James T. Cleland - "God in Three Persons?" (May 21, 1967)
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Transcript
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- | Let us pray. | 0:09 |
Let the words of my mouth | 0:12 | |
and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable | 0:15 | |
in thy sight, | 0:19 | |
O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. | 0:20 | |
Amen. | 0:25 | |
Today is Trinity Sunday. | 0:31 | |
So what? | 0:35 | |
Well, it has no conscious reference to Trinity College, | 0:38 | |
either in Dublin or in Durham. | 0:42 | |
It is a festival in honor of the Holy Trinity, | 0:47 | |
three persons in one Godhead, | 0:52 | |
the triunity, | 0:56 | |
and thereby hangs a tale. | 1:00 | |
Some years ago on a Trinity Sunday, | 1:04 | |
I worshiped in an Episcopal church outside of Philadelphia. | 1:07 | |
I eagerly awaited what the rector had to say | 1:13 | |
on this central doctrine of orthodoxy. | 1:16 | |
He began, "For over 20 years, | 1:21 | |
I have preached a sermon on the Trinity | 1:26 | |
on this particular Sunday each year. | 1:29 | |
I have nothing left to say about the doctrine. | 1:33 | |
So I shall talk to you about Zacchaeus. | 1:38 | |
Zacchaeus was the little tax collector of Jericho | 1:44 | |
who once climbed a tree | 1:48 | |
so as to see Jesus." | 1:50 | |
Now the rector, like Zacchaeus, was a little man. | 1:53 | |
Like Zacchaeus, he was up a tree. | 1:59 | |
Unlike Zacchaeus, he did not make haste to come down. | 2:03 | |
Now, on this Trinity Sunday morning, | 2:10 | |
I want to think aloud with you about God in three persons, | 2:13 | |
and maybe you will come to the conclusion | 2:20 | |
that I too should have concentrated on Zacchaeus. | 2:22 | |
Trinity Sunday is an unusual festival. | 2:29 | |
It is linked with no historical event | 2:33 | |
as Christmas and Palm Sunday | 2:38 | |
and Good Friday and Easter are. | 2:42 | |
It is a purely theological feast, | 2:46 | |
celebrating the accepted interpretation of the Godhead, | 2:50 | |
and yet important enough | 2:56 | |
to give its name to the next 24 Sundays | 2:59 | |
in the Christian year. | 3:04 | |
They are all known as the Sundays after Trinity. | 3:07 | |
Now we here in the chapel acknowledge the Trinity | 3:13 | |
every Sunday | 3:16 | |
in our use of the doxology, | 3:18 | |
as the response to the offering | 3:20 | |
while it is carried to the altar. | 3:23 | |
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. | 3:25 | |
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. | 3:29 | |
Now, what is it all about? | 3:35 | |
One approach to the doctrine leaves the inquirer | 3:39 | |
in a state of puzzled bewilderment, | 3:43 | |
which may turn into anger or laughter. | 3:46 | |
How can anyone, even God, be in three persons? | 3:51 | |
The bewilderment is not clarified for the average listener | 4:01 | |
when we are told that person does not mean person | 4:05 | |
in the sense of an individual being, | 4:09 | |
but persona, | 4:13 | |
which is Latin for the mask which an actor wore | 4:16 | |
and points to him as one playing | 4:22 | |
a specific and special part. | 4:24 | |
If we make use of that analogy, | 4:28 | |
then God is a divine somebody | 4:31 | |
who appears in three personae, | 4:35 | |
three masks, | 4:39 | |
in the roles of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. | 4:41 | |
You can guess what is going to happen now. | 4:47 | |
Questions are going to be raised such as, | 4:51 | |
Does God play all three parts at the same time? | 4:54 | |
Are the three parts in a chronological sequence, | 5:02 | |
with the Father first and the Holy Spirit last? | 5:05 | |
In what way are the three personae related | 5:12 | |
each to the other? | 5:16 | |
And don't think that the church | 5:20 | |
over the years didn't ask questions like that. | 5:22 | |
And don't assume that the answers were always the same | 5:28 | |
or even coherent. | 5:33 | |
Let me read you the Athanasian Creed, | 5:37 | |
