doctrine of the trinity

Look at my post for Trinity Year B. Schleiermacher, you will remember, put the doctrine of the Trinity at the very end of his Christian Faith because he thought it an “unnecessary” doctrine. He meant that it was not demanded by the essence of Christian faith (which he characterised as “absolute dependence” on God). Barth, on the other hand, begins his magisterial Church Dogmatics with the doctrine. For Barth, everything flowed from the understanding of God as Trinity.

I’m with Barth on this one, albeit from a different perspective. The doctrine of the Trinity is vitally important for theologians to grapple with. It concerns the Person and nature of God. Yet its function in the life of the Church - in discussion among believers struggling to become more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ - is different. Here I want to return to the origin of the doctrine, which is christological and soteriological. The doctrine arises out of the conviction (presented most fully and forcefully, though by no means uniquely, by the Fourth Evangelist) that Jesus was not simply a man of God, but God as a man. This was necessary, as Anselm, for example, treats in his Cur Deus Homo, for salvation. Sin was the preserve of human beings. Yet only God can forgive and liberate from sin. Therefore it was necessary for God to become a human being in order to make “satisfaction” for sin, so that sin could be forgiven and Christ can be (as Paul says) the Second Adam. The point is not about Anselm’s theology here: it is about his insight that christology - and therefore Trinity - is essential to salvation. Likewise, the experience of the Spirit who mediates the Life of God (the gift of salvation) is more than an agent of God.

This guides the “use” of the doctrine in the Church: it is to shape our God-talk and ensure that the salvation we proclaim is the salvation that God has effected in Jesus. That Jesus was God incarnate; that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself”; that we have received the Spirit of Adoption necessitates a revolution in the concept of God. “One-ness” is no longer the same as “singleness”, yet multiplicity in God is about relationship between Persons, not about multiple gods. The “infinite, qualitative difference between God and human beings” (Barth, following Kierkegaard) is not about distance, nor is it primarily about degrees of holiness (although it clearly is). Classically, this “difference” has led to the doctrine of divine apatheia - the denial that God can be changed by the world - and the condemnation of patripassianism - the notion that the Father can suffer. God’s entry into the world in Jesus Christ means that there are no “no-go” areas for God - including sin, darkness and death.

To be trinitarian, in other words, is different from being monotheistic, but it is neither polytheism nor tritheism. It is to be committed to the God who has acted to save the world in Jesus Christ and who, by the Spirit, is engaged in the ongoing mission of transforming the world into the kingdom. Everything flows from that, and to be “trinitarian” means to live by the story of God in Christ, made real and present through the Spirit. That is why I argue that it is not the purpose of preaching on Trinity Sunday to try and explain or teach the doctrine: it is rather to show why it matters! And that means rehearsing the story of our world and what God has done in Christ to save it. It means worship. It means calling people to faith in Christ.

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