Sermon. "I Believe in God!" How?

 

Sermon, St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford, 30 August 2020

Trinity 12 (Year A)

 

Matthew 16.21-28: Get behind me, Satan!

 

Last week Simon Son of Jonah named Jesus “the Messiah, the Christ”,and Jesus named Simon “Peter”. And we reflected on the meaning of names.I knew then that this week we would hear how Jesus gives Peter yet another label or name. It’s not a name that stuck. It is not hard to see why.

The name is “Satan”.

We know the story well, I suspect: Jesus says that he will suffer and be killed; Peter objects; Jesus says “Get behind me, Satan; this is all Gd’s will.” How it is Gd’s will is a big question, but all the gospels are clear that somehow Jesus’ suffering and being-killed is Gd’s will.

“Get behind me, Satan.”

Jesus’ language strikes us as so extreme that it may well be worth reflecting on what might be going on. It’s not straightforward. I’ll make three points, in growing order of importance.

 

We Christians think of Satan as being another title or name for the devil. There is, after all, a verse in Revelation [20.2] which speaks of the dragon, who is the serpent, who is the devil, who is Satan. All one.

But in fact they may have been thought of as different characters at one point.

Think of the Book of Job. Job begins with a character called ha-shatan, the satan, in dialogue. What may surprise you is that he is dialogue with Gd, and the dialogue is respectful. The satan does not speak from the bowels of hell; he seems to be part of the heavenly court. He is something like a prosecuting lawyer, taking a sceptical view on the virtues of Job. The satan in Job is a title, not a name, and just means “accuser”. We can say he is negative, cynical and hyper-critical. We can say he is bad news. But it’s much harder to say he is, in Job, the embodiment of all evil. It is just possible that Jesus’ use of the term “Satan” here means something like that.   

 

You may not be convinced by that. To be honest, neither am I. I just wanted to give you the full picture. You may say that for anyone to call anyone “Satan” must be about the harshest thing that can be said. But! But, another point: we have to understand how people argued in the ancient world. It was in fact quite rhetorically acceptable to say that your opponent was possessed by the devil and such like, when you wanted to disagree with them. It did not sting in the way it would for us. It was, frankly, quite normal. We do have a flavour of this in the New Testament. Remember in John (7.2) when Jesus says people will attack him, they respond: “You have a demon! No one is trying to kill you”. There - and I think we do sense this - “you have a demon” just means “you’re being very foolish”.   

 

Again, you may not be wholly convinced. But! Another point: we can take comfort in this. Calling  Peter “Satan” did not stick and was never intended to stick. Even as Jesus calls Peter “Satan”, he gives him a way out:

 

“Get behind me”.

 

We may think this means ”disappear”, but surely it is more likely to mean “get behind me” in the sense of “change your way of thinking and get in line; follow me again; be a true follower of mine, and stick close. Yes, your understanding of the ways of Gd has been faulty, and I have called you out in colourful language, but I still want you close by me”. So Jesus is as far from giving up on Peter – sending him away, as if he were Satan – as can be.

 

“Get behind me, Satan!”

 

We are, it is true to say, not a church that speaks a lot about Satan. I will tell you bluntly that I think that is a good thing. We are right not to.

 

True story. Back in the day, I studied Theology in Germany for a semester. I had some famous lecturers. And not only were they scholars, they were also typically ministers. One – Jurgen Moltmann, if you know your German theologians – said that any parish interviewing a minister is certain to ask them, among all their questions: “Do you believe in the devil?”. He said he always gave the same reply: “No, I believe in Gd”. It is not too hard to understand his point: it is important to keep your attention focused in the right place, on Gd. Whatever we may think about the reality and dangers of the devil/Satan, the answer lies in Gd. So keep your focus on Gd.

 

“I believe in Gd”.

 

 

We say it so often. We say it repetitively, within this very service. We may – will – find that we say it rote, without thinking about it, at least from time to time. We need not beat ourselves up for this. It is bound to happen whenever with have rituals and set forms. But it is actually a powerful thing to say. “I believe in Gd”.

 

We’ll misunderstand it, if we think it means the same as “I have worked out - come to the conclusion – discovered the fact - that Gd exists”. It isn’t about an objective fact out there. I will go so far as to say it doesn’t describe a state of affairs at all. Because it is so much closer to: “I place my trust in Gd”.

 

“I believe, trust in Gd.”

 

Some say that the English word “belief” is related to the word “beloved”. So it might almost be like saying: “I declare my love for Gd”. And they say much the same about the Latin word for belief. You will actually know the Latin for “I believe”, because it’s “credo”, which gives us our word “creed”. And there is the school of thought that says “credo” ultimately comes from “cor” and “do”. Cor – heart; do – I give. “I give my heart to.” Something similar can be said about the Greek and the Hebrew: to believe in Gd is to trust in Gd, and to act accordingly.

