Pursuing a knowledge of God, and pursuing godliness

Today, on Trinity Sunday, I am reminded of how eagerly we can pursue a knowledge of God, how thirsty we are for a deeper understanding of God. But the pictures we draw of God often pursue the lines of our curiosity, not the lines of his gifts and his self-disclosure. I am as prone to curiosity as the next person. But if I were to try to draw God based on Scripture taken as God's self-revelation, I might get something more like this: 

Let me be the first to say: It's incomplete, and could also use some editing for more appropriate parallels. With that out of the way, here is what it's trying to convey: 

The general form is ripples going out from the center, and the center is God. The rippling outward indicates God's reach throughout creation and specifically to the creatures who are made in God's image. Streaming out from God, we see water representing God's actions to cleanse us and renew us, foremost of which is the work of Christ; and flames representing the Spirit's presence with us. 

The center, God as the origin of all things, contains three attributes that come up as key in Scripture. At the center is "holy," as Scripture repeatedly says "Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." While it is God's attribute first, it is something that he means for us to share. At one side is "mercy," where Scripture tells us to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful (again, a key attribute that God means for us to share with him). On the other side is "wisdom," where Scripture tells us that the wisdom of God is communicated to us by the Spirit of God: wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, fear of the Lord (reverence), joy in his presence. Once again, this is an attribute God means for us to share. 

At the top are the well-known gifts of the Spirit: faith, hope, and love. At the bottom we see the fruits of the Spirit. 

The graphic has some significant shortcomings (beyond the amateur art): though it is already crowded enough, still "Jesus" and "the Holy Spirit" are not explicitly named anywhere. That is not a small shortcoming, and so I can consider this to be a not-quite-beta version of the drawing, since it requires reading the accompanying text to get to material that is so vital. 

For all that it lacks, there are many passages of Scripture that could be explained with reference to this visual, where the authors are saying: God is this way, he is transforming us to be like him. 

If on Trinity Sunday I find myself drawing three circles to describe the person and work of God, these  particular three circles show how God's character has ripple-effects in our lives. The traits I would most focus on today are the ones he wants to share with us. The work of the Word and Spirit are to bring exactly that fellowship -- and transformation -- into our lives. 

Thank you for your patience with this series, now concluded. Several of my other series over the years have been driving at the same point. Related series include On being like God, and Rethinking the Shape of the Trinity, of which the most closely-related post in the series is part 4, which originally appeared in the Trinity Blogging Summit in 2009. 

The Question of Christ's Relation to God: Sample writings from the 100's AD

There is a question that keeps recurring in Christian thought: "Is Jesus subordinate to God?" Since the question of whether a human is subordinate to God is, at face value, absurd, sometimes the related question is asked instead, "Is the Word of God subordinate to God?" This is considered an equivalent question by those who believe that Jesus is the incarnate Word of God. The second framing of the question may come closer to the point, since the intended question tends to be less about Jesus' humanity and more about the eternal nature of God and of the Word of God.

Here we look at some examples of how the early church came to understand the Word of God in relation to God, focusing on some writers from the 100's AD: 

And His Son, who alone is properly called Son, the Word, who also was with Him and was begotten before the works, when at first He created and arranged all things by Him, is called Christ, in reference to His being anointed and God’s ordering all things through Him (Justin Martyr, died around 165 AD)

But this Offspring, which was truly brought forth from the Father, was with the Father before all the creatures, and the Father communed with Him; even as the Scripture by Solomon has made clear, that He whom Solomon calls Wisdom, was begotten as a Beginning before all His creatures and as Offspring by God, who has also declared this same thing in the revelation made by Joshua the son of Nave (Nun) (again Justin Martyr, died around 165 AD)

But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation; for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one. And, the Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit, the understanding and reason (νοῦς καὶ λόγος) of the Father is the Son of God. But if, in your surpassing intelligence, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by the Son, I will state briefly that He is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence (for from the beginning, God, who is the eternal mind [νοῦς], had the Logos in Himself, being from eternity instinct with Logos [λογικός]); but inasmuch as He came forth to be the idea and energizing power of all material things. (Athenagoras of Athens, died around 190 AD)

In these examples, the idea that the Son is the Word of God is taken fairly literally, in context of some different philosophical and theological ideas about the Logos (λόγος). I have not seen any areas of tension between these writings and the Bible, though as the Catholic Encyclopedia notes there are some areas of tension between these writings and later orthodoxy. 

To be continued ...

Why the Holy Spirit was not a Driving Force for the Doctrine of Trinity

If the early Christian church had believed Jesus to be simply human, they would not have developed a doctrine of the Trinity. If we ask, "Why did the Christians come to understand God so differently?", the answer revolves around Jesus. That is to say: the conversation in the early church started with Jesus and how they understood Jesus. 

There was a separate conversation about the Holy Spirit, and that conversation took place slightly later in church history. By the time that conversation came into focus for the Christian community, there had already been centuries of conversation about how to understand Jesus. There seems to have been an expectation by that point in time: whatever had been decided about Jesus, the same logic should apply to thinking about the Holy Spirit. They brought parallel reasoning to the question of how to understand the Holy Spirit, and eventually reached the doctrine of the Trinity as it is known today. As with any summary, that is simplified; the relevant point is that the Christian experience of the Holy Spirit did not demand the same conversation. The church's experience of the Holy Spirit did not demand any changes to the idea of One God. 

To make my point clearer, think for a moment about the Holy Spirit. For those who take guidance from the Bible, the Spirit is clearly non-human, clearly uncreated, clearly based solely in God. In church history I have not seen any serious Christian disputes about the eternal divine nature of the Holy Spirit. So why didn't the church's experience with the Holy Spirit drive the conversation about the Trinity? And consider that for centuries Judaism had lived comfortably with awareness of the Holy Spirit without questioning the oneness of God. 

The answer seems to lie here: Many viewed the Holy Spirit as something like an extension of God, and not as fully distinct from God. While that question does not arise with Jesus, it is an important question in our understanding of the Holy Spirit. 

(Part of a series, to be continued.)

Trinity: Why did Christians develop such a different understanding of God?

All of Jesus' original apostles were Jewish. Of the documents in the New Testament, only two (Luke and Acts) were known to be written by a Gentile. To the best of our knowledge, the rest of the New Testament was written by people who were life-long Jews, who continued to see themselves as Jews while understanding Jesus as the Messiah. In the Second Temple era there were different Jewish groups with different opinions on various points of law and texts, but none of those mainstream groups disputed monotheism: There is only one God, and God is one. 