the official statement of orthodoxy on the Holy Trinity, | 5:42 | |
ascribed to St. Athanasius, who died in 373, | 5:48 | |
and widely accepted by 670 AD. | 5:54 | |
It presents the Catholic faith | 5:59 | |
over against the heretical teachings of Arianism, | 6:02 | |
Nestorianism, | 6:07 | |
and one which I cannot pronounce, | 6:10 | |
Monophysitism, | 6:13 | |
which heresies are still with us | 6:16 | |
under other names. | 6:19 | |
Now stay with me if you can. | 6:22 | |
Here is the Athanasian Creed. | 6:27 | |
"The Catholic faith is this, | 6:32 | |
that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, | 6:34 | |
neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. | 6:39 | |
For there is one person of the Father, | 6:44 | |
another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. | 6:46 | |
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, | 6:50 | |
and of the Holy Ghost is all one, | 6:52 | |
the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. | 6:55 | |
Such as the Father is, such is the Son, | 7:00 | |
and such is the Holy Ghost. | 7:03 | |
The Father uncreate, | 7:06 | |
the Son uncreate, | 7:08 | |
and the Holy Ghost uncreate. | 7:10 | |
The Father incomprehensible, | 7:12 | |
the Son incomprehensible, | 7:14 | |
and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. | 7:17 | |
The Father eternal, | 7:20 | |
the Son eternal, | 7:21 | |
and the Holy Ghost eternal. | 7:22 | |
And yet there are not three eternals but one eternal. | 7:25 | |
As also there are not three incomprehensibles, | 7:30 | |
nor three uncreated, | 7:33 | |
but one uncreated and one incomprehensible." | 7:35 | |
Now let me skip some of it for your sakes. | 7:41 | |
"The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. | 7:45 | |
The Son is of the Father alone, | 7:50 | |
neither made nor created, but begotten. | 7:52 | |
The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, | 7:56 | |
neither made nor created nor begotten, but proceeding. | 7:59 | |
So there is one Father, not three Fathers, | 8:06 | |
one Son, not three Sons, | 8:09 | |
one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. | 8:11 | |
And in this Trinity, none is afore or after another, | 8:15 | |
none is greater or less than another, | 8:20 | |
but the whole three persons | 8:22 | |
are co-eternal together and co-equal. | 8:24 | |
So that in all things, as is aforesaid, | 8:28 | |
unity in Trinity and the Trinity in unity | 8:32 | |
is to be worshiped." | 8:36 | |
And listen to the last sentence. | 8:38 | |
"He therefore that will be saved | 8:40 | |
must thus think of the Trinity." | 8:44 | |
Now, can we, | 8:51 | |
untrained in the accepted philosophy | 8:53 | |
of the first 10 centuries of the Christian era, | 8:56 | |
understand, far less believe, such a statement? | 8:59 | |
Is it any wonder that an English undergraduate, | 9:06 | |
when asked what is the doctrine of the Trinity, replied, | 9:08 | |
"The Father incomprehensible, | 9:12 | |
the Son incomprehensible, | 9:14 | |
and the whole thing incomprehensible. | 9:16 | |
Something put in by theologians to make it more difficult, | 9:20 | |
nothing to do with daily life or ethics." | 9:24 | |
And yet, as I said to you, | 9:28 | |
the Athanasian Creed ends with the words, | 9:31 | |
"He therefore that will be saved | 9:34 | |
must thus think of the Trinity." | 9:37 | |
And our spontaneous response is gobbledygook. | 9:41 | |
Bafflegab. | 9:47 | |
The whole doctrine is a vague triangular blur. | 9:50 | |
If we start our study of the Trinity | 9:56 | |
with the Athanasian Creed, | 9:58 | |
the normal reaction is one of puzzled bewilderment, | 10:01 | |
and understandably so. | 10:06 | |
A better place to start | 10:11 | |
is with one of the New Testament passages | 10:13 | |
which made up our morning lesson just read. | 10:17 | |
The Matthew passage | 10:21 | |
offers a baptismal formula | 10:23 | |
used to this day, | 10:26 | |
be the recipient a baby or an adult. | 10:29 | |
The Pauline passage closes with a benediction. | 10:34 | |
