A friend once remarked that of all the Sundays on the
liturgical calendar Trinity Sunday was the most difficult for sermon
preparation. What do you preach to a congregation whose eyes will glaze over
as soon as you announce your topic? Not that parishioners couldn't use some
edifying discourse on the subject of the "trilogy," as one layman recently
put it when he asked me for some clarification of what Christians believe.
Even if clarity is not wanting, the doctrine may seem as unnecessary to
disciples in the pew as it did to Friedrich Schleiermacher (the "Father of
Protestant Liberalism") 180 years ago when he appended a few pages on the
topic at the end of his systematic theology. Those who concede its necessity
might still ignore it as irrelevant to a culture that seeks doses of
spiritual insight for quick fixes and "felt needs."
Yet the confession of a triune God is one of the most
unique and essential features of the Christian faith. This became crystal
clear to me last summer when I assigned my Sudanese students at Nile
Theological College (Khartoum) the task of interviewing Muslim friends about
their perceptions of Christianity. That God has a Son and that Christians
address God as "Father" was a recurring theme in student reports of what was
perceived to be wrong with the Christian faith. It illustrated the point
that much of our apologetic task consists of clarifying what we believe.
In a time of increasing religious pluralism the task is
even more pressing. Just as Moses asked for more specificity about the God
(El) who was addressing him (Ex 3: 13-15), so the unambiguous name of
the God Christians worship and baptize new disciples into is Father-Son-Holy
Spirit (Mt 28: 19). As Stanley Hauerwas put it in a politically correct
civic prayer, though folks would prefer we pray to the "God of Ultimate
Vagueness," the history of Israel and Jesus
Christ keep forcing us to be more particular.1
Experiencing God as Three Persons
In fact, in the context of religious pluralism in the
Greco-Roman world of the New Testament, it was precisely the Jewish
Christian experience of Christ's lordship that launched the early disciples'
trajectory toward a doctrine of the Trinity: These were committed
monotheists (who regularly professed commitment to Israel's "one God" in the
shema-Deut 6:4) who worshipped and preached Jesus Christ as "Lord"
(Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3; Phil 2:6-11)2
and ascribed to
him what was ascribed to God (In 1:1-18,5:18, 10:30;
Col 1:15-20), even to the point that they considered his claims to be
the Temple where God and humans meet vindicated (Mk 2:1-12, 14:61-62; Mt
12:6,42; Jn 2:19).3
Were they worshipping two gods? No-pagan
polytheism was an unacceptable explanation for what they were experiencing.
(And there can only be one "Lord"-by definition.) Still, the early Christian
believers could not revert to some kind of unitarianism-the belief that God
was only one person. The biblical witness reported that Jesus prayed to the
Father (In 17) and claimed to come from and return to the Father (In 16:9,
17:25) after he completed his mission of making the Father known (In I: 18).
Unless Jesus was schizophrenic, it seemed that at least two individuals were
involved here. In other words, something about the identity and activity of
Jesus Christ required an appropriate explanation.
In addition, a third party seemed to be caught up in
this-the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus called the paraclete (one who "comes
alongside," see Jn 14:25, 16:7). In his "farewell address" to the disciples,
Jesus not only told Philip that any who had seen him had seen the Father-
that Jesus was in the Father and the Father was in Jesus (In 14:9-11), but
he also wanted them to understand how they would experience his presence in
their lives after his ascension: at Jesus' request the Father (and Jesus)
would send "another" who would remind the disciples of all that Jesus taught
them, guide them into truth, be their advocate, convict folks about sin, and
glorify Jesus (In 14:16-17,25-26; 15:26; 16:7-15).
The church was beginning to experience God according to
the manner in which God revealed himself: they were seeing God self-revealed
in Jesus Christ, who identified himself as the Son in relation to the Father
whom he, in turn, came to make known and glorify (In 17:1-5). And they were
experiencing the Spirit who made it possible for them to enter into a
relationship of adopted children of God, so that they found themselves
calling the God of Jesus Christ "Abba, Father" (Gal 4:6). Though they
could not articulate it in theological language, the early church was
becoming aware that God reveals himself as three persons.
From Worship To Doctrine
But they soon found they had to articulate what
God was up to in more sophisticated ways. True, they could extend greetings
in the name of the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 1 :7). They could
assert there is one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all
things come and for whom we live (I Cor 8:6). They could baptize in the name
of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit (Mt 28: 19). And they could pronounce a
benediction by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the
fellowship of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 13: 14). Yet, as Jaroslav Pelikan put
it so well, "one could speak this way while kneeling to pray, but it was
harder to do so when standing to teach or sitting to write."
