Trinity

The doctrine of the Trinity is a tricky subject and has always been controversial. It isn't stated clearly (or even obscurely) in the Bible. About the closest that we come to it are the two New Testament readings that we have just heard. It seems very likely that the concept of one God in three persons was not put forward in any explicit way until three or four centuries after Jesus' death.

The two creeds commonly used in western Christian churches, including the Methodist church, talk of belief in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but do not explicitly state that they are all persons within one God. Indeed the Apostles' Creed appears to set the Holy Spirit on a level with a long list of elements of Christianity, rather than equal with God the Father and Jesus the Son, all put into the last sentence of the creed.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting.

The Nicene Creed attempts to make the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit more clear:

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.

And

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son,

who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,

who has spoken through the prophets.

This doesn’t quite express the idea of three persons, one God, but you can see how it might lead on to such an idea.

But even this creed is controversial. It isn’t the version that was agreed at the 1^st Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. It includes the so-called "filioque" clause, which was added in 589, and which contributed to the split between the Eastern and Western branches of the church. The original version stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, and not "from the Father and the Son". (Filioque is the Latin for "and the Son".)

The Athanasian creed, which was most likely written in the 5^th or 6^th Century AD, does make explicit the idea of the Trinity. It is based on the writings of St Augustine of Hippo, who set out his ideas on the trinity in a book published in 415 AD. This statement of Christian belief is little-used today, probably because of its uncompromising stance regarding the fate of anyone who fails for subscribe fully to the doctrines that it sets out.

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 Essence.

For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal.

Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost.

The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated.

The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited.

The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal.

As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite.

So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty.

So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord.

For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity; to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord; So are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion; to say, There are three Gods, or three Lords.

The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding.

So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal.

So that in all things, as aforesaid; the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity.

The Church of England firmly gives its backing to the view set out in the Athanasian Creed in its 39 articles of religion approved by her majesty Queen Elizabeth in 1571. Article 8 states that all 3 creeds "ought thoroughly to be received and believed". Interestingly, in 1801 the Anglican Church in America adopted a slightly different version of the articles, which only includes the Nicene and Apostles' creeds.

John Wesley abridged the 39 articles for the American Methodists, producing a list of 25, which does not include any reference to creeds, but does uphold the doctrine of the Trinity.

Article I—Of Faith in the Holy Trinity

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and good; the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

During the Protestant Reformation there was a move to discard doctrines that were seen as later accretions which had been added to the "pure" Gospel set out in the Bible. The concept of the Trinity came under scrutiny and some people rejected it. Unitarianism was first described under that name in Transylvania in 1600, and was first recognised in England in 1673. It became increasingly popular and was particularly strong here in the North West, with Joseph Priestly being a prominent member of the movement. There was even a Methodist Unitarian movement led by Rev Joseph Cooke, who founded a Unitarian chapel in Rochdale, after being expelled from the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1806 for beliefs incompatible with Methodist doctrine.

Unitarian worship was made legal in England in 1813 by the Doctrine of the Trinity Act. Prior to that, only Christian Worship that acknowledged the Trinity was tolerated by law.

So the Trinity has been a "hot potato" for hundreds of years, and has been exercising the minds of theologians and politicians across the world and across the centuries. But what relevance does it have for us today?

Well, firstly, let's remember that the nature of God and in particular the relationship between God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit is something that has been exercising the minds of great theologians for at least 17 hundred years - and they still don’t have a clear picture that everyone can agree on! So, whatever else the doctrine of the Trinity tells us about God, it tells us that it isn’t going to be easy to understand everything about Him.

But how could we expect to be able to understand fully the creator of the universe? It would be a poor sort of God who could be completely comprehended by our puny minds!

So we should expect to entertain a certain degree of uncertainty over how we view God. Some things we can be sure of: his love towards his creation and in particular towards us; his power to create and recreate us; his constant presence with us. But a comprehensive description is bound to be beyond us.

A Victorian schoolmaster by the name of Edwin Abbott wrote a story about a two dimensional world called Flatland. The inhabitants were polygons who were constrained to move only in the two dimensions of a plane. A sphere appeared to them, not as a three-dimensional solid object, but as a circle, which changed in size as it moved through their world in a direction perpendicular to everything that they knew.

