Celebrating the Trinity
Stained glass from St Etheldreda's church in Ely Place, London. Image by Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P. via Flickr, used with permission under Creative Commons Licence.
The church festivals of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost celebrate key events in the history of salvation. Holy Trinity Sunday doesn’t. In fact, the word ‘trinity’ doesn’t appear in the Catechism, the church’s regular liturgies, or Scripture. So why is Trinity Sunday a major church feast?
Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3:13-17) is one place in the Bible where the Triune God is alluded to. A voice from heaven (the Father) said: ‘this is my beloved Son’ and the Spirit of God descended like a dove. Galatians 1:1 makes it plain the Father is God, Romans 9:5 that Jesus is God and in Acts 5:3-5 Luke equates God with the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, Genesis 1:26, Matthew 28:19-20 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 hint at, or proclaim, a three-person Godhead. However, according to Deuteronomy 6:4 and 1 Corinthians 8:4, Scripture also teaches that God is one – that there aren’t three Gods, only one!
To try and grasp this mystery, consider this scenario. When we proclaim the gospel, we usually begin – as did the apostles in the New Testament church (e.g. Peter in Acts 2) – by relating how God has revealed himself to humans in Jesus and reconciled sinners through the death and resurrection of Christ. Speaking in this way leads – as it did the early church – to the doctrine of the Trinity. As Alister McGrath explains:
But if you were to sit down and start thinking about the question ‘What must be God be like if he is able to act in this way?’ you will end up with the doctrine of the Trinity. In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity is the end result of a long process of thinking about the way in which God is present and active in his world. It is the result, not the starting point, of a long process of thinking which can be seen going on in the first four centuries of the Christian era, as theologians wrestled with God’s self-revelation in Scripture and tried to understand it. The proclamation is that God redeems us in Jesus – the doctrine is that God must therefore be a Trinity. It doesn’t explain why God is like this, neither does it pretend to – it simply states that God must be like this if he acts in the way in which Christians know that he does.[i]
The Trinity as doctrine is confessed in the Apostles’, Nicene and Athanasian creeds. In brief:
The doctrine of the Trinity is thus a summary of the story of God’s dealings with his people. It narrates the story of how God created and redeemed us. It hits the high points of this story, affirming that it is the story of the one and the same God throughout . . . the doctrine of the Trinity identifies those great moments in the history of salvation when God was active and was seen to be active. It affirms that God is active in the world, that he is known by what he does, and points to the creation, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and Pentecost as turning points in his dealings with us. The doctrine of the Trinity thus spells out exactly who the God we are dealing with actually is.[ii]
The triune formula, ‘Father Son and Holy Spirit’ (Matt 28:19) is almost a proper name. In Scripture a name involves much more than identify. It denotes the power and presence of the one named. To declare ‘the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit’ does more than identify a deity. It enacts God’s presence, power and purpose. When someone is baptised, ordained, absolved of sin or blessed, it is done in the name of the Triune God. That is, by God’s power and speaking. Thus, by ‘baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Matthew 28:19). God’s triune name is bringing about the new life in Christ.
When pastors declare, ‘In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ at the beginning of Divine Services they confess that the God worshippers call upon is the Triune God who gathers his baptised people. This invocation names who has been, and who will continue to be, at work among his people: namely the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Invoking the name of the Triune God, and making the sign of the cross, is a reminder of baptism. But it is more. It also acknowledges that the congregation has come into the Triune God’s presence to receive his gifts and praise his glorious and powerful name. The Spirit, who calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies his people, enables the congregation to respond to the invoking of God’s presence and power with a firm Amen!
Robert Jenson identifies an important aspect of the doctrine of the Trinity.
The Father is the Father of the Son, so that without the Son he would be nothing at all. The Son is the Son of the Father, so that without the Father he would be nothing at all. The Spirit is the Spirit given by the Father resting on the Son, so that without the Father and the Son he would be nothing at all, nor they without him. None of the persons, therefore, would be God without the others. Neither do they make three gods – ‘the Lord your God is one Lord’.[iii]
It took the church centuries to resolve this doctrine. Despite this, Jenson sees it all as astonishingly simple: What is the true God? The one God is the life lived between the Father and the Son and the Spirit.[iv] From this simple conclusion, Jenson draws an incredibly important insight in relation to the good news at the heart of the gospel.
And therefore the one God can truly take us into himself. The one God is the life lived between the Father and the Son in the Spirit, and so of course he can, if he will, invite us into his life. Which is what the other gods cannot do.[v]
In baptism, through the Spirit, Christians become siblings of Christ and children of the Father. They come to share and participate in the life of the Triune God. While the Trinity is a doctrine, and it identifies and distinguishes our God (for instance from the god of the Jews or Muslims), its ultimate importance is that in the Trinity we come – as a consequence of our baptism – to participate in ‘the life lived between the Father and the Son in the Spirit’.
The blessing at the end of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians epitomises this marvellous reality.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you (13:13).
The order of this benediction is significant; the grace of Christ expresses and leads toward the love of God which, when activated through the Spirit, produces communion with God and with one another.
A classic instance of this participation in the life of the Triune God is when we pray the Lord’s Prayer. When we say ‘Our Father’ . . . we speak having Jesus as our brother and the Father as our father – we live within the Triune God, in the power of the Spirit. The Trinity is more than a doctrine – it is the spiritually-creative centre of our life as Christians.
Therefore, it is absolutely appropriate that Holy Trinity Sunday is a major church feast.
The best response to this doctrine is to sing our praises to our gracious Triune god:
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee:
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty,
God in three Persons, blessed Trinty! (LH 140)
By Mervyn Wagner
[i] Understanding the Trinity, Academia, 1988, p 115
[ii] (p 127-8)
[iii] ‘The God Question’, Lutheran Forum, Nov 1992, p 50
[iv] (p 50)
[v] (p 50)