SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND NATHAN A. RUGH
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST:
TRINITY SUNDAY
3 JUNE 2007

 

 

 

In case you are not aware, today is Trinity Sunday. And near as I can tell there is not a Sunday of the year that fills preachers with more dread than Trinity Sunday. I have a couple of
theories about why that is. First, I think it is because there is no doctrine quite as tricky as the doctrine of the Trinity. In trying to explain it, is remarkably easy to slip into heresy. In trying to describe the doctrine to people, In my own experience, I have often wanted to catch a word in mid-air and bring it back.

 

But another reason why I think it is hard to preach on Trinity Sunday is because the doctrine itself seems over-indulgent to the modern ear. Despite a resurgence of the doctrine among scholarly theologians in the 20th century, since the 16th and 17th century it has fallen into some disrepute.

 

To some the doctrine seems illogical or arrogant. And in a day in age where books like The God Delusion are on New York Times best seller list, it seems extravagant and misguided to seemingly add a doctrine on top of the difficulty of believing in God. At a time where believing in God often seems like foolishness, believing in God as Trinity seems like multiplying the problem of belief by three. Maybe, it is hard to be a preacher on Trinity Sunday because belief in God as Trinity seems unnecessary and overly problematic to the majority of us, the preacher included.

 

 

And yet, this was not always the case. There was a time where the doctrine of the Trinity was the meat and drink of the Church. It arose out of the very experience of the church. For before the doctrine took its creedal form, the first Christians were left with their experience of God revealing God's self in the person of Jesus. And so the experience and the revelation preceded the articulation of the doctrine.

 

 

The early church was in the position of taking what they experienced about God and trying to use the words and concepts they had on hand to try to make sense of those experiences. The experiences had to do with the person and work of Jesus and the experience of God's Spirit in the life of the fledgling community.

 

 

The event of Jesus as the Christ and the event of the Church stretched the concepts and language of the day. Words like ousia (Greek for substance) and hypostases (Greek for persons) were commandeered from the philosophical lexicon of the day to begin to make sense of the experience of the early church and of the revelation it had received.

 

 

Experience was the mother of the doctrine of God as Trinity. Faith in search of understanding is what caused the technical and philosophical language of the doctrine. The experience gave itself voice with the best tools that were at hand. After all the doctrine actually does a lot of work. It is absolutely critical to theories of atonement and prayer. It makes sense of a doctrine of revelation. It is a way in which we can make sense of mission. It is used to understand the existence of creation. It can serve to ground ethics, ecclesiology, and even political theology.

 

 

If God is ultimate reality and God is three in one and one in three, then all of creation is stamped with this pattern of being and relation. And as such entire theological programs have been built around the doctrine. It might be a complex doctrine, with plenty of opportunities to misstep, but it is the vehicle for thinking through Christian experience and thought. The doctrine of the Trinity was critical for the early church and it is critical still to give voice to the Christian experience, but that does not make it any easier to get our heads around.

 

Here are two models that work for me. They are borrowed from the tradition and they are actually in some tension with each other.

 

The first draws on the metaphor of the psychology of an individual. God is a single substance, of one being, and thus an individual. Within this individual there are three persons, or hypostases, If this language of persons presents a problem it is because we equate persons with individuals. Instead, we might want to use the language of three aspects. One aspect is the completely transcendent ground of all being, the source, or in Jesus words ­ the Father. This aspect is the cause of all that is seen and unseen. This first aspect is also the source of the second aspect.

 

This second aspect is the supreme intelligence of God. This second aspect is called logos and Sophia, word and wisdom. This aspect is uncreated but proceeds from the source, begotten not made.

 

The third aspect is the dynamic energy of God. This third gives actuality to the forms conceived of in the second aspect. This aspect is the giver of life and is immanent in all of being.

In short, God is one individual in three aspects. One is transcendent source, the second is particular but unbounded intelligence, and the third is dynamic and immanent creative energy.

This might sound hopelessly technical, but it is an attempt to make sense of the Christ as the incarnation of God who stood in relationship to the one he called Father who is transcendent source and to make sense of the experience of the life-changing reality of the Spirit. While this model stress unity, its limitation is that it conflates the relationship of the persons.

 

My second model is more relational and rests in the metaphor of God as love. God is love. And we cannot begin to make sense of God as love if God is a monad. If God is love, God also needs an object of love. One could posit that God's object of love is creation and indeed it is, for God does love the world.

 

But, if God is love and the world is the only object of God's love then the world becomes necessary. If the world becomes necessary then God is not complete. If God is not complete then God is not ultimate reality and not perfect and not self-sustaining. God the source must have an object of love within the divine life. And so God as source pours out God's self in love and begets the Logos, the eternal and divine Word. The Logos returns the love and pours out himself, in love of the Source.

 

Out of this dynamic of self-emptying love proceeds the Spirit, which is the expression of joy by the Source and Logos. This is ultimate reality and the divine life. It is full and complete love. But this love overflows and it is out this superabundance that creation comes into being. Creation is invited to participate in all of its particularity in this dynamic of self-giving love. It is in this participation that we will find joy and meaning. This metaphor stresses the relational quality of the divine life, but perhaps it is too much a stress on the trinity of persons.

 

These metaphors help me but I think that they also reveal the limitation of all language about God. Our language for God falls short. We simply cannot conceive of God intellectually and we cannot know God fully.

 

God is ultimately mystery. Even the best words will fall short. Our concepts are only part way there. They are like fingers pointing at the moon. They only point, but they are not the moon. The doctrine of the Trinity is extravagant. It is logical and yet defies logic. The words and models we use are vehicles for a deeper knowledge. And they smack of sheer craziness to many.

 

And yet these are the words we have been given. They are a gift to us. They are the words that make sense of the experience of God being for us, for our creation, for our redemption, and for our sanctification. As such, they are also an invitation for us to plunge past the words and into the experience to which the words point.

 

The experience that gave rise to the doctrine is still available for us today. The invitation to participate still stands.

 

Amen.