Abstract: This article explores the recent rediscovery of the relevance of the Trinity to Christian life by discussing the contemporary understandings of sacraments as symbols, feminism and equality in personal relationships, pluralism and inter-religious dialogue, and the latest attempts to recover the historical Jesus.

Introduction

The distinctive feature of Christian monotheism through the ages is its conviction that the one God is triune. Yet, despite the profession of this Trinitarian creed, the majority of Christians for the past fifteen centuries were practically speaking Christ-focused monotheists, or Christomonists. [1] Furthermore, theoretically speaking, the doctrine of the Trinity has had little impact on theological thought and development for the most part of history. Karl Rahner commented in 1967: We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain unchanged. [2]   In this article I will explain why the doctrine of the Trinity has been largely irrelevant to Christian praxis until recently. I will examine the philosophical, theological, cultural and linguistic difficulties inherent in appropriating this classical doctrine in the contemporary terms of the past fifteen centuries.  I will further explore the rediscovery of the Trinity in the last thirty years as it has found new expression in contemporary sacramentality, inter-personal relations, inter-religious dialogue and the latest quest for the historical Jesus.

A brief history of the development of the doctrine

Since the very beginning Christians have named the one God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit (2 Cor 13:13; Mt 28:19).  Early Christians were aware of this triunity of God implicitly through their faith in Jesus; the closeness of the Father and the activity of the Holy Spirit in the world were revealed by Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Word made flesh and Son of God. Yet as the personal memories of the experiences of Jesus and the Apostles receded over time, this implicit understanding needed explication to define orthodoxy and defend against heretical interpretations. Finally it became the subject of intense debate in the third and fourth centuries as theologians developed comprehensively reasoned explanations of these early Christian beliefs. The doctrine of the Trinity was initially formulated in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381AD) and promulgated by the Council of Chalcedon (451AD). The doctrine sought to explain the very in-dwelling nature of the triune God by examining the Christian experience of God in the history of salvation. The creedal formula demonstrates the concentrated effort of contemporary theologians, in the face of heresy and possible schisms, to rediscover the fundamental meaning of early Christian faith. The doctrine was firmly rooted in Scripture, influenced by contemporary (Greco-Roman) philosophy and, to its later detriment, palpable to the prevailing patristic culture. As such, the initial process of formulation of the doctrine is in itself a model for demonstrative theologising in exploring the possibilities for the doctrine’s expression in contemporary times. [3] The classic doctrine has undergone only relatively minor development since the fifth century and was set forth explicitly in the Council of Florence’s Decree for the Greeks (1439) and Decree for the Jacobites (1442). The doctrine tells us that there is one God, two processions or missions (generation and spiration), three hypostases giving rise to the trinity of persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), and four relations (paternity, filiation, active spiration and passive spiration). [4]

Difficulties in contemporary expression of the doctrine

Clearly the first difficulty of the doctrine is its language. Whilst the doctrine may have developed from a firm basis in the context of the “economic” trinity experienced in the history of salvation, the jargon used to describe the “immanent” in-dwelling nature of the Trinity was abstract. Its “1,2,3,4“ formularisation led to academic rather than practical interest. Without a readily identifiable link to the “economic” Trinity it’s pastoral significance and usage was very limited. [5] Yet another language difficulty arose in the term “Person.” As linguistics and philosophy evolve some words take on very different meanings. The term “Persons”, used to describe the hypostases, or three subsisting relations in opposition, had no basis in the New Testament and was only gradually adopted by the Church. [6] In later philosophical and linguistic usage a person would be recognised as an individual centre and subject of consciousness – a self. This made it difficult to readily comprehend the Persons of the Trinity as originally intended and tended to either a tritheistic or a subordinated monotheistic understanding. [7] A cultural difficulty lay in the patriarchal understanding of God’s Fatherhood, with its tendency to identify Christian monotheism with the rule of God the Father. The insight of the Cappadocians, in seeing God’s Fatherhood as “relation-to-another-who-is-equal,” was lost in the adaptation to the contemporary patriarchal and imperial cultures of the time. [8] The patriarchal culture of domination and subordination, so alien to the fundamental tenets of the Cappadocian theology, was in fact reinforced by the very terminology of the doctrine of the Trinity and proved to be pervasive. Only in the twentieth century has this patriarchal culture begun to recede, providing new possibilities for the original doctrine in the twenty-first century. [9] A further difficulty arose with modern Biblical criticism, which re-opened the challenge to the Scriptural basis for the divinity of the Holy Spirit, reminiscent of the Pneumatomachian “Spirit-fighters” of the fourth century. [10] David Brown identifies four difficulties for modern Biblical criticism. He cites the paucity of references to the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ teaching; the lack of historical credibility for the Pentecost event in the experience and teaching of the disciples; the lack of distinction between the presence of the Spirit and the presence of Christ in the earliest Christian writings by St. Paul; and the lack of personal reference in the occurrence of the word ‘Spirit’ in many Old Testament and New Testament citations used to support the original claim for the divinity of the Holy Spirit. [11] Mackey argues that Paul’s lack of distinction between the presence of Christ and the presence of the Spirit supports a perspective of a Biune God. [12] Finally, there is today the difficulty of taking the doctrine of the Trinity, substantially undeveloped for fifteen centuries, and making it fit into the significantly developed contemporary terms of the prevalent transcendental, political and liberation theologies and post-modern philosophies.

