This is the last post in my present series of posts about my course. This is the end of the course notes, but there is, of course, lots of discussion going on. So the course notes don’t represent, together with the readings, the totality of the content of the course. 
I think, if others may find it of interest, I may post later on the second of my two essays when it is written. That will be in about a months time though.
I’m conscious that I’ve been posting a lot recently, which has no doubt been disrupting the regular flow of contributions, so a bit of peace from me for now.
In the meantime, I hope this series of posts has been of some interest – I believe by comments received that it has. When I post about my essay, I’lll also tell people about the pilgrimage I am making in January/February 2014 – something else that might be of interest.
The last notes below concern the Trinity. As ever, from the written notes it’s not always clear of the flow of the content, but I hope that, even for those who have been around the block a few more times than me with their faith, there might be something of interest here to comment on.
God bless!
The Trinity
The Christian confession of God as Triune is a summary of Scriptures witness to a God of unfathomable love. A love incarnate in Jesus Christ. A living Christ experienced and celebrated in the community of faith.
Not an ancient technical formula, but an understanding of God, which springs from the Gospel message. It is the product of the reflection and insight of the Church over many centuries.
The doctrine of the Trinity did not fall down from Heaven, nor was it found on tablets of stone. It is the product of the reflection of the Church on the Gospel message—the Christ event and the experience of his Spirit among them.
The Trinitarian formula did not define the Trinity. The Trinity was experienced and the formula was the Church’s attempt to give coherent expression to the mystery of God’s grace experienced by the faithful, revealed through the Scriptures.
Biblical Roots of the Doctrine of Trinity
It would perhaps be stretching the point to suggest that there is a full-blown doctrine of the Trinity in the N/T. Instead, there are hints towards it (although the significance of these is much debated).
John affirms something of the closeness of the Son to the Father, especially in the prologue (John 1:1—18), where the pre-existence of the Logos (Word) with God is maintained. In addition, certain blessings/baptismal formulas are Trinitarian in structure (2 Cor 13:13, Matt 28:19).
It would certainly be true to say throughout all this that the divinity of the Son is clearer than that of the Spirit. ‘Indeed, as in John 14, the Spirit is perhaps the way in which the Son is present to the earliest Christian community.’
We do not believe in the Trinity because of a few proof texts (e.g. Matt 28:19) but because of the pervasively Trinitarian pattern of the N/T’s description of revelation and activity of God.
Both O/T and N/T affirm that there is one God who is almighty (Deut 6:4, Mark 12:29—30).
Yet, in the N/T’s record of God’s love there are 3 centres of divine activity:
Father
–Revealed to us in one called the Son
–Present reality in the Church by the one called Spirit
Moltmann—the story of the Gospel is ‘the great love story of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. A divine love story in which we are all involved together with heaven and earth.’
The Triune God accords with biblical witness and the experience of the Church.
1) God over us (Father)
2) God for us and with us (Son)
3) God in us (Holy Spirit)
1) The loving God
2) The gracious Lord Jesus
3) The fellowship and community creating Holy Spirit
There are not 3 God’s but 3 distinct personal expressions of the one God.
Distortions of the doctrine of the Trinity
1) Unitarianism of the Creator or first person in the Trinity
- Concept of Almighty God but little sense of personal relationship
- Often linked with nationalism, Lord of the nation’s destiny
- Little sense of forgiveness, repentance, transformation of life
- Often leads to fixed and judgemental attitudes, little tolerance of alternative attitudes, minorities. God is like this and not any other way
2) Unitarianism of the Redeemer (Christ)
- Jesus is the exclusive concern of this kind of piety. Jesus alone is the object of trust and allegiance.
- Jesus becomes a cult figure of some sort, rather than the Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel’s.
- Jesus my personal saviour, Jesus my Lord. Stress is only on the individual relationship and this seems to cut the believer off from the wider issues of society.
- We may become a private exclusive group of the saved, far removed from the openness of Christ whose Gospel is for all nations. (Division from society).
- Salvation is defined in terms of me and my group and nothing else is of real concern—this attitude often exists side by side (even hand in hand) with the most unchristian attributes like injustice and exploitation.
