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The Trinity: Mystery of Relation

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The Trinity: Mystery of Relation The Trinity: Mystery of Relation What is our experience of God? Our experience of God has many facets to it. We find our very lives shaped by our encounter of God who is, first of all, beyond, with and within the world; who is behind, with and ahead of us; who is above, alongside and around us. What is the symbol of the Trinity attempting to express? It's an attempt to express a dynamic life in God, a relatedness to the world in activity that creates, redeems and renews, an activity which also suggests to us that God's very own being is a relational, dynamic mystery of love. What is the problem for some Christians today regarding the doctrine of the Trinity? The doctrine of the Trinity has become divorced from the original experiences that gave it birth in human understanding. What is a consequence of this "divorce"? This symbol of the Trinity has become unintelligible to many, a kind of doctrine that we learn/memorize, and leave it at that. To paraphrase the late Jesuit theologian Fr. Karl Rahner, "If people were to read in their morning newspaper that a fourth person of the Trinity had been discovered it would cause little stir" --- so detached has the triune symbol become from the actual religious life of many people. What has been lost in our understanding of this symbol? For a variety of reasons, the liberating point of the symbol is lost. The doctrine of the Trinity seems to be found in the appendix of the personal catechism of many minds and hearts, as compared with its place in official church teaching and prayer and ecumenical statements. Structure How does classical theology speak of the Trinity? Classical theology speaks of the Father who sends the Son and, together with the Son or alone, also sends the Spirit. They are equally related, one to another, but distinct in the way they do or do not proceed from one another. This is what the Catechism presents us, a classical theology. Is the biblical witness entirely in agreement with this understanding? The totality of biblical witness is somewhat different: (a) Luke 4:16-20 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. According to Luke, it is not the Father who sends Jesus to bring good news to the poor, but the Spirit. What are we to make of this varied witness to the Trinity? (b) Before the resurrection, the sequence reads Father-Spirit-Son. The Spirit is active in the birth, baptism, Passover of Jesus, so that Jesus can be said to live from the works of the creative Spirit. (c) After the resurrection, it is Father-Son-Spirit, for Jesus is now made a life-giving Spirit and himself joins in the sending of the Spirit to the community of disciples. (d) In the eschatological transformation of creation, it is Spirit-Son- Father, for the Spirit is the power of the new creation and brings all to rebirth. Here the Spirit is not the energy proceeding from Father or Son, but the glorifying God from whom Father and Son receive their glory; the unifying God who gives them their union; the active subject from whom Father and Son receive the world as their home. What is the doctrine of the Trinity attempting to do? When Trinitarian language is pondered as a whole, it is clear that the fundamental attempt of the doctrine is to secure an understanding of God as a profound relational communion. Freeing the Symbol from Literalness Where does this symbol of holy mystery come from? It arises from the historical experience of salvation and it speaks about divine reality not literally but by way of analogy. An encounter with holy mystery lies at the root of all religious doctrine. So too with the Trinity. It develops historically out of the religious experience of the gracious God who encountered Jews and then Gentiles through Jesus of Nazareth in the power of the Spirit. What does this term Trinity attempt to do? The Trinity is a legitimate concept that synthesizes the concrete experience of salvation in a "short formula." It is a theological construct that codifies the liberating God-encounter in history. How did the first Christians symbolize God? The first Christian believers symbolized God as YHWH, the God of Israel. What eventually happened in the Christian community's life? Without abandoning this tradition they increasingly focused on how this same God mysteriously encountered them in the person and mission of Jesus the Christ. Again, they experienced this same God's continuing presence and activity through the power of the Spirit in their midst after Jesus' death had removed him from ordinary human interchange. In each they were engaged in a religious experience of divine mystery acting in a very particular gracious way within their history. Do Biblical writings of the 1st century community contain a developed trinitarian doctrine? No. Instead it has stories, words of praise, narratives, doxologies cast in three- fold symbols of God that arose spontaneously out of Christian experience of holy mystery in its character of being transcendently mysterious, historically mediated, and liberatingly immanent. What was the prime concern of the first generations of Christians? To announce and celebrate the genesis of human liberation and cosmic reconciliation coming from God through Jesus the Christ in the Spirit. What was the "trigger" for the growth of this doctrine? Reflection about Jesus' relationship with God. The basic motivation was religious, empowered by the question of how one and only God could be so envisioned that each of the ways in which the community encountered divine mystery could be affirmed as genuinely an experience of God. What does this symbol of the Trinity intend to safeguard? God is utterly faithful and does not self-reveal in any way other than the way God is. The symbol of the Trinity intends to safeguard the reality of liberating experience both as given by God and giving the one true God. Is the symbol of the Trinity considered a literal description of God? No. Far from being literally descriptive, the Trinitarian symbol desires to express and protect the fundamental Christian experience of shalom drawing near. It is shorthand for the dynamic, inexpressible God of compassion, liberating love who is involved in history in multifaceted ways. Do these distinctions that we make about God tell us anything about God's own inner life? The distinctions we experience in divine encounter are not only on the creaturely side. Our experience indicates a three-fold character even of God's own way of being God. God really corresponds to the way we have encountered the divine mystery in time. Once again, to what does this language about God's inner life point? This language is not a literal description of the inner being of God who is beyond human understanding. It is a pointer to holy mystery in trust that God really is the compassionate, liberating God encountered through Jesus in the Spirit. It is language which affirms that what is experienced in Christian faith really is of God, that we are involved in nothing other than saving divine mystery. At rock bottom, it is the language of hope. No one has ever seen God, but thanks to the experience unleashed through Jesus in the Spirit we hope, walking by faith not sight, that the livingness of God is with us and for us as renewing, liberating love. What are we daring to say when we call God "Trinity"? We dare to say in the Trinity that divine mystery is the power of love for us springing from God's being love from all eternity. "In knowing the God who is our origin, ground and goal, we do not know a shadow image of God but the real saving God of Jesus Christ in their Spirit. The God who saves -- this IS GOD!" Such understanding depicts the presence of deep hope, the very essence of the risk of faith. Spoken Allusively How are we to understand this speech about the Trinity? Such speech is always indirect, having a metaphorical, analogical or symbolic character. Even when taken from scripture, no similarity can be made between God and creatures without the dissimilarity being always ever greater. No model mirrors directly. The concepts are bound by human finitude and do not reach their intended goal without first being negated with respect to their creaturely content. What do we intend when we speak of God by using the numbers "one" and "three"? To say that God is one is intended to negate division, thus affirming the unity of divine being. To say that the persons are three is intended to negate singleness, thus affirming a communion in God. Number, when said of God, cannot be taken in a quantitative sense. As an analogy, to what does the Trinity itself refer? As an analogy, Trinity refers to divine "livingness." Our speech about God as three and persons is a human way of saying that God is LIKE a Trinity, LIKE a three-foldedness of relation.
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