From that background, why not keep to the most obvious solution: That Jesus is simply human, and so the Jewish understanding of God remains unchanged? It's important to any following discussion that we take the first step seriously and make the first point clear: Why is there a need for any discussion at all? The whole question could have been a non-starter; possibly the most natural view of that topic would have been as a non-starter; so why did something else happen? 

Or to come from the other direction, we can look at the alternatives to the Trinity that have been considered. Over the centuries, Christians wrestled with other options such as: Maybe Jesus was fully divine and his humanity was merely an appearance; or maybe Jesus was adopted by God; or maybe Jesus was the one through whom all things were made as the first of God's creations. Still in our times we see alternatives like: Maybe Jesus was an angel, or maybe Jesus is a god but not the God of this world, or maybe God is one and Jesus is one way that God appears to us. (These are my fumbling attempts to summarize the views of Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Oneness Pentecostals; if anyone can suggest a clearer way to word those, or finds a more accurate way to summarize, those suggestions would be welcome.) 

Why take a quick survey of the alternatives? To show that even the Christians who have not agreed with the doctrine of the Trinity generally don't say that Jesus is simply human. Even among feuding sects who hesitate to recognize each other as belonging to the same religion, there's an unintended consensus on that one point: There's more going on with Jesus than "simply human". 

If we were to make a decision tree of how people understand him, the first point might be, "Is Jesus simply human?" At that point, not only the prevalent Christian theologies but most of the alternative Christian theologies join together in the same answer: No. 

For this blog, most of the readers are familiar with the reasons why the answer is generally: No. In the New Testament, the early records of Jesus introduce him with John the Baptist fulfilling prophecies about preparing the way for the LORD -- texts that in the original language use the Divine Name. Even in the shortest, possibly least-theological gospel in the New Testament, that of Mark, we find his opponents challenging him over whether he is laying claim to God's authority: "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" And even in that early document we find words attributed to Jesus in which he questions their understanding of the promised Messiah: "Why does David call him Lord?" 

The alternative gospels -- the ones outside the New Testament -- do not present us with a merely human Jesus either. Consider the Coptic Gospel of Thomas: "Jesus said, 'I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.'" (Saying #77)

These few texts are not presented in order to prove any point, but as a sample of the reasons why someone might look at the documents and think: Jesus' followers didn't think he was simply human; and unless they were inventing what he said then Jesus didn't consider himself simply human either. That lies at the heart of why Christians developed a different understanding of God, and to some extent still wrestle with it today: How exactly do we understand the information that we have, being faithful to the facts as we know them? 

(Part of a series)

Reviewing the Trinity: Authority, Proof Texts, and Ways Forward

I have a long-standing interest in the tracing the origins of the teachings of the church. The Trinity has an interesting place among Christian doctrines: it is never directly taught in Scripture; there are Scriptures that seem to support it and others that seem to contradict it. It has been the subject of much debate, and conversation is fenced off carefully: the wrong answer may find you excommunicated from many churches. Despite the problems with the doctrine, I'm not aware of a better explanation for how God is described in the sayings of Jesus and the writings of the apostles. This post will not propose to resolve that, but to size up the "authority" approach and the familiar proof-text pool for avenues to move the conversation forward. 

The "authority" approach does not seem capable of resolving the matter fully. By the "authority" approach, I mean the situation where the church cites its authority to resolve disputes over its own teachings and declares the question resolved, or claims the Spirit's guidance. That creates pockets of acceptance wherever that particular source of authority is respected or that particular claim of guidance is believed. Outside of that scope, the claim is only as respected as the reasoning that supports it; the teaching must prove its legitimacy. That brings us back to the original sayings of Jesus and the writings of the apostles, and how we understand those. 

Beyond the most obvious point -- that the Trinity is not taught directly -- several other points catch my attention about the texts brought to support the different views: 

• The gospels of Mark and Luke are cited less often, despite their interest in Jesus' identity
• Only a few passages in Matthew are cited, again though there is interest in Jesus' identity
• The Gospel of John has some of the more directly applicable comments for both sides of the debate. When both sides rely on the same document, it raises questions about whether we may have misunderstood the document. 
• There is also an item that isn't directly addressed very often: Even in passages that are quoted as proof of the Trinity, when the word "God" occurs it generally refers to the Father specifically. 

The doctrine of the Trinity seems to have a specific job: to safeguard our insistence that God is one, and to reconcile that with the divinity of Christ. That is: rather than the idea being developed directly for its own sake and on its own basis, it seems to have been developed indirectly to serve a function of supporting other teachings. 

In the centuries since the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, the teachers of the church have often read the Bible while focusing on academic points that touch on this doctrine, rather than focusing on the original point. For example, how often can we discuss the blessing "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all" without focusing on Christ's grace, or God's love, or the Spirit's fellowship? In some ways, drawing the different verses into the controversy has been a disservice to their original message. 

Since the doctrine of the Trinity seems to have been developed indirectly, and since a return to the original sources seems the most productive approach, I hope to spend some time in the coming weeks looking at what the Scriptures say about the identity of Christ, and how we understand that in light of the oneness of God. 

c# theology: How clearly can we explain what we are saying about God?

Logic is a useful tool, and originally a branch of philosophy. Then computers were invented, and over the years logical languages became far more specialized than their ancestors that were used in basic syllogisms. With the advent of object-oriented programming (OOP), logical languages made enormous gains in their ability to model the real world. But has computer programming, the now-grown independent child, ever returned the favor to philosophy to see how much the more advanced logical tools can help clarify philosophical problems?

For example, someone once used the question "What is a chair?" to explain to me just how complex a thing can be. Roughly their side of the conversation ran like: "A chair is a noun, isn't it? And yet, if you change all kinds of things about it, is it still a chair? Can't we take two very different things (maybe a squashy recliner for one, and an uncomfortable hard plastic stackable armless seat for another) and say they are both chairs? So what can we really say about chairs?" And I thought to myself, quietly, "The effort we put into outsmarting ourselves!" I was very young at the time so simply filed away the example in my mind; these days I suspect they simply didn't possess the right analytical tools. Because from an OOP point-of-view you could argue that "chair" is an interface -- roughly a set of certain predefined requirements, in this case mainly the ability for one person to sit on it -- that is implemented by any number of specific chairs. Or you could argue that "chair" is a function that returns a specific object that can be used as a chair. There are probably other options for how we model our thoughts about what "chair" means. But we don't want to confuse "slightly complex" with "ineffable".

On Trinity Sunday, I often come to the question: How clearly can we explain what we are saying about God? And it's hard to know where to start. For example, what if I start here:

public class God
{
    // what it means to be God
}

We run into open questions immediately. What does it mean to be God? In the Athanasian creed, the content of what it means to be God would be filled in along the lines of "uncreated, infinite, eternal." In the Nicene creed, it would be filled more along the lines of "Father Almighty, creator". In various parts of Scripture we'd also see holy, wise, compassionate, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love (or simply "love"). For today I'm fine with leaving "what it means to be God" as an open question; we'd hardly settle it in the course of a post anyway.

