Little Ah-Has

On the Trinity questions.

I've been reading The God We Never Knew by Marcus Borg. (Watch for an upcoming online book discussion on this.) He indicates the term persons in ancient texts doesn't mean separate individuals as we think of. Instead it refers to different roles. (pp. 97-98) This concept makes a lot more sense to me.

Second, in thinking about the traditional terminology of Father, Son & Holy Spirit and other terminology that is or might be use, I came upon this idea. I was trying out the gender neutral terms Parent, Child....but I didn't like that because child conveys the sense of a person who is not an adult whereas son is inclusive of all ages. This brought me to the term offspring. It may not be the most poetic term, but it triggered something in me.

At first the idea of offspring seemed a bit objectionable. God is God and God having offspring, or that offspring being Offspring with a capital O (that is God), seemed to be a lowering or compromise of the concept of God. Though the same issue exists with the concept of father and son, I hadn't had the same clarity about it until I thought in terms of parent and offspring.

Then I realized that maybe the concept of Offspring is the point. Its not that it lowers the concept of God, rather it elevates the concept of Offspring, broadens the concept of God and fits together with a few things that make sense to me that I hadn't been able to put together before. Offspring God emanates from Parent God, but its still all the same - its all God. I sense possible connections to the relational, communal aspect of the trinity, to panentheism (no, that's not a typo of pantheism, that's a different thing), to what's reflected in the Holy Trinity icon I wrote about before, to the immanence of God, to creation - both past and continuing...

This is exciting.

I'll have to live and work with this a lot more to become more clear on which of these connections hold up and how those that do work out, not to mention to get to a point to be able to talk or write about it more clearly. For now I hope someone reading this has a sense of what I mean.

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.

Increased Interest in Trinity

Two things have struck me and increased my interest in the Trinity since the BCMS paper got my attention on the topic.

One is the The Holy Trinity Icon and explanation that Aron brought to my attention. The Trinity is pictured around a table, with an open place (with food)...an open place for us. In this concept I sense a new perspective with new potential.

How might that image speak to the nature of God and to the nature of God as Trinity?

Might that open place for us be understood as inherent to the nature of God?

What does it mean to have that open space there for us? Is it an invitation or something else?

If an invitation, what are we invited to do or be? If something else, what?

The other thing that struck me and piqued my interest was the image (called a triquetra) that I found in the lower picture on this page while searching for labyrinths to walk. Apparently this familiar image and the concept of Trinity extends beyond its specifically Christian associations. Finding "Christian" concepts in other contexts tends to increase my sense that the relevance of those concepts isn't limited to a certain sectarian way of framing things, but that they speak to something basic and broad.

How accurate is that sense in this case? If accurate, what is that relevance?

Why has trinity been important in other belief systems as well as in Christianity?

What about reality, what about the Divine does it reflect that I haven't been keying in on?

How might my response to these questions impact my perspective on orienting our understanding of mission to our understanding of the Trinity...?