May 26, 2013

Glynn Cardy

Trinity Sunday

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The doctrine of the Trinity has traditionally affirmed “one God in three persons”. It sounds like God is a committee of three people – two of whom are male and one probably female[i]. It also sounds a long way from monotheism, and the Judaism believed in and practiced by Jesus and his first disciples. Indeed many Jews and Muslims, our cousins in faith, understand the Trinity to be an abandonment of monotheism and an affirmation of ‘tri-theism’.

Trinity language though does go back to the New Testament. In the 50s Paul uses the phrase: “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” [2 Cor. 13:13]. In Matthew’s Gospel the Great Commission uses the names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit [28:19].

But the doctrine of the Trinity – making an official formulated teaching – took time to develop. Implicit in the Nicene Creed of 325, it became explicit later in the 4th century, particularly in the poetic theology of the Cappadocians[ii].

Although as I’ve mentioned there is much criticism of this threefold articulation of God, many religions affirm a twofold divine nature - even Judaism and Islam. For God is both transcendent and immanent, namely more than everything yet present throughout everything. Hinduism also affirms a twofold ultimate reality: fully transcendent as brahman and immanent within each of us as atman.

The question is why Christians add a third to this twofold understanding of God. The answer is simply the significance of Jesus for his first followers who experienced God uniquely and decisively through him. He was the human icon of God.

Trinity was an attempt put the Jesus into the heart of divinity. Traditionally this has been portrayed as the earthly Jesus being elevated into the heavenly godhead. However it is more accurate to understand the incarnation as locating and grounding God in human experience. Instead of a King Jesus sitting on a heavenly throne, we have God suffering at Calvary. God was fully God in humanity. God was not just fully God in Jesus’ humanity, but actually and potentially in our humanity too. Our relationships are the locus of divinity.

As an aside it is more accurate to refer to the second person of the Trinity not as Jesus but as the Christ, or the Risen Christ. Jesus refers to the man who lived and died in Palestine some two thousand years ago. Christ refers to that essence of Jesus that transcended death and is in the heart of God. It’s not a male historically-limited being that is in the heart of God, but a transformative suffering love that can be portrayed [as artists frequently do] as a child, a woman, or a man.

Being formulated in the 4th century, and in a Hellenist rather Jewish context, it is not surprising that some of the language used in the doctrine of the Trinity is often misunderstood. The word ‘person’ is a case in point. In modern English ‘person’ suggests a distinct centre of personality and thus a distinct being. However for the Cappadocians persona in Latin and prosopon in Greek referred to the mask worn by actors in the theatre. Actors wore masks not for the sake of concealment, but to play different roles. The origins of the word persona reflect this: it means “to speak through”. In a literal sense then persona is a mask that an actor speaks through.

Applied to the concept of the Trinity the meaning of persona suggests that God is known and ‘speaks through’ three primary ways: in the evolved universe and the faith of Israel, in the historical Jesus; and through the Spirit [God within and among human communities].

The mask called the first person of the Trinity is particularly problematic. As I’ve mentioned, if it is seen as the transcendent, the wonder and mystery of the Divine – a wonder and mystery at the heart of our universe, and a wonder and mystery that challenged and sustained the ancient Israelites – then there is little dispute. Within our human experience there are glimpses of wonder, mystery, and unfathomable beauty both beyond us and yet, inexplicably, reaching out to touch us.

However this first mask has been labelled ‘Father’. Initially the problem was that ‘Father’ inferred prior existence and superiority to, not co-eternal and co-equals with, the 2nd persona, the Risen Christ.[iii] In the last century the problem has been with this mask’s masculine gender. As Mary Daly famously said, “When God is male, the male is God.” The notion of Trinity has elevated and sanctified male power.

This heresy of a male God is unfortunately alive and well today. In most churches this Sunday they are worshipping him, often without realizing it. They are extolling an idol made in the image of patriarchal power.

Historically it’s the third mask of the Trinity, the Spirit, which has been the most controversial. Initially the Spirit wasn’t taken as seriously as the supposedly male duet of Father and Son. She was God, but not fully God. Thankfully the Cappadocians insisted upon Her inclusion.

Throughout Christian history the Church has usually wanted to restrain the Spirit and restrict Her to the dictates and desires of Church councils and leaders. She could be within and among us only if She behaved.

Interestingly, thank God, the Spirit has persevered, and within what has largely been an authoritarian male God-head there has remained this free Spirit: creative, usually feminine, and potentially anarchistic.

These three masks are sometimes called an external [or economic] understanding of the Trinity because they are the three primary modes in which Christians understand and experience God. Some theologians also argue though that the Trinity is about internal [or ontological] relationships within God as well.

In a general way, the suggestion of internal relationships within God makes an important claim. It offers a relational model of God, and thus a relational model of reality. Reality is therefore not static, but dynamic and relational. It is, like God, moving, changing and evolving. To quote Margaret Mahy “It doesn’t stay put like a good hill does”.[iv]

However such conjecture about the internal nature of God needs to pause before the essential ineffability of God. We can describe our experience of the Divine, but any description of what divinity is in itself – separate from us - is by definition fraught. When theological disputes break out we need to humbly acknowledge the ultimate mystery of the divine.

The most famous of such disputes is the one that caused the Great Schism of the 11th century. The issue was whether the Holy Spirit ‘proceeds’ from ‘the Father’ or from ‘the Father and the Son’. The Western church affirmed the latter, and the Eastern Church the former. In 1054, Christianity split in two over this, producing Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Each side excommunicated the other.

Marcus Borg points out: “There is something at stake in this issue when we think about it today. If the Spirit ‘proceeds’ from ‘the Father and the Son’ [and not from ‘the Father’ only], then God can be known only through Jesus and thus only in Christianity. But if God’s Spirit ‘proceeds’ from ‘the Father’ only, then it is possible that God can be known apart from Jesus and thus in other religions.”[v] Not that many of us need convincing of this.

The Trinity, though problematic as I’ve pointed out, is not I believe redundant for Progressive Christian thought. The masks of the Trinity – transcendent, immanent, and Christic - are signs pointing to a way. They are not the destination. They are not a three person male-dominated committee. For such a committee God is too static, too fixed, too human, and too patriarchal. It is an idol.

Rather I think of Trinity as pointing to God as being like a piece of music, a movement of grace, gift, and transformation. Divinity is wild, passionate, forgiving and free. It is within, beyond, and among us. Trinity points to God as a verb rather than a noun, loving rather than the lover, giving rather than the giver, and shedding rather than accumulating power.

Key Sources:

Marcus Borg Speaking Christian

Considering Orthodoxy: Foundations for Faith Today ed Paul Trebilco

Keith Ward A Vision to Pursue: Beyond the Crisis in Christianity

[i] The Hebrew and Greek words for Spirit are in the feminine tense.

[ii] The Cappadocians were Basil the Great, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, their sister Makrina, and their friend Gregory Nazianzus, Patriarch of Constantinople.

[iii] I refer to what was called the heresy of subordinationism. The use of the metaphor ‘father’ inferred that the father preceded the son, begat the son, and was superior to his child [a normative ancient understanding]. St Paul clearly had this understanding in 1 Corinthians 15:23-28. Orthodoxy, in trying to assert that the 1st and 2nd personas of Trinity were co-equal and co-eternal were metaphorically impeded by the use of ‘father’ and ‘son’.

[iv] Margaret Mahy The Man Whose Mother Was A Pirate.

[v] Marcus Borg Speaking Christian, p.125.