 

So here is an invitation to take the creed seriously, perhaps more seriously than we have done, but/and/but not as a set of propositions, a set of facts we think we have stumbled upon. We can think of the threefold pattern of the creed as saying:

“We place our trust in the Father, whose story is this…”;

“We place our trust in the Son, whose story is this…”;

“We place our trust in the Holy Spirit, whose story is this…”.

 

I am not suggesting this is easy. What it means to trust in Gd – what we actually do – is a big question. And, let’s be honest, whether we are right to trust Gd is going to be a live question for all of us at times. Believers no less than unbelievers can see the world as godforsaken, can really struggle to believe Gd is in charge of it all.

 

But what I am really saying is, all of that notwithstanding, we can come to the creed, week by week, and indeed in just a moment, seeing it each time as an invitation to consciously place our trust in Gd, in whatever ways are right for us, and, if we can hear it, even a chance to celebrate our trust in Gd. I say to myself as well as to you: consider yourself invited.

 

We believe in Gd.   

How to Fail to Teach the Trinity

London RE Hub. 17 April 2016. East London Mosque and Muslim Centre. Trinity. 
Expanded Notes.

No one teaches the Trinity wholly correctly. This is both because of the nature of the material, and because of layers of historical misunderstanding and misrepresentation. So this paper is long, so that teachers (not pupils, in the first instance) can cut through some of the confusion. For those more simply looking for something to take into a lesson, the leitmotif here is that the doctrine is not abstract and dull, but close to the beating heart of Christian ways of worshipping and taking that worship into life. To get a sense of this, sections (4), (6) and (7) can suffice

1. The Trinity as Commonly Misrepresented

a) The joke about the priest who preached only 'The Trinity? The Trinity is a mystery' and then sat down. No! The joke works by implying that the preacher is simply mystified. But the Trinity is not an abstraction or something for the experts only. Admittedly, it is sometimes portrayed as such even by top Western theologians (Schleiermacher).

b) The usual 'illustrations': Three leaves of a shamrock i.e. a Gd of three separate parts. No! Gd¹ is 'simple', meaning cannot be divided up into parts.

Or again: three manifestations of same thing: ice/water/steam;

even (a real-life rabbi trying to make sense of the doctrine): 'Is it like I am a husband and a father and rabbi, but one person?'. No!

That is the heresy of modalism – Gd as one person wearing three different hats, according to context.

c) Not saying 1 = 3.

In the sense in which Gd is one, Gd is one and not three. In the sense in which Gd is three, Gd is three and not one. Two ways of describing same.

Cf. Duck/rabbit image; light as photon particles, and waves

(but you can't see/describe as both at the same time).

So 'Trinity' is neither a phenomenally difficult equation (or overdetailed map – no 'definition' here)

but nor is it something readily explainable, deducible (we know of the Trinity as result of Revelation only).

2. Trinity as Abiding Mystery

Principal source: Soulen, R Kendall, 2011, The Divine Names and the Holy Trinity (Volume One): Distinguishing the Voices, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox.

A twofold problem with the language...

It is relatively easy to describe the One (or rather name/point to the One): Gd.

Sometimes (confusingly at least to modern ears) 'Godhead' (meaning no more than 'Godness').

But the Church has always struggled to find the right (= least wrong) ways of describing the 3 as 3.

a) The question of class/type

What kind of thing are the Three? No 'kind of' three! But language 'tried' varies:

• (Greek) hypostates/prosopon // 
• (Latin) substantiae/personae // 
• Realities/Persons

Difficult to translate and use. 
But later rephrasing can be little help: Aquinas: 'subsistent relations'. Is that any more accessible?

b) The question of name/instances

How to name the particular Persons in question

• Pater, Huios, Pneuma // Pater, Filius, Spiritus // Father, Son, Spirit
  we might say that this language reflects the majority usage in the NT inasmuch as it deals with our theme (no small qualification of course);
• Theos, Logos, Pneuma // Deus, Verbum, Spiritus // Gd, Word, Spirit
  we might say that this reflects John's (crucial) Prologue (John 1), but also the Old Testament², inasmuch as it deals with our theme (an even greater qualification).

The dynamics of the latter pattern of naming may perhaps be more clearly described as:

• Desire to communicate, speech, breath/silence (cf. R. Panikkar).

These three are held to stand for all communication ('speech' meaning more than spoken words), and thus the bases of any love.

The relationship between these two ways of naming the Persons is unclear.

They are by no means mutually exclusive.

But is one better than the other?

One modern answer to take very seriously is: YES!

The latter is preferable because the former is so male/masculine.

(It is not meant to be so literally: no one actually thinks Gd has male genitalia or testosterone, but the argument is about implication and effect.)

Against this, some present a small-c-conservatism:

the apparently male language comes from our unbroken tradition, part of the deposit of faith which we cannot change.
Soulen gives good answer which works for me:

Language of 'Father, Son and Spirit' is one of three ways of naming Gd in Christian tradition.

It must be there; it need not be privileged over the other two, namely:

• to speak with reticence and use circumlocution, as in fact NT inherits from Jewish tradition although we often miss it (cf. Kingdom of Heaven in Matt etc.)
• to speak indeed of Gd, Word and Spirit but also to 'unpack this' in one's own context.

This may mean new gender-neutral or 'even'(!) feminine language.

The Spirit, especially, is feminine in some languages (Hebrew, Syriac)

In point of fact, innovation is quite common among theologians (something of a rite of passage!)

(these variants seldom make it into the liturgy, apart from arguably the analogy of Light):

i Root, Tree, Fruit; or Sun, Ray, Apex; or Fountain, River, Stream (Tertullian – Church Father, turned heretic!) [So NO]
ii Creator, product, and product or product (Arius). [So NO! This is heresy.]
iii Archetype, Image, Purifying Sun (Basil)
iv The Lover, the Beloved, and Love (Augustine)
v Revealer, Revelation, and Revealedness (Karl Barth)
vi Primordial Being, Expressive Being, and Unitive Being (John Macquarrie),
vii Sat, Chit, Ananda - Being, Consciousness, Bliss – (Abishiktananda = Henri le Saux]
viii Tao, Te, Qi (Paul Chung)

c) These problems with language are not a sign that the doctrine is especially abstract, or different in kind from other language applied to Gd.

To speak of Gd at all is a Mystery. This does not mean something we haven't yet worked out, but one day will, but rather something essentially and eternally beyond us. It is 'ontological'; it is to do with Gd's being.

Cf the apparently easy claim that Gd speaks to the prophets. How? How can Gd convey truly divine truth using something as threadbare and inadequate (from Gd's point of view) as human language?³

John Stott once said that all theo-talk, all formal/academic theology is just plumbing.

It exists to drain away the worst excesses of our foolishness and our sinfulness (self-deceit).

It can never get it wholly right.

It can though point out when something is straightforwardly wrong.

We do still need plumbers!

3. Trinity as 'Derived Revelation' (my own phrase)

The Trinity is not the content of Divine Revelation in the strictest sense.

The person of Jesus Christ is the very content of Revelation.

In making sense of Jesus-Christ-as-himself-Revelation, the NT writers began a journey of reflection.

This came to maturity in the Church Fathers and the creeds.

The shorthand for that mature teaching is 'the doctrine of the Incarnation'.

Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh.

Jesus Christ is the Son of Gd, is authentically Gd, and authentically a human being.

(Gd as Gd is Gd; human being as human beings are human beings.)

This doctrine 'comes first' both as a matter of historic record (cf. Council of Nicea), and also logically.

It is only people who already have come to believe that Jesus is in some radical/ontological sense Gd who are going to have a need, opportunity and desire to develop the processes of thought which lead to the doctrine of the Trinity.

It is not hard to say why. Some questions immediately arise for believers in the Incarnation:

a) If Jesus is Gd, to whom does Jesus pray?

b) (Admittedly it's later before this question arises...) what of the Other Advocate/Counsellor Jesus refers to, whom we believe we know in worship?

c) How are we to make sense of Jesus as 'the Word made flesh' in John's Prologue.

4. The Trinity as Moving, Existential Importance

Principal Source: Zizioulas, John, 2004 , Being as Communion, London: DLT, second edition [first edition, 1985]

Both doctrines (Incarnation, Trinity) were not developed in a vacuum.

They were developed in the Greek- and Latin-speaking world of the Greco-Roman Empire.

That means they developed in a religious context.

That context was the family of religious dispositions (more than just philosophical musings) which together made up 'Hellenism'.

This Hellenism had two dominant streams:

• Monism (everything in the universe, including divinity, makes up one glorious, harmonious Whole; we live well by being in harmony with the One, the All);
• Dualism (everything in the universe is either spirit or matter, or some unstable combination of the two; we live well by freeing the spirit within – those of us who have such - from the deadening influence of matter. Gnosticism – itself a whole family of views and practices – was the dominant form of dualism.

Although these sound like philosophies in opposition, they had one crucial thing in common:they both insist that what is of ultimate value,

the Reality behind all that we see, touch and in any sense have to do with,

is abstract, impersonal

It is Spirit, or it is Nous (pure Mind) etc.⁴

Now, while the teachings of the Church Fathers, in councils, creeds, and treatises, are often taken to amount to 'the Hellenisation of Christianity', taking it away from its biblical basis in the story of Jesus – and in particular Jesus the Jew - actually the reverse could be said: we can speak about the 'Christianisation of Hellenism'. Bringing the Bible's own ideas of Gd to the abstracters!

This means: the Church Fathers in their creeds etc were determined to say a radical No to the presumption of Hellenism, that the Most Real is (must be) impersonal.

Rather, they insisted that the biblical message (the content of Revelation) is that the Most Real is Personal Gd. (While we don't know what that means, it is not a metaphor for something else we might name better; this is the least wrong language.)

This is important, moving and existentially engaging.

It means that the Ultimate is not some distant abstraction but

• Person;
• one who wills, chooses, desires, loves, reaches out in communication and openness;
• a Person who is radically free, is not constrained by the (divine or universal) nature;
• one who wills creation for no other reason than Gd lovingly wills it – so that creation (matter) is 'very good' (Gen 1) and not some side-effect, nor some error;
• one who can speak into that which Gd has willed into being, who can freely choose to love us, creatures;
• one who can even speak of the Divine Nature to us, as Gd does in the Son, the Word-made-flesh, Jesus.

This is all a radical challenge – indeed something distasteful - to Hellenism.

So, now we have:

• cleared away the crude misunderstandings;
• admitted that the language is difficult, imprecise and sometimes contested (and some of that is the nature of all Gd-talk and some of it may be particular to this doctrine);
• brought into focus what the doctrine exists to oppose

we can maybe see how it serves to give honour, value, meaning, and, yes, freedom and sacredness to us as creatures.

We have this value as the creatures made 'in the image of Gd' in our difference (male and female, archetypically, Gen 1.26-27).

We are persons in some ways mirroring the Persons found within the internal love and communication who is Gd.

And it is our destiny to mirror those persons-in-relationship more and more.

So what is apparently a theological abstraction turns out to be intimately related to our 'anthropology' (how we understand human beings)

and our ethics (how we live together, precisely in all our differences).

5. The Trinity as 'Rediscovered' in the West

In theological circles the joke about the preacher who had nothing to say on the Trinity thus doesn't work any more. The Trinity is not some play-thing for the really keen, or difficult equation for the theological geniuses. It 'names' the one whom the Church worships.

The doctrine of the Trinity was never lost in the East.

It has been 'rediscovered' in the West, not least as ecumenical bodies.

These needed to think anew about the Holy Spirit in particular because of exposure to

• ecumenical theology – going back to first principles, behind the denominations' divisions
• charismatic worship within and beyond the Pentecostal movement (see Kate Christopher's paper);
• Eastern Orthodoxy.

So in the 1980s the (then) British Council of Churches commissioned a report and study guide, The Forgotten Trinity (see https://ctbi.org.uk/forgotten-trinity/)

Since then the phrase 'the social Trinity', emphasising the three Persons-as-in-relationship, became not a source of embarrassment but (somewhat) de rigueur.

The prime icon by far was Rublev's Hospitality of Abraham.

6. Personal Remarks in Conclusion

I have come to love Rublev's icon.

It is a great teaching aid, as you can always ask: which figure represents which Person of the Trinity;

Rublev (to my knowledge) never said.

But I did get a bit bored of it when I was studying 'Ecumenics'; 
it was overplayed.

I remain personally moved by

• the idea that 'Father, Son and Spirit' is one way of naming Gd, precisely because, in its difference from all other names, it bewilders us - which is what one would expect if one were encountering Gd (the gendered-language point notwithstanding – there are plenty times when it is wrong and variations are permitted);

• the underlying insistence that Gd is personal (to say again: we don't quite know what that means, but we know it includes the insistence that Gd freely wills, desires, loves);

• and that this personal nature of Gd 'goes all the way down'; it is not some ruse, tactic, pretence or sermon-illustration; it is Who Gd Is;

• the emphasis, holding on to that point, that this personal nature is Who Gd Is even before and outside of creation. Gd was communicating, dancing, relating, giving-and-receiving love, before even time was made (or indeed it would be a form of pretence, or at least a task, coterminous with creation);

• that human dignity lies not in annihilating our personhood; it is in our personhood, and we too, though not Gd, are by nature communion-enjoying creatures, with freedom, and the capacities for free creativity, and for authentic, non-manipulative friendships.

And these texts move me:

a. Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390) [Orations 40.41]

[I offer this as an example of 'mature'/developed Trinitarian thinking, with, I hope, a sense of how it's about a mystical experience of the love of (from and to) Gd.]

'No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Three than I am carried back into the One. When I think of any of the Three, I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.'

b. Leonardo Boff (contemporary)

[I see this following account of the human being as intimately related to the doctrine – to be in the image of Gd can mean nothing less (from The Maternal Face of God).]

'The human being is the known and the unknown, the deciphered and the mysterious, the clear, the studied, the thought, the word, the order, the system – but also the silence that wraps the word, the darkness emitting the light, the chaos from which the astounding may emerge, the mystery that can ever be sketched in outline, but that ever remains mystery.'

Further, the whole doctrine is a good example of the Church learning by experience.

The Church in its worship was treating the Holy Spirit as divine Person before it got round to writing it down in its creed.

Cf. The shorter Gloria: 'Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be for ever. Amen.' and the following.

c. The Divine Liturgy of John Chrysostom

[I offer this as a marker not only that the creed has its normal setting within worship, but that the doctrine, worship and life – or ethics – are understood to be one. Christians 'believe in' or 'trust' the Holy Trinity, when, and only when they love. This is the introduction to the the Niceo-Constantinopolitan creed (my emphasis).]

'Priest:  Peace to you all.

People:  And to your spirit.

Deacon: Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess

People:  Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Trinity consubstantial and undivided.'

Christians 'believe in' – trust in – the Trinity, when they love.

It's all about love, actually

.

[This illustration is of St Nicholas - aka Santa Claus - whose zeal for orthodoxy apparently led him to biff Arius at the Council of Nicea. He was punished for it. But then some angels helped him out.]

7. Practical Remarks After Feedback

After presentation, I have called this paper How to Fail to Teach the Trinity, and not flippantly. For there were repeated questions along the lines of 'if the ice-water-steam analogy/image does not work, what does?' The point is: no analogy works. Ready and complete sense cannot be made of the doctrine. Ready and complete sense cannot be made of any teaching that Gd is with us (within or without the Christian fold). This is not to say it is meaningless, or against reason. For each part of the doctrine can be defended as plausible and 'articulable'. But it is proper that it overall 'blows our minds'.

Indeed, it can truly be said that each of the points of view which the Church came to reject as 'heresy' were themselves attempts to 'tidy things up' and offer full explanation.

E.g. 'Docetism' neatly says that Jesus was Gd because he only seemed to be human. Neat. Rejected.

Arianism neatly says that Jesus was like Gd but not Gd but rather created outside of time, and so worthy of the dignity of divinity. Neat. Biblical (cf. Proverbs on Wisdom). Rejected.

So the creeds do not so much define and explain what Gd does in Jesus and Spirit as reject all simple explanations in the name of the Mystery.

(The above are rejected by those who came to be called the orthodox on the grounds that 'what is not assumed is not saved' – Gregory of Nazianzus. What this means is that there has to be a real, direct meeting between Gd and human being, or we are still apart from Gd, and so not healed of our alienation from Gd. None of the 'explanations' which came to be seen as heresy allow for such a direct 'meeting' – as it were – in the person of Jesus Christ.)

So a philosophical way in for older and more engaged pupils may be to ask questions like:

• What does it mean to say Gd is 'One'? (The point is that this is the one-of-uniqueness, and not the one-of-counting; it is not as it there might have been two or more gods.)
• What does it mean to be a 'person'?
• If 'Gd is love' what else can and must we say of Gd?

For other (and most) pupils the ways in suggested by Philip Robinson in his paper are strongly to be recommended, namely

• to note that we see the doctrine after the fact, as the eventual solution to a prior 'problem'. Thus to feel the force, we must return to the 'problem', namely: how to make sense of the fact that the earliest Christians believed (a) that Gd is One and (b) that Jesus is Gd and (c) prayer for us is not our own work, but that of the Divine Spirit in us? (PR gives biblical references, as does Kate's paper.)

• To refer to works of art which have some intention to portray the Trinity, and ask how they manage to portray the different aspects which the doctrine seeks to hold in tension.

(This is not to contradict the earlier point. All such images, like all the analogies, will fail in one regard or another. 'Even' Rublev's icon is properly not called 'The Trinity' – which cannot be portrayed in iconography – but 'the Hospitality of Abraham'.)

Another way in might be to take a hint from Dan Brown et al. Not to take seriously his content. His fans and others often think that (say) the Council of Nicea (325) was when 'Jesus moved from being a good religious leader and became God'. This is – historically speaking – nonsense. At Nicea, everybody agreed that Jesus was both human and divine. The argument was all about what this meant and what followed. That very fact might make it good to ask: Why? Why did people care? Care, whether Jesus was 'of the same being as the Father' or 'of like being with the Father'? (The difference in Greek is famously only one little 'i'/iota.)

The same might be said of the First Council of Constantinople (381), where the Personhood of the Spirit was articulated. Capture something of the drama.