- It can encourage us to be ‘sentimental’, ‘cosy’, can be narrow and exclusive, can encourage a sort of ‘them’ and ‘us’, the saved and the condemned, a feeling of moral superiority.
3) Unitarianism of the Spirit
- In this understanding of God, the gifts of the spirit are everything. Little effort is made to test the Spirit to see whether it is the Spirit of God’s Christ—the Spirit that builds up the community and commissions it for the service of God and others. Some charismatic groups come dangerously close to this.
- The solution of the problem of a lifeless Church is not simply to stir up intense religious emotion and experience. The experience of the Spirit must also be the experience of the Triune God or it is a divisive or destructive experience.
The Meaning of the Doctrine of the Trinity
We must realise how imperfect our language about God is. Our words descriptions and images will always fail for some, while helping others to come to a more inclusive understanding of God. Yet, in our images we must not lose the sense of the reality we seek to describe.
The Divine Love—who freely gives himself to others, creates community, and shared life. God creates and relates to the world in this way because this is the way God eternally is.
1) To confess God as Triune is to affirm that the eternal life of God is life in relationship. The Bible speaks of the ‘living God’ (Matt 16:16).
God is not like the dead idols that can neither speak nor act. God speaks and acts creatively, redemptively. Not impersonal but personal—He enters into a living relationship with His creatures.
In Trinitarian faith, we believe that this was how it was from the very beginning—God lives and loves as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Right from the very beginning, there is love, personal relationship, and the creation of community.
God is one but the unity of this one God is a ‘koinonia of persons in love’. We understand the persons of the Trinity in relationship to eachother and in relationship to us. The mutual giving and receiving of love, uniting each with the other—so they are both differentiated and yet inseparable—filled as nothing else can be with one another.
Made in God’s image, we too are called into relationship with God—with other human beings and with all creation.
2) To affirm Trinity is to affirm God exists in community.
The God of the Bible establishes and maintains community. God is no supreme Monad existing in eternal isolation. The God of the Bible shares eternal life, which is essentially communal.
The distinctive relationship of Trinity is their relationship to each other. Trinitarian love, hospitality, friendship, caring, a community of free and equal persons—a dance of harmony.
That God of a Trinity means the concern for a new community—sharing the resources of the Earth and in which relationships of domination are replaced with relationships of honour and respect among equals.
Leonardo Boff—“The Trinity understood in human terms as a communion of persons lays the foundation for a society of brothers and sisters of equals in which dialogue and consensus are the basic constituents of living together in both the world and the Church.”
A community among people’s of diverse cultures, races and gender—‘being in love’, the source of genuine community.
3) To confess God as Triune is to affirm that the life of God is essentially self-giving love.
God loves in freedom, eternal, steadfast, omnipotent. God loves in the world—in suffering and in death—human and vulnerable.
God releases His love to strengthen and live in us in the Holy Spirit. The boundless love of God is revealed in the Cross. The eternal source of life and energy. The source of friendship and sacrificial love.
God is the power of compassionate forgiving love, which is stronger than sin or death. This compassion means to suffer with and for another. In Jesus Christ God goes the way of suffering, alienation, and death for the sin of the world.
Trinity—is the source of community filling us with new life.
Each person of the Trinity is a life poured out for us.
Trinity=Self Giving Love and thus is part of all aspects of the Biblical record. God’s way of life in solidarity and hope for the whole of creation.
God loves in freedom—there is no love without vulnerability—the possibility of pain and rejection.
Romans 8:18—39
-The interdependence of all of life. Trinity is not just looking back at the past but looking forward to the glorious completion of divine love.
When we and all creation will be taken into that Trinity of love and God is all in all.
—————————-end of notes——————————
P.S. Yes, I have just changed my avatar image. Goodbye Terry-Thomas, hello Anglican Communion compass rose. Two excellent films come to mind: La Grande Vadrouille, the most popular French made film of all time for many years, and The Cruel Sea, a film I was brought up on, thanks to a new video recorder and war film loving brothers. Terry-Thomas and HMS Compass Rose, you see.