The Possibilities for Expression in 21st Century Contemporary Terms

Most Christians today do not consciously relate to God as Trinity in the formulaic sense (the doctrine of the immanent Trinity). Christian people relate to Jesus because he is like them – human. They call him friend, brother and the very Son of God. They pray to the Father as an adopted son, because Jesus prayed to the Father. They experience a relationship with the Holy Spirit, as Jesus did, becoming Holy themselves. This experience of life as a Christian saved from the mortality of death is the mystery of salvation. The rediscovery of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the context of the economy of salvation is the only meaningful way to understand the doctrine of the Trinity in contemporary terms. In the late twentieth century Karl Rahner developed the concept of Realsymbol and symbolic causality by considering the possibility of a sacramental understanding of the Trinity in the economy of salvation. [13] A person must express oneself to know oneself, to be a person.  People quite naturally use symbols in their personal and communal self-communication. [14] Given this natural human tendency in self-communication, Rahner’s original insight, that the Trinity is the foundation for all symbolic reality and efficacy, is truly groundbreaking in our understanding of the sacraments as symbols in our relationship with God.  Jesus, the Logos with us, is the real symbol of the Logos with God, the Word made flesh. What Jesus is and does for us and for our salvation reveals the indwelling nature of the Logos, the utterable self-expressing Word of God. [15] For God, the fully human nature of Jesus, the real symbol of the Logos, is the model for human creation. [16] For us, Jesus is the primordial sacrament of the self-expression of God. [17] Karl Rahner’s reflection on the symbolic reality of the Trinity in the economy of salvation shows that the Word, the Logos, has been present in creation throughout history in different sacramental symbols. The Word was present at the dawn of creation, in the Word of God spoken through the Prophets, in Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made flesh, and now in the Church. In each of these “sacraments of the Logos” we can see the Father’s will, as the principal cause, initiated in the self-communication of the Word, the history of Truth, and completed in the self-communication of the Spirit of God’s gracious Love. Each symbol (Creation, Scripture, Jesus and the Church) is an efficacious sign and instrumental cause of the sacrament. [18] Catherine LaCugna developed the Cappadocian understanding of Person as relationship among equals and showed the significance of the Trinity in the economy of salvation as a model for all personal relationships. She tackled head-on the issue of our changed understanding of person in the context of a self-conscious, self-sufficient, self-possessing individual. She observes that, in the economy of salvation, God’s whole energy is devoted to the movement of the material to the spiritual. She asserts, “The law of personhood is that the only way one ‘has’ oneself at all is by giving oneself away.” [19] This is the essence of love: a person who loves another, who will suffer with another and who will unite himself or herself with another as equal peer in the communion of love. LaCugna explores the nature of perichoresis, the reciprocal presence of the three divine Persons in one another, as described in the classic doctrine of the Trinity. She goes on to apply the rediscovery of this aspect of the immanent Trinity to the Church as sacrament of the Triune God, in mutual giving and receiving, without domination or subordination. [20] Bruce Chilton’s imaginative, yet informed and plausible biography of Jesus brings the economic Trinity squarely into view in the life and teaching of Jesus. Most interestingly, against the difficulties raised by David Brown and J.P. Mackey regarding the divinity of the Holy Spirit, Chilton contends that the very Kingdom of God, which Jesus speaks of at length, is a Kingdom of the Holy Spirit. Inspired by Ezekiel and John the Baptist, Jesus developed a deep personal relationship with the spirit of God (Ez 36:25-27; Mk 1:8-11; Mt 3:11-17; Lk 3:16-22): and the holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” To Jesus’ way of thinking, the spirit of God, to be poured out on all humankind (Joel 3:1), was the link between God and God’s Kingdom. [21] The very personal relationship between Jesus and the spirit of God demonstrates the distinctness of the two and personifies the spirit, by relationship, as Holy Spirit. So strong was this relationship that Jesus abandoned John the Baptist’s purification practices. His faith in purification by the Holy Spirit meant that purification by water was unnecessary; people were already clean. The clear sign of the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in the Kingdom of God, over the purification practices of John the Baptist, is evidenced in Jesus remark (Lk 7:28; Mt 11:11): Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. [22] This approach to the Kingdom of God and the divinity of the Holy Spirit is supported by James G. Dunn, notably identified by both Mackey and Brown as one of the detractors of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Dunn makes the point that there are echoes of the tradition of Joel, Ezekiel and Jesus’ baptism in the Spirit in the letters of Paul (cf 1 Cor 12:13). Dunn goes on to show support for the personification and divinity of the spirit of God as Holy Spirit in the earliest of Pauline letters (1 Thes 1:6; 4:8). [23] There are many other possibilities for expressing the doctrine of the Trinity in contemporary Christian experience of the one God – terms of religious pluralism and inter-religious relations, for example. Vatican II specifically calls for dialogue with other religions with the understanding that their traditions “often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all humankind.” [24] In seeking inter-faith dialogue, Raimon Panikkar and Jacques Dupuis have both developed hermeneutics of religious pluralism that effectively extend Rahner’s initial insight of sacramentality in the Trinity.  They examine the possibility of other sacraments of the Logos as a means of understanding the reflection of Truth and Holiness experienced by other religions in their precepts, teachings, prophets, teachers and ways of life.