But then on Trinity Sunday here, there's more to say. So what if we sketch out:

public class Word : God
{
    // class Word is from class God
    public purpose Speak(person[])
        {
        // do something
        }
}

For those who don't code for a living or use other languages to code, I'll mention: the above says that Word inherits from God, so that everything God is, the Word is also. And I've sketched in one method (action) that belongs to "Word": the Word can Speak. The Word speaks to one or more persons; we haven't defined persons yet but pseudo-coding theology is not a small project and we have to start somewhere. I'm not sure that putting "purpose" in the return value is the best construction for Speak() but I certainly didn't want to pseudo-code it that Speak returns void. (Yes, there's a coder-theology-geek pun in there, but might be on the obscure side.) At any rate, while it's open to a more fully-developed model, it will do for the first draft -- with the understanding that it's not done yet, and wouldn't even pass a programmer's logical syntax-check at this early stage. Most code starts that way.

And while there are some points I'd like to discuss on that, it might help to bring the Holy Spirit into the discussion (in more ways that one!)

public class Spirit: God
{
    // class Spirit is from class God in the most ancient constructions
    public childOfGod Indwell(this, person)
        {
        // do something
        }
}

Again, that says that everything God is, the Spirit is also. And I've so far described one action of the Spirit, which is Indwell, an action which requires both the Spirit (this) and a person, and returns a childOfGod (again not even defined yet).

Now the number of things incomplete about this is fairly mind-boggling. If any reader feels the need to say so, you'll have my full agreement. But it opens up for us to have more exact discussions over our questions about God. Because the above is not the only possible arrangement; far from it. For example:

Which methods (actions) really belong to the child classes, and which to God as the originator? Is the Word of God more like a class, or more like an interface (having all the properties of God but not an independent class)? How about the Spirit of God: class or interface?

I know, some will find this hopelessly ... unhelpful (at best). But I hope that what it lacks in refinement, it makes up for in possibility.

The Concept of Trinity as a Venn Diagram, and Divine Simplicity

I hope any reader does not find it too irreverent to use a Venn diagram in discussing the nature of God. Yesterday many Christians celebrated Trinity Sunday, and in recognition of that I'd like to take the wording and structure of the Trinitarian portion of the Athanasian Creed (named in honor of Athanasius) and interpret it as a Venn diagram.

I have taken the liberty of adding the phrase "self-existing" to the portion describing the Father, making explicit the self-existence of the Father in contrast to the portions describing the origins of the Son and Spirit. Otherwise, the material is directly from the Athanasian Creed.

I'd like to add a note about a philosophical teaching called divine simplicity. Briefly stated in simple form, that view holds that God cannot be composed or complex because the fact of complexity implies a prior cause in order to get that complex effect. Consider the implied question "Who made God like that?", and the implication that if there is a straight answer to that question as asked, then God would not be God. Without going into the full argument here, I'd like to say that the Venn diagram -- or better said, the earlier creed on which it's based -- can clarify one thing about that: if only the Father is self-existing, and the Father is the ultimate origin of Son and Spirit*, then God made Himself like that. Of all the follow-up questions that come from the idea of God as Trinity, the one I find most useful in increasing our understanding of God is "Why?" If we start with the view that God's will has a purpose within God's own wisdom and nature, and if we consider that the Son and Spirit came about by the Father's will, then "Why?" is a legitimate question. And the answer, the best I can discern so far from Christian Scripture, is to reach out to us: to be God with us and God in us.

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* For those who hold the view that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, the Father alone is the necessary prerequisite for the Spirit. For those who hold the view that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, still the Father is the ultimate origin of the Spirit, as the Father is the sole origin of the Son.

Grace and the Trinity

The current series on grace has three main posts still planned: this entry plus two others. There is also some additional material that may not fit cleanly into one of those posts and may be posted separately. The remaining posts are all interrelated; as this piece seems more of a foundation to the following two, it will be posted first. 

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God in Three Persons, or Father, Son, and Spirit?

I'll start by briefly mentioning some thoughts I've written before -- some time ago -- about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It does actually matter whether we think of "God in three persons", or whether we think of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Bible does not know the language of "three persons in one godhead"; it speaks about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When the Bible speaks of "God" it generally means the Father. Speaking of the Father, Jesus says that people call him God (John 8:54). The Father is the "first person" not by accident but because He alone is without origin, unbegotten, self-existing; in Him the Son and Spirit have their source. If the Father alone is self-existing, how and why do we see God as more than the Father alone?

The Word of God is sent out by grace

So what is the true nature of Christ? The Bible does not speak of the "second person of the Trinity"; it speaks of the Word of God becoming flesh and living among us. I take this to mean that the Word of God is the true nature of the divine in Christ. The earliest church does not proclaim the "second person"; it speaks of the Word of God who becomes flesh and dwells among us in Christ. If God did not care to establish a relationship with the world, then the Word of God would have stayed hidden within God; the Word would not have been sent into the world. If God desired that we should relate to him only as servants -- to do as we are told, and look no further than that -- then all his words to us would be commands. The Word of God is not all commands; that teaches us that God did not intend us to be only servants.

The Word of God was sent forth into the world through various messengers and different types of message, each with its own kind of grace (more on that in an upcoming post). First, the Scriptures tell that the Word of God was the means of creation -- in which grace was established as the foundation of God's relationship with the world. In time, God's word called forth a people to live under his blessing and protection, to work for his purposes in this world. Under that covenant, the law called for God's people to be known for their integrity and goodness. In other times through his word, God showed us the beauty of holiness, held out visions of paradise, and promised the coming Messiah in the kingdom of God. God's word reveals his decision to be our leader, our teacher, our protector, our guide through the wilderness, and our hope.

Moving forward, the Word of God became flesh and lived among as Jesus. Here we see the fulfillment of God's decision to join with us, to be "God with us". In Christ, in living with us, God establishes his love for us, and establishes our forgiveness. Where grace had always been our human hope, that hope was given solid ground in Christ: grace was set as a covenant. The covenant was no afterthought, and the incarnation was no afterthought. The act of love, the purpose of grace, is part of the essential nature of Christ, the living Word of God.


The Spirit of God is sent in grace

Then what is the true nature of the Spirit? Again, the Bible speaks of the Spirit of God in the same way that it speaks of the spirit of a man knowing his thoughts within him. I take this to mean that the Spirit of God is the true nature of the Holy Spirit. When we think rightly of the Holy Spirit, we remember that the Spirit is essentially, genuinely, the Spirit of God who knows God's thoughts within him.

