Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Hints About the Trinity Puzzle

Came upon a blog by a priest in England. She seems to offer well informed & interesting perspectives. Her writing on the Trinity has some things I find worth further reflection.


So far, off the cuff, I'm thinking I like the way she backs us up to look at the concept of Trinity in terms of the concept of God this gives us before letting us jump too quickly to applications for worship and mission. She's getting the horse & the cart in the right order. This lends to exploration and development of the concept with a sense of credibility and integrity.


I think she has good points about the effects of "unitarian" worship as a face off between us and God...but I have the sense that there are also other better ways seeing God as a unity can work out too. I'm not ready to put that concept aside quite so much.


I have issues about how predominantly we anthropomorphize our concept of God. Even though her language about the Trinity includes some of that, somehow her explanations help show me a window for thinking of God as Trinity without necessarily carrying the personified, anthropomorphic concepts as far as usual. I think that comes largely from her talking about the movement, exchange and non-coercive openness that can be implied in the concept of Trinity. That can be understood in non-anthropomorphic ways.


Finally, I notice that she's talking about responding to the invitation to join with the Trinity in a way where we may end up hardly noticing the seams....this is some of what I was wondering about in my previous thoughts stemming from the Rublev icon...she has the courage and clarity to say what I didn't.


Her work and my response deserve more careful treatment than I've given them here. My reading and writing have been hasty and I hope I haven't misrepresented her perspectives, or my own for that matter. But...I think I'll give myself this disclaimer and thereby try to give myself permission to let go of some perfectionism and post....Here goes.

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