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| Andrei Rublev's "Trinity" icon, 15th century. |
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 and Romans 5:1-5
Trinity
Sunday, 26th May 2013
According
to the liturgical calendar, today is Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after
Pentecost. It’s the Sunday we lift up
the Triune nature of God: One in Three
and Three in One. If you want to see eyes glaze over fast, spark a conversation
on the Trinity. If you want to see a
congregation quickly doze off during a sermon, try preaching on the
Trinity.
I
don’t mean to be flip about it, just honest.
This central doctrine of orthodox Christianity is a tough one to wrap our
heads around. Logic and reason make certain
demands. How can one be three? How can three be one? One substance, three persons or
manifestations of the one: Father, Son,
Holy Spirit. Mathematically it doesn’t
all add up. Maybe the problem is math itself, using numbers to characterize the
Living God. Such reflections can be
abstract, cold, calculating. And let me
tell you, the theological literature on the Trinity is pretty abstract and, at
times, cold and calculating, and depending upon the theologian, pretty boring.
Yet,
the doctrine is central to Christian orthodoxy.
It’s one’s the theological claims that sets us apart from other world
religions. And other religions look at
us with great puzzlement, as a result.
Take Islam, for example. Early on
Muslims and Christians actually worshipped in the same buildings. It was difficult to tell Muslims apart from
Christians. There are many affinities between Islam and Christianity and Islam
itself has great respect for Jesus and his followers. But when it comes to the
Trinity, from their perspective it looks like we are polytheists, that we have
three Gods, not one God, such as Allah.
Allah is one. God must be one.
How does one have three in one and three in one?
It’s
tough for them to understand. It’s tough
for us to understand. I know many
Christians who overlook this aspect of the faith and don’t affirm every article
in either the Apostles’ or Nicene Creeds (or they recite the creed with their fingers crossed). When these creeds were written, for example, the church was wrestling
long and hard over the theological question of the Trinity. It wasn’t abstract for them. It was real and critical. The church expended a lot of emotional energy
and considerable intellectual acumen in the hope of getting this right. It’s difficult for us make sense of
this. Some Christians give the Trinity
lip service, but, to be honest, this image of God is not all that important for
them. Many Christians are really more Binatarian
in their thinking – focusing on God and Jesus, not sure what to do with the
Spirit. Other Christians are Unitarians
– it’s all about God, Jesus wasn’t divine and the Spirit is not a separate
entity of the Godhead. Unitarians, however,
are not really considered orthodox by a majority of the Church. It’s a subject
for debate and disagreement. There was a
time when Unitarians were refused admittance to Princeton Theological
Seminary. One of my friends at Rutgers
College was denied admittance to Princeton Seminary because he was a Unitarian. He went to Yale Divinity School instead.
So,
can you see why preaching on the Trinity is problematic? And there’s another reason. The word Trinity is never found in the New
Testament. It’s not there. We have Trinitarian formulas, as in Paul’s
benedictions. But there’s no reference
to the Triune God. That comes centuries
later. The first of the early church
fathers to use the word "Trinity" was probably Theophilus of Antioch
(d.183-185) writing in the late 2nd century. He defines the Trinity as God, His
Word (Logos) and His Wisdom (Sophia), and refers to the Trinity in a discussion
of the first three days of creation. The
Word (or Logos) was with God at the beginning, according to John’s Gospel (John
1:1-5). And so was God’s Wisdom or
Sophia. We heard echoes of this in the
reading of Proverbs 8, with reference to Divine Sophia whom God calls forth in
the creation of the world.
Beyond Paul’s
benedictions we have texts like Romans 5, especially verses 1-5. While we don’t have a systematic definition
of the Trinity here, which comes centuries later, all three persons of the
Trinity are featured here. And what we
find here in the text, I think, paints for us unique and distinctive image of
God. It’s the one thing I want to lift
us here.
Look closely at the
text: We are justified by faith –
justified meaning declared righteous, meaning forgiven, cleansed by God, made
one with God. And it’s done; it’s already
achieved through Christ. We are
justified, therefore “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ.” Peace with God. And we have more than peace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ we have gained
accessed to something. We have obtained
access to God’s grace, “in which we stand.”
We stand in grace, through Jesus Christ.
Not only do we have peace and grace, we are given a promise: the hope of
sharing in the glory of God. All this
is true because we are now with God through Christ. We stand with Christ before God.
And
because of this, other things are granted to us, especially to those who
suffer: suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does
not disappoint us. The follower of Jesus
is able to move through sufferings because she knows that she’s not alone, that
we stand in God’s grace, at peace
with God. There’s a kind of spatial
dimension to Paul’s message here. We
live in this knowledge that
saves. And such knowledge yields hopes.
And
hope does not disappoint us—why?—“because
God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has
been given to us.”
