Jews and Muslims, our
fellow monotheist ‘peoples of the book’, vehemently reject the idea of God as
Trinity – they allege that Christians do not really believe in one God, but in
three Gods. Even some Christians find it puzzling. How can one God possibly be
divided into three persons? Surely 1 + 1 + 1 = 3?
Over the centuries Christian
apologists have answered this question in different ways. We all know, I’m
sure, how St Patrick illustrated the Trinity - with the trefoil-leaf of a
shamrock – three leaflets within the one leaf. John Wesley said: ‘Tell me how it
is that in this room there are three candles and but one light, and I will
explain to you the mode of divine existence’. And it is true in
mathematics that if you add three infinities the result is still infinity. But
I personally don’t find such arguments helpful. The Catechism of the RC Church says
that ‘God’s
inmost being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone’.
But to call it a mystery seems like a fudge to me.
So today let me
reflect on how we as Christians might seek to understand the Trinity.
We must start, I think, with how the early
Christian community came to understand God.
First, the community
had its roots in the Hebrew scriptures, our Old Testament. There they learned
that God created all that was and is and is to come, as reflected in today’s
reading from Genesis (1:1-2:4a). God had also created them in his own image. More
than that, God had an intimate relationship with them, as a parent, as a father
or a mother. Hence the OT stories where their God hears the cries of the
people, brings them out of bondage, and in a lovely metaphor, cares for them as
a hen cares for her chicks. The first Christians did not see God as remote, but
as a loving and gracious God, like a parent, like a Father – and also a God for
all, Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free. They followed Jesus’s
lead by praying to their Father in heaven.
Second, the early
Christian community also understood God through the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus. From the apostles
and first disciples they heard the story of Jesus - how in Jesus God lived and
acted in new and profound ways among people. Through them they encountered the
risen Christ, and heard him promise, ‘Remember, I am
with you always, to the end of the age’. They learned that God
was made manifest in Jesus, that God was not just out there somewhere, but had also
lived as one of them, as their brother, through his Son, Jesus, who had
ascended to his Father and would come again. The stories were written down in
the Gospels to show that God was not only their Creator, but also Jesus Christ their
Saviour and Redeemer.
Third, the Christian
community came to understand God as the Holy Spirit. As promised by Jesus, the
gift of the Spirit came at Pentecost. It came to the whole community in the
upper room, not just to a select few. And it made them fearless. Responding to
Jesus’s call, ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations’, they proclaimed their faith to all who would listen,
baptising and gathering around them people from every nation in the Eastern
Mediterranean and beyond. And the same Spirit came to the gathered groups of
new Christians, just as it had to the apostles and first disciples. The Acts of
the Apostles reads like an adventure story as the Spirit spreads like a
wildfire through the Roman Empire. And the Epistles reveal for us how the
Spirit formed the self-understanding of the gathered groups that we can now
call churches.
It is clear that very
early on Christians came to believe that the one God they worshipped was
manifest in three different ways, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Today’s
Gospel reading (Matthew 28:16-20) shows this when Matthew records Jesus’s
command to baptise ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit’.
By the 4th century the Church had
captured the imperial Roman state.
Dogmatic theologians
were arguing bitterly over what the Trinity really meant, amid power struggles
in the church.
These disputes were
eventually settled at a Council of Bishops, convened in Constantinople by the
Emperor Theodosius in 381AD, which settled the doctrine of the Trinity in the
words of a creed, which we now know as the Nicene Creed and still use in the
Holy Communion service.
Most Christians,
including Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and our own Anglican Communion maintain
that this is still the best way to think about God.
It is not hard to understand the historical
reasons why Christians came to believe in God as Trinity.
But I do not think
that our belief that God is best understood as the Trinity should rest only on
the words of scripture and the partisan arguments of Church Councils more than
1600 years ago. I believe that divine revelation did not cease when the last
full stop was written in the last book of scripture – God’s creation all around
us is a continuing revelation, and in the world around me I see signs of our
Trinitarian God everywhere.
I see the Loving
Father in the beauty of the universe he created. He has precisely tuned it to
support the miraculous, evolving web of life on our planet. He has made it to
be a place where you and I and all creatures can flourish and be fed - if we
would only tend and care for it, and for our neighbours, as we ought.
I see the Saving Son in
the widespread altruism that exists in the natural world. And I see him in communities,
communities of people but also of other organisms. I see him in the worker
bee’s dedication to raising a sister’s brood. I see him in the three-cornered
dance of insects, fruit trees and seed dispersing animals. I see him in the
cycles of death and resurrection that drive evolution. And I see him in our
human capacity to love, to love each other and our neighbours as ourselves –
even if we often fail to do so.
I see the Holy Spirit
in the continual innovation of living creatures and ecosystems. I see him at
work exploring new expressions of what is possible in the arts and the sciences.
And I see him in the way that human beings, in all our variety with our different
gifts, come together to build communities with meaning and purpose – including
the Church, the ‘body of Christ’ as St Paul called it, among many other kinds
of community.
We should not, I
think, see the doctrine of the Trinity as very difficult or a great mystery. Rather
we should see it as something very natural. It is very simple really – but also
very profound.
Let us finish in prayer:
God of heaven and earth,
before the foundation of the universe
and the beginning of time
you are the triune God:
Author of creation,
eternal Word of salvation,
life-giving Spirit of wisdom.
Guide us to all truth by your Spirit,
that we may proclaim all that Christ has revealed
and rejoice in the glory he shares with us.
Glory and praise to you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
now and for ever. Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment