These are dark days for the Vicar of St Stephen’s Ambridge. His engagement to a local solicitor who just happens to be a devout Hindu has been the subject of lurid speculation in the local press. It has prompted a display of prudery on the part of one of his churchwardens that has taken even diehard Archers fans by surprise, and has inspired the publication on the internet of a ditty cataloguing the peaks and troughs of his ministry among the simple country folk of Borsetshire. It’s to be sung to a well-known Gilbert and Sullivan tune (not that I’ll inflict that on you), and it goes like this:
I've taken up each trendy cause, I've filled the manse with down-and-outsI'm very good at counselling (I say "It's swings and roundabouts")It won't be long till I've removed all pews from the vicinity But please don't press me hard about the meaning of the Trinity.
Please don't press me hard about the meaning of the Trinity…this is the day that the preacher fears above all others, of course. It is the day when he or she has to stand before the faithful and find something to say (preferably something new and full of insight) about the central mystery of orthodox Christian doctrine, the mystery that appals our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters and remains the surest way of really upsetting a Jehovah’s Witness, the mystery of God the Holy Trinity..
I’ve never had the benefit of hearing the Vicar of Ambridge preach on the meaning of the Trinity, but my guess would be that he is a devotee of what has become known as its ‘social’ meaning. Put simply, if that is not a contradiction it terms, belief in the Trinity means belief in one God, but in one God who is three Persons. Any attempt to explain that further, and there have been many, must inevitably emphasize the One God at the expense of the Three Persons, or the Three Persons at the expense of the One God. The social understanding definitely does the latter, and in so doing it draws extensively on the tradition of the Eastern Churches, and, alongside the vogue for all things Orthodox, such as John Taverner’s music and Andrei Rublev’s famous icon, it has been hugely fashionable and influential in recent years.
God, say social Trinitarians, is a perfect community. Father, Son and Spirit are locked in an eternal embrace that is characterized by their giving to one another and receiving from one another mutual and reciprocal love. The internal life of the Trinity models a pattern of unity amidst diversity, and so God is in Godself an exemplar for human behaviour and human belonging. We are called to live in perfect love just as the divine family lives in perfect love.
This is infinitely preferable, in my view, to the classical Western understanding of the Trinity. Ever influenced by Platonic thought this has constantly emphasized the essential unity of God and his utter changelessness and impassibility. But although I owe a personal debt to the social Trinitarians I find myself increasingly dissatisfied with their understanding of God, or at least with some of its more casual and sloppy manifestations. The reason is that I can’t help thinking it a little smug. It may be very reassuring to conceive of God’s interior life as being a life of love given and received in perfect proportions, but I find myself asking, (and feeling rather churlish as I do so), well, what about us?
We inhabit a world whose internal dynamics are not those of perfect love, a world whose internal dynamics are rather different. We need look no further than the streets of this city, in which young men are stabbed or shot every week, or so it seems. The eternal dance of love that is the social Trinity’s reality is all very well, but what difference can it make to Lambeth or Stockwell’ internal reality? Our exhortation that God’s life is different to ours and that we had better change ours to match his echoes mockingly around the car-parks and estates that are the backdrop to so much of this city’s life.
It seems to me that we are in need of a theology which more robustly links the Trinity to earth, air, fire and water; to bubbling magma and shifting tectonic plates; to asphalt, glass and concrete; to flesh and blood; to a poisoned atmosphere and a changing climate. We are in need of a theology that does not detach God from our lived reality and lock him up in a realm we label ‘spiritual’; we are in need of a theology that only the Trinity can provide.
We need to learn to speak more confidently of God the Father: of God the creative energy that blew the universe into being and that crackles at the heart of all matter. This is God who cradles creation in his arms, sustaining it at every second, ceaselessly pouring himself out into it, giving himself as our life-blood and beating heart.
We need to learn to speak more confidently of God the Son: of God the enfleshed reality in our midst. This is the incarnate God, incarnation not being something God gave up on the first Ascension Day. It is something as fundamental to God’s nature as is creation. God the Son is among us as surely as he was when Jesus of Nazareth walked the byways of Galilee and sought out the poor and the despised. Look under the fallen buildings of Chengdu or into the heart of the Burmese cyclone, look at those places where God’s people are suffering, and there you will see divine footprints, there you will place your fingers into the eternal wounds of Jesus Christ.