4 And they had to engage in the teaching and the
writing, because they had to define the Christian faith
over against inadequate and pagan notions of God.
For instance, modalism (taught by, among others,
a man named Sabellius around the year 215) held that the one God has
revealed himself in different modes or manifestations-like a Greek
actor who would come out playing one part with a mask, only to return later
playing another part with a different mask. In this view, Jesus was just one
of the many manifestations of God. The incarnate Son-Redeemer was just a
role that God was playing after he played the role of Father-Creator on the
universe's stage.
While this idea of God preserved a very high view of
the divinity of Jesus Christ, it not only contradicted those passages in
which the incarnate Son, Jesus, seemed to be talking to another person, the
Father (as in Jn 17), but it led to strange notions. For instance, if the
Son was just the Father in another role, it could be argued that the Father
was being crucified just as much as the Son. If God is three persons
always and at the same time, then it makes sense to say that the
Father abandoned the Son on the cross (Mk 15:34), and that the Holy Spirit
descended on Jesus at his baptism as the Father announced his identity as
the Son (Lk 3:22). (This is why the analogy of the three forms of water is
not a good representation of the Trinity, since the same water cannot be all
three forms at the same time.)
But the real problem with modalism has always been that
it leaves us uncertain about how definitive God's self-revelation in Jesus
Christ was. That is, if modalism is correct, then we will always wonder if
some other god is lurking behind the mask Jesus wore-one who pops out in a
fourth (or fifth or sixth) role that God hasn't played yet. I have found
that it's helpful to remind people that the fullness of deity dwelt in
Christ, for to look at the Jesus of the Gospels is to know how God responds
to our diseases, our infirmities, our pride, our joys, and so forth. We need
no further unveiling of God's being and character than what God has
disclosed in Jesus Christ as he is witnessed to by Scripture.
Another tendency that the church had to avoid was
adoptionism. This was the mirror opposite of modalism. It emphasized the
distinction between the Son and the Father, but it did so by compromising
Jesus' deity: Jesus was the Son of God by adoption, not by nature. That is,
God foresaw just how obedient Jesus would be and promoted him to the status
of "Son of God" as a kind of reward. The adoption took place either at the
resurrection (Rom I :3-4; Acts 2:32-36), the baptism (Mk 1: 1 0-11; Acts
10:37-38), or the birth (Lk 1 :34-35).
Not only does this view result in "divinity by
promotion," but it has no room for an incarnation. There is no Christmas in
this view of Jesus. Jesus is not the incarnate Son of God (the Word become
flesh); Jesus is simply an inspired man who, through his obedience, became
the trailblazer for our salvation. This is precisely what Jehovah's
Witnesses teach. And the problem with what they and some other modem
"biographers" of Jesus teach is that salvation comes by trying harder to be
like Jesus so that we too will get promoted for being obedient to God and
good to fellow inhabitants of the planet. In the end, this leads to a self.
centered legalism, and legalism, like all heresies, is cruel-it will harm
your spiritual, emotional, and physical health.
5
On To The Nicene Creed
One species of adoptionism was Arianism, named
after a fourth-century churchman Arius. (Come up with a good heresy and you
might have an enduring legacy!) In fact, it was Arianism that eventually led
the church to fashion the Nicene Creed, but not until after Arius was
opposed by a North African Christian named Athanasius.
Arius had argued that if you take the Bible "literally"
(such as references to Jesus being the "firstborn" in ColI: 15 and to Wisdom
being created at the beginning of God's work in Prov 8:22) and if you want
to safeguard the transcendence and unchangeableness of God, then you
wouldn't want to say that God can be divided into persons or that God can be
incarnate in human flesh. But you could say that the first of God's
creation-a supreme angel of sorts-had become flesh and become the
intermediary between God and humans.
While Athanasius couldn't point to a passage of
Scripture that would refute Arius once and for all, he argued that Arius'
"Son" could not be Savior. Not only was this first creature neither fully
human nor fully divine, but the logic of our salvation is such that only the
God who created us in his image in the first place has the power and
authority to recreate us in his image in the second place. That is, the God
who is the Redeemer has to be the same God who created all things. In that
way, though no Bible verse actually came out and said so, the history of
what God is up to from Genesis to Revelation calls for a God who himself
becomes human to redeem what we humans have severely damaged. (Athanasius
put it this way: "God became human so that humans might be made god.")
6
Arius' Christ could neither redeem humans nor reveal
God (because he wasn't). And to worship Arius' Christ was to worship a
creature!