All of these warnings notwithstanding, of course, all teaching must be age- and ability-specific. In primary school, one may ('wrongly') teach that a poem must rhyme and have a set rhythm; in secondary school for a lot of the time one may ('wrongly') teach pure Newtonianism. No damage is done. Quite the reverse. No part of this paper is to seek to 'police' teachers away from teaching that 'summary' of Christian teaching which works in concrete context. 
Do not let the best be the enemy of the good.

The Trinity in Haiku

Gd is One: no parts!

Nonsense pure to think there might

be more gods: Unique!

Gd wills to being

all there is, from sheer delight;

Love: the Key to this.

Gd's love: unbounded;

no game to help us get on;

that love is Gd's Who.

Appendix One: Some Additional Texts

1. Niceo-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381

And we believe in the Holy Spirit [this is already in Nicene creed of 325 - all following is added in 381 emphasis mine],

the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father*, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified,

Who spoke by the Prophets;

And we believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.

We look for the Resurrection of the dead,

And the Life of the age to come. Amen.

sic. 'and the Son' was added only to Latin versions of the creed in the East, becoming a definitive part of the Latin creed in the C11th, and leading to the schism between Latin West and Greek East which exists to this day (oversimplified history!).

2. From Wikipedia:

[I offer this just to show that the forerunners of the doctrine at least as older than people might think. Remember that the last documents of the New Testament were written roughly around 100 CE.]

Ignatius of Antioch provides early support for the Trinity around 110, exhorting obedience to "Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit". Justin Martyr(AD 100–c. 165) also writes, "in the name of Gd, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit".The first of the early church fathers to be recorded using the word "Trinity" was Theophilus of Antioch writing in the late 2nd century. He defines the Trinity as Gd, His Word (Logos) and His Wisdom (Sophia) in the context of a discussion of the first three days of creation. The first defence of the doctrine of the Trinity was in the early 3rd century by the early church father Tertullian. He explicitly defined the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and defended the Trinitarian theology... St. Justin and Clement of Alexandria used the Trinity in their doxologies [praises] and St Basil likewise, in the evening lighting of lamps.

3. Chalcedonian Definition (first part) 451:

[I offer this as the mature/developed expression of Christology, referencing the two natures.]

'Following, then, the holy Fathers [of the earlier councils], we all unanimously teach that our Lord Jesus Christ is to us One and the same Son, the Self-same Perfect in Godhead, the Self-same Perfect in Manhood; truly Gd and truly Man; the Self-same of a rational soul and body; co-essential with the Father according to the Godhead, the Self-same co-essential with us according to the Manhood; like us in all things, sin apart; before the ages begotten of the Father as to the Godhead, but in the last days, the Self-same, for us and for our salvation (born) of Mary the Virgin Bearer-of-Gd as to the Manhood; One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably...'

NB the gender-exclusive language here can be challenged: the Greek speaks of anthropos, human being, rather than aner, male man.

4. Athanasian Creed (6th century; not by Athanasius, Western use, historic, very rare today):

[This is not really part of people's experience these days. And it was never popular in the East. But it gives a flavour of a pretty crystallised formula for Trinitarian thinking.]

'Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one Gd in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost...'

Appendix 2: A Further Note Contrasting Western and Eastern Approaches

Part of the reason for the near occlusion of the Trinity in the West was the slightly(?) different models of thinking (inasmuch as we can think it through – see above on Mystery) on how the persons interrelate.

All agree that the Persons interrelate intimately. Indeed, they are 'constitutionally' bound to. It is who they are; it is not that they are individuals with their own separate and mutually exclusive preferences (that would be tritheism, belief in three gods). No, they are 'alike in all things save their mutual relations'. Necessarily so, or the doctrine morphs into being either tritheism or modalism. Indeed, they are engaged in a loving 'dance' or mutual indwelling or interpenetration, each of the other, called perichoresis in Greek.

But, in order to allow us to think about their distinctiveness at all, the East tends towards this model:

Gd/Arche/Unsourced Source

('Father' in the sense of Unbegotten)

            /          \

         /               \

       /                   \

Son                      Spirit

(begotten)          (proceeding).

The West may allow for:

Gd/Arche

      I

      I

the Son (begotten of the Father)

      I

      I

the Spirit (proceeding from the Father and the Son)

The East finds this problematic, since

a) it may (admittedly if differently illustrated) imply the Spirit has two 'ultimate sources' which is nonsensical, they say.

b) it relegates the Spirit.

The latter is indeed what happens in some Western theology;

rather than being a Person, Gd of Gd, the Spirit becomes abstract all over again,

as 'the love between the Father and the Son', the glue which binds them together etc.

There can then be an impulse, to think of the Oneness of Gd as

the Persons combined: Father + Son + Spirit = God, the Godhead.

