Genesis 1: 1 –
2: 4; Psalm 8; II Corinthians 13: 11-13 ; Matthew 28: 16–20
This is a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker that was given at St.
John’s in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, June 11, 2017.
“UNDERSTANDING THE HOLY TRINITY, SORT OF”
(Homily texts: II
Corinthians 13: 11–13 & Matthew 28: 16–20)
We’ve just sung the familiar hymn
“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty….God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.”
This hymn is a perfect way to begin our
worship on this Trinity Sunday. We’ve spent the entire Church Year, to date,
preparing for the Lord’s arrival in Bethlehem during the season of Advent, and
then we celebrated His coming as a babe born in a stall. We considered the
implications of what it means to have the light of God, shining among us, as we
proceeded through the Epiphany season. Then, we prepared for the second major
feast of the Church Year, Easter, by setting out on our Lenten journey. The
Easter season has just concluded, last week, with the great feast of Pentecost.
Now, we pause for one Sunday, Trinity
Sunday, to spend some time considering something of the nature of the God who created
everything that is and who loves us; the God who came down from heaven to show
us the Father in the person and work of Jesus Christ, His Son; and the God who
encourages and enlightens us in the work of the Holy Spirit.
Just exactly what might we say about
the nature of God, the God who is One God in three Persons? For starters, we
might admit that our normal, human abilities to understand and grasp the
mystery of God’s nature is something that – this side of heaven – will elude
our grasp to some extent. To be sure, we can be confident in the fact that
there are some things we can believe and trust about our knowledge of God. Of
course, the opposite is also true, for some aspects of God lie beyond this present
age’s perspectives and outlook.
If we are to try to understand the Holy
Trinity, “sort of” (as the title of this homily states), then what might we say
about the Triune God?
Let’s begin our journey with the Lord
Jesus Christ, for it is the coming of Jesus Christ which forms the lens through
which we see the Father’s nature and also the nature of the Holy Spirit. As the
Lord’s disciples pondered the things He had said, they began to understand that
the Son was one with the Father (see John 10:30). Furthermore, they understood
– in time – that the Holy Spirit was also an integral part of the Godhead. One
of Jesus’ statements undergirds this view:
The passage from Matthew’s gospel account which is known as the Great
Commission, points to the reality of the unity of the God, the Son and the Holy
Spirit. Notice that the three persons of the Godhead are joined together by the
word “and”, denoting an equality and a unity of the three.
St. Paul closes his second letter to
the early Church in Corinth with a passage which also points to the three
persons (albeit in a less clearly seen way), as he writes, “The grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be
with you all.” (II Corinthians 13: 13).
It is fair to say that this process of
understanding took quite awhile, centuries, in fact. Along the way, some
significant contributions aided the Church’s understanding of God’s nature.
One such person was Theophilis of
Antioch, who, in about the year 180 AD, coined the term “Trinity”, which is a
word made up of the prefix “tri”, meaning three, and “unity”, meaning one.
The third century theologian Tertullian
claims the distinction of adding the words “Being” and “Person” to the
discussion.
In the face of challenges to proper
belief, the Church crafted the Creeds: The Apostles’ Creed (most likely) dates
from the second century, while the Nicene Creed dates from the fourth. Worthy
of our notice and study is the Athanasian Creed, which may be found in the back
of the 1979 edition of the Book of Common Prayer at page 864. This creed is
dated, most likely, at a somewhat later, undetermined, date.
The two most often used creeds are
Trinitarian in structure, for both the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed are
organized around each one of the three Persons of the Trinity.
As the Church made its way toward a
fuller understanding of the Trinity, vigorous debates took place about the
exact relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Some in the
Church said that the Father was “unbegotten”, a word meaning – in this sense –
“not flowing from”. The Son, however, is regarded as having been “begotten”, a
word the Nicene Creed uses to describe the sense that the Son, though His is
co-eternal with the Father, came forth from the Father. Likewise, the Holy
Spirit is seen, in the eastern Church, as having proceeded from the Father,
while the western Church maintains that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the
Father and the Son, a position that the Nicene Creed underscores.
Confused yet?
Our human limitations encourage us to
concentrate on one person of the Trinity at a time. Perhaps this is because we
are limited in our ability to grasp the mystery of who God is. So, we tend to
look at one Person of the Trinity at a time, failing to remember that, whenever
we encounter one Person of the Trinity, the other two are also present, all the
time.
This approach to the Trinity is called
“modalism”, coming from the idea that we experience God in one “mode” or
another. An example of modes may be seen in a person’s description of
themselves as being a parent, a grandparent, and a child of their own parents,
all at the same time. Being a parent is one “mode” of being, while being a
grandparent is another “mode”, and so forth. This approach might help us a bit
in our quest to grasp more fully the mystery of God’s nature, but it is a tool
which is of limited use. Its usefulness will fail us somewhere along the way as
we come to understand God better.
We are encouraged to realize God’s
unity, a unity that is so perfect that one Person of the Trinity penetrates the
other two to such an extent that their unity is complete and perfect.[1]
One final note is in order: In current discussion, much has been said
about the traditional nouns for God, that is, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One
point to make is that such names have biblical warrant. An alternative to the
use of male nouns has been suggested….some would prefer to refer to the three
Persons as Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. This approach, too, may offer some
assistance to us, but, like modalism, its usefulness is limited, for these
three words describe things that God does, not who God is.
The Collect which is appointed for this
day realizes the present state of our knowledge of God, and the expectant hope
of knowing God in all His fullness someday, the “already” and the “not yet” of
our understanding of God.
May the words of the Collect undergird
our efforts at understanding God better, and may they bolster our patience in
our quest for deeper understanding:
“Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory; O Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
May the God who is known to us as
Father, Son and Holy Spirit enable and enlighten us to understand more fully
and more deeply the mystery of God.
AMEN.