As an aside, we should notice that Athanasius'
insistence on not separating the Creator and Redeemer also helps us to
realize that a robust doctrine of the Trinity keeps us from separating the
God of the Old Testament from the God of the New Testament,
7 the wrath of God from the love of God, and the indwelling
of Jesus Christ from the baptism of the Holy Spirit in one's life.
Part of Arius' problem was that he thought "only
begotten" in John 3: 16 meant that the Son was created only by God. That is,
Arius confused the verb "beget" with the verb "create." But they are two
very different things: A dad begets a daughter, but a dad creates (or makes)
a dollhouse for his daughter. (Well, actually, I tried to create one!) Like
begets like; like creates unlike. That is why the Nicene Creed is careful to
say that the Son of God was "begotten from the Father, only- begotten,
that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from
light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance
with the Father."
That phrase "of one substance" is homoousios in
Greek-a word Athanasius preferred, even though it doesn't appear in the
Bible. (For that matter, the word "trinity" isn't in the Bible either. It
was a word used by Tertullian, an early third-century theologian to mean
"three-in-oneness.") But he thought it best summarized what the Bible was
saying about the Son's being in relation to the Father's being. In fact,
Mormons, who reject the Nicene Creed, claim that they believe in a Trinity,
but when pressed to say that God the Father is the same God as God
the Son, they deny that understanding of the Trinity. In other words, the
Mormon idea of the Son of God is not much different from Arianism.
This precise theological language, referring to "three
persons in one substance," was not meant to define God. It is
language that operates like rules of grammar- telling us what is permissible
for Christians to say about God (and what not to say) if they want to remain
in the Christian camp. Even to say that the Father "begets" the Son is not
an admission that we know what such begetting would mean to God; the
word might sound familiar, but when applied to God it signifies something
beyond our comprehension. (In fact, Origin, a third- century theologian,
even sounds illogical when he describes the Son as "eternally
begotten.")
The theologians and the creeds were actually trying to
preserve the mystery of the triune God with their words. William Placher
puts it so well when he says:
What the early theologians
said was much more something like this: We know from Scripture that the Son
is not the Father, for the Son prays to the Father with an intensity that
cannot be playacting. We know that the Spirit is Another whom the Father
will send, and not the same as the Son. We know that there is one God, and
yet we pray to the Son and the Spirit, and count on them to participate in
our salvation in a way that would be blasphemous if they were other than
God. We need some terms in order to say that God is both one and three, and
so we devise such terms, but it is only beyond this life, in the vision of
God, that we will understand how God
is both one and three.
8
We will come back to this idea of preserving the
Trinity's mystery, but first we should recognize that the Holy Spirit did
not get much mention in this battle between Arius and Athanasius. In fact,
it was what led up to the version of the Nicene Creed that we have in our
Book of Confessions today that helped bring the Holy Spirit into the
discussion. It was, in part, the work of three Cappadocian (Asia Minor)
theologians (one Basil and two Gregorys) that helped us understand better
how the three exist in relation to each other. (The 325 Nicene Creed
was revised at Constantinople in 381, with an expanded section on the Holy
Spirit.)
Life In The Trinity
The Eastern church, of which the Cappadocians were a
part, had given the Father top billing in their understanding of the three
persons. The Father was the origin and manager (i.e., "monarch") of the
other two, from whom the Son is always begotten and the Spirit is always
proceeding. While this seemed to smack of a heretical tendency called
subordinationism, the intention was not to suggest that the Son and the Holy
Spirit are any less God than the Father. As we shall see, the Cappadocians
would insist that, in one sense, the Father's existence depends on the
existence of the Son and the Spirit. But it is important here to point out
that the Son's voluntary submission to the Father (as in Phil 2:6-8) is not
a diminution of the Son's divinity, but an expression of what it
means to be God the Son. The "pagans" think of divine authority in worldly
terms as "lording it over" others, but the incarnate Son in the upper room
stooped down and wiped the disciples' feet at the moment he knew that
"the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from
God and was returning to God" (In 13:3-5; Mk 10:42-45).