And
there you have all three: God, Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit. God at work through Jesus Christ offering
something to us. Jesus Christ sharing in
the glory of God that is offered and promised to us. We, standing in grace, surrounded – by God,
in three manifestations, yet related.
The use of the word “related” is very intentional here because this is
the one thing I really want to lift up today.
Because essentially what we are given here is an understanding, an image
of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit relating and working for one another,
serving one another, relating to us, and working for us and even serving
us. What we’re being offered here is an
image of God as essentially a relationship.
God is a Divine Relationship, literally a Holy Communion, a Holy Community of
persons in relation, persons motivated by love.
It’s love that pulls them together.
It’s love that defines them. And
it’s love that is being poured forth from them, through the Holy Spirit, to
us. God’s love has been poured into our
hearts. This implies, therefore, that through
this love we too are part of the Divine Relationship, we get to partake of the
Holy Community, we get to share in Holy Communion. We exist in that relationship. When we pray, when we worship, when we share
in the sacraments, when we love, even when we suffer, the love of God is
pouring through us and we discover the power and the beauty of the simple word
“with,” we are doing all of this with God.
Many
theological works on the Trinity are cold, obtuse, and technical, which is a
shame, really. The Trinity is not a
puzzle to be solved, but a mystery to be celebrated and encountered. Our
analytic minds have reduced the mystery into a puzzle to be solved, we’ve
dissected it and torn it apart instead of celebrating and embracing the
mystery. And what are we
celebrating? “We have a God who is
relational - who expresses a dynamic living pattern of relationship. And - WE
are made in this image! WE are made relational. WE are made to be a dynamic
living caring pattern of relationship with others and with All.”[1] And it’s only through
our ongoing encounter and relationship with God does the mystery take on life
and relevance.
There
was one theologian, however, who wrote a magisterial work on the Trinity that
was different. It was Augustine
(354-430) and the title of his book, simply, was The Trinity (De Trinitate). It was written while the battles over the
nature of God were still raging around the Roman world. It’s a long and complicated book. It was his contribution to the debate. He had some ideas to share, but he also knew
his limitations and approached the subject with great humility. He wrote:
“Dear reader, whenever you are as certain about something as I am go
forward with me; whenever you hesitate, seek with me; whenever you discover
that you have gone wrong come back to me; or if I have gone wrong, call me back
to you. In this way we will travel along
the street of love together as we make our way toward him of whom it is said,
‘Seek his face always.’”[2] Wise counsel for every Christian in every
age.
That
phrase –Seek his face always—is a quote from Psalm 105. Augustine cites this psalm at the beginning
of his work on the Trinity. He cites it
again half way through, with a special accent on always. He quotes it a third time toward the end,
this time in full: “Let the hearts of
those who seek the Lord rejoice; seek the Lord and be strengthened; seek his
face always” (Psalm 105:-34). And then
he cites it a fourth time in the concluding prayer, this time adding passion,
urging the reader: “Seek his face always
with burning desire.”[3]
What
it’s striking here in this demanding theological text is that Augustine is not
interested in intellectual acrobatics, great feats of technical theological
engagement. This is not a cerebral,
academic exercise for him. He’s seeking
understanding, but also something more.
Augustine is not looking for a theological concept or an explanation of
the Trinity. He’s searching for the
living God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Most of al, it’s a desire of the heart. It’s a desire to participate in
and live in and with the living God, to enter the relationship. It’s love that drives him forward. It’s love that draws him searching toward the
Trinity.
And
“Finding means more than simply getting things straight or discovering the most
appropriate analogy in human experience for the Triune God. There can be no finding without a change in
the seeker. Our minds, Augustine says,
must be purified, and we must be made fit and capable of receiving what is
sought. We can cleave to God and see the
Holy Trinity only when we burn with love.”[4]
And
if Paul is right – and I trust that he is – God is already at work in us
preparing our hearts and minds. Love is
being poured out through the Spirit all the time, right now: a love that draws
us into the Divine Relationship, into Communion, into a relationship, a space,
a place where we know grace and peace. When
we are alive in that relationship, when we view God relationally, when we see
the world relationally, then love pours forth into our hearts and into “the
street of love” and into the hearts of the people we love and have difficulty
loving. The Trinity is relational and relevant and personal. There’s nothing abstract about any of
this. The images we have of God and the images that have us make all the
difference in the world.
[1] The words of Alexander
Shai, founder of Quadratos: www.quadratos.com. On relationality and the Christian
experience, see also Kenneth E. Kovacs, The
Relational Theology of James E. Loder:
Encounter & Conviction (New York: Peter Lang, 2011).
[2] Augustine, The Trinity 1.3.5., cited in Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 37.
[3] Wilken, 106.
[4] A summary of Augustine,
The Trinity, 9.1; 1.1.3; 8.4.6, in
Wilken, 108.
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