B, Trinity Sunday By
the Rev. Blake Hutson
Good Morning. We have had Ascension Day, we’ve celebrated Pentecost last week and so according to the liturgical calendar, today is Trinity Sunday. You know, they warned us about this day in Seminary. A professor told us, he said ‘If you are fortunate enough to work as an Assistant in a Parish, get ready. Be prepared, because the Rector will probably want you as the Assistant to preach on Trinity Sunday.’ You know I have been an Assistant for four years now at two different parishes. Three out of those four years, I have found myself in the pulpit on Trinity Sunday. So here we are. I have the privilege of talking about the Trinity this morning.
Someone asked if I was going to explain it. Well, I don’t quite know if I’ll be able to do that because it’s true, the doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most puzzling and confusing aspects of Christian theology. The questions that surround this doctrine seem to be endless. How can God be three in one…or one in three?
Basically the traditional form of the doctrine goes something like this: God is a unity of three persons and these three persons make up the one God who has been revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Scripturally speaking, the doctrine of the Trinity does not appear as such in the Bible. Honestly, very few of our doctrines do. Most of them, like in the case of the doctrine of the Trinity, actually arise from reflections on the Scriptures. The doctrine of the Trinity is no different. The foundation for this doctrine is found in the pattern of divine activity that we find in the scriptures, specifically the New Testament. God’s presence among humanity, God’s work in human history and God’s saving power is expressed by describing the three different ways that God relates to us as Father, Son and Spirit.
Now every theologian of the Church from the second century all they way up to the theologians of our own day all have a different model, they all have a different way of describing the Trinity. There is a lot of literature, a lot of things you can read on this topic. As you can imagine there is a lot disagreement and different perspectives. I thought I would talk about a few points about this doctrine and a little about how this doctrine developed.
A man named Tertullian was an early Church theologian who actually came up with the term Trinity that we use today. Tertullian also came up with the idea that God was three persons…and he actually used that term ‘person’ to speak of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit. And if you can believe it… in the early Church there was a lot of disagreement about how God existed as these three persons and also about how these three persons related to one another. And how would you imagine they resolved the controversies? They resolved it with a Church meeting. You might say that a large committee of Bishops was formed called the Council of Nicaea. In the year 325, the Council of Nicaea came together to discuss the relationship of God, as Father, Son and Spirit. There’s a whole history and background to the Council of Nicaea that is quite fascinating, but the outcome of this meeting had a great impact on the Church and even has an impact on what we do every Sunday when we worship. They developed what we call the Nicene Creed. The version that we say is basically the version they developed.
This Creed is divided into three sections—maybe you’ve noticed as you’ve recited the Creed on Sunday mornings. There is a section about the Father, a paragraph about the Son and a paragraph about the Holy Spirit. As we say the Nicene Creed after the sermon, pay special attention to the wording. This council spent a lot of time (several months in fact) in discussion and debate to come up with this Creed, this statement of what the church believes about this difficult and complex subject.
Controversy continued throughout the Middle Ages between the
Eastern & Western halves of the Church.
Theologians differed specifically over the source of the Holy Spirit. We call it the filioque controversy and you’ll see it come up in the Creed in the
paragraph dealing with the Holy Spirit.
Specifically notice when we say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father
and from the Son. In the Middle Ages Eastern theologians
disagreed with this—they thought the Spirit came from the Father, not
the Son. Western theologians turned to
the earlier writings of Augustine to argue the rightness of their
position. Many scholars & historians
see this disagreement over the Trinity contributing (even playing a major role)
in the split in the Christian Church between the
No doubt, this doctrine is very difficult and complex. It’s hard to get our minds around this doctrine, because as finite human beings with limited understanding, it’s hard for us to get our minds around God. When we talk about the Trinity, that’s what we are trying to do. We’re trying to talk about and trying to describe God.
At the end of the day, our names for God always fall short. In addition to Father, Son and Spirit some prefer to speak of God as Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier—referring to specific things each person of the Trinity has been involved in. Others prefer the terms the Source, the Word, the Holy Spirit.
