Trinity 2012

If I described a common every day action in the following way – a contraction of the zygomaticus major and minor, orbicularis oculi and three other sets of muscles you would (with a few exceptions) have very little idea what I was talking about. What I was describing was a smile – you probably do not have sceintific words for it but when you see a smile you know what it is. You probably are pretty good at spotting a fake smile too but would you ever describe it as a volunatry contraction of the zygomatic major muscle? Probably not.

So whilst we recognize things to be true and real for us, explaining them in proper and precise terms is confusing – it is not how we communicate. However a scientist has a battery of names and tests which can pin down the physiological and psychological aspects and origin of a smile. What is experienced as obvious in the way we live can also be observed in a more detached and theoretical light.

The doctrine of the Trinity is one which many people struggle with and for good reason. Our brains are set up in an either or world and the Trinity is a both and doctrine. There are lots of illustrations which give us an idea of how this might work. One of the better known one is that you can have three seperate candles each with a flame – but the light that the three flames give out is one. Or the now legendary illustration a friend came up with at theological college using a Big Mac meal – a burger, drink and fries and yet all one meal None of the examples which we can give are perfect, all fall prey to logical reasoning, for the Big Mac meal to be a perfect example the burger, or any of the other parts, would have to be the meal with or without the other things.

Yet the doctrine of the Trinity is hard to put into words without using an awful lot of words. The Roman Catholic goes so far as to say, something along the lines of, when a doctrine seems so strangely complicated that it would have been difficult to make up- it must be divine. Again this leaves a lot of logical holes. Rather than sit in words and dialectic it might be better to look at the experience of God which is recounted in the Bible – just as we know what a smile is by experiencing one – we know that God is Trinity by encountering and experiencing life with God.

In the first verse of the Bible the word Ruah occurs, in the Greek Old Testament this is the word Pneuma which means in both languages breath or wind – that which gives life. This Spirit then is hovering over the face of the deep at the beginning of time ready to breathe life into creation. The NRSV has the word wind, but the old Authorized Version goes so far as to use the much more New Testament language of the Spirit of God.

Experience throughout the Old Testament has a God who is sometimes transcendent and sometimes imminent – the transcendent God is seen as dangerous with a holiness within which humanity cannot survive and the imminent God as close and comforting. Many scholars see the person of Lady Wisdom in the Old Testament as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit – this especially challenges the until recent years predominant view about God being male – the old man in the sky with a big stick theory of divinity.

The in the New Testament, and this is most clearly worked through in John's Gospel and the Johanine Epistles, Jesus is linked back to that first moment of creation. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God – Jesus was bound up in the act of creation just as He will now be bound up in the act of re-creation which is His life. Already you can see a tangle emerging between what we can do with words and what is evident in human history.

The word Trinity does not appear in the Bible but there is clear evidence of experience of God as Triune. It is not accident that in Isaiah 6 God is called Holy, Holy, Holy – a three fold acclamation or that in Romans Paul struggles to put into words the truth of the Good News he comes to bring in a coherent and water-tight manner – the Spirit, he says, bears witness in those who are adopted as God's children through faith in Jesus Christ. He sees a smile but he struggles to find the theological words to describe what is common experience for him.

So why didn't things stay there at that level of implicit knowledge? Why did things get hammered out into long and complicated words? Simply because that is what human beings tend to do. We can already see, in Paul's writing and the other epistles, that there are different ideas starting to be put forward, arguments about how to be Christian. An epistle like like Corinthians is a practical guide to Christian living in a world which is always eager to pull people away from faith. An epistle like Romans is much more a work of theology, and because Paul has a legal background, hee is desperate to tie up the edges.

As time went on the disagreements about how to believe became more frequent and a lot more hostile in character. Heresies formed which denied that Jesus was God at all – he was just a nice bloke, a sort of super prophet. Or that there is secret knowledge, or that God is equally everywhere and in anything, dispersed only in creation.

You can see the problem. Christianity, if it was to survive at all, had to be clear about what it was saying, about what it believed about God and the world we live in. As I have said the Epistles beginthis work of levelling out but where it was really to happen was in the Church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries.

St Augustine spent his life writing about the Trinity in no less than fifteen books in the fourth century, but one of the crowning glories of the age in terms of Trinitarian Doctrine has to be the Athansian Creed.

(So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty. So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity; to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord; So are we forbidden by the catholic religion; to say, There are three Gods, or three Lords. The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal. So that in all things, as aforesaid; the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity.)

It was likely finished well after St. Athanasius' lifetime and affirms the Doctrine that God is three persons in one, all equal and all fully God. All live in the same eternity all are God but none of the persons overlaps with any other. Believe me, the real thing is a lot more long winded than that – but, actually, it is remarkably clear in a strange sort of way.

I think my favourite phrase for the Trinity is perichoresis – Gregory of Nazianzus used this phrase in the fourth century to describe the intimacy between the persons of the Trinity – but could not have been unaware of where the word comes from – and that is the word for dance, choros is a dance and peri is about. So what we have is a dancing about God, a moving, kinetic God. A dancing around God who moes with and in us. No wonder that St. Patrick's breastplate has Christ with, within, behind, before, beside,beneath, above and in every part of life. This strong and holy Trinity who protects and comforts and guides. That is our experience of God, as simple and natural as a smile, but sometimes, it seems, a lot more difficult to explain in words.