Conclusion

The classical doctrine of the Trinity was the way that Christian contemporaries of the fifth century were able to express their understanding of the immanent nature of God, based on scriptural reflection and personal lived faith experience. Today’s language and cultural milieu make it difficult to directly appropriate the fifth century doctrine to contemporary experience. Yet, the original doctrine is valuable as a demonstration of contemporary reflection on what God’s relationship with humankind, as portrayed in Scripture, says about the very nature of God. More than this, the doctrine reflects deep theological insight during patriarchal times in seeing Godhead in terms of relationship among equals and relationship with humankind. The recognition of the divinity of the Holy Spirit is critical to understanding humankind’s participation in and communion with God, as temples of the Holy Spirit, as experienced by the early Christian communities (cf 1 Cor 3:16). The idea of the Triune God, ever-present in Scripture, was unveiled through thoughtful reflection, adapted to contemporary culture and expressed in vernacular language by the Church Fathers in the classic doctrine. Today’s challenge, as always, is to do likewise. The works of Karl Rahner, Catherine LaCugna, Bruce Chilton, Raimon Panikkar and Jacques Dupuis among others have shown us the enormous possibilities for the idea of the Triune God, particularly in contemporary Christian sacramentality, day-to-day personal relationship experiences, inter-religious dialogue and the quest to discover the historical Jesus.

ENDNOTES

[1] Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism New Ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 278

[2] Karl Rahner, The Trinity (Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Burns and Oats, 1970), 10-11

[3] J.P. Mackey, The Christian Experience of God as Trinity (London: SCM, 1983), 249

[4] McBrien, 329-330

[5] McBrien, 296

[6] McBrien, 324 

[7] McBrien, 321

[8] Catherine M. LaCugna, God for us. The Trinity and Christian Life. (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 393

[9] LaCugna, 389 - 396

[10] J.N.D. Kelly, “The Doctrine of the Trinity” in Early Christian Doctrines (London: A. & C. Black, 1977), 259

[11] David Brown, “Holy Spirit: the Argument from History” in The Divine Trinity (London: Duckworth, 1985), 160-163

[12] Mackey, 246

[13] David N. Power, R.A. Duffy & K.W. Irwin, “Sacramental Theology: A Review of Literature,” Theological Studies 55 (1994), 665-675.

[14] J. McKenna, Symbol and Reality: “Some Anthropological Considerations,” Worship 65
(1991), 2.

[15] Rahner, 32-33

[16] Raymond Vaillancourt, Toward a Renewal of Sacramental Theology Eng. Ed. (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1979), 38

[17] Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of Encounter with God, trans. P. Barrett (London: Sheed & Ward, 1963), 16

[18] Rahner, The Trinity, 99-100

[19] LaCugna, 398

[20] LaCugna, 402

[21] Bruce Chilton, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (New York: Doubleday,2000), 55

[22] Chilton, 69

[23] James D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 418-420

[24] Nostra Aetate, 2.

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Paul Mason, having completed his Grad. Cert. Arts. (Theology) is currently studying for a Master of Arts in Theology through ACUweb, the Internet/OnLine Campus of the Australian Catholic University.