Sarx

RINITY is the third of the “Big Three” doctrines without which I can’t make sense of Christianity. It is the third leg of my own personal xmin stool. It is also the third in doctrinal Chronology. After Eucharist (from the very beginning) through an understanding of Jesus as God, came the understanding of God as Trinity. While it is possible to read Trinity backwards into Christian history. We have no reason to: this understanding of God is not, for example, present in the text of the Didache liturgy where Jesus is seen as God’s servant and the Spirit as Divine Being isn’t there at all.Why is this doctrine important? How does it tie into our salvation? What is it’s purpose? I think two essays are needed – one to touch lightly on what I mean by “Trinity” and another to wrap up this series and I hope tie it all together: Trinity, Incarnation, Eucharist.

There are pages and pages of text written about the Trinity. There is a feast day (Trinity Sunday) in the Western Rite, the texts for which are filled with Doctrinal Formulas; there are hymns and prayers in the East each one richer than the last used on many feast days. All the Creeds of the church address the topic, most especially the one called Athanasian.

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith;
Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;
Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.
Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.
The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.
The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal.
And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal.
As also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible.
So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Spirit almighty.
And yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty.

It continues on in that vein in seemingly incomprehensible language about “not three of ___ but only one ___” and dictating very specific doctrines about the relationship of the three, “He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity”. I don’t think so: Trinity is a statement about how we understand God and how we understand God to be working out our salvation. It is not, however, something everyone must grasp in order to be saved.

As I sat down to give this essay it’s first edit, I found a blog post that helps point the way down the path I want to walk. Over at In A Godward Direction, Fr Tobias reminds us this is not a doctrinal discussion:

First of all, I start with the assertion that the Trinity is not a doctrine, but a Person — in fact, three Persons. “Trinity” is the name of the God whom we worship, the God we then know — insofar as we can know God — as Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit — and we get that Name from the liturgy of Baptism: told by Jesus to do it to the ends of the world, not to think about it. We worship before we understand, before we know. Like the Athenians, we worship a God to a large extent unknown — yet faith and grace support our worship even with the partial knowledge we have. God has not left us entirely clueless, as Paul told the Athenians. As Julian reminds us, God gave us as it were an ABC, so that here on earth we can have a little of the knowledge that we will have in full measure in heaven.

The first thing we gather from the Baptismal ordinance is that God is One in Three, a love so powerful it could not exist simply as a singularity but had to be more dynamic — and paradoxical. And so we give our God the name of Trinity, for this is the only way we have to grasp the hem of the transcendent garment. For though there are many doctrines about the Trinity, many unpackings of the meaning of this name, the Trinity God’s-self is not a doctrine to be discussed but a mystery to be contemplated.

In the eastern lexicon the Trinity is a Mystery: not something that we can grasp or define or even begin to categorise. As a jumping off point, I’ll take my disagreement with Fr Tobias’ next (very minor) comment that “Mystery stems from the Greek word for Sacrament“. Sacrament is from a Latin word meaning Oath. Mystery comes from the Greek for “Initiate”. The Latin understanding of “Sacrament” overlaps with but does not entirely parallel the Greek “Mystery”.

Generally, at least to my ear (admitting bias, here), “sacraments” seem smaller than “mysteries”. The Roman denomination (and many others who follow her tradition) has seriously defined all the Sacraments: what happens when, how, why, and even what is “appropriate matter” of the sacraments. There are seven. Period. Although there are Eastern Writers who engage in dubious, Romanesque attempts to categorise and itemise everything, the appropriate Eastern response to “Mystery” is just to say it is so. It’s there, it’s important. It’s real. Definition is impossible. “It’s not a doctrine to be discussed.” More importantly, the mystery of the Trinity functions in our salvation exactly like the Mystery of the Eucharist or the Mystery of the Incarnation – or multiple other mysteries in the Eastern Rite. They are not limited to seven, nor are they very easy to define. God’s use of your neighbour to work out your salvation makes your neighbour a holy mystery, equal to the mass or the Trinity. Unlike the idea of “Sacrament” there is no pretence to understanding “mystery”, our only response is Love and holy awe.

Let’s go from there with our contemplation of this mystery.

Most “progressive” sorts simply admit that they can’t do the math. 1+1+1 does not equal 1. This is stupid and, modernly, rationally, we must just admit we messed up. Boomer-batory “we can do this our way or else throw it out” doesn’t work for me. That may be their truth… but my truth needs more – not less – mystery. I don’t need to be able wrap my brain around it for it to be true.

One way to contemplate this mystery is from a very common standpoint of God as Apotheosis of Human Ideals. If it is important to restore the Human Race to communion, then the Divine Race, if you will, must also experience communion. Further, it must be a communion that was never broken (since God is perfect and we are not) ergo this can not be a simple case of communion with humanity or angels: Communion must be one of like to like. We will discover implications to this later, but for now suffice to say that it is not enough for God to be in Communion with, eg, Abraham. God must be in communion with one like unto godself. Yet Christianity, like its Jewish mother, is radically monotheistic. So it can not be that there is another God for God to be in communion with. As we came to an understanding of Jesus as God-in-flesh, we also came to an understanding of God-not-Jesus doing something as well.

