with Rev Dr Chris Walker
Trinity
In my first church placement at Bondi Beach I had a surfboard that was custom made. The guy who made the surfboard for me put a cross on it and the word “Trinity” over it. This was mentioned in a newspaper article on me as the new minister at Chapel by the Sea.
Often people speak of the doctrine of the “Trinity” as a mysterious and difficult concept. It is mysterious for it relates to the nature of God who is always beyond our capacity to grasp fully. Nevertheless, Trinity is a central and helpful theological concept in Christian understanding.
Christian thought focuses on Jesus Christ. In him we hold that God was present in a unique way. He was more than a holy man or prophet. His life and teaching culminating in his death and resurrection led the early disciples to speak of him in exalted terms. As the risen Lord he was spoken of in the same way that they spoke of God. Through Jesus God was at work. In his earthly ministry, the way Jesus was able to heal people and caste out demons was taken as a clear indication that God’s power was active in him. They were signs that God’s reign was breaking into the present through Jesus. His death on the cross was understood not simply as the unfortunate end of a leader whose life was cut short by the religious and political authorities. His death was held to be a representative one highlighting God’s love for humanity. In Jesus God identified with this person and was willing to endure the worst that people could do to him, namely suffer and die a cruel death. In doing so evil and injustice were exposed. The resurrection showed that God is stronger than the powers that opposed Jesus. Evil and death did not have the last word, God’s love did. So the early followers of Jesus held the cross to demonstrate God’s love, forgiveness and reconciliation. The theological term for God’s activity in Jesus is incarnation. God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self (Paul). In Jesus God’s word became flesh and dwelt among us (John).
As the early church reflected on the significance of Jesus, they came to say that while Jesus was fully human he was also fully divine. This did not mean that Jesus was God in the sense that he prayed to himself. Clearly Jesus prayed to the Father, taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father in heaven…” and sought to do the Father’s will no matter how hard that might be (consider his prayer at Gethsemane). What it did mean was an expansion of how we understand the nature of God. God was not only God the Father, the Creator and Lord of all. God was also in the Son, Jesus. Thus there was held to be differentiation in God. God was Father and Son in intimate relationship.
This raised the question of the status of the Spirit. Was the Spirit somehow less than God or equal to God? The Holy Spirit was recognised to be God’s very Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen One. The Spirit was held to be at work in the world. Indeed it is impossible to get away from the Spirit of God’s presence (Psalm 139). The Spirit was especially linked to the life and ministry of Jesus, from birth to resurrection. John says the Spirit will not speak on his own but will glorify Jesus (John 16). The Spirit is given to followers of Jesus and provides gifts and fruit (Galatians 5) to enable people to live as a community of God, the body of Christ, and become more like Jesus Christ in the quality of their lives (Ephesians 4).
This means a further differentiation in God. God was Father, Son and Spirit in an inter-related way. So the idea of God as Trinity moves us away from thinking of God as a simple, single identity. Nor are we to think of God as being in effect three gods. Rather God is to be thought of as beyond us (transcendent) and with us and all creation (immanent) and even to identify with a particular individual at a specific point in time (Jesus of Nazareth). The risen Jesus is one with God and God’s Spirit.
God created the universe. God redeems it and would sanctify it. God in God’s freedom has created the universe, the world and all that is in it. God granted the world a relative independence and respects the freedom given to the world and its creatures, most notably humans. It was out of love and a desire, it seems, to create something that was not God and had its own dynamic qualities.
God has also surprisingly chosen to relate closely to the world even to the point of subjecting God’s self to the contingencies of life, a particular human life. God does so out of love for creation and for humans who have misused the freedom granted to them. God suffers with creation and especially sinful and suffering humanity. In Jesus God has acted to redeem and reconcile the world to God’s self.
God would also lead the world and humans towards the fulfilment God intends for them. This is not a simple progression towards an ever better world. History is more complicated and ambiguous than that. Yet God does want to sanctify the world through humans becoming more fully the human beings they potentially can be. This takes place through the work of the Spirit touching human spirits to enable them to become more like Jesus Christ. This is not just an individual matter for God desires that God’s reign of love, justice and peace come. Jesus inaugurated this rule of God and said it was coming. While its full realisation is beyond this life, eschatologically, it can become more of a reality in this life.
The Trinity then is about God who is a differentiated God, who functions as Creator, Word and Spirit. More personally, God is Father, Son and Spirit, a community of love. This Triune God has identified with us in Jesus and continues to be present by the Spirit. God not only created and creates, but redeems and reconciles, and moves us towards fulfilment and sanctification.
Chris Walker
(National Consultant Christian Unity, Doctrine & Worship)