Today is Trinity Sunday,
the day set aside to specifically honor the doctrine and worship the
mystery that is the Holy Trinity – three in one, one in three,
separate but not divisible, unified but individual. And because of
the difficulty in trying to explain this concept without falling into
some kind of heresy, it's also the day most likely given over to
guest preachers.
Unfortunately, everyone I
asked to preach was mysteriously unavailable today.
All kidding aside, it can
be tough to preach on the Trinity. Mainly because when we look into
the Trinity, we are looking into the deep mystery of the eternal
Godhead. And when we start talking about and exploring those deep
mysteries, we need to be prepared to face our own inadequacies,
insufficiencies, and desires for control and certainty.
There are two basic ways
to talk about God – in the negative and in the positive, otherwise
known as what God isn't and what God is (officially known as
apophatic and cataphatic theology). Negative theology states that we
can't know what God is because God is just too immense to know. For
instance: God is not a creature, because God is not any thing
since God transcends all things; God is not ignorant (not that God is
wise because that assumes we know what all wisdom is); God is not
evil (not that God is good because that assumes we know what all
goodness is); and God is not confined to our concepts of space and
time.
Positive theology attempts
to know God through God's defining nature. For instance: God is
loving; God is creator; God is omnipotent; God is a seeker; God is
forgiving; God is one.
It's that last one, God is
one, that sort of set us on the path to Trinitarianism.
In the beginning, a wind
from God (or, “the Spirit of God”) swept over the face of the
earth. And God said, “Let there be light.”
In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Jesus said, “Before
Abraham was, I am.”
The Spirit of truth will
take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is
mine.
In these and other places
in Scripture, Christian scholars have found what they believe to be
the doctrine of the Trinity – that deep mystery stating One in
Three and Three in One, undivided yet individual. That doctrine was
fought over for many years, in particular by the Arian heresy that
stated there was a time when Jesus was not, thereby denying the
Trinity. In response to this controversy, the Council of Nicaea was
called in 325 and Trinitarian orthodoxy sort of won the day, giving
us the Nicene Creed. The controversy continued up until 381 when the
Council of Constantinople reaffirmed the Nicene Creed and, for all
practical purposes, eliminated Arianism.
However, there are
religious groups, the Jehovah's Witnesses being one, who deny the
Trinity because that image, and that word, doesn't specifically
appear in Scripture. But if we were to rely solely on scripture
quotations alone, we would eliminate the third leg of our Anglican
stool – Reason (the other two being Scripture and Tradition),
thereby surrendering our God-given ability to think. But Scripture
must be interpreted through our reason, and we must be willing to
accept the mystery of God. Consequently the doctrine of the Trinity
was formed over time, through reading, study, prayer, and
interpretation, as well as being willing to say that God is more
mysterious than we can imagine. Eventually, thanks to people like
Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil of Cappadocia, the
Church settled on the orthodoxy of the Trinity.
But because the Trinity is
a mystery, the more we talk about it, the more we try to pin it down,
the more likely we are to wander off into one heresy or another. And
that's what was going on in the early days of the Church.
On the one hand we need to
give thanks to God for the rise of the heretics because they got the
rest of Christianity to actually think critically about this whole
God-Jesus-Spirit thing which helped to define orthodoxy. On the
other hand though, in attempting to totally define God in their
terms, they did some really strange things. So I want to take a few
minutes and have us look at some common Trinitarian heresies. As you
have already noticed, these can be found in your bulletins.
Modalism: The three
persons of the Trinity are different “modes” or aspects of the
Godhead, acting in those different modes at different times in
history, but never unified as one. A common modalist example is that
of a woman acting as wife, mother, daughter.
Tritheism: The Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit are three independent and separate Gods.
Arianism: Often called
the greatest heresy. Developed by a priest named Arius, it
essentially states that there was a time when the Son was not. This
meant that the Son was a created being, and not divine.
Docetism: Taught that
Jesus was a purely divine being who only appeared to be human. Some
versions claimed that Jesus' divinity departed from him on the cross,
others claimed he only appeared to suffer and die.
Ebionitism: Basically the
opposite of Docetism – Jesus was sent by God, but was only and
always a man.
Macedonianism: A sect
founded by Macedonius, an Arian priest, that followed the logic of
the Son being created in that the Holy Spirit was also a created
being, and therefore not part of the Godhead.
Adoptionism: Taught that
Jesus was born a human and then adopted (usually at his baptism) by
God and infused with divinity at that time.
Partialism: Similar to
Modalism (three components of one God), but that each person of the
Trinity is only one-third of God.
Orthodoxy: Check out the
Athanasian Creed on page 864-5 of the BCP.
So there you have it. The
Trinity is a core doctrine of our faith. For anyone to claim to be
an orthodox Christian, they must hold to that doctrine, with the
creeds being a good place to start. Anything more and we begin to
limit God, forcing God into a box of our own making, losing the
mystery, and actually turning God into an idol. Anything less and we
begin to deny the holiness of God, the divinity of Christ, and the
revealed glory of the Trinity, essentially rendering God impotent.
This is one reason why the
Episcopal church is a creedal church and not a confessional church –
because the creeds are a sufficient standard of orthodoxy, allowing
for an unlimited and mysterious God, while avoiding a confessional
statement that reduces God and faith to nothing more than a series of
intellectual propositions.
Today is Trinity Sunday.
May you see God in all things and know that all things are in God.
More importantly, may you abide in the mystery that is the Trinity.
Amen.
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