But this, as a composite, once again takes us back towards abstraction/impersonalism. Gd as a committee?!

1. To write God as 'Gd' is in a way my own idiosyncratic style. It has parallels in the practices of some Orthodox Jews to write 'G-d'. This resonates with the idea that Gd's name cannot be pronounced (except by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement). This leads all forms of Judaism to refrain from pronouncing the name YHWH. (We don't know what vowels to add anyway; a + e is an educated guess.) A circumlocution is used, or even a circumlocution of a circumlocution: HaShem, the Name. In English it is typically the LORD.

This English, found in Christian Bibles, in turn reveals that this devout reticence is a practice which Christians took over, even if they did not often reflect on it. If we read of Gd, there should be something which makes us stumble, slows us down. To speak of Gd is never an easy matter. There was a further version of this, when in Greek and Latin, words for Gd and Jesus etc. were habitually shortened, and not for reasons of space. DS (with a line on top) as short for DEUS, Gd; IS (same line) as short for Iesus, Jesus, and so on. It is these Christian practices that I here am seeking to revive. (I say this because the sometimes-Orthodox-Jewish practice is not uncontroversial in Jewish circles, and I am obviously not in position to engage in those controversies.) I owe this practice to R Kendall Soulen, referenced in the main body.

2. I use the term 'Old Testament' deliberately, as (a) this is an in-house Christian discussion and (b) I have come to be convinced that by 'Old' here no sense of 'passing away' or 'worn out' or 'superseded' is intended. This is and remains Christian (as well as Jewish) Scripture. (http://frpatrickponders.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/yousay-tanakh-i-say-old-testament.html)

3. Either Gd speaks to us of truths we can any way understand, in which case the process is in principle unnecessary, or Gd speaks to us of truths we cannot understand, in which case, what does that mean? The alternative is to imagine that Gd somehow 'thinks' like we think (at least at our best) which probably is an idea people carry around, but which looks ridiculous when exposed to scrutiny.

4. Zizioulas (op cit), 16: 'The greatest difficulty [for Christian thinkers] stemmed from ancient Greek ontology which was fundamentally monistic: the being of the world and the being of God formed, for the ancient Greeks, an unbreakable unity. That linked together the being of God and the being of the world, while biblical faith proclaimed God to be absolutely free with regard to the world. The Platonic conception of the creator God did not satisfy the Fathers of the Church, and this, precisely because the doctrine of creation from pre-existing matter limited divine freedom. So it was necessary to find an an ontology that avoided the Greek philosophy as much as the “gulf” between God and the world taught by the gnostic systems – the other great danger of this period. The creation of this ontology was perhaps the greatest philosophical achievement of patristic thought.'

Sermon for Pentecost: Tradition as Change

Sermon. 24 May 2015. 
St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford

Pentecost (Year B)

Acts 2.1-21

Psalm 104

Romans 8.22-27

John 15.26-27, 16.4b-15

Last week Fr Brian told of his first visit to the Holy Land. Now, it wouldn't do if – ever – a clergy team exhibited internal competitiveness. No, that would be wrong. Nevertheless, I feel myself strangely drawn to say... 'When I visited the Holy Land, on each of my three visits there, I too came back laden with anecdote and insight, which I might just share with you, from time to time!

Brothers and sisters, I am joking of course. Really, I want to complement, build on what Fr Brian said last. I want to do that by returning to one place he mentioned, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the middle of the Old City of Jerusalem as it is now. 'Sepulchre' just means 'tomb'. So it is the Church of the Holy Tomb, the tomb of Jesus. This also explains its other name, the Church of the Resurrection.

I might give it another name: it is, perhaps supremely in the Christian world, the Marmite Church. You understand? I am saying: you either love it or you hate it. It so happens I love it (but to go into why would be a distraction). I do get why others hate it. You see, all the main indigenous Christian Churches have a presence there, and some others. And... they do not get on. That is putting it mildly. I might say they live in a state of constant mutual antagonism. This means that when huge numbers of Christians want to gather in the Church at the festivals, typically the Israeli police (overwhelmingly Jews of course) have to be present – police, in the Church itself. What is more, none of these Christian groups will trust any other with the key to the door of the Church. Instead, that trust is placed in Muslim families (who consider it a great honour, by the way).

What this also means is that the Church is run wholly by policing and preserving the status quo. At least it seems to me that nothing can be moved; nothing can be repaired; no times or customs of services can be changed. The Copts, for example, everywhere else in the world, have an Easter procession, with the great icon of the Resurrection when you would expect - during Eastertide. But... in the Holy Sepulchre they have that same Easter procession every Sunday of the year, including throughout Lent. The reason? Nothing remotely theological (at least as it's been explained to me). It's rather that if they once gave up their right to that bit of space, at that time, they'd lose it altogether, lose it to the other Christian groups who are always competing for space and time.

