Following Sunday School last week, I asked one of our kids what she learned.
“Nothing,” she said. (That’s not an uncommon response from lots of kids, but this was strange for this particular child.)
“Nothing?” I responded. “Surely you picked up something?”
“It’s the same thing we heard last year,” she said, “the Trinity, God is three and also one.”
I’m willing to wager that the vast majority of people, like that 9-year-old, are so far beyond being tired of Christian preachers asserting dogmatic truths that they’ve started to feel as if Christianity is nothing more than a wierd code language, and some of us some of the time as part of our commitment to grow deeper and help change the world are forced to listen to words which don’t actually convey meaning. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that those who are not in churches and not likely to darken the door of any church are a lot like many within those sanctuaries – wondering about the purpose of their life and how they can help make this world a more just and equitable place and if they care, whatsoever, about what Christians are doing on Sundays they’re probably wondering “Why? What’s the big deal? So what? What’s the point?”Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
It’s not important whether one understands Christianity. Take the doctrine of the Trinity, for instance – that God is one and in three persons. For starters, this is hardly comprehensible. And, on another level, understanding it doesn’t really matter. Ask yourself, instead, what difference it makes. That’s what the world’s asking, and it’s a very good question.
In short, the Trinity makes a difference, a big difference.
The doctrine of the Trinity wasn’t officially settled until the Council of Chalcedon in 381 A.D. That doesn’t mean that everyone still agreed, but it’s interesting that a lot of years passed between Jesus and this church council. In that time, there was a lot of wondering and figuring stuff out and discerning and talking but, if you haven’t figured out by now, there was also a whole lot of arguing, screaming, kicking out and fighting. The story of Christianity, in many ways, is also the story of a big, drawn-out family argument. Perhaps you’ve experienced or, maybe, started one. The table erupts into contention, everyone’s involved even if they don’t want to be, and as much as you want to walk away and scream and say “I’m done with all you people!” you don’t. No, they’re still your family and as much as you don’t know why you love them you still do, in spite of your radically differing opinions about whatever it was that started that argument.
That’s a real gift, the gift of different opinions and arguing parties. A brief journey through the story of how early Christians wondered and wandered toward a definition of the Trinity might highlight some of this.
In the pages of the New Testament, there’s no doctrine of the Trinity, but there is a threefold understanding of God and in places where the context wouldn’t otherwise demand it. The Apostolic Fathers of the late-first and early-second centuries, such as Ignatius of Antioch, didn’t concern themselves with figuring out dogma – they were too busy tending the lives of growing congregations – but God is clearly affirmed as creator and Jesus is not only Son of God but also “our God” (as in Ignatius’ Letter to the Ephesians) and a triadic formula is often used. Justin Martyr and other Apologists of the early second century began to develop an understanding of how the one God can be both eternal and, at the same time, also revealed in the Son. Using logos – Greek for ‘word’ and ‘speech’ – Justin affirmed that God is one but, just as your own speech comes from within your own mind, so too does God bring forth something of Godself from time to time. Building on that, Irenaeus (late second century) developed a more thought-out understanding of how the Spirit plays in all of this: there’s an economy in God, Irenaeus taught; God’s nature is one but, at various points, God’s Word (Son) and God’s Wisdom (Spirit) are disclosed.
Irenaeus’ “economic trinitarianism”, as it’s called today, sparked fervor because many felt it denied an essential part of the Christian faith: monotheism. And in the third century there was a backlash against emergent trinitarian thinking, leading to the belief that there was no distinction in the Godhead. Into this argument stepped the third-century theologian, Tertullian, who not only affirmed the one-ness of God but, going beyond Irenaeus and Justin Martyr, also showed that in God there are three unique, distinct persons. Tertullian’s synthesis of Latin and Greek philosophy with emerging Christian doctrines remained central for some time, until in the fourth century a preacher from Alexandria named Arius returned the original fear that all of this denies the belief in one God. Arianism was so popular that it led, in time, to the Councils of Nicea (325 A.D., figuring out the relationship between the Son and the Father) and Chalcedon (381 A.D., addressing the first question as well as dealing the Trinity). Both Councils officially denounced Arianism as heresy and proclaimed that the Son is fully God (so we say in the Nicene Creed: “…God from God, light from light, true god from true god…”) and that there are, in fact, three distinct persons in the one God. This we call the Trinity.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Perhaps this sounds like one of those big family blow-outs in which everyone’s argued about something for so long that someone, at some point, says “What is it we started arguing about again?”, at which the entire table erupts in laughter. Surely, parts of the story I just told do sound a lot like starting World War III because someone forgot to put out the salad dressing!
But there’s a reason why this conversation got started, and there’s a reason why it turned into an argument and why it took so long to get worked out. There is a why?, a so what? to this entire story and that is far more important to know than the answer itself.
The Trinity is essentially a very profound and progressive understanding of God. The desire which fuels all of this is the search for a way to understand with some degree of comprehension that God is both eternal, true, for all time and, at the same time, new and fresh and living. You know that God is, and if you’ve ever flirted with atheism – or tried it out for a while – you know, I’ll bet, the limits of cutting off all possibility of something beyond, something else, something more to life. But just because you experience an open-eyed wonder you might not be entirely comfortable with feeling locked into a belief system which seems to assert with dogmatic authority that there are things you must believe about God. You want to be rooted in something true, something lasting, something real … and yet you don’t want to get stuck.
The reason why Christians stumbled upon the idea of the Trinity is to explain these real-life issues. The Trinity is our way of explaining how we can be both rooted in God but not bound by that rootedness, tied to something real but not restricted by that tether, not cut-off to the ways in which God is revealing new riches and, yes, challenges. The Trinity is our way of explaining how we can be both religious and spiritual, both rooted and open.
A catch-phrase for many is that they’re “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). Ironically, there are so many ‘SBNR’s that even though it feels to them like something avant garde it’s a lifestyle which is so caught up in the mainstream that there’s no real substance, if anything there’s a palpable absence of meaning. (It’s not dissimilar to the experience of buying some new fancy outfit that everyone says is the latest in fashion while you also know, as you’re making the purchase, you’re going to dump it in the second-hand shop box in less than a year.)
We are living in a new apostolic age, and it’s much more similar to the early centuries of Christianity than these latter ones. This is not to say that the answers and the doctImage may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
rines are invalid or, somehow, less valid. I am saying, though, that the challenge for us is to get underneath our dogma and listen and respond attentively to the voices and experience of real women and men, people who are really searching and quite honestly struggling to make meaning in a relatively unmoored world. The democratization of technology and widespread availability of information in our western, internet-connected world has not only led to a greater dissemination of knowledge but also, ironically, a profound disconnect for many with what it feels like to have an intellectual, spiritual home — a native language, a base-line understanding of how the world works. The challenge and, I’d say, gift is that we live in a world in which people are free and sophisticated enough to ask, with integrity, why? and so what difference does that make? And when they ask this question they are really, truly wondering and searching and yearning for something that sounds like a refreshing place to lay their spiritual and intellectual heads … but not get stuck there.
This also means that we are free, in fact we are expected to no longer simply give the answers to the test but share with a compelling narrative that our faith is progressive and open-minded, that we are spiritual people who are seeking and, when we stumble upon the Holy, we pause in the presence of a living God. Because of that, then, we’re unafraid to put down roots and journey deeper into the heart of that mystery, that God who is eternal and true and yet, at once, involved in this world and revealing something new, indeed “new every morning.” (Lam.3:23)
…..
Excerpts from a sermon preached at St. George’s Episcopal Church on, you guessed it, Trinity Sunday. May 26, 2013. For the full text, click here.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