When we try to describe God, we are like the Flatlanders trying to understand the third dimension, which is so clear and simple to the sphere, but so incomprehensible to them. A three-dimensional being can view the whole of Flatland, by looking down from above. It can be visible to the Flatlanders only at the points where it meets their two-dimensional world. And their perception of it is necessarily distorted in order to fit into two dimensions, which is all that their minds can imagine.

We can’t imagine how a single being could be composed of three persons. The words that we use to describe it only make it more difficult to imagine. "We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence."

What does that mean? Why might I be tempted to "confound the Persons"? How might I go about "dividing the Essence"? Often words can give us a false sense that we understand something, when all we have done is to invent a clever code to hide our confusion.

And because we can't properly understand, we each have to find our own way of coming to terms with a picture of God that will work for us. For the majority of Christians since the 4^th or 5^th Century, the idea that God is so much greater than us that he can actually be three persons at the same time has been an important feature of their faith; for some it has been more important to emphasise that unity of God - and His uniqueness. And those who opt for the Trinitarian view have many different ways of describing it. St Patrick talked of God as being like a shamrock, with 3 leaflets forming a single leaf. Easter Orthodox icons frequently portray the Trinity as three men seated together around a table - a sort of divine committee! For what it's worth, I have my own pictorial way of thinking about the Persons of the Trinity.

We all have various different roles in life. To different people we may be parents, sons or daughters, employees, bosses, church members, friends, …

I'm not a different person when I'm at work, from when I'm in the pulpit, but I am performing a different function. And my work colleagues will see different aspects of me from what my family see when I'm at home. If you were to ask all the people who know me to describe what I'm like, they would probably come up with rather different answers depending on the context in which they knew me.

You might expect that the different answers would be compatible, but sometimes they might not be - because we often try to extrapolate from what we actually know to cover things that we don't have any evidence for. For example, my family might imagine that they know exactly how I would behave at work - but they might be wrong!

Going back to the Flatland analogy, two flatlanders might get totally different ideas of what a 3-D shape is like if they each saw a different 2-D section through it. For example, if you cut a cone in different ways, the 2-D section can be a circle, an ellipse, a parabola or a hyperbola. Imagine the arguments that might ensue: what we have here is clearly a circle - I measured it and the radius was constant! Rubbish! It isn't even a closed curve - I could see clearly a parabola extending infinitely in both directions!

So one way to think about the mystery of God the Three in One is to think of him as having three different roles: the Father, who creates and sustains the world, including ourselves; the Son, who shares our humanity and shows us how to live; and the Holy Spirit, who gives us the power to change our sinful natures and to become truly God's children. If it helps you to think of God in that way, then by all means take it on board. If not - feel free to cast it aside and look for your own way of interpreting the concept of the Trinity.

We will all see God a bit differently, depending on how he has chosen to reveal himself to us. For some, God the Father is sufficient and Jesus can be his son without being a Person of the Trinity. For others, it is absolutely crucial that Jesus can be identified with God. For some, personal experience of the Holy Spirit is more important than anything else. For others, the Holy Spirit remains a rather vague and nebulous concept.

Does that matter? I would say emphatically - no! We all need to have some sort of picture in our mind of what God is like, but let's not kid ourselves that it is any more than a picture - a two-dimensional diagram of a three-dimensional reality. If I am looking at the floor plan of a house and you are viewing the front elevation, our pictures will be very different - but they are both aspects of the same building.

Perhaps it matters a lot to you to be sure that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son and not from the Father alone - while I am not even sure what "proceeds" means in this context. Perhaps, for you, the shamrock fully explains the mystery of the Trinity - if so, there is no need to look for something more complicated - or perhaps that particular image isn’t, for you, a helpful way of picturing the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It's not important which picture you choose as your way of imagining God. What IS important is that, whatever our own personal vision of God, we move beyond mere speculation about Him and allow Him to start changing us. Faith isn’t about developing the most accurate theory of what God is like; it's about each of us becoming more God-like in our behaviour.

In our Old Testament reading we heard about the importance of seeking wisdom. St James, in his letter to the early Christians, had this to say on the subject:

James 3: 13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.

May we all continue to seek true wisdom and to show it in our lives. AMEN.