All Along the Watchtower 
Struans, I look forward to hearing about your pilgrimage. It is helpful to see all the questions this course brings up for discussion: I think it should provide the authors of the posts here, find many topics that we have yet discussed.
I would state something here that had baffled me in the past and is still an object of some concern and then finish with a question for you. Catholics deal with it in the context of what is termed theologically as vincible and invincible ignorance. I was reminded of it with the talk of community here in your notes.
The point which is a stickler for many is that we are not all of the same community or even of communities that have the same equality of status, wealth, opportunity or intelligence. The world is a wide place where God is hard, if not impossible, to find. They neither hear the gospel or think theology as they are only thinking of their day to day survival. I think about the Indian children sold into slavery, or the crack babies that are born into the ghettos, the tribal peoples in Africa, the Muslim children raised by fanatics and the list could go on almost indefinitely.
From that standpoint, I often find it hard to speak in terms of dogmatic theology or moral theology, that may or may not relate to or include them. For these peoples our theology, at whatever level, is an extravagance that is meant only for those of means or those who live with personal choices in their life. There are, of course, marvelous stories of a few who have escaped such lives and have achieved what seems impossible to us given their station and situation in life. And it is a wonderful expression of how God can be found in the most improbable places in this world. But these are rare occurrences and I am sure than none of us expects God to judge those who did not find a way out of these circumstances with the same yardstick he uses for the rest of us: the more you have been given the more that is expected, etc.
But it does beg the question of how theology provides answers about the ‘community of believers’ and whether ‘self giving love’ is even witnessed (or any kind of love at all for that matter) during some peoples lives. They seem to operate outside the boundaries that we normally envision. It was those very people that Mother Teresa picked up off the streets of Calcutta and picked the maggots off their bodies.
It leaves me to believe the visions of St. Faustina and the message of Divine Mercy that might be offered at the moment of death and that our Lord might find something among the refuse of these broken lives in order to redeem them. Even if one does not accept the saints message, one who is Catholic might still turn to the doctrine of vincible and invincible ignorance noted above as a viable answer. For I cannot think that God does not give every soul a means to attain to everlasting life otherwise Calvin’s predestination would reign which I cannot abide with; for makes of God a tyrant. What might be your answer to these seemingly lost communities of people who have only one morality: do whatever is necessary to keep myself alive for another day?
LikeLike
Some most excellent points. As so often, when one communicates through the written word with those that one is not physically known to, it is difficult for the whole person to be understood or appreciated.
I agree in the main with all that you write. Your question too is excellent, and one to be asked of all humans one hopes, each and every day in our lives.
Your question is one where a long and detailed answer might be possible to cover all of the nuances, and to embody the passion I have to relieve suffering. Indeed, I could write about what I currently personally do in this regard – be rest assured, I am a sinner, but I do try to help, and am somewhat involved with many organisations.
Let me try to answer more briefly though. I hope this will address the matter, if only imperfectly.
As my previous essay noted, which I posted on this blog, theology is something people do all the time – implicit theology. Even those who call themselves atheists and who are not nihilists will have god(s) about which they will theologise. Theology therefore isn’t necessarily some high-voluted discussion by the great and the good drawing on quotations from Church Fathers, philosophy and the great tomes of the world to prove their points. Rather, for most, people, it’s about where is God in my life? What does God call me to do? For the five year old girl sorting the trash on the rubbish dump outside Mumbai, someone who is notionally Hindu, but who may, little known to her, be but a few years away from brutal systematic rape to turn her into a submissive pliant whore whose soul is dead. Where is her hope? Where is Christ for her? The Scriptures make several mentions of women, prostitutes and the poor, after all.
Let me tell a story. A few years ago in London I was walking from Southwark Cathedral to St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London. After a quick pint in a south bank pub, I nipped across the new pedestrian bridge from the Tate Modern to St. Paul’s. Near to the north side of the bridge, little did I know it beforehand, is the world headquarters of the Salvation Army. Curious, I nipped inside – knowing nothing beforehand of their organisation. My inclination to carp was silenced: they understand the call to deliver Christ and hope to the very poorest and disadvantaged communities. I have links to Quakers too, whom I admire. That is not to say that I am who I am, Anglican and politically on the centre-right (in a British way).
