Trinity Sunday June 12, 2022
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Psalm 8/Canticle 13
Romans 5:1-5 John 16:12-15
In my typical droning fashion, of reading a written sermon, I'd like to drone on like the proverbial Officer Friday with some "just the facts" ma'am, about the Trinity. But by facts, I mean FAQ or frequently asked questions, or more truthful frequently asked Phil Questions about the Trinity.
Q: What is the Holy Trinity?
A: The Trinity is the Christian belief about God being one God in three equal Persons.
Q: Is the Holy Trinity the invention of the Council of Nicaea in the year 325?
A: The Council of Nicaea was a meeting of Bishops to standardize across the known Christian World, Christian practice, and belief, starting with what Christians believed about God, as God was referred to as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit within the writings which had come to be general accepted as inspired writings for the churches, the writings known now as the New Testament.
Q: Did all Christians agree about the Trinity before and after the Council of Nicaea?
A: No. There were different writings by scholars and bishops regarding the degree of divinity of Jesus, and the nature of the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The winner of the Council resolution is associated with Athanasius who argued for the full and equal status of Jesus as both equally God and human. This is referred to as a High Christology position. A priest named Arius is associated with what is call a Low Christology in emphasizing the human nature of Christ. Bishops and scholars had followings in different regions with many having the support and protection of their local governors. So, even though Athanasius’ position won the vote at the council and the canons condemn any other beliefs to the contrary, those contrary beliefs continue in various regions for about another century. There was not actual unity of belief and practice for the period before and after the Council of Nicaea.
Q: Is there evidence for the Holy Trinity in the Hebrew Scriptures?
A: Yes, if one is a Christian looking for that evidence, like the reference to a "Son of Man," coming in the cloud mentioned in the Prophet Daniel. Also, one can say God the Father spoke the words to create and the Word that was being spoken was the Eternal Word Christ, and further the dynamic implementation of creation was the Spirit moving over the abyss. Voila! There is the Trinity found in the creation account. It would be wrong to say that for Jews who are in the traditions the Hebrew religion and Judaism, find the Trinity in their Scriptures. The Hebrew religion and Islam derived from polytheistic situations and the Hebrew Scriptures describe the condition of henotheism (belief in a chief god who presides above other gods). Hebrew Scriptures describe the phase of henotheism while becoming exclusively monotheistic. One can see that anything that looked like the direction of plural deities would be suspect to strict monotheistic religions like Judaism and Islam.
Q: Can the Holy Trinity be defended as true according to empirical verification?
A: If something is only meaningfully true if it can be empirically verified, then the Holy Trinity does not qualify as that kind of meaningful truth.
Q: How can it be claimed and defended that the Holy Trinity is true?
A: First, admit that empirical verification is not the only criteria for meaningful truth. There are intuitive truths, aesthetic truths, literary truth, relationship truths, spiritual truths, and moral truths that are obviously meaningful in the lives of people. The belief in the Trinity conforms to these other criteria of meaningful truths. And these truths have empirically verifiable outcomes, like when we practice active love and justice in physical word and deeds because of our Trinitarian beliefs, these outcomes are verifiable.
Q: How is the Holy Trinity a relational truth?
A: It is found in the specific words attributed to Jesus about himself, about his relationship to God as his Father, and his promise of the Holy Spirit being known to his followers. Since Jesus is the superlative life example for his followers, his words about himself and the nature of God become definitive for how we understand and communicate our faith. Jesus was the relationship location for God as Father and Holy Spirit, and he said that people too could be in a relationship location for the three Person of the Godhead.
Q: How is the Holy Trinity intuitive truth?
A: As human beings, we are limited to having human experiences of God, so we speak about God from human perspectives with human language and human experiences from which we use analogies about God. We understand we have come from Plenitude as the origin of our coming to be, so God as Father is Origin Plenitude. The appearance of one who is human, and God means that human experience is a valid way to come to know the one greater than we are. So, we speak of God the Son, as validating our higher knowledge of God. Further, we know that we exist in an environment which conduct mutual and reciprocal and relationship experience. So, we call the Holy Spirit this omnipresence which allows us to know mutual connection. In this way, we can confess the Trinity to be intuitively meaningful truth.
Q: Can you and I know the Holy Trinity?
A: Not if we think that we have the equal capacity to know. We can know that we are contained by Plenitude and greatness. We can know that our relationship with Plenitude is personal, because we use language. The use of language implies personality; so we cannot avoid knowing God in personal ways. God as Trinity is never known, but God is always becoming known, because relationship is dynamic in time. And God becomes known in piecemeal events of relationships, sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son, and sometime as Holy Spirit. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as original dynamic love relationship, acquires all of the possible attributes which are consistent with the definition of greatness. Knowing the Trinity is being open to continuous future relationship, since as Jesus said, "the Spirit is present to let us know continually about this endless on-going relationship."
Q: How should we regard the Holy Trinity?
A: With the humility of knowing that it is better that God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, knows us and is knowing and experiencing through us, rather than it being about our pride in thinking we know God.
In short, let us not be proud of our knowledge of the Trinity; let us humbly make ourselves available to be known by God so that we can represent the divine persons to our world with a witness to God as Creator, God as forgiver, redeemer, reconciler, and God as continuous dynamic personal connection as the Holy Glue of continual Oneness.
In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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