral rather than an hierarchical model. Thus, while each person has a specific identity & role (or mission), each of these is equally important and is indispensible for the success or carrying through of all the others. We’re not, in other words, talking Platonism ie a descending, hierarchical model initiated by ‘the Father’. Nor are we, in Stoic mode, saying that ‘the Father’ is the sum total of God-stuff that is then parceled out to the Son and Spirit. Rather the three are equally primordial. The Communio model, in other words, heads off Patriarchy (the prioritizing of all things male) at its root in the account we give of God.
• We are familiar with threefold structures. For example, the Three Tikanga Constitution of our Church (Maori, Pakeha, Pasifika). Recently, people have been content to talk of diversity and identity as requiring separation. However, in a Church that calls itself, The Anglican Communion, we have to explore, on the Trinitarian model outlined above, what it means to talk of ‘related diversity’. With this, compare the Defence Force composed of Army, Navy, & Air Force. Are all these quasi independent & therefore in competition for resources? Or, are they all part of the one Defence Force that needs to operate co-operatively or even as one?
• Another problem. In the last three years there have been so-called Hermeneutics Huis in our Church around questions of sexuality. How can people of differing sexual orientations – gay, lesbian, straight – co-exist & enjoy equal rights in the same Church? Some think it can’t be done. But might not the model of ‘persons-in-relation’ help us here? Instead of defending our position and attacking that of others, couldn’t we dialogue our way to mutual understanding, mutual support, equal rights & a shared & enthusiastic participation in the mission & life of the Church? This might be a very Anglican Communion thing to do!
Appendix 1 Fr. Gilbert Shaw, one of the spiritual masters of the previous generation, had a spirituality grounded in a lived experience of the Trinity. Here are some of his sayings from a collection recorded by Freda Collins, one of his spiritual directees. Each one deserves to be pondered.
•Once love has beaten on you, you are never the same again
•Obedience is the creativeness of man tied back into the creativeness of God
•Christian prayer is the unfolding of reality, and Christ is the unfolder. He is all.
•Be still and let God fill you with His love and then go on with Him
•Grace is the personal, secret gift given by God to each of his children. The whole of the Christian life is lived in freely accepting a gift offered, letting God do His own work and win His own battles – for which he needs our full co-operation
•The whole universe is gathered into the Heart of Jesus and held by the Godhead. The immensity of God’s love! In our Lord the Godhead is touched, and the flesh is torn [adapted]
•The Blessed Trinity is the key to the whole Faith. Everything on earth, as it is in heaven
•Go on quietly. Love God as much as you can, knowing that your love for Him is His love in you
Appendix 2 The Chalcedonian Definition, 451 AD/CE.
Following the holy Fathers [of the Councils of Nicaea, 325, and Constantinople, 381], we all with one voice confess our Lord Jesus Christ one and the same Son, the same perfect in Godhead [divine nature], the same consisting in a reasonable soul and body, of one substance with the Father as touching the Godhead, the same OF ONE SUBSTANCE WITH US AS TOUCHIING HUMANITY, LIKE US IN ALL THINGS APART FROM SIN; begotten of the Father before the ages as touching his Godhead, the same in the last days , for us and for our salvation, born from the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos [the God-bearer], as touching humanity, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged IN TWO NATURES WITHOUT CONFUSION, WITHOUT CHANGE, without division, without separation; THE DISTINCTION OF THE NATURES BEING IN NO WAY ABOLISHED BECAUSE OF THE UNION, BUT RATHER THE CHARACTERISTIC PROPERTY OF EACH BEING PRESERVED, and concurring in one person, or hypostasis [=person, face, identity], not as if Christ were parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ.