The Cappadocians are often credited with taking our
focus from the "economic" Trinity to the "immanent" Trinity. The former has
nothing to do with money. The word economic simply refers to the way
in which someone manages the affairs of a household, business, state,
or the like. And most theologians had rightly been occupied with the way in
which we see the three persons of the Trinity manage (or being managed by
the Father) in the affairs of the world's salvation. But what God is in his
saving activity-pouring out God's self in creation, redemption, and
recreation-is what God is in the divine being itself. That is, as
three persons God is the self-giving God. Though each person of the Trinity
exists in distinction from the other two, each also exists only in
relation to the other two. For example, the Father is the Father
but can only be Father if there is the Son (and vice-versa). Take
away one of those two, and the other no longer exists. This fits nicely with
some postmodern notions of what it means to be a "person," for a person's
identity depends on his or her relation to others. The identity and
existence of each person of the Trinity co-inheres in the other
two--they interpenetrate, depend upon, and participate in each other. In
Greek this is called perichoresis, and it is developed from another
Greek word chore in, which can mean "to make room for." In other
words, each member of the Trinity makes room for and relates to the others
in self-giving love. Cornelius Plantinga expressed this so well in a sermon
entitled "Deep Wisdom":
From all eternity inside
God, inside the mystery of God, inside God the Holy Trinity-the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit make room for each other, envelop each other,
call attention to each other, glorify one another. It is the ceaseless
exchange of vitality, the endless expense of spirit upon spirit in eternal
triplicate life. The only competition in glory of this kind is to outdo one
another in love.
9
When Jesus prays that all of his disciples may be one
"just as you are in me and I am in you" (In 17:21), Jesus in effect prays
that we in the church live in such a way that we reflect the very triune
existence of God. To paraphrase what Austin Farrer once wrote about dogma
and prayer, we should insist that no doctrine deserves its place unless it
is livable, and no Christians deserve their doctrines who do not live them.l0
No doubt Calvin would concur when he wrote that Christian doctrine is
learned only when it moves from head to heart and "passes into the conduct,
and so transforms us into itself, as not to prove itself unfruitful."
11 As confessors
of a triune God we must live the unique doctrine we
profess, pouring out our lives into one another in self- giving, hospitable
love.
In the end, our job is not to comprehend the
triune God. Not that we could, since the etymology of the word would imply
that we could "seize" or "get" God. And Augustine's oft-cited warning is
correct: if we understand God, it is not God that we understand. The best we
can aim for is "learned ignorance"-the kind of understanding that Calvin
described as appreciating what God has revealed in Scripture, but
refusing to speculate about God's being beyond God's self- revelation in
Christ, who comes to us "clothed in Scripture," which the Holy Spirit
authenticates as the Word of God.
12 And with that "learned ignorance," by the
transforming power of the Holy Spirit, Christians in their churchly
existence may mirror the God in whose image we are created, as we grow up
together into Christ who is the very image of the Father (Eph 4:15, 22-24;
CoI1:15).
It is this God we know as Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit-this God who encounters us condescending, pouring out, humbling,
giving, making room (Phil 2:6-11 )--this God whom we confess and praise as
the "great One in Three," whose "sovereign majesty may we in glory see, and
to eternity love and adore."
Questions
As you look over this essay, consider the following
questions:
1. What led the early Christians to begin thinking of
God as three?
2. Why is it important to insist that God is three-in-
one?
3. What do we learn about how to live our lives as
Christians based on our confession that God is triune?
4. What does it mean to practice the doctrine of
the Trinity?
1 See Stanley Hauerwas, Prayers Plainly Spoken
(Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999,2003),47-48 (and his
explanation of the context for the prayer on p. 17).
2 The Greek word for "Lord" is kyrios, a transcription
of the Hebrew adonai, which was a substitution for the unpronounced
name of God- YHWH.
3 See N. T. Wright's discussion of the ascription of divinity
to Jesus in Simply Christian (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,
2006), chs. 7-8. Also, see James Edwards, Is Jesus the Only Savior?
(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), chaps. 5-6.
4 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of
the Development of Doctrine; vol. I: The Emergence of the Catholic
Tradition (100-600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 178.
5 See C FitzSimons Allison, The Cruelty of Heresy
(London: SPCK, 1994).
6 Athanasius makes his argument in his classic, On the
Incarnation of the Word.
7 It has been part of Christian tradition, especially in the
Eastern church, to understand Gen 18: 1-2 as a theophany in the three
persons: "The Lord appeared to Abraham He looked up and saw three men
standing near him."
8 William Placher, The Triune God (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 130.
9 See Timothy George, ed., God the Holy Trinity (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 155. Also, see Placher, Trinity,
155.
10 Ref. Austin Farrer, Lord I Believe (Cambridge, MA:
Cowley, 1989), 10.
11 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion,
ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1960),3.6.4.
12 See Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.2, 1.7.4-5.
This article appeared in Theology Matters (A
Publication of Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry) 13:3 (May/June,
2007) and is reprinted with permission.
