A couple of days ago, my friend Tim and I sat in our living room, talking theology. It was a revisiting of the days of mentor-student discussing the "joyful science" (we're both Basically Barthians); it was also in preparation of his next step toward joining me in ordained ministry as my colleague. So, we spent some time talking theology and theologians.
The next day, Kendra asked that next time I try to be a little less academic sounding. So I thought I'd give it a try here, with a topic that infuses and enlivens my theology: The Trinity. The Trinity can, after all, sound like an unnecessary and even unbiblical idea.
So here are 10 theses that try to make the doctrine of the Trinity more accessible to non-academic-theologian types.
1. The Trinity is essential for Christians.
It grows out of our experience of Jesus. It is the language of salvation. The Trinity is not an optional doctrine, it is essential. God's unity is not behind God's threeness, God's unity is in God's threeness. This is not speculative mathematics, it is a descriptive theology of revelation. Without it, we have trouble talking about Jesus as the revelation of God.
2. The Trinity is the language of worship, not academics.
The Trinity is not an academic doctrine thought up by clever scholars, rather it grew out of the Christian experience of worship, i.e. it expressed the early church's pattern of prayer to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. The Nicene Creed is the smartest thing ever written, sure, but it's the language of confession, of worship, before it's anything else. This is why if you want the best book ever written on the Trinity, look at St Basil's On the Holy Spirit before anything else. And notice he's teaching about worship and prayer!
3. The Trinity is the language of Jesus, of salvation. "Of" here means not just "from" but also "about".
The driving force of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity was Christological and soteriological, i.e. it served to articulate the Christian experience of salvation in Christ. The first Christians already knew God; through Jesus they came to know God as Jesus' Father and Jesus as God's Son; while in the Spirit Jesus continued to be present to them, forming a family of prayer to the Father and building a community of witness to Christ.
4. What you see is what you get, AND what you get is what there is.
The church's thinking was this: As God discloses himself in worship and salvation, so God must be in Godself. In the technical language of Karl Rahner's Trinity Rule: The "economic" Trinity is the "immanent" Trinity, and the "immanent" Trinity is the "economic" Trinity. What you see is what you get, and what you get is what there is.
5. The Trinity is a triunity, not a secret uniformity.
At the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity is God's being-as-communion. God's unity is not monadic, it is relational. The doctrine of the Trinity is the church's shorthand of 1 John 4.8b: "God is love". Father, Son and Spirit indwell each other in love, giving, receiving and returning love in an eternal dynamic of gift-exchange. Trinity is the word of a social God, about a social Gospel. God is never "alone", much less lonely.
6. The Trinity keeps us open to other religions, not closed off.
If God is Trinity, do Jews -- and Muslims -- know nothing of God? Not at all. God can be known without being fully identified. In fact, the church's identification of the one true God as the Trinity does not preclude, but rather requires, that Abraham and his children know how to refer to this God, and so are able to worship him. Indeed the activity of the Spirit in the world encourages the church to be open and attentive to the presence of God in all the major religions. If you're using The Trinity as a club to beat the truth about Jesus into the heads of the non-believers, you're doing it wrong.
7. God isn't male.
Is the language of the Trinity sexist? Not at all. No responsible theologian has ever thought of the Father and the Son as male, nor of the Spirit (as is currently fashionable) as female. In fact, Gregory of Nazianzus says somewhere in his Orations, that someday, some foolish people are going to think God has a penis just because we call God "Father, Son and Holy Spirit". The issue is not gender but personhood. In fact, it's a strictly monotheistic God, not the Trinity, that is patriarchal -- and oppressive. Don't believe me? Look at the generic "god" invoked in America, and watch how mean and oppressive he sounds.
8. There's no such thing as an individual, and it's a good thing, too.
Father, Son and Spirit are constituted by their mutuality, i.e. they are who they are only in their inter-relationships. So too human beings, made in the image of God: We are who we are only in relationship with others. Margaret Thatcher notoriously said that there's no such thing as society; on the contrary, there's no such thing as an individual: There are only persons-in-relationship. This is the fundamental thing fundamentalists get wrong about God, which makes them get it wrong about being human, too.
9. It's the politics and economics, too, silly.
Clearly the Trinity is not an irrelevant doctrine, it has very practical -- indeed political -- implications. That God is essentially and eternally God-in-relationship of equality and mutual fellowship -- could there be a more cogent critique of hierarchies of domination and exclusion, or of an economics of greed and exploitation? In other words, if Christians want to get their politics and their economics right, get your understanding, experience and language of God right, first. This is why both modern fundamentalism and modern liberalism get things wrong.
10. God is not a puzzle to be solved, but a mystery to be experienced.
Finally, that God is Trinity means that God is mystery -- but a mystery not to be explained but entered. God calls us to participate in his very being, joining in the divine dance that issues in creation and concludes in redemption. In Rublev's great icon of the Trinity -- the very picture that is my Google+ picture -- Father, Son and Spirit are seated around three sides of a (eucharistic) table. The fourth side awaits a guest. That's you and me. If you're waiting for me to give a full and accurate logical account before you believe (in) God, you're waiting on the wrong thing. Instead, Trinity is God's way of waiting for you.