The answer to “why three and not four, two or five” is most like a Monty Python skit. The easiest answer is that three is a magic number (in a way that two is not), so a triangular image of deity seems better than a dyadic one.

Something called “The Holy Spirit” was mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures, the Sayings of Jesus and the Apostolic Memoirs and Letters. This something must either be defined as God or something else. When Judaism met Hellenism, rather like Jesus, there was no other option for the Spirit. It acts like God, it has divine powers, ergo it must be God or a Demigod. And, as with Jesus, it was Christianity’s monotheism that made the Spirit out to be God. And the Spirit seems rather like the perfect triangulation with Jesus and the Father. Sophia/Wisdom is seen as Jesus present and active in the OT world. Wisdom is Female and Jesus is Male: this creates some interesting theology. But the Holy Spirit, as mentioned in the Hebrew texts, is something else. One of the early saints refers to the Spirit and the Son as the Left and Right hand of God the Father.

Fr Tobias says, correctly, “This is not a doctrine, but a person.” The actual doctrinal debates about Trinity – including the split between east and west over the filioque – are not as important as they might seem. The fullest statement is that God must be in Communion as God wants us to be in Communion. The debates include things like “who is in charge? How is the Spirt related to Jesus and the Father? Is there something to the understanding of Father and Son that needs to be clarified? Is the Spirit the Mother? But if we admit God to be a mystery, it is enough to say God is in communion as he desires us to be.

The Greek debate (for it is not Jewish, as noted above) centres around the use of the words Hypostasis and Ousia. By the 4th century and following Ousia means “essence”. Hypostasis comes to mean person. The Church fathers saw the Godhead as “three “Hyperstases in one Ousia“. In a like manner they saw our human nature as our ousia and each of us is a Hyperstasis within that ousia. Gregory of Nyssa says, “To say that there are ‘many human beings’ is a common abuse of language. Granted there is a plurality of those who share in the same human nature… but in all of them humanity is one.” He goes on to say, “It is not in a part of [human] nature that the image is found but nature in its totality is the image of God.”

God as Trinity is a sign of Human Unity. It is not important that we debate who is above whom: but it is important that we have as our icon of the Holy this Divine Community.

But this is also a deeper Mystery that simply human love. It goes beyond the union of loving spouses: they have another symbolic meaning – and that’s another reason why God as Dyad just won’t work: We need something supra-sexual, something meta-natural, to show us the universal communion which we seek. In that way it’s important, I think, for the early Christians to see the Trinity as “All male” – to avoid the sexual content. Today some writers make much of the homoerotic content of an all-male Godhead, but that wasn’t present to the ancients. The social world was exactly all male. Only men would have been out and about in public. Yes, there was some same-sex eroticism, but it was not “gay” as we understand that term today. An all-male Godhead would have avoided the family and sex images that would have otherwise appeared.

Nowadays I don’t think that content is still culturally restrained. As I noted some critics cite the homoerotic content of an All-Male Godhead. Other’s cite the absence of female energy as an oppressive sign. Some go so far as to imply that it matters not if Jesus is seen as male or female. This I think is a lie: for why see my earlier essays on Jesus being God having importance. But on the other hand I have sung about “The Glory of God our Mothering Father” and also said “Our Mother in Heaven”. These images are not a threat to the doctrine of the Trinity save to some retro-thinking folks who insist on the legalism of the formulae rather than the mystery of the symbol. If you need to have God the Mother or a feminine Holy Spirit, I think that’s cool.

Neither can we merely ascribe functions instead of personal titles. Parent is ok, but it is also cold and clinical in the same way that calling me a “homosexual” is cold and clinical. Mother or Father is important. But we can not say “Creator, Redeemer & Sanctifier” because, for example, it is Jesus who is seen as the Creator in Christianity. “All things were made by him and without him was not anything made.” The Father is only the first mover – the world comes into being through the actions of Spirit and Son. “Redeemer” is a very scary title, I think: that without care can devolve into Jesus as “Payment of our Debts”. Jesus is our Sanctification as the scripture tells us. And it is the Father who sanctifies us by the indwelling Spirit. To attempt to split these roles into names creates a confusion. I’d rather we say, “Begetter, Begotten and Proceeding” As in:

May God the Begetter, the Begotten and the Proceeding one fill our world with his peace in our lives and by our actions.

This is also important because these three Gender-Neutral Terms describe who God is in relation to God as do the traditional titles. The other set, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, tell who God is only in relation to us. The point of salvation is to make that relationship with us a living reality: but it is not who God is. God has that relationship of persons within godself and seeks it with us. But God does not change to be with us. God remains who God is: the begetter, the begotten and the proceeding one.

One more essay to tie all of this up together – bridging the gap, I hope, between the trinity and us in the incarnation and Eucharist. God is who God is – and now we talk about how God comes to us. The preceding essays are listed there in the sidebar.