The Spirit of God is poured out on the world and lives in us.* This living in us is an act of goodwill towards us -- that is to say, an act of grace. In it, God increases his fellowship with us, which is a remarkable gift. The ancient Temple at Jerusalem was inlaid with gold, with cedars of Lebanon, adorned with fine embroidery and images of heavenly beings -- it was a beautiful, pure, and holy place, and was blessed with the presence of God. Now we are called to be his living temple. (Are we supposed to build our hearts inlaid with love like gold, and righteousness like the cedars of Lebanon? Or as the Psalmist says, "Your Law to me is better than gold.") If God living in a city was a blessing and honor to the city, if God living in a nation was a blessing and honor to the nation, then consider God's presence living in us, and in all his people. If the Spirit of God is that inner part that knows God's thoughts within him, then how does that Spirit come to us? The Spirit of God only comes to us because God chooses to pour out his Spirit on his people. Grace is the essential answer of how the Spirit of God comes to be within us, rather than only within God.

What does that mean?

The very nature of the God -- Father, Son, and Spirit -- reaches into the world until it is accomplished that he lives in us, until we have hope in him, and we have fellowship with him and with each other. If "Trinity" is how our minds see and understand God, then our understanding of God is structured by his workings in the world to accomplish the beginnings of restoration here and now in our lives.

It may be that this is how and why, if the Father alone is self-existing, we see God as more than the Father alone. Trinity is inherently a matter of grace: the Word and the Spirit reach out into the world and communicate God's attributes and God's own spirit to us, by their constitution -- by God's decision from the foundation of the world to be the God who loves us, to be God with us.

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And the footnote referenced above, which would have disrupted the flow of thought earlier

* The Holy Spirit lives particularly where the message of Christ -- the message of God's grace -- has been trusted, as Paul challenges his readers in Galatia to remember: "... before your eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. Tell me just one thing: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?" (Galatians 3:1-2)

"My Father is greater than I" - the road less traveled

"My Father is greater than I." - Jesus. (John 14:28)

The problem

We Christians are generally taught that Jesus is equal to the Father. This verse calls that into question (or some would say, appears to call that into question). There is a ready answer, both traditional and common -- the road more traveled, if you will: That Jesus spoke this according to his human nature alone. Of course humanity is less than deity; problem solved.

This whole piece will assume the reader is familiar with basic Christian theology and, considering where it will be read, that the reader is probably fairly orthodox according to historical Christian views.

The problem with the answer

The answer -- that Jesus spoke according to only his human nature -- has seemed problematic to me. For one, we had to flirt with the outskirts of Nestorian theology to say that; it essentially separates the divine and human in Christ by saying that the divine did not participate at all in that answer. If Christ's humanity and divinity are separate in such a way that he said things according to just the human nature alone, then how do we recognize things where the divine was participating? What else did he teach only according to his human nature? Did he die only according to his human nature? Was he baptized only according to his human nature? Did he weep at Lazarus' tomb only according to his human nature? Did the very nature of God participate with manhood fully, or not?

The answer that Jesus spoke according to only his human nature may also be problematic in light of what Jesus said, "I do nothing of myself; but as my Father has taught me, I speak of these things" (John 8:28). Sure, there are different ways we could understand this depending on how we view Jesus. But it does lend more weight to the idea that, if we take the gospels as reasonably reliable witnesses, we have reason to wonder whether "only according to the human nature" is really consistent with what Jesus' contemporaries wrote about him and what they meant to tell us about him.

Many people are decidedly uncomfortable with Jesus saying "My Father is greater than I" because it shines a spotlight on a problem-area for understanding the Trinity. I have heard theologians wrestle with questions like "Why is the Father the first person of the Trinity, if all are equal?" Or, "Why was the second person of the Trinity the one who was incarnate? Could it have been another?" I suppose, from that point of view, you could just as easily ask how the third person was assigned the job of being the one who came at Pentecost. If our starting point is "There are three equal persons who are one God", then those questions are very difficult to answer at all, much less to answer convincingly. They are not so difficult to answer if our starting point is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- the way the people encounter God, rather than the theories attempting to explain it.

The road less traveled and the nature of the Father

And so I am, for this piece, taking the road less traveled. I'm not talking about the easy solution that many non-Trinitarians have taken, where they likewise assume that Jesus was talking according to his human nature -- and this because they assume the human nature is the only nature he had. It is often assumed that if only we dismiss the Gospel of John, the problem goes away and we get a human Jesus.* Some have pointed out that it's only in the Gospel of John that Jesus claims to be equal with God, only in the Gospel of John that Jesus says that whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father, only there that he is called uniquely begotten of God. But it is also only in the Gospel of John that Jesus makes problematic statements such as "the Father is greater than I", or the Father being "the only true God" (John 17:3). So rather than toss out John, I think we might want to consider the possibility that our interpretation isn't a great fit to what John has said.

Here I start by taking a broad application of Jesus' saying, "I do nothing of myself; but as my Father has taught me, I speak of these things." What if we apply that also to "The Father is greater than I"? Taking a close look at the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we can notice one thing: only the Father is without origin. The Son is "begotten" of the Father; the Spirit "proceeds". The Father is the origin of the Son and the Spirit. The difference between the Son and the Spirit on the one hand, and creation on the other hand, is that the Son and the Spirit are not creations. They are of the very essence of God. But that very essence has its origins in the Father. The Father is unique within the Trinity in being the only "person" -- if we care to use that language -- absolutely without origin, absolutely self-existing. That is why, when we use Trinitarian language to describe God, that the Father must be the first person of the Trinity.

Some could say -- and fairly enough -- that the persons of the Trinity are numbered as "first, second, and third" after how they are listed in the ancient baptismal formula: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." True enough; but unless that baptismal formula is arbitrary then the order there may give us knowledge to help us in our understanding of God. And when we study further, we find that not only is the Father listed first in the baptismal order, but that he is also the origin of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The baptismal formula fits well with what we know of the Father from other teachings of Jesus.

The road less traveled and the nature of the Son

Once, when reading Jurgen Moltmann's writings, I came across a passage where I badly wanted to check the translation and see if he really could have said such a thing; he said, in essence, that the second person of the Trinity became the Word of God. I suspect the translation was accurate about the general intent, because several of the things he had said sounded as though his starting point was the idea of three persons in one Godhead, rather than the witness of those who had seen remarkable events involving the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He sounded as though he was denying that the Son is intrinsically the Word of God. And whenever we talk primarily about "persons of the Trinity", we risk losing sight of that. But what if it is better to start with what Jesus' contemporaries said about him, rather than what later theologians and philosophers made of it? Here we do not find "the second person became the Word", but "The Word became flesh."