So if I love it, I love it in spite of this weirdness. It is worse than weirdness; it is wrong. It compromises our Christian witness. More: it is a good example of what tradition in Christianity is not.

*

The danger is that we may be so used to thinking that all these words mean the same thing: old-fashioned, ancient, unchanged and unchanging, small-c-conservative, and traditional. In some contexts, that might be fair. If we are thinking about, say, architecture, or cuisine, or musical preference, there may well be a large overlap in meaning between old-fashioned, ancient, unchanged and unchanging, small-c-conservative, and traditional. But not so in the Church.

And the reason why it is not so in the Church can be summed up in ten words:

because of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

What the gift of the Holy Spirit, as a constant presence over and among the Church, means is that within Christianity, tradition means rather the right kind of renewal of the Church, tradition isn't things staying stuck and changeless, it's faithfulness to the pattern of renewal we inherit from the saints.

If that sounds wrong and/or bizarre, consider our first reading. After receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, the disciples move from speaking Aramaic, to speaking any number of languages. They move from being scared and timid, to being bold and public. (Not necessarily in your face, but certainly in your ear.) They speak of the fulfilment of prophecy. So we are in New Times, if not in the End Times.

We see the idea also in the psalm: 'Send forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth'. The Spirit is the spirit of renewal.

We see it also in Paul's Letter to the Romans. True, you wouldn't know it from today's extract alone, but today's passage is part of a wider reflection by Paul on the new thing that Gd has done, in bringing gentiles, non-Jews, in great number into the Christian community.

We see it supremely in the gospel, when Jesus says: 'When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth'. We are to expect new truths.

And one more: we see it also in the creed we will pray together in a few moments. The language we will use, that the Son of God is 'of one Being with the Father [or of the same substance], God from God' and so on, was criticised at the time it was proposed in the fourth century, as being novel, innovative language – as such un-biblical. But those who defended it said the language is innovative, true, but we need this innovation to convey the truth of the Son of God. And these people – not the biblicist conservatives – are those we now call the 'orthodox' and indeed the 'traditionalists'.

In the Church, and so for us, tradition is the right kind of change, change as prompted by the Holy Spirit, who leads us into new truths.

Now, if this alarms you, please don't panic. It doesn't mean throwing babies out with bathwater. It doesn't mean (change of image) re-inventing the wheel Sunday by Sunday. It doesn't mean tying ourselves up with the latest fad or fashion. It has to be the right kind of change, change after the pattern of renewal we inherit. That means it typically can be discerned only over time, after prayer, deliberation, disagreement, and more time.

*

How, then might we change? We will need, over time, to reflect on where the Spirit is leading the Church and the Churches into new truths. We will need, over time, to reflect on the Spirit of the prophecy, which is the Spirit of Pentecost, and the prophetic challenge the Church is duty bound to address to governments and other instruments of power. But for now let us return to the second reading. Paul writes:

'we groan inwardly... [and] the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes...'.

Here, in the first place, we can find renewal of hope for ourselves. If we find ourselves this Sunday morning feeling we do not know how to pray - if we, indeed, find ourselves, if truth be told, resigned to the fact that, while we shall say some prayers, we have long since given up on prayer being important in how we actually live our lives – then we are not in a bad place. Because we will still groan and sigh, in our own ways. And the revelation of God is that, in the Spirit, our sighs and groans are already prayers. Renewal of hope for us, I say, here and now.

But not only for us. I am wondering if one possible form of renewal for the Church is the way we speak with people who are not Christian and who have no religious or spiritual allegiance. Such people often seem to say, 'I wish I had your faith' (or words to that effect). And perhaps we don't know what to say. They seem to think that faith is, well, there are many variations, but among them, they may assume that faith is:

a) a way of seeing another dimension in life which is simply natural for some, but simply impossible for others;

b) rock-solid certainty which never doubts and has an answer for everything;

c) a spiritual entity which God as-it-were injects into some but leaves a long way from others.

We know that faith is none of these things. And it is good that we know this. We know that, even if we are or get called 'people of faith', it may mean nothing more than that we trust that our groans and sighs by the Spirit do find their way to God. And maybe the renewal of the Church will come when we find new ways to say this.

In the Church, then, tradition has nothing to do with preserving the status quo out of fear or enmity. Tradition, rather is the right kind of change. And... who knows? Who knows what change might just come about if we find ways of being alongside our friends and neighbours, to hear their sighs and groans, and finding the right ways to say to them that these are already prayers? Prayer and faith are already not totally alien to them, far from it. So they would at least have nothing to lose in simply seeing what happened if they joined with others who pray, say, in Church.

Amen.