Bonus: What is a Trinity?

what on earth is a trinity

[Music]

on sundays we started a series called

the forgotten god and we're looking at

the idea specifically of spirit

a commons we talk about being

intellectually honest and spiritually

passionate that's always our goal

but often it can feel like spirit is

secondary to intellect around here

that's largely due to my own baggage and

experience with charismatic christianity

but still

we do want to remind ourselves of a more

healthy balance from time to time

however

to talk about spirit i thought it was

important to talk about trinity as a

foundation for that conversation

and the interesting part about that is

just how fraught with theological terror

trinity can be

i mean there are just so many ways we

can get this one wrong

yet i really have no interest in talking

about the nature of god as a gatekeeping

exercise

now truth is all of our god talk is

provisional or at least it should be

we're talking about the nature of god

after all and we're using language

that's drawn from our experience of the

world granted god has offered us

language and metaphors

images and ways to think and talk about

the divine but to imagine that our

theology can ever contain god seems at

least a little naive and probably more

than that quite arrogant

that said trinity is really important to

my conception of god and i wanted to

talk a little bit about why

now the first two sermons of that series

are available here on the channel that

you can check them out if you're

interested but here are a few thoughts

about trinity

first of all doctrines of trinity should

at their best i think help us to be more

creative about the divine not to close

down our imagination of god

here's an example of how that works

theologically

we could say god is like water because

water is a liquid but if you freeze it

it can become a solid and if you boil it

it's a gas it's one molecule with three

different realities just like god

that's nice helpful even maybe except

it's also technically heresy

this is a form of what we call modalism

and that's the idea that god isn't

really three persons

but just that god appears or seems that

way

now you can use modalism as a doctrinal

club and call someone a heretic and get

angry at them if you want to i suppose

but what we're really trying to protect

by ruling something like modalism out of

bounds

isn't so much a description of god that

we can hang our hat on

it's actually about protecting the

mystery of divine love

see the christian conception of god

imagines a divine community of shared

love within the godhead from before

there was anything else

god is the singular source of all that

is

and god is an eternal dance of gift and

reception

so when we say that modalism has a

reticle we're not saying that we

understand god and you don't we're good

people and you're not

as much as we're saying that we have to

hold on to we want to protect this

mystery of divine love

to believe that god was loving that god

could be loving

before there was anything else to love

and not only that that is this divine

love shared and expressed in community

that sits at the foundation of

everything in the universe

to say that we believe in trinity is to

say that expressed love defines god

and this is why the specifics of trinity

are far less important to me than that

we hold this mystery tightly in our

imagination

and we have these beautiful images of

father son and spirit or creator

redeemer sustainer that's good and

sacred language gifted to us to speak of

the divine

but the point is not to get hung up on

father and start picturing god as a man

or to fixate on some specific hierarchy

within the godhead

the point is to always come back to the

expanse of imagination of god as loving

community from before there was

anything

and one of the most

important implications of this

comes from the 1960s with a catholic

theologian named carl rauner

he formulated what later became known as

rauner's rule and it went like this the

economic trinity is the imminent trinity

and the imminent trinity

is the economic trinity

now he's using some technical

theological language here so let's parse

it out quickly when he says the economic

trinity he's talking about god as god

works in history so god with a mission

or god with a purpose everything that

god does in the world to save humanity

any time we are talking about atonement

or creation or salvation we are talking

about the economic trinity

on the other hand the imminent trinity

sometimes you might come across this

named as the ontological trinity

is who god is within god's self

so whoever god was or whatever god was

doing before there was a universe

and what ronner says is that however we

conceptualize god in history however we

make sense of the cross for example

that has to be coherent with or

consistent with who god is within god's

self who god has always been as this

perfect community of gift and reception

and if you let that be the foundation

for how you make sense of the divine

that inevitably begins to shape how you

read your bible

how you experience a sense of god in

your life how you understand god woven

throughout the text of human history as

we have all of us tried to find our way

back to god

god is shared love

period

and this is why our theology is at its

best

not when it's trying to explain god to

us but when it is doing just enough to

help us learn to love like god in

community

and so this is also why in the second

part of the series when

we wanted to talk about listening to the

voice of spirit in our lives i wanted to

talk about listening for that gentle

welcoming invitation of the spirit

now everybody's experience is different

but early in my christian story i was

around the charismatic movement now i'm

not sure that was really ever my bag but

i was in that orbit for a time

and i certainly don't want to

characterize that all as bad it wasn't

and there are a lot of things that added

to my journey from that period in my

life things that i want to hold on to

but i did also see witness expressions

of toxic authority and manipulation that

were associated with sometimes even

attributed to spirit

there was a sense that spirit could be

used as a trump card for anything

but again here's where our conception of

god rooted in trinity becomes really

helpful

because if god is an eternal dance of

give and take if god has only ever known

perfect community

it seems to me likely at least that the

voice of spirit in our lives should

reflect that divine reality

the way to distinguish the voice of

spirit from all of the other voices that

vie for your attention is to train

yourself to listen for the most peaceful

the most gentle voice you can possibly

distinguish

the voice of spirit is the voice that

gently listens back to you

and i don't mean by that that god never

speaks clearly to us or that god never

tries to correct us

very clearly there are times we fall

short of love our actions do not promote

justice and healing in the world and god

continues to call us to repentance in

these areas that's part of what spirit

does in our lives

but what i mean by this

is that i'm not sure the christian

imagination of god makes room for a god

that speaks

outside of the context of loving

relationship

that's all god knows that's what god is

so god doesn't speak at you god speaks

to you god doesn't demand from you god

invites you to become

more

and sure

god is angry at sin but the nature of

god reminds me that god is angry at what

sin does to me and what sin does to

those around me god is not angry at me

god isn't love expressed in relationship

god is against therefore

anything that damages relationship

and this is why even though in my life

and my career and my ministry i tend to

focus on the way of jesus in the world

how we live toward each other by

following jesus

i think it's very helpful from time to

time to jump out of that into the exotic

world of discussing the nature of god

as long as that orients us back toward

each other in love and it doesn't leave

us debating theology endlessly

so god is an eternal dance of gift and

reception from before there was

anything we call this perikeresis

but god is also the singular source of

all that has been made the foundation of

universe and those two concepts together

in the mystery of how they coexist

this is what we call trinity

this is also what calls us back to

loving relationship with everyone we

encounter in god's world