Now let's look at it. | 10:38 | |
Paul changes the normal order of the three persons, | 10:41 | |
which is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, | 10:48 | |
as in the baptismal formula. | 10:52 | |
Now the Pauline change is important. | 10:55 | |
He starts with Jesus. | 11:00 | |
"The grace of the Lord Jesus." | 11:05 | |
Now do we grasp what this means? | 11:10 | |
The origins of the Trinity are not to be found | 11:13 | |
in the lecture halls of the philosophers | 11:18 | |
but in the experience of the first Christians. | 11:23 | |
Paul starts with what he had come to know about God | 11:29 | |
because of the teaching and person of Jesus | 11:34 | |
to whom he gave the name Lord, | 11:38 | |
the one who reveals the will and character of God. | 11:42 | |
When Paul, the Christian, thought of God, | 11:48 | |
he thought in terms of what Jesus had made known. | 11:53 | |
God, the author of grace, | 11:58 | |
graciousness, | 12:02 | |
forgiveness, | 12:04 | |
deliverance from self, | 12:06 | |
transformation. | 12:09 | |
He wrote in that same letter to the Corinthians | 12:11 | |
that he had experienced the light of the knowledge | 12:14 | |
of the glory of God | 12:19 | |
in the face of Christ. | 12:22 | |
He had experienced the light of the knowledge | 12:26 | |
of the glory of God | 12:30 | |
in the face of Christ. | 12:33 | |
The fact of Jesus Christ | 12:36 | |
was definitive for Paul the Christian | 12:38 | |
when he thought of God. | 12:42 | |
But Paul had been a Jew. | 12:46 | |
Now what does that signify? | 12:49 | |
He had been taught about God. | 12:51 | |
Creator and preserver. | 12:54 | |
Lord of history. | 12:56 | |
Giver of the law. | 12:58 | |
He knew God as awful, | 13:00 | |
just, | 13:05 | |
sovereign. | 13:06 | |
He worshiped that God. | 13:08 | |
There was nothing casual about his devotion. | 13:10 | |
He was trained as a rabbi and as an earnest Pharisee. | 13:13 | |
He was a good man. | 13:19 | |
His persecution of the church was a sign | 13:23 | |
of his legal goodness. | 13:28 | |
And he never gave up that primary loyalty to God. | 13:31 | |
But under the influence of Jesus, | 13:37 | |
he brought a new attribute into his view of God. | 13:40 | |
God was still creator, sovereign, judge, | 13:44 | |
but he was also Father. | 13:50 | |
And that emphasis influenced the others. | 13:54 | |
And so the second phrase in Paul's benediction, | 13:58 | |
not the first, | 14:01 | |
but the second is, | 14:03 | |
"And the love of God." | 14:05 | |
If he had been dictating more carefully, | 14:10 | |
he would've added two more words. | 14:13 | |
And the love of God the Father. | 14:17 | |
Love is upon the throne. | 14:22 | |
Paul learned that from Jesus. | 14:25 | |
There's a third element in Paul's religious experience | 14:29 | |
and it is expressed in the last phrase of the benediction, | 14:33 | |
"And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit." | 14:38 | |
A key word in the Acts of the Apostles is power. | 14:43 | |
Power. | 14:49 | |
The disciples were changed men after the Resurrection. | 14:50 | |
The 11 who had fled from Jerusalem | 14:55 | |
and deserted Jesus at the time of his trial and crucifixion | 14:58 | |
would now stand up to anybody. | 15:02 | |
Ecclesiastical officials. | 15:06 | |
Imperial officers. | 15:09 | |
Angry mobs. | 15:11 | |
They were dynamite. | 15:13 | |
And dunamis, dynamis is the Greek word for power. | 15:17 | |
If you asked them what happened, what caused the change, | 15:25 | |
they would say the Spirit is in us. | 15:28 | |
If you pressed the matter further and asked, what spirit? | 15:32 | |
They would be inconsistently consistent. | 15:38 | |
Let Paul speak for them | 15:43 | |
In three successive verses, in his letter to the Romans, | 15:45 | |
Paul uses as identical terms, | 15:51 | |
the spirit, | 15:55 | |
the spirit of God, | 15:57 | |
the spirit of Christ, | 16:00 | |
Christ, | 16:02 | |
the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead, | 16:04 | |
he who raised Christ Jesus, | 16:07 | |
his spirit. | 16:10 | |
Seven synonyms in three verses. | 16:12 | |
And all of these, which are the same spirit, dwell in you. | 16:18 | |
The indwelling spirit of God the Father is tested, | 16:26 | |
controlled, | 16:31 | |
made normative | 16:33 | |
by the teaching and life of Jesus of Nazareth. | 16:36 | |
And thus Paul's experience of God was threefold. | 16:41 | |
Trinitarianism began when men made this discovery, | 16:47 | |
that they could not say all they meant by the word "God" | 16:53 | |
until they had said Father, Son, Spirit. | 17:00 | |
But "Son" was the word which controlled the other two. | 17:06 | |
It is because of Jesus | 17:14 | |
that Christianity has been, in its main line, | 17:16 | |
a Trinitarian religion. | 17:21 | |
And if we would understand the doctrine of the Trinity, | 17:24 | |
the place to begin is not with the creeds, | 17:27 | |
but with the experience of the early Christians, | 17:31 | |
as it is recorded in the New Testament, | 17:36 | |
summed up in a baptismal formula | 17:40 | |
and a benediction. | 17:43 | |
And yet we mustn't stop there. | 17:47 | |
And here's where the intellectual difficulties begin. | 17:50 | |
Canon Hodgson, in his book "The Doctrine of the Trinity," | 17:56 | |
has put his finger on the cause of all the problems | 18:00 | |
which have pestered this doctrine for centuries. | 18:06 | |
And he has done it in one sentence. | 18:10 | |
"Christianity began | 18:16 | |
as a Trinitarian religion | 18:19 | |
with a Unitarian theology." | 18:23 | |
Christianity began as a Trinitarian religion, | 18:28 | |
that was the experience, | 18:31 | |
with a Unitarian theology. | 18:33 | |
The early Christians knew God as creator, | 18:37 | |
as revealed in Jesus, | 18:40 | |
as experienced in the Spirit. | 18:41 | |
But the early Christians were Jews. | 18:44 | |
They believed theologically in one God. | 18:47 | |
And the trouble arose depending where the emphasis was laid | 18:52 | |
on one God or on three persons. | 18:58 | |
And so two parties came into being. | 19:04 | |
Each side believed both emphasis | 19:07 | |
but each was more emphatic about one of the emphasis. | 19:11 | |
And this is how heresy arises, | 19:17 | |
for heresy is never a lie, per se. | 19:20 | |
Heresy is an over-emphasis | 19:27 | |
of one aspect of a double truth. | 19:31 | |
Now do not be upset by this threefold expression of God | 19:36 | |
or by this threefold distinction within the Godhead. | 19:40 | |
It's not peculiar to Christianity. | 19:45 | |
Pitney Van Dusen tells of seeing in India | 19:50 | |
a black ebony head | 19:53 | |
showing three faces, | 19:57 | |
a black ebony head showing three faces. | 20:01 | |
And the Maharaja who owned it explained, | 20:06 | |
"That is a representation of our Hindu deity. | 20:10 | |
But unlike your Christian deity, | 20:16 | |
we do not believe in three gods | 20:20 | |
but in a single God with three faces." | 20:23 | |
The austere face was Brahma, | 20:28 | |
the ultimate reality. | 20:31 | |
The distorted face was Shiva, | 20:34 | |
the destroyer. | 20:37 | |
The gentle face was Vishnu, | 20:39 | |
the restorer. | 20:43 | |
And the question comes up when we decide | 20:46 | |
whether to stress a single head or the three faces, | 20:49 | |
be we Hindu or Christian. | 20:55 | |
If we stress the faces, the persons, | 20:59 | |
then the problem is, how the three persons can be one God? | 21:03 | |
What is the relation of each person to the others? | 21:09 | |
Now we move from the Trinity of experience | 21:13 | |
to the Trinity of speculation, | 21:17 | |
of theology. | 21:20 | |
The persons can be so individualized | 21:22 | |
that we end up with three Gods. | 21:26 | |
A committee of three with the Father in the chair. | 21:30 | |
A kind of theological troika. | 21:35 | |
This has been the stress | 21:39 | |
and it's been the danger of the Greek Orthodox Church, | 21:40 | |
which has been accused of tritheism, | 21:44 | |
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit | 21:48 | |
being three distinct Gods. | 21:50 | |
If on the other hand, we stressed the unity, | 21:53 | |
the black ebony head, then the personae are masks, | 21:57 | |
faces, | 22:03 | |
parts in a drama, | 22:04 | |
rather than individual entities. | 22:06 | |
And now the problem is, | 22:09 | |
to separate God the Father from Jesus the Son | 22:11 | |
as distinct individualities. | 22:16 | |
We know ourselves in various personae. | 22:20 | |
Let us take an example. | 22:24 | |
Chaplain Wilkinson is somewhere in this congregation. | 22:27 | |
We know him as one entity, | 22:32 | |
one individuality, | 22:34 | |
in at least three personae, three masks, | 22:37 | |
three modes of being. | 22:42 | |
He is the son of his mother, | 22:45 | |
the husband of his wife, | 22:47 | |
and the father of his children. | 22:49 | |
This is Howard in three persons. | 22:53 | |
As a son, he is not a husband. | 22:57 | |
As a husband, he is not a father. | 23:00 | |
As a father, he is not a son. | 23:04 | |
But what is he at a family gathering, | 23:09 | |
where mother, wife, and children are all present? | 23:14 | |
Is he a human chameleon? | 23:20 | |
He is always Howard Wilkinson, but is he the same Howard | 23:24 | |
in his three differing relationships? | 23:29 | |
And the answer is no. | 23:33 | |
And yes. | 23:36 | |
Analogically, this primary emphasis on the unity of God | 23:41 | |
has prevailed in the Western church | 23:47 | |
ever since St. Augustine at the end of the fourth century. | 23:50 | |
The doctrine of the Trinity stresses unity with diversity | 23:55 | |
and diversity within unity, | 24:00 | |
which is true of religious experience | 24:04 | |
but a first-class enigma | 24:07 | |
for theological consistency of thought. | 24:11 | |
Well, what are we going to do with God in three persons? | 24:16 | |
Let us claim neither too much | 24:20 | |
nor too little for the doctrine. | 24:22 | |
It is very anthropomorphic. Of course it is. | 24:25 | |
What do you expect? | 24:28 | |
It is man trying to understand God | 24:30 | |
in terms of what he best knows, | 24:35 | |
which is man. | 24:39 | |
It's very analogical. | 24:42 | |
Of course it is. What do you expect? | 24:44 | |
Theology cannot be interrogated by the methods of the lab. | 24:48 | |
The doctrine of the Trinity | 24:54 | |
is man using relationships he understands | 24:56 | |
to explain relationships which are new to him. | 25:01 | |
Like father and son, | 25:06 | |
which he knows, | 25:10 | |
for the relationship of God and Jesus, | 25:12 | |
at which he guesses. | 25:17 | |
It's very Christocentric. Yes, it is. | 25:20 | |
It is because of Jesus the Christ | 25:24 | |
and/or because of the early Christians' experience of him | 25:26 | |
that our faith is Trinitarian. | 25:31 | |
All I would ask of us on this Trinity Sunday, | 25:34 | |
this rainy festival, | 25:38 | |
is to seek to understand | 25:41 | |
what the church has been trying to say | 25:43 | |
when it affirms God in three persons. | 25:47 | |
And then we may come to the place | 25:52 | |
where we can appreciate its witness, | 25:55 | |
even though we have all kinds of difficulties | 26:00 | |
with its mode of thought. | 26:05 | |
Maybe though we cannot affirm its creeds, | 26:08 | |
we shall be able to sing its hymns | 26:13 | |
with affection, | 26:16 | |
even with joy. | 26:18 | |
Holy, holy, holy, | 26:21 | |
God in three persons, | 26:24 | |
blessed Trinity. | 26:26 | |
And so after an ascription of praise to the Trinity, | 26:29 | |
let us sing one of these hymns. | 26:34 | |
To God the Father, | 26:42 | |
God the Son, | 26:43 | |
and God the Spirit, | 26:45 | |
three in one, | 26:47 | |
hallelujah. | 26:49 | |
Amen. | 26:51 | |
(church organ music) | 26:55 | |
(congregation singing) | 27:21 | |
(church organ music faintly in background) | 29:44 | |
(church organ music faintly in background) | 30:14 | |
(church choir singing) | 30:21 |
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