So the answer for those in Calcutta that you mention is that all Christians have a call to take Christ to all, not by forcing doctrinal drivel down peoples throats, the way some fundamentalists talk. Communication is, so I read, over 70% body language anyway. That is to say, communication is very Christ like – embodied. Let us therefore do all that we can, through our human structures such as politics, as well as our church structures to bring the true message of Christ to the people, even though riddled with compromises and imperfections it may be.
Can those in Calcutta gain eternal life? Will, at the final judgement, the Lord have mercy? I have much to say about these more doctrinal descriptions of the more practical considerations I have just written of, but will not do so here. After all, what is eternal life? Let me just suggest that I am one much taken with a type of universalism and with a mystical platonic outlook – like Rowan Williams, I admire much of Orthodoxy, albeit that I remain Anglican (and I admire much of Roman Catholicism, just as we see that Rome can like Anglicanism too – witness the recent Vatican prize awarded to the Anglican scholar Richard Burridge).
Let us all heed our call to be a source of the blessings that a true part of the Living Christ will embody. The ignorant will hear Christianity, if not through the communication of doctrines, but more importantly by the communication of love. That is what I want to say. That 70% quoted is accompanied figures of 25% and 5%. 25% of effective communication is by how something is communicated, and 5% is the content of the communication. Effective communication is not effective if it is not received.
Let us therefore commit ourselves to communicating Christ first through embodying to the fullest extent we can. Those of us who like to can also get on with the detail of the content.
If someone’s only daily thought is: how do I survive this day? Then we ought not only to ask ourselves how and why he is in that situation, and how and what we can do to help, but also we ought to remember that he will be asking himself those questions. Where is the fairness in his life of unbelievable struggle. Let Christ come close to him.
Incidentally, the talk of Calcutta and Mumbai is quite apposite: my pilgrimage is to the church in India. More on that later on. And it has been a long answer after all! Well, not quite an essay 🙂
S.
LikeLike
I appreciated your answer, Struans and agree in large part. Suffice it to say, it is my belief that God who is infinite love and mercy as well as infinite justice and the just judge will in some mystery unknown to us, find the most just and merciful way to deal with those in such conditions.
It is not always practical or possible to go into a non-Christian country and relieve the suffering of people as you have described though. There are those who will not allow even aid to be given to these forgotten people and there are tribes that are almost inaccessible to us even with our modern age of transportation. Mental and physical illness also at times renders a few people incapable of being reached through love. So there will always be a an element that lies outside the ability to receive help from people who would like to do so. So the object of the question wasn’t so much how we should care for these people as I think it is a given that we Christians (and a number of other religions as well) are compassionate and would like to help – it is only that circumstances or physical and mental illness may sometimes prevent us from doing what we would do if unencumbered.
And no doubt you are right that before one talks of God to these people they must be fed, clothed, housed, cured, educated and given a way to make their way in this world. Sometimes, such love and compassion is the only time in the person’s life that they have experienced this from another human being. I remember a young lady I taught in RCIA that told me the reason she wanted to be Catholic was because my wife had given her a hug, rather than a lecture, after she bared her soul to my wife in her office. It seems she had not gotten any of that in her life and she is in a first world country. And I do wonder if some of these people ever get an opportunity to ask themselves the questions we all ask: is their justice, is there a purpose for me, is there a God etc. I would pray that they have such moments but I am not so sure what is going on their minds, hearts and souls for they are busy 24 hours a day with surviving or dealing with the delusions, emotions, or depressions associated with their physical or mental illness.
But I do think we are thinking much along the same lines and as you say we could probably write a long essay on such or speak to one another for a long time on these matters. I just was curious where you stood on such topics. Thanks for the insight. 🙂
LikeLike
Thank you, friend.
S.
LikeLike
Pingback: Churches, Scripture and Tradition (2) | All Along the Watchtower
Pingback: Talking about God (2) | All Along the Watchtower
Pingback: The Word made flesh? | All Along the Watchtower