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Trinity Sunday Sermon
11 June 2006
Bill Niskanen ©
Good morning. Today is Trinity Sunday, the sermon for which
many rectors assign to a seminarian. For the church has
never been very clear about the doctrine of the trinity, and a
seminarian would at least remember the orthodox version.
My brief remarks this morning summarize how this one lay Christian
has come to terms with the Nicene Creed. I must acknowledge
that I have repeated the Creed almost every Sunday for years but
with little more understanding or conviction than when I sang
the Creed twice last weekend -- in Church Slavonic As
a lay Christian, I do not have the education of a seminarian or the
disciplined reflections of an ordained minister. As a
consequence, I recognize that my understanding of the several
sources of Christian authority on this issue is only “as through a
glass darkly.”
As a former Baptist, I am first inclined to look to the authority of
the Scriptures.
As it turns out, the
Scriptures do not provide very clear guidance on the doctrine of the
trinity. The word trinity is not included in the New
Testament. The most explicit description of the trinity is a
passage in the First Epistle of John that “There are three that bear
witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these
three are one.”
The problem is that there is no record of this passage in the early Greek
manuscripts; this passage is almost surely an insertion by Jerome or
some later Latin scholar. And the doctrine of the trinity may
also reflect a misleading translation. Both the Greek and
Latin words that have been translated as persons, as in “One
God in Three Persons,” would be more accurately translated as
masks, as in “One God in Three Masks.”
Second, my reading of the several traditions of the early Christian
church leads me to conclude that the doctrine of the trinity was a
second and third century historical development, the byproduct of an
attempt to resolve major differences among these traditions on the
nature of Jesus. One group believed that Jesus was human but
not divine, another group believed that Jesus was divine but not
human, and a third group believed that Jesus was born and died a
human but was also divine from his baptism to his crucifixion.
The Roman church claimed that they had resolved these differences by
going beyond any of these positions, asserting that Jesus was
both divine and human, as he always was and always will be.
This then left the awkward problem of the nature of the Spirit, to
which there are numerous references in the Scriptures. So the
Roman church also escalated the Spirit to a co-equal and co-eternal
status with the Father and the Son. And, voila, the
doctrine of the trinity was born, later to be affirmed by two major
4th century church councils.
So where does this lead to the role of reason, the third source of
Christian authority, in understanding the doctrine of the trinity?
For the most part, this doctrine is beyond reason. The editor
of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
writes that the doctrine of the trinity “ … is a mystery in the
strict sense, in that it can neither be known by reason apart from
revelation, nor demonstrated by reason after it has been revealed …
”
All of which leaves this lay Christian very uneasy. I am not averse
to living with mystery; all sorts of conditions that I value are a
mystery to me. But it does lead me to question whether there
is some perspective on the trinity that is both better rooted in the
Scriptures and more coherent. I suggest that there is.
In the late 2nd century, two Latin theologians who
contributed to the developing orthodoxy about the nature of Jesus
described God as three in expression though one in essence. As
Hippolytus of Rome describes the trinity, “With respect to the
power, God is one; but with respect to how this power expresses
itself, the manifestation is triple.” Tertullian of Carthage,
the first Latin theologian to use the word trinity, describes
God as three in degree, not condition; in form, not substance, in
aspect, not power.
The most important later development of this perspective, I suggest, was
by a 3rd century Roman churchman named Sabellius, who
taught that God is one but is revealed to us through three distinct
masks or manifestations. Sabellius believed that as
Creator, God is Father; as Redeemer, God is Son, and as Sanctifier,
God is Spirit. These three are not separate entities but the
same entity that is revealed to us in three different
manifestations. Sabellius likened his doctrine to the
three-part division of human nature into body, soul, and spirit, all
of which constitute one person. In one way or another, the
substantial community of Sabellians all believed that Father, Son,
and Spirit be taken as names for different ways in which one God
is revealed to us. At this point, I must acknowledge that
Sabellius was later declared to be a heretic.
My own suggested modification of the Sabellian perspective is that
God is revealed to us in three ways: a transcendent manifestation,
an incarnate manifestation, and an intimate manifestation.
The transcendent manifestation is the order that God created
– the order of the physical universe that led Einstein to wonder how
any intelligent person could be an atheist, the evolutionary
order of the biological universe that too many of our fellow
Christians deny, and the order reflected by those social
institutions that make it possible to live peacefully and
productively with many people and joyfully and lovingly with some.
Several weeks ago at Christ Church, in one verse of a favorite hymn,
we sang in witness to this transcendent manifestation:
O wide-embracing wondrous love, we read thee in the sky above.
We read thee in the earth below, in seas that swell and streams that
flow.
The incarnate manifestation, of course, is the life and teachings of
an itinerant rabbi named Jesus, who revealed God to us in human form
in Galilee around 2,000 years ago. As Christians, this
manifestation is what most inspires us and most distinguishes our
religious beliefs from those of other religions. In the next
verse of that favorite hymn, we sang in witness to the incarnate
manifestation:
We read thee best in him who came to bear for us the cross of
shame.
Sent by the Father from on high, our life to live, our death to die.
The nature of the Holy Spirit has been a puzzle to many Christians.
The Latin word that has been variously translated as Spirit or
Ghost, however, means breath – a condition that is no less real
because it is neither visible nor touchable. Jesus used
similar words to describe the Spirit in his goodbye conversation
with his disciples, saying (from the Gospel of John) that “ … the
Father … will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever,
even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it
neither sees him nor knows him. You know him for he dwells
with you, and will be in you.” I suggest that it is only a
little stretch to describe this intimate manifestation of God to
each of us as that still small voice that comforts us when we are
grieving, counsels us when we are uncertain, chastens us for
something we have done, and reminds us of something we have left
undone. Last Sunday, in a lovely hymn about the Holy Spirit,
we sang
Like the murmur of the dove’s song, like the challenge of her
flight,
Like the vigor of the wind’s rush, like the new flame’s eager might:
Come, Holy Spirit, come.
On occasion, that
still small voice speaks to me so clearly that I am surprised
that others in my presence do not also hear it. Like, right
now, when it tells me that “Time’s up. Episcopalians
prefer short sermons.”
This morning, my fondest hope is that my brief remarks lead each of
you to think about what you mean when, together, we stand to
say that “We believe in One God.”
Amen.
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