what on earth is a trinity
[Music]
on sundays we started a series called
the forgotten god and we're looking at
the idea specifically of spirit
a commons we talk about being
intellectually honest and spiritually
passionate that's always our goal
but often it can feel like spirit is
secondary to intellect around here
that's largely due to my own baggage and
experience with charismatic christianity
but still
we do want to remind ourselves of a more
healthy balance from time to time
however
to talk about spirit i thought it was
important to talk about trinity as a
foundation for that conversation
and the interesting part about that is
just how fraught with theological terror
trinity can be
i mean there are just so many ways we
can get this one wrong
yet i really have no interest in talking
about the nature of god as a gatekeeping
exercise
now truth is all of our god talk is
provisional or at least it should be
we're talking about the nature of god
after all and we're using language
that's drawn from our experience of the
world granted god has offered us
language and metaphors
images and ways to think and talk about
the divine but to imagine that our
theology can ever contain god seems at
least a little naive and probably more
than that quite arrogant
that said trinity is really important to
my conception of god and i wanted to
talk a little bit about why
now the first two sermons of that series
are available here on the channel that
you can check them out if you're
interested but here are a few thoughts
about trinity
first of all doctrines of trinity should
at their best i think help us to be more
creative about the divine not to close
down our imagination of god
here's an example of how that works
theologically
we could say god is like water because
water is a liquid but if you freeze it
it can become a solid and if you boil it
it's a gas it's one molecule with three
different realities just like god
that's nice helpful even maybe except
it's also technically heresy
this is a form of what we call modalism
and that's the idea that god isn't
really three persons
but just that god appears or seems that
way
now you can use modalism as a doctrinal
club and call someone a heretic and get
angry at them if you want to i suppose
but what we're really trying to protect
by ruling something like modalism out of
bounds
isn't so much a description of god that
we can hang our hat on
it's actually about protecting the
mystery of divine love
see the christian conception of god
imagines a divine community of shared
love within the godhead from before
there was anything else
god is the singular source of all that
is
and god is an eternal dance of gift and
reception
so when we say that modalism has a
reticle we're not saying that we
understand god and you don't we're good
people and you're not
as much as we're saying that we have to
hold on to we want to protect this
mystery of divine love
to believe that god was loving that god
could be loving
before there was anything else to love
and not only that that is this divine
love shared and expressed in community
that sits at the foundation of
everything in the universe
to say that we believe in trinity is to
say that expressed love defines god
and this is why the specifics of trinity
are far less important to me than that
we hold this mystery tightly in our
imagination
and we have these beautiful images of
father son and spirit or creator
redeemer sustainer that's good and
sacred language gifted to us to speak of
the divine
but the point is not to get hung up on
father and start picturing god as a man
or to fixate on some specific hierarchy
within the godhead
the point is to always come back to the
expanse of imagination of god as loving
community from before there was
anything
and one of the most
important implications of this
comes from the 1960s with a catholic
theologian named carl rauner
he formulated what later became known as
rauner's rule and it went like this the
economic trinity is the imminent trinity
and the imminent trinity
is the economic trinity
now he's using some technical
theological language here so let's parse
it out quickly when he says the economic
trinity he's talking about god as god
works in history so god with a mission
or god with a purpose everything that
god does in the world to save humanity
any time we are talking about atonement
or creation or salvation we are talking
about the economic trinity
on the other hand the imminent trinity
sometimes you might come across this
named as the ontological trinity
is who god is within god's self
so whoever god was or whatever god was
doing before there was a universe
and what ronner says is that however we
conceptualize god in history however we
make sense of the cross for example
that has to be coherent with or
consistent with who god is within god's
self who god has always been as this
perfect community of gift and reception
and if you let that be the foundation
for how you make sense of the divine
that inevitably begins to shape how you
read your bible
how you experience a sense of god in
your life how you understand god woven
throughout the text of human history as
we have all of us tried to find our way
back to god
god is shared love
period
and this is why our theology is at its
best
not when it's trying to explain god to
us but when it is doing just enough to
help us learn to love like god in
community
and so this is also why in the second
part of the series when
we wanted to talk about listening to the
voice of spirit in our lives i wanted to
talk about listening for that gentle
welcoming invitation of the spirit
now everybody's experience is different
but early in my christian story i was
around the charismatic movement now i'm
not sure that was really ever my bag but
i was in that orbit for a time
and i certainly don't want to
characterize that all as bad it wasn't
and there are a lot of things that added
to my journey from that period in my
life things that i want to hold on to
but i did also see witness expressions
of toxic authority and manipulation that
were associated with sometimes even
attributed to spirit
there was a sense that spirit could be
used as a trump card for anything
but again here's where our conception of
god rooted in trinity becomes really
helpful
because if god is an eternal dance of
give and take if god has only ever known
perfect community
it seems to me likely at least that the
voice of spirit in our lives should
reflect that divine reality
the way to distinguish the voice of
spirit from all of the other voices that
vie for your attention is to train
yourself to listen for the most peaceful
the most gentle voice you can possibly
distinguish
the voice of spirit is the voice that
gently listens back to you
and i don't mean by that that god never
speaks clearly to us or that god never
tries to correct us
very clearly there are times we fall
short of love our actions do not promote
justice and healing in the world and god
continues to call us to repentance in
these areas that's part of what spirit
does in our lives
but what i mean by this
is that i'm not sure the christian
imagination of god makes room for a god
that speaks
outside of the context of loving
relationship
that's all god knows that's what god is
so god doesn't speak at you god speaks
to you god doesn't demand from you god
invites you to become
more
and sure
god is angry at sin but the nature of
god reminds me that god is angry at what
sin does to me and what sin does to
those around me god is not angry at me
god isn't love expressed in relationship
god is against therefore
anything that damages relationship
and this is why even though in my life
and my career and my ministry i tend to
focus on the way of jesus in the world
how we live toward each other by
following jesus
i think it's very helpful from time to
time to jump out of that into the exotic
world of discussing the nature of god
as long as that orients us back toward
each other in love and it doesn't leave
us debating theology endlessly
so god is an eternal dance of gift and
reception from before there was
anything we call this perikeresis
but god is also the singular source of
all that has been made the foundation of
universe and those two concepts together
in the mystery of how they coexist
this is what we call trinity
this is also what calls us back to
loving relationship with everyone we
encounter in god's world