doctrine of the trinity
Look at my post for Trinity Year B. Schleiermacher, you will remember, put the doctrine of the Trinity at the very end of his Christian Faith because he thought it an “unnecessary” doctrine. He meant that it was not demanded by the essence of Christian faith (which he characterised as “absolute dependence” on God). Barth, on the other hand, begins his magisterial Church Dogmatics with the doctrine. For Barth, everything flowed from the understanding of God as Trinity.
I’m with Barth on this one, albeit from a different perspective. The doctrine of the Trinity is vitally important for theologians to grapple with. It concerns the Person and nature of God. Yet its function in the life of the Church – in discussion among believers struggling to become more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ – is different. Here I want to return to the origin of the doctrine, which is christological and soteriological. The doctrine arises out of the conviction (presented most fully and forcefully, though by no means uniquely, by the Fourth Evangelist) that Jesus was not simply a man of God, but God as a man. This was necessary, as Anselm, for example, treats in his Cur Deus Homo, for salvation. Sin was the preserve of human beings. Yet only God can forgive and liberate from sin. Therefore it was necessary for God to become a human being in order to make “satisfaction” for sin, so thatsin could be forgiven and Christ can be (as Paul says) the Second Adam. The point is not about Anselm’s theology here: it is about his insight that christology – and therefore Trinity – is essential to salvation. Likwise, the experience of the Spirit who mediates the Life of God (the gift of salvation) is more than an agent of God.
This guides the “use” of the dcotrine in the Church: it is to shape our God-talk and ensure that the salvation we proclaim is the salvation that God has effected in Jesus. That Jesus was God incarnate; that “god was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself”; that we have received the Spirit of Adoption necessitates a revolution in the concept of God. “One-ness” is no longer the same as “singlneness”, yet multiplicity in God is about relationship between Persons, not about multiple gods. The “infinite, qualitative difference between God and human beings” (Barth, following Kierkegaard) is not about distance, nor is it primarily about degrees of holiness (although it clearly is). Classically, this “difference” has led to the doctrine of divine apatheia – the denial that God can be changed by the world – and the condemnation of patripassianism – the notion that the Father can suffer. God’s entry into the world in Jesus Christ means that there are no “no-go”areas for God – including sin, darkness and death.
To be trinitarian, in other words, is different from being monotheistic, but it is neither polytheism nor tritheism. It is to be committed to the God who has acted to save the world in Jesus Christ and who, by the Spirit, is engaged in the ongoing mission of transforming the world into the kingdom. Everything flows from that, and to be “trinitarian” means to live by the story of God in Christ, made real and present through the Spirit. That is why I argue that it is not the purpose of preaching on Trinity Sunday to try and explain or teach the doctrine: it is rather to show why it matters! And that means rehearsing the story of our world and what God has done in Christ to save it. It means worship. It means calling people to faith in Christ.
Lawrence,
Great idea to follow a thread.
I am a pastor, not a theologian.
I respond to the presence, activity and power of the image of God in the Trinity.
I do wonder it one does not view the atonement from the substitutionary perspective,
is the Trinity any less essential as an understanding of God’s presence and activity
in the world? I would have to say no. I am not certain that it is essential to
view the work of God in Jesus’ life death and resurrection as a satisfaction
for God’s demand for justice, is the only logical conclusion to John 3:16.
“Gave” can have so many implications.
Here is a Call to Worship that I wrote attempting to center in on my work
with the doctrine of the Trinity.
L: Today we celebrate our God who reveals self in works of
creativity to plumb the limits of the human spirit.
All: GOD IS CREATOR!
L: We celebrate our God who continually works to reconcile us
to one another and reclaim our relationship with God.
All: GOD IS REDEEMER!
L: We celebrate our God who is ever present in our lives and
will ultimately receive us in death.
All: GOD IS HOLY SPIRIT!
L: God shows all these faces in our lives in order to reach us and
bring us into everlasting relationship with the Saints.
All: PRAISE GOD THREE IN ONE
Allen Simons
8 June, 2006 at 1:27 am
Essentially ( now there’s a word) I want to focus on helping people discover who and what they worship. Is your church/faith a Father church/faith. A Son church/faith or a Spirit church/faith. We do not seem to look too closely at the God we worship and Trinity offers a real chance for examing what part of the dance of the Holy Three we are missing out on.
