Sacred Space #11

Here is the final study summary from our Sacred Space series. Over the next few weeks Tony will be summarizing our current study - of his book "Virtually Christan". Peace- Linda

Trinity 12/17/10

The doctrine of the Trinity is highly evolved, not finding full, systematic expression until 451 AD. It describes three persons of the Godhead who share the same substance, and one of whom also became a human being! It came out of the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople and Chalcedon from the fourth to the end of the fifth century, the time when Christianity had become the established religion of the Roman Empire. It was formulated in Greek terms of substance and nature but was rooted in the lived experience of the early church.

In polytheistic religions there is a rivalry among the various gods. In monotheism, the single god inevitably becomes a symbol of solitary might and power. For Christians, the Trinity became the way of understanding God in terms of community, love and equality – without rivalry or violence. While triadic forms exist in other religions and three is a holy number in many cultures, for Christians, the idea of the Trinity grew organically from the person of Jesus.

1 John :1-4 is a riff on the Prologue of John’s Gospel. It was written at a later time than the Gospel of John and attempts to counter the Greek Docetic and Gnostic heresies that were emerging at that time. These denied or down-played the humanity of Jesus. Jesus only appeared to be human. 1 John underscores the physicality of Jesus: “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.” (v. 1)

On the night before his death Jesus prays for his disciples in John’s Gospel (Jn 17). Jesus makes the amazing claim that he alone knows the Father. “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you” (v.25). Here “knowing” refers not to intellectual understanding and conceptualization, but to intimacy. In this sense it is closer to the Old Testament meaning of “knowing” as sexual intimacy. This claim by Jesus comes as liberation: the concept of Trinity is rooted in the practice of love witnessed in Jesus. It brings God into our human realm. Through the concrete ways that he behaved – teaching, healing, serving, dying, Jesus manifests this claim that would otherwise appear megalomaniacal.

Mt 11:25-27 has a similar passage. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” It is a Johannine like passage but written much earlier. It is unexplained in the text but is entirely memorable. It reads like other of his wisdom sayings and is probably authentic to Jesus. It suggests an exclusive intimacy between Jesus and the Father which is not a matter of doctrine but of perfect love unmarred by any division or rivalry. Packed away in these earliest traditions the Trinity is already there.

The Holy Spirit appears in John’s Gospel: “if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go I will send him to you” (Jn 16:7). A three-fold relationship is shown to exist. The Spirit is the reality within the Christian of the unbroken relationship of love between Jesus and the Father. The Spirit comes from Jesus and becomes our inner experience of God. The Spirit is something inside us that is not Jesus. It is poured out on people. And so the only way to describe it is as another entity, and necessarily a personal one. It was therefore through the lived experience of the early Christians and their attempts to describe it that the concept of Trinity was born. Jesus’ final prayer is that his disciples be one as he is one with his Father. He is praying for the relationship within the Trinity to spread out to the human race. The Trinity is meant to be passed on. Christianity is about learning this relationship.

If we relate to Jesus and imitate him we will imitate his crucial formative relationship. Trinity is the ultimate sacred space determined not by architecture or geography but by relationship. If the Spirit is pure loving relationship, then relationship becomes the ultimate sacred. Any place where this relationship exists becomes sacred. The Trinity sets us free from defined sacred space in order to make every space sacred.