When the Gospel of John tries to describe to us who Jesus is, it starts with the creation of the world, how God spoke the Word and shaped the world. From there, having introduced the Word as the active power of God behind the very existence of this world, the author moves on to say that this Word became flesh; that is the Gospel of John's introduction of Jesus. I don't really think the view that "Jesus only had a human nature" is truly on the table from the Gospel of John's standpoint. The Word of God -- being the living word of the living God -- fittingly came to us as a person rather than a book. But the Word of God is sent from God, derived from God, spoken by God -- shows God, reflects God, reveals God. We can truly and fully affirm that whoever sees Jesus sees the Father. And yet the Father is greater, not by having things that were withheld (as if all the fullness of God did not reside in his Word), nor by staying transcendent while Jesus walks the earth. The Father is greater as the one who sends, the one who is the origin. Jesus did nothing apart from his Father's will; it was not the other way around. The Word of God reflects the Father whose Word he is; the Son of God is in every way a true image. We can affirm that he is the way, the truth, and the life, that no one comes to the Father except through him; and yet, we still see that he is here as the way to the Father who sent him.

The road less traveled and the nature of Holy Spirit?

No, the text I'm discussing -- "The Father is greater than I" -- is not the right place to discuss the Holy Spirit. So here I will limit myself to just a few comments. The Holy Spirit, likewise, is the Spirit of God. Just as Jesus is the Word of God, is fully of God, is uncreated, likewise the Holy Spirit is fully of God and is uncreated. And yet both have their origins in God the Father. (Many would here add, "and the Son"; this writing is not the time or place for that argument.)

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

Christians have called on the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit from ancient times. The baptismal formula has always been one of the important texts informing our understanding of God. I think it is no accident that the place we look to understand God is the place where we first meet him as Christians: at the baptismal font. The texts about baptism speak of our rescue, our being remade in the image of God, our cleansing and rebirth, the renewal of creation, and the forgiveness of sins. At each step of the baptismal formula, God moves closer to us: from "our Father in heaven" to the Son who is God With Us to the Spirit who is God within us, making us God's own temples. We are caught up into the life of God himself, transformed by the renewing of our minds. That is the promise of the power of God at work in this world.

Two roads diverged

"My Father is greater than I." If Jesus spoke this according to the fullness of who he is as Christ, if he spoke as the Word of God, then he has taught us something about God. He has forced us to look more closely not at the abstract "three persons of the Trinity", but at what it means for God to act in this world as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and how the Word of God and the Spirit of God are related to what it means to be God, and to be the people of God. When we understand God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we understand a God who acts in this world for us and for our salvation. So this saying does challenge our understanding of the Trinity, after its own way.

When we speak of the three persons of the Trinity, do we have as clear a picture of God as when we speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

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* If we dismiss the Gospel of John and just limit ourselves to the other writings about Jesus, we still don't get a merely human Jesus. But that's beyond the scope of discussing "My Father is greater than I" and what to make of it for talking about the Trinity.

Re-thinking the shape of the Trinity: Part 5

In the context of Trinitarian studies

It is true enough that this study could easily be placed in our understanding simply as favoring an economic understanding of the Trinity which understands God through divine actions, rather than an immanent understanding of the Trinity which seeks to understand God in his inner being. I view the image of God as he is in himself to be inherently incomplete and, taken by itself, to be essentially misleading about the nature of God – the very thing it intends to describe – and the nature of the world.

God as he is in himself has no actions and no intentions towards us. God as he is in himself does not reveal himself to us. God as we know him acts on our behalf, reaches out to us, and reveals himself. It follows that "God as he is in himself" is God as we hypothesize and imagine, rather than God as we know him. Our revealed glimpses into the life of God before creation are slim. In the act of creation, God disavows his isolation in favor of an outward-focused love of creation. Again in the act of Incarnation, God rejects isolation in favor of involvement. One more time in the coming of the Holy Spirit, God meets us within our own hearts and minds and comes to remain with us. In the intended future, the isolation of God – and the isolation of man – will be ended forever, with the people of God as the bride and with God himself as the bridegroom. Then the involvement of God with man will reach its consummation. This perspective is lost when we portray God in isolation.

While we may make able arguments for this perspective showing God in isolation, I would submit that this perspective cannot legitimately claim the place of the ultimate knowledge of God. The quest for the Immanent Trinity is a quest for God as he is in himself, without regard to creation. This is an attempt to pierce beyond this world, an attempt which shows our inclination to see this world as not quite real or not fully worthwhile, as fundamentally divided and separated from the realities of God. It is a perspective which assumes that the world is not essential to the understanding of God, and may even be an obstacle. Our solution is to strain beyond the world, beyond creation to find God there. God’s solution is the opposite: he draws the world to himself, and rather than draw us into an eternal abstraction, he draws the world –and himself – into an eternally realized incarnation. Our view of a world fundamentally divided and separated from the realities of God is precisely the kind of world that God’s actions seek to transform. The God that we know – the God who acts in history – acts to overcome that division and separation through his repeated acts of reaching out towards us and establishing fellowship with us, acts that he makes a lasting reality in the world.

This submission, then, is not only about these two approaches to knowing the Trinity, it is also about moving the proclamation of the Trinity forward from its veneration as dogma back out into the streets as kerygma: the proclamation of the goodness of God and the involvement of God as the foundation of the promise of the world’s redemption. It is difficult to proclaim or preach God as he is in himself; God as he is in himself has no interactions with us that need proclamation. However, the message of God in context, God in action is a message of the God who touches us, who transforms our lives. In a continuation of the act of creation, God transforms the world itself from something we need to get beyond in order to understand God, into something which bears and reveals the presence of God.

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Thank you for the patience of all who stayed with me while I serialized this year's Trinity Blogging Summit submission. Many thanks to Nick Norelli for hosting and organizing the event; may there be many more!

As a footnote to the whole submission, I should mention that I am sympathetic to the goal of knowing God's essence, the persons and relations among them; and that I consider this to be an appreciably different enterprise from knowing God "as he is in himself" -- for reasons I hope I've explained. I hope that will be my topic at the TBS in a future year.