Jo
8 June, 2006 at 4:59 pm
1. Hi Allen and thanks for this. I don’t think it matters whether we hold to penal substitution or not makes a difference to the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity. I certainly wasn’t suggesting that Anselm’s notion of satisfaction ought to be normative. Mark’s theology of the cross is not about penal subsitution – though it is clearly substitutionary. Luke’s theology of the cross is about high priestly forgivenss, as I read it; John’s is about coronation and the reign of love. I don’t think Paul understood penal substitution in the terms it’s usually portrayed either – yet all are trintarian. The key thing is that the incarnation means that God is actually present in the world of darkness and death, not using an emissary and certainly not watching from afar. Nor is God the judge in a divine courtroom: God is intimately involved.
I like your Call to Worship. One question: you speak of the three “faces” of God, which classically referred to the notion that the economic trinity (ie God in the process of salvation) behaves as one actor wearing three different masks (“faces”). The Sabellians (who taught that) would put three “Persons” heavily in inverted commas. “Persons” did not mean any distinction in God – it meant something more like three “appearances”. Is that what you mean?
2. Jo, many thanks for this. It’s helpful. I like the notion of using the opportunity to check emphases, because the distinctions you suggest are observable and real in terms of different theologies and spiritualities. The “dance of the Holy Three” – what an incredibly winsome picture! I particularly like it as someone who finds Moltmann very helpful. Moltmann insists that the classical, static hierarchical pyramid with the Father at the apex (source of all divinity) is wrong. He sees a far more dynamic and equal relationship between the Holy Three, with sometimes one and sometimes another at the apex. In other words, a whirling dance is precisely the image he wants to evoke – but you do it more eloquently!
Lawrence
8 June, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Dear Lawrence,
Thanks, as always, for your insights. Thanks, especially, for your emphasis on gospel and doing, rather than doctrine and being.
And yes, I found the new site!
Children learn, teachers are taught, in three ways – auditrory, visually and kinestetically. the best teachers can see which way each individual child learns best and tailor their teaching accordingly.
How would it be if God was the first teacher – letting us experience [Him] and the Salvation [He] offers in different ways according to our preferred learning style?
If this isn’t taking the analogy too far . . the Father is the God who speaks, Jesus is the God who demonstrates and the Spirit is the God who empowers us to experience and be ‘hands on’
Peter Rand
9 June, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Thanks for this, Peter. I like the idea – as long as “learn” has an emphasis on “encounter” rather than “accumulate knowledge”, which you clearly have. Your sense of “learn” is very Johannine: you seem to be using it in the same sense that Jesus does when he talks about teaching the disciples about the Father. A question, though: I can see that as a helpful way of understanding different “points of entry” into the life of God. How do we ensure that we’re genuinely going on to experience the fulness of “the dance of the Holy Three” (as Jo so beautifully puts it), rather than simply “picking our favourite Person” of the three? Lawrence
Lawrence
10 June, 2006 at 10:56 am
Hi Lawrence, it’s great to get feedback on my thoughts.
I guess that in part it’s the grace of God that ensures we get all of God. As a good teacher will lead a pupil from one way of learning into another, so that the learning is rounded, so God leads us from one way of discovering [him] to another – sometimes hints and glimpses and sometimes dazzling insights. And, yes, there’s the dance. I also wonder if the ‘three’ limits us – what about the idea of a ‘rainbow’ God, where colours fade and merge into one another – so the God we meet in the calm of mauve and blue in meditation is the same as the God we meet in the red and blazing fiery furnace of conflict, or the green of spiritual growth . . . or is this getting fanciful?
Peter Rand
10 June, 2006 at 7:39 pm
Peter, I love the thought of a rainbow as a symbol of the richness of all that God is and has for us. The idea of correlating the colours to contexts is imaginative and importantly true. However, I think it’s important to keep the notion of multiplicity in God to Persons. There’s a huge jump involved – a category shift – in linking multiplicity and variety of contexts (as you suggest) and to Persons. For me, the Trinity is essential – in the strictest theological sense of that word, Jo! I believe that we have access to the inner life of God – and discover God to be three Persons in one godhead. So I personally couldn’t go with the idea that that is limiting. My own application of your suggestion is that we discover God in precisely the variety of ways you suggest – but that we always discover God to be Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer (or, in Jesus’ terms, Father, Son and Spirit). Oh – and I’m right with you on the sense of God leading us in different ways of discovery.