And we need to learn to speak more confidently of God the Spirit: of God the bringer of truth and unity. This is the God who burns in our hearts and who today reaches out to embrace us, God whose impetus is always towards our unity and never towards our division, God whose leading is always into truth and never into suspicion and fear.
To to this God, the Triune Majesty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be all honour, glory and praise, today and always. Amen.
I've taken up each trendy cause, I've filled the manse with down-and-outsI'm very good at counselling (I say "It's swings and roundabouts")It won't be long till I've removed all pews from the vicinity But please don't press me hard about the meaning of the Trinity.
Please don't press me hard about the meaning of the Trinity…this is the day that the preacher fears above all others, of course. It is the day when he or she has to stand before the faithful and find something to say (preferably something new and full of insight) about the central mystery of orthodox Christian doctrine, the mystery that appals our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters and remains the surest way of really upsetting a Jehovah’s Witness, the mystery of God the Holy Trinity..
I’ve never had the benefit of hearing the Vicar of Ambridge preach on the meaning of the Trinity, but my guess would be that he is a devotee of what has become known as its ‘social’ meaning. Put simply, if that is not a contradiction it terms, belief in the Trinity means belief in one God, but in one God who is three Persons. Any attempt to explain that further, and there have been many, must inevitably emphasize the One God at the expense of the Three Persons, or the Three Persons at the expense of the One God. The social understanding definitely does the latter, and in so doing it draws extensively on the tradition of the Eastern Churches, and, alongside the vogue for all things Orthodox, such as John Taverner’s music and Andrei Rublev’s famous icon, it has been hugely fashionable and influential in recent years.
God, say social Trinitarians, is a perfect community. Father, Son and Spirit are locked in an eternal embrace that is characterized by their giving to one another and receiving from one another mutual and reciprocal love. The internal life of the Trinity models a pattern of unity amidst diversity, and so God is in Godself an exemplar for human behaviour and human belonging. We are called to live in perfect love just as the divine family lives in perfect love.
This is infinitely preferable, in my view, to the classical Western understanding of the Trinity. Ever influenced by Platonic thought this has constantly emphasized the essential unity of God and his utter changelessness and impassibility. But although I owe a personal debt to the social Trinitarians I find myself increasingly dissatisfied with their understanding of God, or at least with some of its more casual and sloppy manifestations. The reason is that I can’t help thinking it a little smug. It may be very reassuring to conceive of God’s interior life as being a life of love given and received in perfect proportions, but I find myself asking, (and feeling rather churlish as I do so), well, what about us?
We inhabit a world whose internal dynamics are not those of perfect love, a world whose internal dynamics are rather different. We need look no further than the streets of this city, in which young men are stabbed or shot every week, or so it seems. The eternal dance of love that is the social Trinity’s reality is all very well, but what difference can it make to Lambeth or Stockwell’ internal reality? Our exhortation that God’s life is different to ours and that we had better change ours to match his echoes mockingly around the car-parks and estates that are the backdrop to so much of this city’s life.
It seems to me that we are in need of a theology which more robustly links the Trinity to earth, air, fire and water; to bubbling magma and shifting tectonic plates; to asphalt, glass and concrete; to flesh and blood; to a poisoned atmosphere and a changing climate. We are in need of a theology that does not detach God from our lived reality and lock him up in a realm we label ‘spiritual’; we are in need of a theology that only the Trinity can provide.
We need to learn to speak more confidently of God the Father: of God the creative energy that blew the universe into being and that crackles at the heart of all matter. This is God who cradles creation in his arms, sustaining it at every second, ceaselessly pouring himself out into it, giving himself as our life-blood and beating heart.
We need to learn to speak more confidently of God the Son: of God the enfleshed reality in our midst. This is the incarnate God, incarnation not being something God gave up on the first Ascension Day. It is something as fundamental to God’s nature as is creation. God the Son is among us as surely as he was when Jesus of Nazareth walked the byways of Galilee and sought out the poor and the despised. Look under the fallen buildings of Chengdu or into the heart of the Burmese cyclone, look at those places where God’s people are suffering, and there you will see divine footprints, there you will place your fingers into the eternal wounds of Jesus Christ.
And we need to learn to speak more confidently of God the Spirit: of God the bringer of truth and unity. This is the God who burns in our hearts and who today reaches out to embrace us, God whose impetus is always towards our unity and never towards our division, God whose leading is always into truth and never into suspicion and fear.
To to this God, the Triune Majesty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be all honour, glory and praise, today and always. Amen.
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