Re-thinking the shape of the Trinity: Part 4

Alternate image #2: Outward-reaching TriCircle

The next of the alternate images I would envision still contains three circles, but now concentric ones like the ripples in a pond. (Image public domain courtesy of Wikipedia, altered.) These circles do not remain still; they are ever reaching outward, ever expanding, ever sending forth the presence of God. This image emphasizes the origin of all things in the Father and the dynamic action of God. If we take the conventional ordering of the first person of the Trinity as the Father and the second person of the Trinity as Christ, the Word of God, then this image reflects the work of the Word being sent out into the world, in forming God's thought into created reality, into revealed thoughts, and into God incarnate where we meet the fullness of God in bodily form. Through the Word also the Spirit goes forth into the world. Here it is clearer that the Word and Spirit have their origin in the Father, and that through them God reaches out into the world, communicates with us, and shares his presence. In this concentric, expanding image, God now has direction and purpose and movement. The world to which God relates is now part of the picture. The approaching and outward-reaching movement of God also forms the promise of a future of God's presence throughout all things.

This picture too has its drawbacks. While a ripple shows the center as the origin and implies a world at the horizon, that smallness of the center is not quite what we want to say about God as the origin of all things. And there are still shortcomings such as the impersonal shapes in this particular image of God. Maybe someday a skilled artist might help us here.

Also, this image barely suggests what it should better portray: that as the Holy Spirit and the Word fill us, we become partakers of the divine nature, new centers of the outgoing ripple of God's presence in the world. Here we, like God, seek to accomplish the blessing of those around us, seek to draw others into fellowship, to convey the same love and human touch which God conveys, to relay the Spirit of God to others. The image of the Living God is inextricably bound up with the people of God. It is an image of God who breaks the barriers of isolation, loneliness, and separation, God who is always reaching and always moving forward, who has no boundaries.

This outward-moving ripple depicting the action of God in the world is related to our understanding of baptism, and not by the superficial coincidence that both involve water. In baptism, God immerses us in himself, cleanses us, gives us new birth, and in his Name transforms who we are. This mirrors what we have said about God's actions already based on the other images we have reviewed. In baptism we see God touching the world, touching each person in turn as we pronounce over each new person the name of Father, Son, and Spirit so that the circle of God's presence is felt in ever-wider contexts.

Re-thinking the shape of the Trinity: Part 3

Alternate image #1: TriCircle with Person and Content

The first alternate image of the Trinity I would suggest has God in context. This symbol starts with the basic and familiar layout, but adds to it some consideration that God can only be understood in context, and that the context in which God is known is not abstract and impersonal. The accompanying artwork plainly calls for someone with better artistic skills than I have - or at least better image editing skills! If the image gives at least the general idea, that will be all I can hope. The image now in the "Father" circle is God reaching for Adam, detail from the Michelangelo Creation of Adam fresco in the Sistine Chapel. The image in the "Son" circle is from Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, with certain elements arranged so that we see Christ's hand offering bread and wine. In the "Holy Spirit" circle we see some detail from Jean Restout II's Pentecost, with a flame of holy fire resting on a disciple's head.

In this arrangement the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are seen as they are known to us: in actions that have become fundamental parts of the Christian understanding of God. While these actions of God are already iconic in their own right and have already taken their place in the Christian understanding of God, I would draw attention to some similarities among these actions. In all three cases, the action shows God reaching for or touching us, and in all three cases this contact with God fundamentally transforms us. There is a sense also in which these actions define the relationship of God with the world.

In Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, we see God the Father in a scene from the Book of Genesis reaching out to touch the First Man. Genesis relates that as soon as God had created mankind, in his next words he blessed them. If we read God's actions as indicative of God's purpose, then God created mankind in order to bless mankind. Again in the Last Supper we see images of God touching the world, and the down-to-earth physicality of the God who hands us bread and wine, vividly bound to his own body and blood in which he shared our humanity so that we, then, have an enduring taste of his divinity. In Pentecost, we see God coming to live within us, transforming his people so that we, too, can share the very mind of God.

It is no mere accident that these three images by which we so readily recognize God all portray actions in which God initiates and maintains fellowship with us. God's actions toward us are intimate and personal, approaching us at each turn, culminating with God's own Spirit living within us, with our becoming God's holy temple in which he lives.

Is this an accurate portrayal of God as he is in himself? If we are to consider that God's nature is unchanging, then "Immanuel" – God with us – is not a late-coming addition to the intentions and nature of God. In each of the three images here, God is revealed as God with us. If we take this as basic and fundamental to God's character, then it must be allowed to have its implications for our thoughts about God. God can never be God as he is in himself – God in isolation – if he has determined himself to be God with us. He can never be the distant, unknowable, impersonal power, the beautiful isolated perfection and untouchable, unapproachable holiness beyond our grasp. Each action that we consider shows God coming to us, blessing us, and seeking fellowship with us. God's approach to man is a recurring theme in the Bible, and God's fellowship with man is portrayed there in vividly intimate terms. It is not only the symbolic and visionary book of Revelation which shows God ultimately consummating a marriage with his people, but this marriage is a staple Hebrew image of God, one also seen in the New Testament not only in Paul but also in Christ as he repeatedly compares himself to a bridegroom. Here we see God who with a human touch restores our humanity, God who gives himself to us in a way that is intended to be permanent in our lives.

Re-thinking the shape of the Trinity: Part 2

The 2009 Trinity Blogging Summit is expected to be up soon at Nick Norelli's blog. The first part of my submission appeared on this blog earlier, near the original intended date of the summit, starting with the familiar image of three interlocking rings and using it as a launching point for talking about the Trinity. The remaining parts of my submission will be posted over the next few days.

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Critiquing the TriCircle Symbol

An image is like any other analogy: it makes its point, but you can press it too far. At some point, the usefulness will break down. In the case of the classic TriCircle depiction of the Trinity, the point is that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct, in some ways alike, and inseparable. In this, it makes its point and has proved its usefulness. I expect this image of the Trinity will continue to endure.

The TriCircle symbol also partially reflects that God the Father is the origin of the Word and the Spirit: that they owe their very being to him. We might debate which of the two lower circles stands for the Son and which for the Spirit, but the upper circle is God the Father. In him and from him the Word and Spirit originate.

However, as useful as the image is, it has its drawbacks. It is completely impersonal. Father, Son and Spirit are reduced to geometric shapes. The Being of God is shown to have certain attributes of perfection, but this image of God has relatively little content other than perfection and interlinked three-in-oneness; it does not represent much of what we know about God. Also, in contrast to all the thoughts of God we have known through the Bible, the TriCircle God is seen in isolation. He does not interact with creation. He does not interact with people. The TriCircle God shows no intentions, plans no future, describes no will, proclaims no salvation. The TriCircle image does not show God in action or God with a purpose: this image of God has no direction. Here we try to portray God as he is in himself, and we portray God as he has chosen not to be: in isolation from us. In this abstraction, we have removed creation and humanity from our understanding of God; here God has no context. If God desires or intends our ideas about Himself to include how he loves the world, then our attempt to be objective has fundamentally obscured the picture in that respect.