Lawrence
10 June, 2006 at 8:51 pm
I still live John V Taylor’s ‘Go-Between God’ (1972) which rang all the bells for me as a portrayal of the Holy Spirit. It seems to me that ‘revelation’ is at the heart of the understanding of the Trinity. I wish I had the opportunity to discuss revelation with a Muslim, since both Islam and Christianity claim to be revealed religion. Can the One who creates not also reveal what he chooses to reveal to the creatures? Taylor’s description of the Spirit is of the One who
: continually creates deep awareness,
: inevitably leading the one who has become aware to recognise there are choices to be made, and to be decisive about making them, and who
: creates a willingness to make personal sacrifice in obedience to the challenge of which one has become aware
This not only chimes with our human experience but describes how the Creating one goes about creating, and how God does it in such a way that the Creation remains ‘free to choose.’ It describes why and how it is that Jesus, the ‘Human One’, does what he does and is what he is; and it describes how it can be that a single human being can express the fulness of Godhead.
I don’t know enough about Islam. The Qur’an is revealed truth in its entirety, it is claimed (I believe). How, by what process or agency, does a Muslim claim to *know* this? And what is the relationship between Allah and Qu’ran? The Qu’ran is, I believe, an object of worship. What significant difference is there between the way a Muslim might ‘know’ the ‘divinity’ of Qu’ran and a Christian might ‘know’ that Jesus is God’s ‘Word’ since before Creation?
I suspect that that telling quotation from Rowan Williams about preaching the cross as if there is a difference of attitude between Father and Son might go some way to explaining the misunderstanding of Trinity as ‘Three Gods’.
For what it’s worth, I offer a prayer I wrote for Trinity Sunday (my favourite Sunday in the year):
“Holy God, you cannot exist, for you are before any existence was. How can you be the centre of our life’s pilgrimage, home of our hearts? For you are in no place and no time . . all places and all times. The compass needle of our hearts swings wildly in all directions. We are lost without you, and lost within you.
Forgive the religious arrogance that is so certain it knows you.
Jesus of Nazareth, only uncreated child of God, we turn to you for you are nonetheless one of us, and you have loved us. You are human like us, a Palestinian Jew walking the roads of Galilee and Jerusalem, nearly 2000 years ago. Our hearts’ compass needle swings about in the mystery of God, and then points steadfastly to you. We seek to follow you, to walk your ‘Way’.
We crucify you. Forgive the religious arrogance that recruits you to its own cause, using your holy name as its ‘Big Excuse’.
Holy Spirit of God, comforter and disturber, life-giver, opener of doors : no sooner do we know you have touched us than you are gone. You it is who steer the compass of our hearts towards the real Jesus, the living Lord. You it is who put the ultimate choice before us — life or death? You it is who makes the choice easy, even when choosing life means death.
Forgive the closed minds and stubborn wills that turn your exuberant loving freedom into doctrine, Scripture, law and habit.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I dare to declare to you : though we have chosen, and will choose again, deadness, lifelessness, lovelessness and our own comfort — Christ has, in his own body, broken the bonds that hold us in this slavery. It is not inevitable. The door to life in the Spirit remains open. Let us walk through it together, humbly rejoicing in the name of Jesus.”
Dick Wolff
12 June, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Thanks for the comments and the prayer, Dick. I think you’re right about God creating the capacity to receive rvelation – the Qur’an is the Muslim version of this. Augustine pointed to the vestigia trinitatis. Barth is the great Protestant theologian of revelation, whereas Rahner takes the Thomist line, locating the capacity quite explicitly in a theological anthropology. All are different ways of unpacking the conviction you express. I like the movement in the prayer from God to our response. And John Vincent Taylor is high on my list of “goodies”! A very interesting pneumatological account of the Trinity!
Lawrence
13 June, 2006 at 3:19 am