Trinity Sunday

May 27, 2018

Susan Adams & John Salmon

Trinity Sunday

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Today is Trinity Sunday so the theme for the day is obvious: Trinity. Last year John had to deliver my sermon on Trinity for me so I’m having another go!

As we are going to continue our discussion of Mark’s gospel after church this morning I thought I would try to open up what the writer of the Gospel of Mark – who, although we don’t know who it was, we call Mark – says about this idea that we Anglicans love so much. This, 'one God in three forms' – notwithstanding that it is one of the church's significant heresies! So, back to Mark and what he says about he says about the concept of Trinity.

That will be difficult to identify, Susan, because Mark’s gospel – like the other Gospels – says nothing about Trinity, as the church speaks of it. In fact, the word Trinity does not appear anywhere in the Bible!

Yeah, yeah, I do know that John, but I think that perhaps we might find traces of ideas that could point toward Trinity in Mark’s Gospel – ideas about God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit or, as we are used to reframing it to avoid the sexist language: Creator, Redeemer, Life giver.

Yes, but those three in themselves do not make ‘Trinity’, in the way the Church formulated that idea. Trinity, as shaped by early Church Fathers, describes for us one God with three divine presentations to the world: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in a kind of hierarchy. It is difficult for us to get a handle on – and in fact the great Thomas Aquinas said the concept of Trinity was incomprehensible to the human mind and simply had to be accepted on faith!

So where Mark uses God he is invoking a divine being, ruler of all, not a composite being. And his use of 'Son of God' (which he uses a lot) simply indicates Jesus has a special relationship with God – but is not himself divine – is this right?

Yes. For Mark, Jesus is not a divine figure. He underlines this by his use of ‘Son of Man’, a term from the Book of Daniel, and used to indicate a human – an ordinary human representative of a group of humans. So Jesus is as human as are all humanity – all of us, children of human mothers and fathers. 

Ok. So as ‘Son’, Jesus (according to Mark) has a special relationship with God the divine one, but is himself an ordinary vulnerable representative of all humanity. 

And the Holy Spirit? We do know that all the Biblical language describing the Holy Spirit is feminine, and for many she has introduced a female dimension into the otherwise all masculine Trinity – or Godhead as some would say. We read in Mark that Jesus calls on God to send the Holy Spirit to help out.

Well, I’d say the Holy Spirit is the enlivening female dynamic in that otherwise male brotherhood! Not that I think those earnest early Church Fathers, meeting in convocation, would have thought about this in the early 300s when these doctrines were first being shaped.

Well, so what is so important about the doctrine of the Trinity if it is not Biblical? Why do we use the formulation at every opportunity; and the churches of the World Council of Churches insist that baptism must be in the ‘name of The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – no other words will do?

Trinity is a symbol, pointing to a core Christian tenet: God is one, yet with a threefold nature and activity. In the doctrine, we learn that while the Father and the Son share the same being, the Spirit is a subset of both. And all three are worshipped together. The Spirit has the role of inspiring the message of the prophets. An early expression of the doctrine is set out clearly in the Nicene Creed, first agreed in 325. The Apostles creed from a bit later in the same century does not mention a divine Trinity. Both however set out statements of Christian Faith acceptable in a diverse religious milieu.

It seems to me that ‘Trinity’ as a symbol of unity taking shape in the midst of great diversity, could be helpful. In a time and context of diverse religions and cultures it aimed not to offend the major players of the day: Jew, Greco-Roman or Christian. It opened space for them all to engage while at the same time, it seems to me, it aimed to stake out the particular Christian territory, pointing up the differences with the other religious groupings. 

It might even have been acceptable across the emergent different ways of being Christian in that time of competing expressions of Christianity. 

But it doesn’t tell us why the doctrine of the Trinity has survived through the centuries given it is so dense theologically in its doctrinal formulation. Unless, that is, it functions as a ‘marker’ of who is a 'proper Christian' and who is not – much as it was in its earliest setting in the time of Constantine.

Can you comment on that?

First let me note that this idea of “unity in diversity” was radical. It was probably quite shocking in times when religious wars and persecution were raging. 

Here is a doctrine of the Church that sought to hold together all the differences:

• The Jewish ‘God’,

• The emerging ‘Christian’ Jesus –Christ, as some (like Paul and his followers) were promoting,

• And the widespread Greek and Roman Spirits.

There were lots of gods and plenty of spirits around, with their adherent communities. The Christian Church was marking out its distinctiveness, and clarifying its message. The Emperor Constantine and the King Bishops wanted a coherent following that could provide unity and be called on to confront the ‘pagans'. So they basically called the various Christian groups together to get an agreement that would stop them arguing about 'true faith' and enable the ‘Christian’ armies to fight for the Empire. As a push to reach an agreement, Constantine offered tax incentives – a very contemporary thought! But a long time after Mark – 200 years or so!

Ok, let’s look at Mark: in the opening verses of chapter1 we have a human Jesus presenting himself to John, his cousin, for baptism; God ripping the barrier between heaven and earth apart and declaring a familial relationship with Jesus, ‘my son’ he calls him; and the spirit in the form of a dove descending. All the elements are there but that is not a doctrine, each of them acts according to their own nature, they do not make one God! Mark’s point seems to have been to present a man of power. His Gospel presents clearly a man of power who can heal and cast out unclean spirits because they recognise his power, who declares ‘all (who, like him), do the will of God are his brothers and sisters and mother’ (Mk 3:34-35) – all children of God. It seems to me that it is not what you believe but what you do that locates you in the family of God. After all, a doctrine is a formulation of the later church, shaped according to context and current issues, mostly around 300 years after Jesus' death. 

Nor, like this one – the doctrine of Trinity – are they necessarily set in stone for all time. Scholars tell us that this particular doctrine has never been fully explained or even agreed…you could say it's still in formulation!

Well that’s interesting. Are you saying what was once dismissed as a heresy, such as modalism, could be acceptable, even orthodox today?

Yes, it could. I think we can use ‘creator, redeemer, life giver’ if we must have three attributions to describe God, and we do use even ‘wisdom, love, and power or other ways of describing attributes of God – modes of being or acting.

And I suggest understanding Trinity as a symbol that holds in unity our great diversity – while it might still be a radical notion – is helpful to us in our current diverse world. 

But there is nothing magic in a ‘so called’ Trinitarian formula – beloved by Anglicans, though it might be. Finishing prayers with a 3-fold attribution does not add weight or more power to the prayer.

No, but perhaps it reminds us that God is with us, within and between us, acting through us in different ways to bring healing and peace.