Re-thinking the shape of the Trinity: Part 1

Nick Norelli is hosting the 2009 Trinity Blogging Summit. This post covers the introductory section of my submission to this year's summit. So as not to scoop the summit, the remaining sections will be posted here after the summit has been posted. The intended publication date for TBS 2009 is 3/1/2009.

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Picture the Trinity. One of the images that comes to mind is likely the one shown here: the three interlocking circles of one of the most enduring symbols of the Trinity. Here I will set aside the technical term of Borromean Rings and refer to it as the TriCircle symbol, in hopes that this name is more readily understandable.

While we think of this Trinitarian symbol in holy or even near-mystical ways, it bears a noticeable resemblance to a Venn diagram, one of the simple types of graphs showing areas of similarity and difference. It would be tempting to think that the similarity to a Venn diagram is just a coincidence. But when we review the Athanasian creed in its descriptions of the Trinity, a large section of that creed reads very much as if someone is describing a Venn diagram as it catalogs what is shared and what is distinct.

When iconoclasts insist that we should make no image of God, the issue is whether an image could mislead us to worship some other God than the God we know, to substitute our thoughts about God for the reality of God. In modern Trinitarian theology, this one question has persisted: have we done that with the Trinity?

I have no basic objection to images of God, but every image does raise some questions. How well does the symbol reflect our thoughts? How well do our thoughts reflect the reality of God? My goal in this year's submission is to reconsider some of our thoughts about the Trinity by considering the images we use to reflect our thoughts.

Fine-tuning the doctrine of the Trinity?

I waited until now, after Lent was over, to discuss the controversial parts of my submission to the recent 2008 Trinity Blogging Summit. Emotions can run high around questions of dogma, and a few of the things I said were not conventional.

My general view of the Trinity on a charitable day is that it is close enough for government work: it does the job of explaining how Father, Son, and Spirit can be distinct but still One God. On an uncharitable day, I'll still acknowledge that it is better and closer to the truth than the alternatives that have been put forward by, say, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, or Oneness Pentecostals, to mention some of the better known alternative views there. Keep in mind that I do not write from the "free church" rejection of tradition but from within the tradition, belonging (with no apology) to the kind of church that recites one or the other of the historic creeds each time we worship. So my aim in discussing the Trinity is to determine what it would take to fine-tune the existing view for accuracy based on views that are deliberately native to Scripture. Here are the specific challenges I set out:

• Seeking to know "God in Himself" may be misguided. Do we know anything definitive about God in Himself? Did God choose to be known in that way or remain that way?
• Speaking of "God in Himself", do we actually know whether the Son and the Spirit, apart from creation, were meaningfully distinct from the Father?
• The phrase "God in three persons" has at least the potential to be misleading, even given the changes in language and meaning over time. To what extent is it possible to complete the phrase "God in three ______" (insert noun) without obscuring the unity of God or obscuring the origins of Son and Spirit from the Father or obscuring the differences between Father, Son, and Spirit? To be sure, additional explanations have been added and the phrase does not stand alone. But have the additional explanations been adequate? If not, then filling in that blank is not a helpful move and may be an unhelpful move.
• When we call the Holy Spirit a "person" (even granted the shifts in the meaning of words over the different times and languages involved), does considering the Spirit as Person prevent us from considering the Spirit as Spirit? Is Spirit in a different category than Person, so that a Spirit belongs to a Person (in the more modern sense at this point) and is rightly known as the Spirit of that Person? When we consider the Holy Spirit as Person do we lose sight of the Spirit as the Spirit of God?
• I consider it likely that the Son (the Word of God, the Christ) is an intermediary not only in his role but also in his essential nature.

So with all those points of tension, I would not have been surprised to have been asked to discuss some of those points in more detail by people who see it differently.

Scripture and the bounds of certainty

Mark over at Pseudo-Polymath has a question for Sola Scriptura adherents. He names a variety of doctrines and asks how does a Sola Scriptura adherent decide what is in bounds and what is out of bounds.

Generally, I expect to find that someone who trusts the New Testament accounts will believe a thing if Scripture teaches it, disbelieve it if Scripture teaches against it, and is open to discussion and even varying opinions if Scripture is silent or is not explicit. In those "gray area" cases, if an early and unanimous opinion exists among the early church fathers I would expect to give that opinion the benefit of the doubt without quite holding it with the same certainty as Scripture. That's why we (Lutherans) hold to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (Scripture teaches it) but not to transubstantiation, and why most of us do not hold to Mary's perpetual virginity though some do.

I don't think this next was your main question, but I think the quote from Pelikan had an interesting salvo. He implied that the usual explanation for the Scripture "The Father is greater than I" amounted to "manipulation of the Scriptures". I have to agree on this much: the usual explanation of that is disappointing at least and may even cross the line to manipulation of Scripture. That particular text is often explained away as meaning that when Christ acknowledges the Father as greater he does so "according to his human nature"; yet when else is he said to speak according to human nature alone? I have always believed this interpretation to be an unnecessary and possibly misleading move. To speak in Trinitarian language, the Father is the only member of the Trinity who has no other origin but is self-existing; the Word and the Spirit both derive from the Father. "The Father is greater than I" seems a natural thing to say even for a Trinitarian: that the Word, Christ, has his origin in the Father but the Father alone is self-existing. As the self-existing source of the Son, the Father is greater than the Son. Now I will also speak bluntly: I think that such a questionable exegetical move was mainly made to defend the Trinitarian formula. I consider some parts of the Trinitarian formula to be an intellectual syncretism between the revelation of God and Greek philosophy. I know "intellectual syncretism" may be seen by some as fighting words, so let me explain what I mean. The relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit is not cleanly understood or expressed with complete clarity in the common formulas used for the Trinity. Granted that nobody has yet done better expressing the nature of God using the categories of Greek philosophy, and the standard Trinitarian formula may well be the cleanest fit possible between the nature of God and Greek philosophy. Still, certain things we know about God seem to have been squeezed a little bit to fit into those categories, and it has created a tension in Christian theology ever since. I expect the day will come when we Christians rethink the Trinity in terms more native to Scripture and that, when complete, we will still have the Trinity but not one so determined to see things through the lenses of ancient Greek thought categories. At the time the Trinity was formulated, much of the Christian world was still deeply enamored of Greek philosophy, and may have overestimated Greek philosophy's capabilities towards expressing the realities of God. Until such a day as we retool our understanding of the Trinity to go beyond that kind of intellectual syncretism, certain passages of Scripture will show their tension with how God has been fit into those pre-existing schools of thought.

