Isaiah
6: 1-8; Psalm
29; Romans
8: 12-17; John 3: 1-17
A
homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given
at St. John’s Church, in Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania, on Sunday, May 31, 2015.
“OF
THE HOLY TRINITY”
Back when I was in seminary, and the
topic of the Trinity would come up in theology class, the professor would say,
“Now when Trinity Sunday rolls around, it’d be a good idea for you to appoint
your assistant to preach that Sunday.”
Of course, the reason for this is simply because the nature of God as
Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a very difficult matter to try to talk about,
and it is a very difficult matter to try to understand.
Well, since we have no assisting
priest here at St. John’s, the task of trying to unpack a little bit of the
subject of the Holy Trinity falls to me, for better or for worse.
Given those realities, let’s explore
the subject of God’s nature as we understand it to be One God in three Persons,
that is to say, the Triune God who is referred to as Father, Son and Holy
Spirit.
We might begin by looking at the word “Trinity”
itself. If we go to a concordance of the words in the Bible and look for the word “Trinity”, we will
soon discover that the word never appears in Scripture. In fact, the word was coined by one
Theophilis of Antioch sometime late in the second century (most scholars say
the word came into being about the year 170 AD). Of course, the word is a combination of two
Latin words, trinitas = three and unitas = one.
While we are on this part of the
subject, it would be good for us to recall the origins of the saying that God
is “One God in three Persons”. The
application of the word “Persons” to the three members of the Godhead is
ascribed to a third century theologian, Tertullian.
Even if the word “Trinity” does not
appear in Holy Scripture, we will find references to God’s nature as Father, Son
and Holy Spirit in the Bible. The
clearest reference can be found at the very end of Matthew’s gospel account, as
Jesus tells His disciples to go out into the world, “Baptizing them in the name
of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28: 19b)
St. Paul also makes reference (in an
oblique way) to God’s three-fold nature, as he closes his second letter to the
Corinthian church, saying, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of
God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”[1] (II Corinthians 13: 14)
In all honesty, at the early stages
of Christian believing, during the time that the Scriptures were being written,
a full understanding of God’s nature as it came to be known in the doctrine of
the Trinity did not exist. Understanding
just how the Father relates to the Son, how the Son relates to the Father, how
the Holy Spirit relates to the Father and to the Son, and so forth, took a lot
of reflection and a lot of guidance of the fullness of God, especially through
the leading of the Holy Spirit. After
all, Jesus had said that the Holy Spirit would lead the Church into all truth
(John 16: 12). The Church’s process of
coming to a fuller understanding of the nature of the Trinity took the better
part of four or five centuries to come into being. Along the way, there were
many challenges to a correct understanding of God’s nature to be overcome.[2]
The beginning point for the Church’s
reflection on God’s nature begins with the coming of Jesus Christ. As the Church recalls what Jesus Christ said
and did, they begin to understand more and more of His relationship to the
Father. They also begin to understand
more and more about the nature of the Holy Spirit, and how the Holy Spirit
relates to the Father and to the Son.
We might do well to recall some of
the things Jesus Christ said and did as our beginning point for reflecting on
God’s nature.
Jesus Christ claims oneness with the
Father. In John 10: 30, we read His
statement as He said, “I and the Father are one.”
But He also claims co-eternal status
with the Father, saying, “Before Abraham was, I am.”[3]
(John 8: 58)
Of the nature of the Holy Spirit,
Jesus Christ says that he will be sent by the Father (see John 14: 26).
We would do well to notice that much
of what we have remarked on in terms of scriptural references to the
relationship of the Son and the Holy Spirit to the Father finds its way into
the Creeds of the Church. Both the
Apostles’ Creed (which dates from the second century) and the Nicene Creed
(which dates from the fourth century) are Trinitarian in nature, affirming
God’s nature as being Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Both are arranged in three fold fashion,
devoting a paragraph to each of the three persons of the Trinity.
A closer look at the Nicene Creed
will reveal that the Church affirms that Jesus Christ is one with the Father,
and is co-eternal with the Father. The
Creed says that the Son is “eternally begotten[4] of
the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.”
Now notice that the Creed affirms
that the Holy Spirit comes forth from the Father and from the Son. The statement is “We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the given of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” This is an obvious reference to the statement[5] we
referenced a moment ago in John’s gospel account in which Jesus Christ tells
His disciples that He will ask the Father to send the Son to His disciples.
In truth, we ought to acknowledge
that our human language cannot completely capture the full truth of God’s
nature. Our finite words struggle to
capture at least a part of that truth.
As much as God’s nature cannot be
fully known this side of heaven, yet there remains a truth about God’s nature that
we can know with assurance in the meantime.
What can we affirm about God’s
nature, which is three-fold?
We can affirm that God is One God,
echoing the great Sh’ma of the Jewish
faith, which affirms “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” (Coming from Deuteronomy 6: 4)
We can affirm that, as God is One
God, God is also known in three Persons:
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The
three Persons of the Holy Trinity are so closely one, so closely
interconnected, that, though there is some distinction in the three Persons,
yet they are so interconnected with one another that they cannot be separated.[6]
Holding the concept of God as being
One God in tension with the idea that God is to be known in three Persons can
be difficult. I suspect that most of us
might tend to concentrate on one Person of the Trinity at a time, forgetting
that, as we do so, we might tend to forget that the other two Persons are also and
always present.
This approach to God is known as
modalism. The word derives from the idea
that God acts in three different modes, much as a human being might be a parent
to someone, a grandparent to others, and an aunt or uncle to still others. In this way, a person can be one person, but
acts in three different ways, or modes.
This view of God’s nature might be helpful to some extent, but it misses
the fullness of God’s true nature.
So, as we close this reflection on
the Trinity, perhaps the take-away for us might be that we would be more
mindful of the totality of God’s working and presence as we experience or
concentrate on one Person of the Trinity, recalling that the other two Persons
of the Trinity are always present whenever we experience the working of one of
the three.
AMEN.
[1] This verse is known as the Grace, and it
closes the Daily Offices of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer.
[2] Many of these challenges took the form of
wrestling with the nature of Jesus Christ as being true God and true man. As a consequence of the struggle to
understand the nature of the Son, the implications of being able to understand
the nature of God as Father in relationship to the Son came to light.
[3] John’s gospel account is peppered with many
“I am” statements, of which this is one.
The statement “I am” is reminiscent of God’s appearance to Moses at the
burning bush, where God identifies Himself by the words “I am”. This claim of divinity is not lost on Jesus’
Jewish hearers, who correctly understand that He was claiming divine status.
[4] In this context the word “begotten” has the
sense of “coming forth from”, not in the sense we often read it in the Old
Testament, where the word refers to being born of one’s parents. Notice that the Creed affirms that the Son is
begotten, “not made”.
[5] John 14: 26.
But also see John 14: 16, which reads in part, “I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of
truth….”.
[6] The technical theological term for this
interconnectedness is perichoresis, a
Greek word meaning “going around” or “envelopement”.
