15^th June 2009

Sunday 07 June 2009 Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley

Lessons -- Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; John 16:12-15

    Jesus said, 'When the Counsellor (Helper) comes, whom I shall send
    you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, he will bear witness
    to me.' (John 15:26 RSV)

Bishop Lesslie Newbigin tells a lovely story about a visit to an old monastery in Yorkshire. When they reached the ruins of the chapel, the note in the guide-book read: 'Here every Sunday the Abbott preached the Gospel -- except on Trinity Sunday, owing to the difficulty of the subject.' (Newbigin's paper 'The Trinity as Public Truth' p2, in The Trinity in a pluralistic age, Kevin J Vanhoozer.) This is a day to test the faith of ministers and congregations. It is also a time when the Church's faith in God is most magnificently expressed and should be gladly celebrated.

Christian worship -- Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox -- is marked by adoration, confession and intercession to the Triune God. The doctrine of the Trinity gives distinct shape to faith in the Triune God in contrast to monotheistic faith of Jews, Muslims and Unitarians ('God is One') and to pluralistic faith of animists, New Age spiritualists and relativists ('Gods are many').

The language of the Trinity in hymns, creeds and prayers is familiar -- and puzzling. We may wonder if any sense can be made of 'One in three'
and 'Three in one' when speaking of God. It seems to defy the laws of arithmetic and to undermine belief in One God. Some think it is optional. Many are sceptical. Others prefer the simple, practical teaching of Jesus to unworldly, speculative doctrine. Many people ignore profound reflections on the Trinity in the long history of the Church -- St Augustine wrote 15 books on the Trinity! They insist that trinitarian language is merely a 'human invention'. God for them is not essentially triune.

This is understandable, but regrettable. The doctrine of the Trinity wasn't developed in the early Church to satisfy their culturally conditioned or primitive view of faith. It was a glad affirmation of God's immeasurable love for us and a warning against making God in our image. It expressed the unity of God's love for humanity which overflows from the love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Faith in the Triune God developed in the midst of a fierce contest over the reality of God's self-disclosure in Christ. In the face of beliefs which distinguished between a 'simple' God and a simple human Jesus, Christian thinkers were compelled to give better expression to their experience of God's presence in the person of Christ. Simple New Testament expressions of faith in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (e.g., in John, Romans) 'cried out for fuller elaboration'. (Bernhard Lohse, A Short History of Christian Doctrine, 1966 p41)

The doctrine of the Trinity wasn't a human invention to 'explain' God.  It 'uncovered' what is implicit in genuine Christian thinking and experience of God's self-revelation in Christ's life, death and resurrection. 'Faced with the choice between an invented God who could be understood without the slightest difficulty, and the real God, who couldn't, the Church unhesitatingly chose the latter.' (Alister McGrath, Understanding the Trinity,1987 p151.)

In reflecting on the Incarnation, they were compelled to hold together two things: the unity of God (God is One) and the relations between the Divine Persons (God exists in communion). Because they had experienced the fullness of God in Jesus they had to speak of the 'Son' as 'God incarnate'. And, because Jesus and his 'Father' shared a relationship of deepest love and trust, they had to speak of distinct 'persons' in God. Likewise, the 'Spirit' unites 'Father' and 'Son' in a bond of love and makes their mutual love known to the world through the Christian community.

The Russian Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann puts it beautifully: 'If the Father is the Lover, if the Son is the beloved, then the Spirit is the Love that unites them. . . . Lover, Beloved,
Love: the radiant mystery of Truth, the revelation of the final mystery of God's very own life.' (Celebration of Faith: I Believe, p110.)

Our problem today is that the way in which Schmemann and others speak about the personal nature of the Trinity is strange to our Western ears. When we think about what it means to be 'a person' we usually think of 'an individual' with certain characteristics. So in thinking about 'God' we automatically think of a 'Supreme Individual' with divine characteristics. 

That is why in the Western tradition the doctrine of the Trinity is largely understand by analogy with the individual. The unity of an individual (as one) takes priority over the relations between individuals. We have been trained to think of 'persons' (human and divine) having individuality. That is one reason we find it hard to think of God 'existing in communion'.  That is why we usually think of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as aspects or characteristics of the One individual God who at different times is Creator, present in the world or with us now.

But what if we were to think of ourselves and God as essentially communal beings? As the late Colin Gunton notes, some theologians in the 4th Century gave priority to the relational concept of the person in their doctrine of God. They said that, because we only truly exist in relationship, so God only truly exists in communion as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In understanding God or ourselves, we do not start with the individual but with our 'being in communion'.  By re-shaping the language used to speak about what it means to be 'persons' they were able to speak about God as a free and mutual communion of love -- 'a sort of continuous and indivisible community', 'a new and paradoxical conception of united separation and separated unity' (The One, the Three and the Many, 1985, p10).

As we can see, it isn't easy to put into words the triune mystery of God's being with us in Christ. But that doesn't mean the Trinity should be treated as a 'problem' to be side-stepped. On Trinity Sunday we have the opportunity to see that the 'very Being of God' is characterised by the deepest Communion of Love -- a Divine Tri-unity of love for which there is no parallel in our experience!

Far from being irrelevant, optional or a barrier to 'simple faith', the Trinity is necessary to express the unparalleled breadth and depth of God's free, costly and victorious love for the human community and for each person (living in community). It expresses the Christian conviction that God only exists in communion. In the communion between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the very Being of the One God is displayed as Love for humanity -- for us who refuse to live in communion with God or our fellows.

Our minds will need to be re-wired if we are to grasp this profound shift in understanding what it means for God (and us) to be persons-in- community, rather than self-enclosed individuals who are free to choose their various individual gods and for whom relationships are of secondary importance.

These are not abstract or theoretical matters. Nowadays in Church services we are more likely to be asked to bind ourselves to the 'God of many names' (TiS 180) than to 'the strong name of the Trinity' (AHB 454). What is forgotten or disliked is that the tri-unity of communion between Father, Son and Holy Spirit is both a critique of our relativistic society, where the individual's faith and their self- chosen spirituality is valued above all else, and an invitation to those who long for communion with the God of Love. 

Therefore the Christian community, founded on the outgoing communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, must not abandon her faith in the Triune God in order that God should fit our faith perspectives or the individualistic idea about what it means to be a person. The Trinity is not an abstract historically-conditioned or primitive doctrine but the pivotal expression of the reality of God who only exists in the personal communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Trinity thus expresses the glorious mystery of God! Not mystery in the sense of knowing nothing about God and being driven to scepticism or despair, but the reality that is 'marvellously incomprehensible'
because it expresses the unparalleled grace of God the Father uniquely embodied in God the Son and revealed to us by God the Holy Spirit. The affirmation that the One God exists only in the deepest communion of Love stretches our minds and hearts, making us dissatisfied with the many gods that satisfy our various faiths and narrow our vision of what it is to be persons-in-communion with God and each other.

 ' . . . except on Trinity Sunday, owing to the difficulty of the subject.'  The reward for tackling difficult subjects in any sphere of life can be great, particularly when we let their complexity shape our ways of thinking and acting. (Such discoveries frequently occur in science!) It is so too with the Trinity. If we let our thinking about God be formed by the magnificent strangeness of God's unity and relatedness, then our minds will be re-shaped and our lives transformed so that we realise that we are created as persons who exist to 'be there with and for others'.  Thus, in some small and imperfect way we may mirror the communion of God's triune love.

As a community formed by the Holy Trinity, let us glorify God in worship and service so that the 'Holy Communion of Love' that exists within God between Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be known by each and every person.

-----------------

Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chairman of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.