The Trinity, God's Essence, God's Energies

Awhile back, Mark at Pseudo-Polymath graciously took up the question I put down at a previous Christian Reconciliation Carnival: for someone Eastern Orthodox to please explain their understanding of God's essence and God's energies. (See also here and here.) My understanding of the teaching is this: God, in himself and in his immutable essence, is not directly knowable; but that through his energies he interacts with the world and becomes immanent, present, and knowable. It is through God's energies that God creates, redeems, and even transfers attributes of his essence to us (e.g. makes us holy because he is holy). That could be material for several posts right there -- even assuming I'm understanding that teaching correctly -- but I wanted to mention why I'm investigating that.

The reason I asked was this: I think some of the Trinitarian issues are going to have to be revisited along the way to achieving reconciliation in the church as a whole, and I think the Eastern Orthodox understanding of God's essence and God's energies will come to play in that. Before anyone starts to be concerned on my behalf talking about revisiting the Trinity, let me assure you that I have no problem at all with the Nicene Creed, nor with any of the passages of Scripture discussing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, some of the expositions of the Trinity that have come out since have sounded awkward, as if the categories being used (essence/ousia, person/hypostasis) were not really the cleanest fit for what was being described. The Trinity as it is currently taught may be the best job that anyone could possibly do in describing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the categories adapted from ancient Greek philosophy; but that leaves untouched the entirely separate question of whether ancient Greek philosophy (even as adapted) was properly equipped to describe God.

As for those explanations of the Trinity in categories adapted from ancient Greek philosophy, some of the explanations have sounded contrived or forced. My concern is that our current understanding the Trinity does not do justice to God: that the awkwardness of the categories in handling the content is a sign that they are not a good fit. Even the best conception of God using these categories rarely attains to the height of true theology where what is taught can be recognized as good news, life-giving news. The current teaching is excessively technical in a way which tends to rob it of even the possibility of being good news for large numbers of people who are not technically minded (besides leaving "theology" for the "experts" and fostering divisions). In practice, this leads to a popular understanding that is flat and rote. Worse than that, the popular current understanding of the Trinity is tenuous because a flat and rote understanding is propped up by the threat of excommunication. I'm not at all saying that no theologian has done better; but I do think I'm describing the actual state of matters in an uncomfortably large number of cases.

It's not only the Eastern Orthodox understandings of essence and energies that I expect to come into play as we broaden, deepen, and refine our understanding of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I expect we will also need to incorporate the ancient Jewish concepts of God's Presence/Shekhinah and God's Wisdom/Torah (in the broad sense).

Just as a sample of what I could envision -- for the average person's understanding of the Trinity as good news -- imagine if the average person were to have a concept of the Torah as God's Wisdom which gives life, the Word by which he formed the world, the Word which gives form to our lives and transfers some of God's attributes to us, which makes us holy (as God is holy) and bestows on us God's image. Then imagine if the average person were to have a concept of God's Presence in the world through his Spirit, a living and active presence full of His glory, and by which the prophets spoke God's Wisdom. I think then you'd be fairly close to understanding the Trinity in alternative terms (in this case, in Jewish terms). When God said in the plural, "Let us make man in our image", did he speak to the Torah and the Shechinah? How far is that from saying that He spoke to His Word and His Spirit?

I'm not saying that rethinking the Trinity in terms of essence and communication and energies, or even in terms of I AM and Torah and Shechinah, is quite so simple as the quick sketch above. I certainly don't mean to say that the concept of God's energies maps directly onto God's Word and God's Spirit. I am saying that if the knowledge of God is going to be what it should be, we still have a lot of ground to explore, even after all this time.

Mark, I hope you're not too appalled at why I was asking. I would be glad if the 21st century of the church goes down in history as the century of reconciliation; or even if the 24th century did and our century was later considered mere groundwork. I would also be glad if the 21st century of the church goes down in history as the century in which we reached deep into our roots -- and even into the roots of our disagreements -- for more resources to know God.

When feminist theology re-invents the Trinity ...

This continues a short series on whether feminist theology is neglecting the everyday voice of women in the church.

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It is common for the egalitarian camp to offer assurances that placing women in key roles does not amount to throwing out historic Christianity wholesale, but instead is simply correcting some misunderstandings and misapplications. Some noteworthy public examples have not been very reassuring. The PC-USA recently approved referring to the Trinity as "Compassionate Mother, Beloved Child and Life-giving Womb." Let's begin, here, with the Life-giving Womb. I can only imagine what the feminists would say if the Trinity were ever referred to as "Father, Son, and Live-giving Testicles" or something along those lines. To put it more plainly, this seems to be an example of over-stretching the study of the Holy Spirit beyond reasonable bounds, with an aim to make a merely human point. In theology -- particularly incarnational theology as we Christians practice -- there's always the careful distinction whether we sinners are remade in God's image (restoration) or whether God is remade in our image (idolatry or blasphemy on the extreme end, or petty presumptuousness and rank silliness on the low end). I don't see that referring to the Holy Spirit as a womb has any Scriptural merit, but instead it seems a fairly transparent effort to thrust our self-image onto God. I don't think it can be taken so seriously as to amount to blasphemy, but I expect it does amount to rank silliness. That an early, conspicuous contribution of the new leadership to church life is something both misguided and frivolous comes as something of an embarrassment to the average woman in the pews, possibly to women in theology in general. It comes across as a nearly childish form of the "me too!" argument, and the focus comes across as less on God and more on women seeking to call attention to themselves at a moment in the worship service when the focus ought to be on God.

It's very likely that "me too!" needs to be said. It is always reassuring of our shared human dignity that the Bible names both men and women as being made in the image of God. Still, I would be less embarrassed if this point was made with a little more tact than that, and if the image of God did not seem to be used as a pawn in the gender wars. The image of God should be one thing men and women have in common; when we use it in a divisive or narrowly sexist way (as in "Life-giving Womb"), that's an improper use of the doctrine. It is not for us to remake God after the image of only one sex.¹ If the image of God bestowed on us is to be a heartening and life-giving teaching, then it is to be seen as a gift of God to us, the hope of glory, and the dignity of humanity, both men and women in common.

Which leads fairly directly to my next post on the subject ...

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1 - It is likely enough that some of the people recommending "Life-giving Womb" for use in the Trinitarian formula recognize it as narrowly sexist, and see the narrow sexism (let's be charitable) as corrective, rather than such a low thing as payback or liturgical revenge. But I'm skeptical that language of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost was ever meant as narrowly sexist; adding something to the mix that is hard to interpret otherwise than narrowly sexist in its reference to reproductive organs introduces a pointed narrowness and explicit divisiveness that was not there before and is not helpful to introduce.