Toward an Emergent Church Values Set IV

A Recovered Trinitarian Ethos

As the Emergent Church recovers a holistic Tradition and Unity, it is simultaneously recovering a holistic understanding of the Trinity. And an ethos bathed in this understanding will allow the church emergent to properly love, to worship, to pray, to serve, to steward creation, to see prophetically, to value diversity, in short, to live as Christ-followers. okay, i may not develop each of these outworkings in this installment, but stay with me and we'll see how far this goes. First, a look back at the last paradigm.

The Enlightenment stunted our Trinity concept.
One result of the high-Modern tendency towards atomization, towards individualisation, was a tendency to trifurcate the Holy Trinity much in the way one would trisect the head, abdomen, and thorax of an ant in a science classroom. By objectifying the Trinity (like any other Modern subject) as something to be mastered, we threw a high-intensity beam on any one person of the Trinity to the exclusion of the others. Under modernity, we learned by isolation. We wanted mastery, not mystery. Trinity data, please. Rationality sucked the mystery out of the Trinity.

In 1987, when I was in high school, a well-meaning youth minister told me, with some pride, that his denomination had the Trinity in correct focus. He said something to the effect of, "The high-churchers have all this focus on the Father, enthroned in Heaven, but distant; and those charismatics are all wrapped up in the Holy Spirit, but we fall right in the center: we're focused on Jesus Christ. The Son. And because of the cross, that's where we should be focused..." I remember explaining that mini-apologetic to my Mom, and she and I both agreed that it seemed reasonable. Each of the three traditions had lost sight of the whole. By polishing one facet of the diamond for too long.

In fairness to Modernity, the Trinity is difficult, impossible, to understand; each era tries its best. Some closer to sublime than others. We look back at our roots and ponder how the mystery of Trinity was communicated to a particular people in a particular time. I think of the Trinity ikon by Roublev -- it was achieved during the early Rennaissence by repeating the same person thrice, showing a single God, a single divine nature, revealed in three equal persons. The image has endured. We also think of Celtic Christianity, which braids (sometimes literally) a celebration of the triune God into daily life. Chuck Smith Jr. points out a few such daily reminders in The End of the World as We Know It (p. 103 ff).

Development and Praxis of a Trinitarian Ethos
Robert E. Webber calls for an "adequately triune" worship of God. A brief look at his elaborations may help us center our thoughts on a recovered Trinitarianism. (You can do some more excellent Webber reading on the topic here at his website.). In a nutshell: God the Father is beyond us. Other. Transcendent. Mysterium Tremendum, per St. John Chrysostom. Our worship must contain elements of mystery, the language of transcendence. Praise. next, God the Son is Story. The story is the witness. The incarnation is story. Our worship must also contain story. Proclamation. kerygma. (Webber reminds us that the fullness of the Story is in the Eucharist). The Spirit is the Presence among us. Presence is experienced, mediated through Symbol. Performative symbols. Burning bush. Pillar of Fire and Cloud. Bread. Wine. Our worship must contain the symbolic.

A proper understanding of this trinitarian nature of the Godhead informs all apects of our life. The missional life of the Church, Lesslie Newbigin has noted, hinges upon a proper understanding of the Trinity. The Father upholds all, maintains a witness, makes his nature known in the Son, where the "veiled presence"¹ allows for a fostered faith, and the Holy Spirit who points to the Son, pointing to the Father. Emergent friend and author Lauren F. Winner writes:

The Trinity shows God in relation with Himself. Our Three-In-One God has welcomed us into Himself and invited us to participate in the divine life. And so the invitation that we Christians extend to one another is not simply an invitation into our homes or to our tables; what we ask of other people is that the enter into our lives. ²

This eternal dynamic of which Winner speaks so beautifully is grounded in an enveloping triune love -- the shared love of the Father, Son and Spirit that existed before creation, eternally. This shared love (God as eternal community) holds a key for our community. For our community's witness in a pluralistic society. I'll try to summarize Stanley Grenz's words³ on this while attempting not to plagiarize (i'm summarizing some hand-scratched notes): We proclaim a God of Love. Only a triune God can/could save us out of this overflowing trinitarian love, for a lesser god [not trinitarian] would create man (and then save man) because of a need for love (his creation would be his only source of love, and render him less than a god). But if God is already love, and God is infintely relational, then his love, creation and salvation come from an overflowing of trinitarian love. If God were not triune, God's love would have required an object; this is untenable. God would then be dependent on the world for love, and he would be God.

This energetic pulsar Trinity of overflowing, pre-existing love, orbiting itself like electrons or muons or gluons or whatever post-Einsteinian metaphor you'd choose -- this post-nuclear nucleus of Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Ghost -- contains in Himself the story, the mystery and the symbol of the Church's future. As we soak in an ethos that is "adequately triune" we will not be quick to fall into the Modern trap of reductionism. We will contextualize each Person of the Trinity in light of His love for the other two, and in light of the eternal relationship each has with each other, and with each's implications for worship, witness and spirituality.

1. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 118.
2. Lauren F. Winner, Mudhouse Sabbath, 47.
3. Stan Grenz, and Robert E. Webber, speaking at Emergent 2004.

Comments

[Jonathan]

Paul. Thanks for sharing. Few weeks back I mentioned on my blog about a guy that came up to me in church and said he had the Trinity all figured out. I mentioned to him that if that was the case, he may have forgotten the 'problem'. It is a mystery and I'm glad you mentioned that, and I like it that way. He's bigger that we can ever figure out!

Your blog is great - a tough one to write about, but well done - keep up the good work.

An the invitation to participate in the Trinity (John 17:20f) is staggering, but so gracious of God.

The early church used the word 'perichoresis' (move about, to dance) of the Trinity, and I think that sums up the dynamism you mention. The Trinity is a 'divine dance' and God has invited us to 'dance' with Him.