Feminist theologians have rightly raised concerns over the language that we use when referring to the Trinity.[1] They rightly point out that God is beyond gender, neither male nor female. Feminist theologians point out that there are feminine aspects of the Trinity in our Christian tradition. For instance, in the Nicene Creed we recite every Sunday, we refer to the Son as being ‘begotten not made’ from the Greek word, gennao which means ‘to be born.’ So we have an interesting image of a Father who gives birth. As we know giving birth is an innately feminine quality. Also in the Hebrew language which we find in the Old Testament and the Aramaic language which we find in places in the New Testament, the word for Spirit is a feminine term, it is grammatically feminine in the text. Images of God's Spirit in scripture are also often feminine, as with the Spirit ‘brooding’ over the chaos in Genesis 1 (Gen. 1:2) ; or such as when the Spirit descends upon Jesus at his baptism in the form of a dove (Mt. 3:16). In the scripture ‘dove’ is a feminine word. Even our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus talks about the nurturing and empowering activities of the Spirit in our lives, in his conversation with Nicodemus Jesus speaks of the work of the Spirit as like that of a mother who gives birth. Jesus said, ‘Spirit gives birth to Spirit,’ (Jn. 3:6) meaning that the Holy Spirit, nurtures and brings forth the spiritual side of ourselves. The Holy Spirit works in our lives to nurture and guide our spiritual development. As the spiritual part of ourselves develops—that’s evidence of the Holy Spirit working in our lives.
Using various forms of imagery to describe God is helpful in those different names and images help us relate to God, but at the end of the day we have to remember that our language falls short. God transcends all language and images that we use to talk about God.
At the end of the day we have to remember the purpose of
this doctrine. The purpose of this
doctrine--our thinking of one God as
three persons is to make God uniquely personal to us. God is spirit, but God has related to
humanity in three different ways. That
is what this doctrine is about, helping us to conceptualize, describe and helping
us relate to God.
Analogy of the Trinity Taken from Daily Life
Finally this morning, I want to share with you one of the ideas of Author and playwright Dorothy L. Sayers. Sayers derived an analogy for how the Trinity functions from her own experience. In her book, The Mind of the Maker, she readily admits that the Trinity is a perplexing doctrine and suggests a bold analogy. Think about this: a writer has an idea. Then the writer exerts energy that results in a book, an article, editorial or whatever it is that you might read—what we read you might say is the incarnation of the original idea. Then comes the creative power by which the original idea, which is expressed in the book, enters into and influences those who read the book, or article, and who by reading it enter into relationship with the author. Idea, energy, and creative power are all involved when we read. And though distinguishable from one another, are not three things but three aspects of a single thing and a single event of reading something. The notion that God is one in three and three in one, then is not so foreign to our human experience, something we can begin to understand and relate to.[2]
I would like to close this morning by transitioning into the next part of our service. In just a moment we’ll say together the Nicene Creed. Pay special attention to the wording and reflect on what the Creed says about God and how God has entered into human history and about how God relates to us. Please stand.
WE BELIEVE in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
Bibliography for further Reflection and Information:
McGrath, Alister. Christian
Theology. Third Edition. Blackwell Publishers.
Migliore, Daniel L. Faith
Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology. Eerdmans.
Thomas, Owen C. & Wondra Ellen K. Introduction to Theology. Third Edition. Moorehouse Publishing. 2002. 67-88
C.S. Lewis. He argued that we have an encounter with the Trinity every time we pray. In fact, it is the work of the Trinity that moves us to pray. In his Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes: “An ordinary Christian kneels down to say prayers trying to get in touch with God. But …the Christian knows that what is prompting him to pray is [the work of] God: God so to speak [working] inside him. But he also knows that all [our] knowledge of God [primarily] comes through Christ, the man who was God—that Christ is [there with] him, helping him to pray, [even] praying for him. God is the thing to which [the person] is praying, the goal he is trying to reach. But God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on…God is also the road or bridge along which he is being [nudged] or pushed …So that the whole three fold life of [God] is actually involved when an ordinary [person] is saying their prayers.